Lighting, to Camera, to Ref Monitor workflow

[lhdor]

I don't know much about lighting, but a co-worker's workflow seemed a little strange to me and didn't know if it was actually the norm.

He would set up the lighting based on how it looked on the reference monitor. I get that, but if he needed to fix the gamma, the levels, or anything like that he would adjust the monitor. I would think you would adjust the settings on the camera not the monitor. His theory is that it's quicker to do it this way and then we would fix the levels in post. Is he right?

 

[RyanT]

Sounds like the smart move to me. That way he knows what it's going to look like lighting wise before he gets to post, but he has a clean image coming out of the camera.

I could see it looking hinky from your perspective, but it makes sense. Just because it's ideal to not change those things in camera, but it's hard to tell the director, "hey man, don't worry about what it looks like in the monitor, just uh...trust me."

 

[Jeff Anderson]

Yeah at first glance this looks like a bad idea, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a fantastic idea... I'm going to have to give this a try... You'd just have to careful to re-cal your monitor everytime you setup.

 

[lhdor]

I can see what you mean. I didn't think it was neccessary a bad idea it just seemed weird. Just wanted to see if the cool kids were doing it. Glad he was able to help your workflow Jeff = )