FS700 Users: Do you shoot slightly over-exposed? and reduce in post via FCP? Question

S

SGM

Active member
I come from the DSLR world and hate noise, as I am sure a lot of you do as well..my question is, with the FS700, I've decided to shoot on non-PP mode. So I am using in image "out of the box" and I'm not doing PP because I have deadlines, etc and a feature to shoot and would rather go the safer route.

With that said, I'm curious on what everything thinks about and feels on shooting a little over-exposed (only slightly, maybe by a few stops and then bringing it down in post production through Final Cut Pro X color correction "exposure" settings? I ask because I did some tests on a cloudy day and it looks good.

My main concern is noise. I'm shooting at 500 ISO and not going any more than 500 ISO.

My question is, will I lose a lot of aspects to the image if shooting a few exposures over and then bringing it down in post?

The positives of doing this is to have less noise in the darks, especially on cloudy days which is when I'll be shooting mostly - overcast days.

The negatives might be you might lose some of the detail.

I'm curious on how other FS700 users go about this.

I suppose, I'm thinking more in the vein of how film stock would shoot a little over-exposed and then they would bring down the tone and saturation and exposure in the editing process...
 
Usually you're better off shooting a little under exposed and bringing it up as digital cameras tend to have a bit more latitude in the shadows than the highlights. If you shoot over exposed, you'll be losing lots of highlight detail in your footage.
 
Just set your zebras to 100 and expose so only the brightest whites show the zebra.

And use the fantastic histogram to do a general check. If nothing is all the way left or right you are all set. If it is relight the scene or use a graduated filter.

It is really easy to nail perfect exposure with the tools in the 700.

I agree that it is better to under expose than over. I do that in DSLRs as well. To each his own.

One thought is that if you are shooting snowy bright scenes common this time of the year here in the NE anyway. Then if you use auto iris it will under expose for you. I always set exposure manually and use skin or a gray card to get the correct exposure. Auto can get you in the ballpark but it can also fool you.
 
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There are lots of trade-offs.

If you push (raise) exposure in post you increase noise (and hence decrease the signal-to-noise ratio), if you pull (lower) exposure in post you DECREASE noise (increase signal-to-noise ratio).

As others have said if you over-expose you remove your room from the highlights and end up with a brighter, almost plastic looking video-look if there is a lot of contrast. If the scene is low contrast you can really just expose for your middle grey or skin tones and let everything else fall where it may.

Lucky for you the FS700 is pretty clean overall no matter which way you decide to go.
 
SGM said:
I come from the DSLR world and hate noise, as I am sure a lot of you do as well..my question is, with the FS700, I've decided to shoot on non-PP mode. So I am using in image "out of the box" and I'm not doing PP because I have deadlines, etc and a feature to shoot and would rather go the safer route.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I see how shooting with PP off is safer. Its not like PP off mode looks very good... id expect you'll get more image issues needing correction in post shooting with PP off than with a standard cine PP or one of the many tested custom ones suggested on this forum.

PP off still has a look just like any PP only you have no control and it looks pretty bad in my experience.
 
olof said:
Just set your zebras to 100 and expose so only the brightest whites show the zebra.
Click to expand...

This is how I shoot as well. I believe that the FS-700 has zebras set to 70 or 90 by default out of the box.

Obviously every shooting situation is different, but in general with my zebras set to 100 I expose until I start to see just a few overexposed point highlights.
 
I under expose a bit as the FS700 seems to prefer that.

As for the stock profile, not sure why you would want to use it as it looks pretty bad and very video IMO. I mostly shoot on Cinegamma 1 and the look is so much more organic than the stock PP. My main job is motion graphics and vfx commercials and promos, and we work with footage all the time. In my 12 years of doing it, I honestly cannot think of 1 shot that did not have some type of minimal grading before the final product, and that's out of thousands of shots.

Also, like Noah says, the reason why they came out with Cinegammas is because the highlights and colors are kind of jacked on the stock PP. You will probably spend more time in post fixing those issues than you would if you just started off shooting with one of the good profiles.

If you care about how your final product looks, put some time in the grade as it's so important.

The only time I don't grade footage is if I'm just handing it over to a client, but they always end up grading it.

So yeah, avoid the stock PP and grade your footage and you will have a more professional looking product in the end; and under expose a bit.
 
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