How is everyone nailing exposure w/ your 7d/T2i?

B

budha

Active member
Hello everyone.

I am coming from the 1/3 ccd world and I am used to having my zebras as a great way to judge exposure on interviews etc (e.g. setting zebras to 70-80 and seeing where they land on the persons face).

I am wondering how everyone is judging exposure now that we no longer have these options. Should I be taking a spot meter and point it at the persons face, or is there another method everyone recommends?

I really appreciate the help on this.
 
I just look at the LCD and if it looks right I under expose a little from that point. Don't know if that is the right way but it works for me.
 
same here. I'll underexpose a half to a full stop. I also use a flat profile with contrast and sharpness all of the way down, and saturation down 2 steps.
 
Guys,

What brightness do you have your LCD display set to? Also, I use that profile already.

How do you guys make sure you're not clipping whites?
 
budha said:
Hello everyone.

I am coming from the 1/3 ccd world and I am used to having my zebras as a great way to judge exposure on interviews etc (e.g. setting zebras to 70-80 and seeing where they land on the persons face).

I am wondering how everyone is judging exposure now that we no longer have these options. Should I be taking a spot meter and point it at the persons face, or is there another method everyone recommends?

I really appreciate the help on this.
Click to expand...

There's an exposure meter right in the camera itself. Just move the square on your screen to what you'd like properly exposed and push the "star" button to do live light metering. On mine, there's two stops under and two stops over represented. I try to expose toward the middle or even a little higher depending on the situation. Hope that makes sense!

Chris W
 
This is what I do and it works really well- (for the 7D)

1st- turn off auto lcd brightness. IT IS THE DEVIL. I set mine right in the middle and use a sunshade when necessary.

2nd- turn on the option to show exposure peaking or image peaking or highlight peaking (I forget the exact name) that will blink from black to white in any parts of the image that are over exposed. Then as you're setting exposure just snap a still. Adjust exposure accordingly until nothing, (or very little) is peaking. After a while, you'll learn to see it on the screen.

If a shot is moving from light to dark to light... etc, you can pause the video playback and it will blink any parts that are over.

I use a light meter especially for the low end, so I know I'm not under exposed, and I know that I can go almost 2 stops over what the meter reads before it will blow out.
 
t2i owners are gonna have a rough time because you don't have 1/3rd ISO stops
this means fine tuning exposure adjustments must be done with aperture and ND's

coming from shooting with a 7d for five months I have enjoyed this luxury,
now when I use my t2i it needs a little more time and effort in nailing it
 
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I use an external panny monitor with waveform and a powered mini hdmi to component cable - this allows me to judge exposure exactly as i would on any other digital camera
 
J Davis said:
t2i owners are gonna have a rough time because you don't have 1/3rd ISO stops
this means fine tuning exposure adjustments must be done with aperture and ND's

coming from shooting with a 7d for five months I have enjoyed this luxury,
now when I use my t2i it needs a little more time and effort in nailing it
Click to expand...
Believe it or not I've been using those 1/3 stops with Highlight Tone Priority set ON and have been getting NO added noise in dark or light areas of my footage.
 
Chris, that's a neat trick with the exposure, I wish it had a bigger range, but still handy.

As for the * on the T2i, there's two buttons on the top right of the back of the camera. They have magnifying glass images in blue, but if you look at the camera from the top you'll see a white star that correlates to the left of the two buttons.

Also for exposure, I'm not sure if it's legit, but I take a still shot while in video mode, then look at the still in playback (or whatever you call it). If something is really blown out it will flash black then white on the image. Also you can look at the waveforms on still shots by pressing the "Disp." button a few times in playback. That should give you a good idea of what you're capturing.
 
budha said:
Hello everyone.

I am coming from the 1/3 ccd world and I am used to having my zebras as a great way to judge exposure on interviews etc (e.g. setting zebras to 70-80 and seeing where they land on the persons face).

I am wondering how everyone is judging exposure now that we no longer have these options. Should I be taking a spot meter and point it at the persons face, or is there another method everyone recommends?

I really appreciate the help on this.
Click to expand...

Snap a still of your scene and use the histogram.
 
But even 1/3 stops wont help in bright daylight when even ISO100 is too much,im using ND filter to keep 50 shutter speed.And ISOs in 550D are native ones.
 
mcgeedigital said:
The histogram is virtually useless for video.

I too use a BM HDMI-HD-SDI converter and go into a Panasonic HD-SDI monitor with a waveform built in.
Click to expand...

Do you have a specific panasonic monitor model number to reference? I'd be interested in checking that out.
 
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