Blown out when in bright direct stage lighting

C

ChipThome

Well-known member
Clip link at end.

Let me set this up a bit first.

GH1 unhackable with 14-140 kit lens.

The stage has two banks of lights aimed at it, both left and right. These are both clear and and with gels attached. The lead singer, very fair skinned and very light blond hair. The white guitar has white MOP plate behind the strings. Flashing lights on the rear of stage are mainly covered in a reddish/orange gels, with some blues and some yellows. WB is pretty close to dead on. Some of the colors could use some help.

When the lead singer or the guitarist steps into the direct light aimed at them, the white guitar blows out as does much of the singer's skin and hair.

I started in IA as this was a test run to see what the cam might do. I went around the dial hoping to find something that altered the situation but nothing did. I manually kicked ISO down to 100 at one point and lens was at 5.6. When I hit shutter priority it was out at 250.

I have shot footage of this band many times with my consumer SD pannys and later my DVXs. The only times we were able to keep this from happening was with the DVXs and cranking gain back almost as far as we could.

Is this an ND filter situation or cam settings ??? If an ND filter situation, what range 2, 4 or 8 ?? If cam settings, where do I start ??? If both, ok, can you aim me where to begin ???

Thanks in advance.

http://www.vimeo.com/19358180
 
I'm no expert, but if you want perfection, this would require expensive post-processing. The camera appears to have exposed an average of what it was seeing. Some areas are over-exposed, some areas are exposed correctly to my eye. If you wanted the singer, you should have selected her in the camera and appropriate exposure for her, then I think the others would have been under-exposed... Al
 
At :24 if you can stop it there the skin tones and her hair color are as close to exact as any cam, I have had, has reproduced. But she is out of the direct beam of the light. At the same time, the guitarist's hand is blown out as is his guitar, but he is in those direct beams. In the past I have asked the light guy to dial back those bright lights focused on the front of the stage, and that went in one of his ears and out the other. So I need to fix this, somehow.

As a side question, will the GH2 with it's larger sensor deal with this better, anyone know ???
 
In theory a polarizing filter can reduce reflection light on non-conductive material. ND filters like Fader adjustable ND filter is circular polarizing filter... I guess.
 
Might try a contrast reduction filter. But I doubt any 8 bit codec camera is going to handle the dynamic range needed in that situation. It becomes a matter of how much under exposure you can handle to protect the highlights before you lose mid tone values or get too much noise in the shadows.

http://www.tiffen.com/contrast_filters.htm
 
I went throught this with a theater production just a month ago. Theater lighting designers often have no idea about camera needs and don't care. Spotlights/ellipsoidals etc. can be so bright compared to everything else that the only way to expose for the subjects they light up is to vastly underxpose for anything else. Especially when what's being lit is white and reflective, like the guitar. Try the polarizer or contrast filters if you can, but don't expect miracles.

Sometimes the best solution isn't technical. If this is important to the performers, ask them to lean on the lighting guy, he/she might be more responsive to them. And good luck.
 
VidE said:
I went throught this with a theater production just a month ago. Theater lighting designers often have no idea about camera needs and don't care.
Click to expand...

No truer words have I ever read on this board. :-)

The polarizer makes sense to me for the guitar. But do you also think it will knock down the overexposure due to the fair skin tone and the light blond hair ???

In shooting this the focus is the lead singer and losing the overexposure. If I can find a way to do that, at that point I will examine the underexposure of everything else and determine which is more detrimental. If on losing the overexposure of the lead singer I also pick up a decent exposure on the guitar, that's a plus, but not imperative.

The rest of the members have some exposure issues, on the sides of their faces, depending on which bank of lights are aimed at them. My cam I was at 5.6 on the kit lens, and still not low enough. That why I was thinking the ND filter might do some good.

But being a complete newb on this style camera, I have no clue if that overexposure can be cured by either one, two or three stops, if at all. Or do skin and hair reflect like water and glass would, making a polarizer more effective ???
 
I think the skin gives a mix of diffusing and polarizing lighting. Prolly more diffusing lighting if she has a fair skin. So less filtering by a polarizing filter.

But it will be hard to capture everything in such "hostile" lighting condition.
 
Here's what I'd do... you may not like it... I'd put it all in to monochrome, aka Black and White, increase the contrast while 'placing' the singer nearly 'white' but still detailed, and dropping the whole rest of the band
into lower values... and add a 'grainy' film filter...

To me, as lit, and shot, there is no separation from the singer and the rest of the band. By changing to B&W, add grain, the blown highlighs 'read' live band, grunge situation... as opposed to 'bad lighting setup'.

Here's an example, mangled without permission from your clip:

attachment.php


While others may disagree, the 'blown' highlights read to me better, along with getting 'rid' of the big clump of 'orange' that takes away from the singer.
(And mister guitar player as well... if you want to get his moment in the sun, get him out there in the light when it's time...)
 
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Soon after I bought my GH1, I attempted to film a couple of live shows in unhacked 720p60 video mode and got even worse exposures than yours. While I agree on the technical merits of j1clark's suggestion to resort to monochrome, I think it's a look that doesn't really suit this type of energetic performance. Here's what I'd suggest for recording future live events:

1. For high-contrast stage lighting, the camera needs a high bitrate to capture good detail in the shadows. This calls for a hack designed for low-light and lengthy single takes. I'd recommend the 720p30 SH video mode in my Fast Action 3-Frame GOP Patch:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?222791-50Mbps-AVCHD-Fast-Action-3-Frame-GOP-Patch

2. You'll need a faster zoom than the 14-140mm kit lens. I'd recommend the Olympus 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II auto-focus zoom. If you want a fast zoom with Image Stabilization, the only choice at this time is the Panasonic/Leica 14-50mm f2.8-3.5 zoom. However, the 14-50mm will not auto-focus on the GH1.

3. Use daylight white balance in the Smooth Film Mode with all settings at -2. With stage lighting, you'll still get too much contrast and saturation, but these settings will tone it down as much as possible.

4. Do not use any lens filters, they will only add flare and/or degrade the shadow detail.

5. Shoot with a shutter speed of 1/60 for the best-looking motion blur. With a fast lens, you should be able to shoot at ISO 400 or lower. If you need more exposure when the lights dim, switch to a shutter of 1/30. To avoid 60hz strobing, shutter speed must be either 1/30, 1/60 or 1/120.

6. If you don't have a fast lens with Image Stabilization, you'll need lens support, particularly with a 1/30 shutter. For live events, I use a Manfrotto 560B video monopod:
http://www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-560...7?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1296449318&sr=1-7

7. Use the spot meter with bright light on the singer's face and hair to set your exposure. Ignore the horizontal exposure bar and pay careful attention to the histogram. However, when the lighting is blue or purple, expect the histogram to show lower readings than you're actually getting.

8. In post-production, lower the color saturation and contrast before you do anything else. You may find that many cases that appear to be blown highlights are actually excessive saturation (particularly with the color orange). A professional job of color grading will require feathered mattes to tone down highlights without plunging everything else into black. A less time-consuming shortcut is to use After Effects CS5's Rotobrush to grab and track the highlights for you.
 
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It seems there was plenty of lighting with the bright stage lighting. Without any filter, even at the lowest ISO, it might have required to narrow the aperture to keep the shutter speed low. But when it gets too narrow, it might affect picture quality. The simplest solution is adjustable ND filter, but I hate the ugly flare and the loss of details, too. I was daydreaming about having built-in ND filter 2 and 4 stops. Or having a built-in high quality 3 stops ND filter would be nice, too. The inner filter wouldn't have any flare or loss of details. No more step up rings. Sigh... maybe in GH3... or GH4.
 
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As people have said sometimes it's in the situation that you have been dumped. That spot is going to really cause you some latitude issues, and the guys white guitar doesn't help at all.... The only thing you could do would be to expose more conservatively so you don't blow out, cause from what I'm getting out of my GH2 is that if it's overblown there's no info in there. So, if it's a little darker than you'd like you can adjust much better in post than having a nuclear hotspot.

Were you also recording with the highlight feature turned on. I do think that the built in ND is one of the biggest selling points about the AF100... that coupled with the real iris control, waveform, zebras, and such...

I'm sold though on the DSLRs.... I mean, for the money they rock. Just not as easy going as my HMC150, but when the situation is right the image pops.
 
j1clark the band does some stuff where that look would work. Thanks for the heads up !!!http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?59441-lpowell

lpowell I really appreciate you taking the time to analyze and give me the heads up on which set of the hack to use. At this time I have no hackable GH1, but would get one of the right opportunity presented itself. All in all, the collection of your pointers I do think will help me get closer, even if this isn't hacked. At least now I have more idea on where to concentrate me education and efforts. :-) As far as support, I agree wholeheartedly !!! This was on top of a 561B, although I wasn't too concerned about movement. This was the first time I had a chance to shoot a GH in this "hostile" environment, and my goal was to see how mooked up the cam would get. As far as the stupid orange color, lots of that is the compression combined with the gels on the lights below the kick drum. The big "clump" you see is actually bright red, if it is in regular light. Same with the lettering on the kick drum logo, bright red again. Those gels blow the colors something terrible, even to the naked eye.
 
Same night, different bar and the guitar player was with the first band for years, which is why I stopped there too. Their light cans were LEDs that changed colors. And just like with the Spin band, these guys blew out too but not quite as bad. This is about all I shot, as I found out what I wanted to know, I had to fix this blowing out. :-(

http://www.vimeo.com/19379460
 
stonebat and Justyn.... I tried a little bit of everything that night, pretty much around the dial. I think I can live with some image degradation, if I can get as justyn says "rid of the nuclear hot spot". The singer and the light guy are friends and I have shot them for years. I also have had this exact same issue, all that time too. This one actually isn't too bad, compared to some. When the light guy cranks his followspot up and hits her with that, she completely ghosts out.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?10733-Justyn
 
ChipThome said:
And just like with the Spin band, these guys blew out too but not quite as bad.
Click to expand...
This is a good example of what I mean by excessive color saturation:
38769201orig.jpg


And here's what you get with Master Saturation dialed down to -60 in Colorista II:
38769201.jpg


Of course, I'd want to continue with additional color corrections, but I think you can see that what's mostly blown out is the saturation. To get more tonal range out of the camera you need to shoot at as low an ISO as possible.
 
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It seems the red channel is clipping. How about lowering WB? But if the lighting colors change... arrrrr
 
lpowell said:
This is a good example of what I mean by excessive color saturation:


And here's what you get with Master Saturation dialed down to -60 in Colorista II:

Of course, I'd want to continue with additional color corrections, but I think you can see that what's mostly blown out is the saturation. To get more tonal range out of the camera you need to shoot at as low an ISO as possible.
Click to expand...

That is just amazing !!!
I was sitting there and those stupid LED cans wash everything in the color they are using, and you have washed it right back out again !!!
OK, I have to try that on the entire clip and see how it works.
 
Hey Chip- great to see the cam getting some love!
lPowell is the man for sure- his comments are spot on and the sat. reduc. in colorista looks brilliant- however,

I would slightly disagree with the FILM MODE 'smooth' and try the 'nostalgic' setting with sat. dialed down as it is a flatter less saturated profile than the 'smooth' mode out of the box. Also, check that the color profile of the cam is in adobeRGB as opposed to sRGB, (now I'm sure this will start a massive adobe vs. sRGB war-but this is NOT MY INTENTION), it has just been my experience that I am able to see more definition in highlights with adobeRGB, I feel like there is more detail....but to each his own !

Furthermore, I would def. avoid shooting in iA, as your WB will fluctuate all over the place especially with the ever changing light environment, plus your shutter will be all over the place as well. You can still 'autofocus' in manual mode with the switch on top of the cam for 'AF' just hold the shutter half way to re-focus.

OR you can just keep shooting the way you are and process in post like lpowell showed us in colorista- (which btw really shows you the power of this cam and it's ability to reatin detail info and be pushed in post quite a bit!).

Z
 
LED instruments are very quickly taking over live performance lighting and the quality and intensity of light they emit differs a lot from their incandescent predecessors.

When deep-saturated colors come from a gelled, conventional incandescent 3200K fixture, the transmission drops below half or less, (depending on the color). A blue or purple washed stage is going to have far less luminance value than a white (or other less saturated color) stage wash lit with the same number of fixtures. Some colors have transmission values of less than 4%!

In LEDs, especially the latest generation 4 - 7 color fixtures, the transmission luminance value doesn't drop significantly when calling up more saturated colors. Knowing this, an all-white luminance value accomplished through a combination of RGB+W/A/RO/I/M/Cy emitters in LED color-mixing fixtures is going to be up to 5 times brighter than the value of any one contributing single color.
 
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