C500: C500ii: Fixing overexposed/blown out face

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seanadl

Active member
Hi all,

I shot a walk and talk segment yesterday outside. Bright, sunny day here in L.A. Thought I had the exposure nailed (using the camera's built-in false color readings) - but looking at it in the edit, the face is completely over exposed. As this was shot in Rec 709 XF-AVC and not log/raw - am I correct in thinking it might be difficult to recover/salvage in the edit?

Any tips/tricks on exposing skin tones nicely on very sunny days, in a one man run and gun situation? I only have the LCD display and built-in camera tools to guide me.
 
If you can, share a still (black out some of the face if you need to).

Being that it's not LOG/RAW, you are most likely correct.

You have a variety of exposure tools in the camera...at least one should be used at all times (correctly). Zebras are probably the easiest for many until you get used to false color and/or waveform.
 
Iris down, brother. Shirt is too hot, too. As someone that has spent over 20 years shooting mostly run & gun, the BEST thing for you to do is learn the camera and VF that you are using and adjust the VF to get as close to how the camera/footage looks on a real monitor(or know that, for example, if the VF image is a tick dark, it's going to be "just right" or any other variation). When I'm running around, I don't want a WF or any of that other stuff cluttering my VF. And outside of a quick check every now and again, I stopped using zebras years ago, too.

This is a general comment and not at anyone specific, but I don't understand why basic exposure is SO HARD for people today, especially with the latitude that modern cameras have. I never blew exposure on a Betacam(with a B&W CRT VF), in the old low res, low DR, SD days, the way I see people do today with cameras that shoot log and RAW and have 27 stops of DR(yes, that last part is a little facetious). We also rarely blew a white balance, either. So how are people screwing that up, too, when everything has a color VF and monitor?

Sorry for the rant...

But seriously, hook the camera up to a real monitor and look at that image and get the VF and on-board monitor as close as possible and make mental notes of the differences so you can compensate and just shoot "by eye".
 
If you can afford the time to color correct later - if you shoot in LOG with a 709 LUT for monitoring, then even if you miss exposure you will be able to correct it.

Also - Wide DR is a nice picture profile that has enough contrast that it often doesn't need color correction, but has much more gradual highlight rolloff and is less inclined to blow out like this

But I also agree with Run&Gun - as you get to know your camera better and experience seeing footage later on a monitor after running and gunning, you will have a better sense of how to expose on the fly
 
I'm going to reshoot this tomorrow. I'm a bit of a novice using professional cameras. This is perhaps the 7th video i've shot, so learning a huge deal on the job (I'm lucky enough that this is all being done for my own company).
 
seanadl said:
I'm going to reshoot this tomorrow. I'm a bit of a novice using professional cameras. This is perhaps the 7th video i've shot, so learning a huge deal on the job (I'm lucky enough that this is all being done for my own company).
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You may want to run a series of tests on your own so you can get some experience with the camera without wasting time during a paid shoot or risking missing exposure.

I would take a shot of someone just like you did above. I would make your best guess at the correct exposure. Then I would bracket the exposure by taking the same shot again and again at increasingly brighter exposures until I'm positive that it's too bright. Then I go back to my original exposure setting. Then I darken the exposure again and again until I'm positive it's too dark. You can say what you're doing out loud (what the aperture is and what the exposure meter says in camera) to give yourself a reference when you review later. The best-looking exposure may surprise you. I still bracket my exposure on particularly difficult-to-expose landscapes and I'm still sometimes surprised by which exposure looks best on the computer.
 
The information is mostly gone (you can recover a bit).

Turn those zebras on...even just as a safety measure, 90-95. You can't miss them. And then when you stop down (or use ND) they will disappear.

But learning exposure and fine-tuning your post workflow is more important in the long run as mentioned.
 
ahalpert said:
You may want to run a series of tests on your own so you can get some experience with the camera without wasting time during a paid shoot or risking missing exposure.

I would take a shot of someone just like you did above. I would make your best guess at the correct exposure. Then I would bracket the exposure by taking the same shot again and again at increasingly brighter exposures until I'm positive that it's too bright. Then I go back to my original exposure setting. Then I darken the exposure again and again until I'm positive it's too dark. You can say what you're doing out loud (what the aperture is and what the exposure meter says in camera) to give yourself a reference when you review later. The best-looking exposure may surprise you. I still bracket my exposure on particularly difficult-to-expose landscapes and I'm still sometimes surprised by which exposure looks best on the computer.
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Why are people guessing at exposure? Even without a waveform or zebras or false color, you should be able to see if something is exposed properly or not(at least close enough to not blow out someones face or anything else important that you don't want to lose detail in) with a decent VF and/or monitor.

I come from a time before there was log or RAW video. There was no recovering/fixing things in post(at least not to the degree of today). You did it all in-camera. You nailed exposure. You set the white balance. You set the "look". So, I don't subscribe to the ETTR philosophy(although I do understand it and know it's usefulness in the right/certain circumstances). If anything, especially running & gunning, and in the field, in-general, I'll err on the side of slight underexposure(ETTL?) to protect highlights and skin tones. Just my .02
 
I don't ETTR generally. I find colors are a bit richer underexposed.

Re: correct exposure - I think it's more art than science in terms of achieving the setting where things look BEST in that particular circumstance.

I'm not talking about blowing things out - that's easy to avoid in my opinion.

Re: bracketing landscapes, I'm talking about situations that have too much contrast to be captured by my picture profile where I have to decide how to balance highlights and shadows and also usually can't see the picture as accurately due to sunlight and the way my eye has adjusted...

But no, I never feel like I "miss" exposure, just that I miss the subjectively optimal setting by half a stop or so

But generally I'm just talking about developing the ability to predict how the image will look later based on how it looks on my monitor or evf on a sunny day
 
NorBro said:
The information is mostly gone (you can recover a bit).

Turn those zebras on...even just as a safety measure, 90-95. You can't miss them. And then when you stop down (or use ND) they will disappear.

But learning exposure and fine-tuning your post workflow is more important in the long run as mentioned.
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What are you using zebras for at 90-95%? White? Skin should never be anywhere close to that. Obviously there are lots of variables that depend on overall look, mood and environment, but you'll seen skin tones anywhere around the 40%'s to 60%'s on narrative and other series. There was an doc series I used to work on and skin tones for the interviews were usually in the 50%'s.
 
I meant in general if he wants to keep them on.

I actually ETTR a lot so skin is probably around 90-95 anyway and I drag it down in post, ha.

Times have changed R&G...you're going to be 50 soon...LOL, J/K!
 
ahalpert said:
I don't ETTR generally. I find colors are a bit richer underexposed.

Re: correct exposure - I think it's more art than science in terms of achieving the setting where things look BEST in that particular circumstance.

I'm not talking about blowing things out - that's easy to avoid in my opinion.

Re: bracketing landscapes, I'm talking about situations that have too much contrast to be captured by my picture profile where I have to decide how to balance highlights and shadows and also usually can't see the picture as accurately due to sunlight and the way my eye has adjusted...

But no, I never feel like I "miss" exposure, just that I miss the subjectively optimal setting by half a stop or so

But generally I'm just talking about developing the ability to predict how the image will look later based on how it looks on my monitor or evf on a sunny day
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Yes. You need to look at the environment, mood, look, etc. You're going to light and expose differently for a dark, moody scene in a narrative than you are a reporter doing a live talkback in a bright stadium on live TV. And sometimes you have to compromise and decide what is the most important thing to expose properly or sacrifice or try to find that middle ground on.
 
NorBro said:
I meant in general if he wants to keep them on.

I actually ETTR a lot so skin is probably around 90-95 anyway and I drag it down in post, ha.

Times have changed R&G...you're going to be 50 soon...LOL, J/K!
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Lol. Still have some buffer there, but I'm closer to 50 than 30!
 
The annoying thing about yesterday's shoot - I couldn't see how obviously overexposed the shot was in the VF. False colors showed the skintone/face to be exposed 'properly'. Obviously becoming more familiar with the camera and gaining more experience will be good.
 
seanadl said:
The annoying thing about yesterday's shoot - I couldn't see how obviously overexposed the shot was in the VF. False colors showed the skintone/face to be exposed 'properly'. Obviously becoming more familiar with the camera and gaining more experience will be good.
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There are only certain instances that I'll use false color and false color is at the bottom of my "exposure tool" toolbox. Underneath waveform and underneath zebra. And histogram isn't even in it, period.

With my ENG camera, if I'm in the field and feel that I need a quick check or have a question, I can pop zebra's on and off very quickly. In-fact, I think my VF on my Vari has a three position switch: middle is off, up or down is ON and the other way is just a spring loaded(returns to middle/off) temporary on for 2-3 seconds and then turns back off. For sit-downs, waveform is my first choice if I need to check the shot. For me, I've found the best use for false color is for green screen or if I'm shooting/lighting a solid white background, etc. Histogram has no business in video. That snuck in with all of the DSLR shooters.
 
ahalpert said:
Buffers fill up quickly, amigo. As far as I'm concerned, I'm already dead. And I'm okay with that (ish)
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You don't know the half of it, brother... The older you get, the faster it goes.

I was fishing through some old pictures tonight, from '07/'08 ballpark looking for something and it's crazy. I feel like that stuff happened last year, until I really think about it and realize that was 12-13 years ago. That was all of K-6, Jr. High AND High School. Think about how LONG that felt when you were in school. Now a decade goes by and it feels like only a year or two.
 
Maybe this is my film snob coming through, having years of shooting reversal stock with no latitude to occasionally get a specific look. ETTR means Histogram. Histogram means you're shooting a still camera that shoots video. I 100% agree that Histograms are close to useless for shooting video. I live and die by waveform and occasionally zebras. In most interiors, I like skin tones to have peaks at around 60 IRE but outside I'll let 'em up more around 70. How are you going to judge IRE for exposure without waveform and or Zebras. Can't understand why mirrorless makers seem to roundly reject waveform monitors on their cameras (with a few exceptions). Thats the main reason I use a monitor on our X-T3s, just to get a damn waveform monitor.
 
Run&Gun said:
Why are people guessing at exposure?
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Give the young man a break, he said he was a newbie, but more importantly, shooting in the sun on the C500MKII without a VF is tricky. You really have to understand the exposure tools on the camera because you won't be able to judge exposure by eye.
 
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