cardmaverick
Well-known member
Hello fellow DVXuser's,
I'm Chris Nuzzaco, a DP in the Washington DC metro area. A few months back, I posted a little tutorial on here about light metering that helped a lot of people out. I've been working on a site for a while, that aims to be a lighting mecca of sorts. It's not yet ready for launch, but here is a little tease to show off what I'm cooking up. By the way, here is a link to the other tutorial:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=82308
Ok onward with the new illustrated tutorial. This time I'm tackling a well written about subject, but one that seems poorly explained and seldom illustrated...
NOTE: This example uses images I caputred using my Nikon D70... a professional still camera. I know its not DV or even HD, BUT, the principal is the same. Keep that in mind.
How to Expose for the Edit
Shooting Prep:
The first step to creating a Pro quality digital image is preparation. You simply have to know what your camera can, and cannot do. The first step I recommend is to shoot a grayscale, get the widest scale you can. In this example, I'm using a photoshop generated 11 step grayscale. I know it's not quite accurate (I metered it to check), but it illustrates my point very clearly anyways.
Here is the raw grayscale:
VIEWING NOTE:
Depending on your monitor, you might not be able to see all the steps. I work on an Eizo Flexscan, a pro graphics monitor, so I can, but if you can't, it has to do with your monitor, not the graphic.
Take this gray scale and light it evenly, use an incident light meter with a flat diffuser disc to make sure.
Now take a spot meter (1 degree is preferred), and take a meter reading on the 18% gray chip. Set you exposure for that gray chip.
Hook your camera up to a waveform monitor. While looking at the monitor, make adjustments to your cameras pedestal. Bring it up. How much can depend on the camera. But to be general, bring it up. Also, kick out the knee while your at it, not too much though. Again, this is camera specific, so I can't give settings. In a nutshell, you are lowering overall contrast, and making the image brighter. Be careful to not exceed 100 IRE on the waveform, thats the point of no return. Keep your highligts around 90 to be safe.
You're grayscale should now look something like this:
Kinda ugly...
Now record the image, and capture to your computer. Put the footage into whatever program you use for color correction. I personally use After Effects 7.0. It's amazing to be short. I call it the poor mans Davinci 2K. When you have the footage loaded, apply a curve of your choice, or whatever the project calls for. Now note how your gray scale looks
Grayscale with post curve applied:
As you can see, I have lost a considerable amount of information after adding my preferred curve. This is where you really take some notes. Use this edited grayscale as your guide for lighting and metering. Whatever the latitude of the edited grayscale is, now becomes your cameras latitude (using your custom settings of course).
Why do this Chris???
Lots of reasons....For one, noise. Digital noise loves to live in the darker areas of your image. Ever notice how the brighter pixels look cleaner...? To be simple, you get a higher quality signal in the midtones area, gradually moving up to the highlights, but not past 90 IRE as a rule of thumb. By setting your camera to record the image in this area you are:
1.) Giving yourself cleaner data.
2.) Giving yourself options. As in options regarding how dark and contrasty your image is.
Remember, DV, HDV, DVCPRO HD, any format other than RED RAW, compresses in camera. Thus it throws away precious information. If your blacks are crushed, your highlights blown, well, sorry , you have to live with it....
Now for my real world example, featuring me!
rogar-SunGlass(DBG
MORE NOTES:
This Image was shot with a Nikon D70 at ISO 200. Because this camera shoots in RAW format, I did my calibrations in post using a RAW editor, then I opened up in Photoshop. The tools I used in there are all found in After Effects. For video formats not shooting in RAW you cannont do this!!! You must do this prior to recording.
My unedited source file:
Pretty hot eh? LOL. Ok now remember, I lit and exposed this realizing how much latitude my camera would have AFTER editing.
First set of curves applied:
Ok, we're already seeing some serious improvement now! However, I wasn't to satisfied, so I added another curve to heighten the effect just a little bit more.
Curve two applied. Subtle, but what I wanted:
Now for some color adjustments. I really liked the blue shirt, but I wanted to make it a deeper blue, so I used the selective color tool to make this happen.
Selective color tool works nicely on my shirt:
Now last but not least, color adjustments. These are sublte, but nice. I used the color balance tool to warm my midtones, and cool my shadows and highlights.
I added red/yellow to midtones and cyan/blue to my highlights and shadows. I kept "preserve luminosity" turned on to keep my exposure from changing.
TADA!
And thats how we do that....
MORE NOTES:
In compressed formats, you should really also do color tests, and set your cameras colors in camera for lowest possible noise AFTER color correction. Is it a big deal? Well depends on what your doing. The more extreme the look, you woud be better off at least orienting the cameras colors in the right direction. If you don't need anything extreme, then you should be fine with a regular white balance or filter. The big offender is really the luminance.
There are certain looks you just can't pull off in camera, or at least not with an HVX200, given the rather limited options for image control inside it. If I could have all of my Affter Effects tools inside the HVX, compete with actual scopes to look at (lets face it, -15 just looks like a number to my eyeballs), you can be sure I'd take advantage of that.
I've shot DVCPRO HD with lower pedestal settings and still been disappointed with the results though.
For HVX200 (DVCPRO HD) bottom line is this:
If you want the cleanest image possible, do it in camera, don't touch it in post.
Cons: There are only so many things you can control. Once you set the contrast and brightness, you're stuck with it (unless macroblocking and banding are your kind of thing..). High level of commitment. Little flexibility.
If you want the most options for your buck, do it in post.
Cons: Depending on how you post, and how extreme you do it, noise can pop up. Again, the amount is dependent on how extreme you go. I've shot with a raised pedestal and had footage that didn't look any more noisey after color correction than the raw footage, but it all depends on several variables.....
For DV:
Quite simply, Test it out. It's not like you can't raise it up, you just can't go as high up. As for going down, well its extremely noisey should you ever need to make any kind of adjustments.
Last but not least (and I know I'll say this again)...Test!
I know I haven't covered anything on how to ISO rate, or use spot meters, but hey, thats for another day. This article and more to come will eventually appear on a new site I'm making. And I aim to use video examples as well, plus interactive tours of light setup examples, and video captures of post processing.
I hope this helps! Feel free to post any questions you might have.
Thanks for reading!
I'm Chris Nuzzaco, a DP in the Washington DC metro area. A few months back, I posted a little tutorial on here about light metering that helped a lot of people out. I've been working on a site for a while, that aims to be a lighting mecca of sorts. It's not yet ready for launch, but here is a little tease to show off what I'm cooking up. By the way, here is a link to the other tutorial:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=82308
Ok onward with the new illustrated tutorial. This time I'm tackling a well written about subject, but one that seems poorly explained and seldom illustrated...
NOTE: This example uses images I caputred using my Nikon D70... a professional still camera. I know its not DV or even HD, BUT, the principal is the same. Keep that in mind.
How to Expose for the Edit
Shooting Prep:
The first step to creating a Pro quality digital image is preparation. You simply have to know what your camera can, and cannot do. The first step I recommend is to shoot a grayscale, get the widest scale you can. In this example, I'm using a photoshop generated 11 step grayscale. I know it's not quite accurate (I metered it to check), but it illustrates my point very clearly anyways.
Here is the raw grayscale:
VIEWING NOTE:
Depending on your monitor, you might not be able to see all the steps. I work on an Eizo Flexscan, a pro graphics monitor, so I can, but if you can't, it has to do with your monitor, not the graphic.
Take this gray scale and light it evenly, use an incident light meter with a flat diffuser disc to make sure.
Now take a spot meter (1 degree is preferred), and take a meter reading on the 18% gray chip. Set you exposure for that gray chip.
Hook your camera up to a waveform monitor. While looking at the monitor, make adjustments to your cameras pedestal. Bring it up. How much can depend on the camera. But to be general, bring it up. Also, kick out the knee while your at it, not too much though. Again, this is camera specific, so I can't give settings. In a nutshell, you are lowering overall contrast, and making the image brighter. Be careful to not exceed 100 IRE on the waveform, thats the point of no return. Keep your highligts around 90 to be safe.
You're grayscale should now look something like this:
Kinda ugly...
Now record the image, and capture to your computer. Put the footage into whatever program you use for color correction. I personally use After Effects 7.0. It's amazing to be short. I call it the poor mans Davinci 2K. When you have the footage loaded, apply a curve of your choice, or whatever the project calls for. Now note how your gray scale looks
Grayscale with post curve applied:
As you can see, I have lost a considerable amount of information after adding my preferred curve. This is where you really take some notes. Use this edited grayscale as your guide for lighting and metering. Whatever the latitude of the edited grayscale is, now becomes your cameras latitude (using your custom settings of course).
Why do this Chris???
Lots of reasons....For one, noise. Digital noise loves to live in the darker areas of your image. Ever notice how the brighter pixels look cleaner...? To be simple, you get a higher quality signal in the midtones area, gradually moving up to the highlights, but not past 90 IRE as a rule of thumb. By setting your camera to record the image in this area you are:
1.) Giving yourself cleaner data.
2.) Giving yourself options. As in options regarding how dark and contrasty your image is.
Remember, DV, HDV, DVCPRO HD, any format other than RED RAW, compresses in camera. Thus it throws away precious information. If your blacks are crushed, your highlights blown, well, sorry , you have to live with it....
Now for my real world example, featuring me!
rogar-SunGlass(DBGMORE NOTES:
This Image was shot with a Nikon D70 at ISO 200. Because this camera shoots in RAW format, I did my calibrations in post using a RAW editor, then I opened up in Photoshop. The tools I used in there are all found in After Effects. For video formats not shooting in RAW you cannont do this!!! You must do this prior to recording.
My unedited source file:
Pretty hot eh? LOL. Ok now remember, I lit and exposed this realizing how much latitude my camera would have AFTER editing.
First set of curves applied:
Ok, we're already seeing some serious improvement now! However, I wasn't to satisfied, so I added another curve to heighten the effect just a little bit more.
Curve two applied. Subtle, but what I wanted:
Now for some color adjustments. I really liked the blue shirt, but I wanted to make it a deeper blue, so I used the selective color tool to make this happen.
Selective color tool works nicely on my shirt:
Now last but not least, color adjustments. These are sublte, but nice. I used the color balance tool to warm my midtones, and cool my shadows and highlights.
I added red/yellow to midtones and cyan/blue to my highlights and shadows. I kept "preserve luminosity" turned on to keep my exposure from changing.
TADA!
And thats how we do that....
MORE NOTES:
In compressed formats, you should really also do color tests, and set your cameras colors in camera for lowest possible noise AFTER color correction. Is it a big deal? Well depends on what your doing. The more extreme the look, you woud be better off at least orienting the cameras colors in the right direction. If you don't need anything extreme, then you should be fine with a regular white balance or filter. The big offender is really the luminance.
There are certain looks you just can't pull off in camera, or at least not with an HVX200, given the rather limited options for image control inside it. If I could have all of my Affter Effects tools inside the HVX, compete with actual scopes to look at (lets face it, -15 just looks like a number to my eyeballs), you can be sure I'd take advantage of that.
I've shot DVCPRO HD with lower pedestal settings and still been disappointed with the results though.
For HVX200 (DVCPRO HD) bottom line is this:
If you want the cleanest image possible, do it in camera, don't touch it in post.
Cons: There are only so many things you can control. Once you set the contrast and brightness, you're stuck with it (unless macroblocking and banding are your kind of thing..). High level of commitment. Little flexibility.
If you want the most options for your buck, do it in post.
Cons: Depending on how you post, and how extreme you do it, noise can pop up. Again, the amount is dependent on how extreme you go. I've shot with a raised pedestal and had footage that didn't look any more noisey after color correction than the raw footage, but it all depends on several variables.....
For DV:
Quite simply, Test it out. It's not like you can't raise it up, you just can't go as high up. As for going down, well its extremely noisey should you ever need to make any kind of adjustments.
Last but not least (and I know I'll say this again)...Test!
I know I haven't covered anything on how to ISO rate, or use spot meters, but hey, thats for another day. This article and more to come will eventually appear on a new site I'm making. And I aim to use video examples as well, plus interactive tours of light setup examples, and video captures of post processing.
I hope this helps! Feel free to post any questions you might have.
Thanks for reading!
Last edited:
