nailing "proper" exposure on the fs100/fs700

R

robfilms

Veteran
i'm very much a fs100 newbie shooter.

and i say that even though i have read many of the threads on this board.

yet, i'm really not very secure in my fs100 skill set.

so i'll ask my most-newbie-ish question:

what procedures do you employ to nail the "proper" exposure when using the fs100?

i look forward to reading the thoughts of the many more experienced than i fs100/fs700 shooters.

thanks in advance.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions
nyc
 
Zebras and the histogram are the tools of choice. I'll be honest and say that, coming from a Canon 7D where I have no tools at all, I personally tend to just eyeball it with my zebras to 100% so as to make sure I'm not blowing out anything I don't want to. If I need to be more critical then I'll use the histogram to get a better idea of exposure but I prefer to leave as much clutter out of the viewfinder as I can.

Since getting myself a Ninja 2 recorder, I've started using the false colour mode on that quite a bit as well.

Cheers
Jeff K
Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
 
Jeff Kirkland said:
Zebras and the histogram are the tools of choice. I'll be honest and say that, coming from a Canon 7D where I have no tools at all, I personally tend to just eyeball it with my zebras to 100% so as to make sure I'm not blowing out anything I don't want to. If I need to be more critical then I'll use the histogram to get a better idea of exposure but I prefer to leave as much clutter out of the viewfinder as I can.
Click to expand...

Yep to that. I wish I had a monitor with a waveform monitor, which I don't. I use the zebras and histogram but what I did when I first started shooting with my FS-100 was to take my footage into my NLE and view in the scopes. Well, actually I still look at my footage on the scopes as much as possible. This will give you the numbers on your exposure, and you will get a feel for what is right using the histogram and zebras, or other tools.
 
I set my zebras to 95%. I then set it so my 'zebra point' will show up in my histogram. Pretty easy to make sure nothing really goes into the 'zebra zone'. Occasionally I will let a little something
go just barely into the 'zebra zone' but only if I know I will be grading it. You see the camera will actually capture 'superwhite' but some NLE's will 'clip' anything over 100%. Depending on the NLE
and if you know what you are doing, you can recover some stuff from 100-109% in post. So as usual, the answer is 'it depends'. But you shouldn't have any problems if you just set your zebras
at 95% and keep everything out of the 'zebra zone' in your histogram.
 
i use lightmeters & use full range in the camera and in post, so i expose to 109, and to -7

In highcontrast i use the average function on my spot, so read the highest highlight, save, deepest shadows, save, now i know how many stops i have to deal with, adjust lighting and or frameing until it's less than 11 stops, press average and use that number

i use the incedent meter when my eye tells me it's already under 11 stops

I rate the camera @ 500ISO other than one profile that lines up with 400ISO

I have the filter factors i have in my head already, so don't add them to the meter's (but i could)

I ignore the histo as it's pretty small and it's easy to miss highlights, zebra's i also don't chose, if i did they would be set to 109 so i would know if something was clipping

Would love to have a Astro3011.. that's really everything in one package but costs more than the camera!

My lightmeters + my eyes are more cost effective

I come from a background of shooting motion picture film, almost zero stills experience, zero experience with auto exposure in stills (other than my android phone's camera)

d
 
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When your subject falls into midtones (which is a case usually) make shure that there are most color informasion in midtones (fattest part of histogramm falls into middle). In real world you have to make choises like preserving highliths or shadows, so you have to adapt this histogramm midtone curve accordingly little left (underexposing) or little right (overexposing) and correct in post. Recording with 8bit codec the more color informastion and contrast you have the better you are in post. Zebras are just guides, making your decisions easier. Came also from DSLR "guessing right exposure" word quite recently :)
 
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