FS7: Overexposing on the FS7 for cleaner shadows

LennyLevy said:
Doug , its all very logical but what do you do when you don't have time or freedom to place your white card? Moreover even if there is a white object in the shot what if the light there is different from the real subject of your shot - or if you are on the move and the area your shooting along with its lighting changes while you're rolling? These things happen all the time.
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I am well aware of the challenges posed when exposing. It is not hard to come up with tons of examples where following a strict rule won't work. But what about the other 99% of the time?

The simple fact is that most of the time there is something white in the shot or just outside of frame that you can pan over to and then reframe. It doesn't need to be a genuine white card. Bright white -- is bright white whether it is copy paper, clothing, a sign, or whatever. Anything white will do and there are white things are all over the place. And the fact that white is all around us is the main reason why white makes a better target than 18% gray which does require a genuine card. But if there is not something white nearby, then you either have to take the time to get something white -- or maybe that is the one shot in a hundred where you do just make a guess.

Another problem with using zebras on faces, that has not even been addressed, is that at that level then you have zebras all over the face. I couldn't shoot with that clutter. By using white as your target, you can leave zebra on all the time and you'll barely see it on only the brightest whites and highlights.
 
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broughtonfilm said:
Well, to defend Sam a bit... Maybe not "guessing" but "projecting", or to use a nicer term, making an artistic choice of what he wants the face to be, regardless of how bright it is in reality. Of course, the implication of that is that since the actual individual reflectance is unknown (and measuring it is an additional step) in a way it disregards what this measurement will do to the rest of the shot (if it is not interpreted). In this particular example had he used a white card as an exposure reference, the highlight and the sky would likely not be overexposed but the face would be darker than what he intended (and let's assume that the clipped highlight are his artistic choice). This example also illustrates that even if he used a white card as a reference, he would still have to make a decision where he wants to place it: in the shadowed area, in the direct sun, at what angle, etc. depending on the desired effect.
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Yep that is correct. Doug initially said exposing for the face is WRONG.. I said not so. And to me this is exposed for the face, not for the trees or the sky and I think my choice was RIGHT not WRONG - is metering of a well placed card a good way to expose for the face.. absolutely :)

Maybe it is just linguistics..

Exposing for the face (often right)
Exposing using the face (a bit slack.. aka wrong)

S
 
morgan_moore said:
Yep that is correct. Doug initially said exposing for the face is WRONG.. (often right)
Exposing using the face (a bit slack.. aka wrong)
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Why do you say "initially"? I have not changed my position on this. Exposing by looking at zebras on a face is wrong and it always will be wrong. Obviously the overall intention is to have the face look good, but you get there by exposing for white, not by exposing for the face itself. Is it really that hard of a concept for people?

BTW, we might need a thread on fill lights and reflectors so you can learn to avoid such awful blown out highlights in the future. In my opinion, there is nothing cinematic or artistic about those highlights. It looks like VHS or Betacam from 1995. You might have got her face right, but at the expense of everything else in the shot.
 
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But isnt Morgans pic a stills shot.. rather than video..? anyway I dont see anything "wrong" with it.. if he was a total beginner and was wondering why the background was over exposed.. then yes he would need some advise.. but obviously it was a stylistic choice.. maybe it was an add for laundry detergent ,Eco friendly shampoo ..or tampons ! what ever that was the style/feel/mood.. probably not an ad for funeral services.. or plight of starving children .. plenty of big time DP,s has shot whole films with every window totally blown out.. dont let a waveform rule your shots..
 
morgan_moore said:
Gentlemen.. I think we all agree.

My phrase expose for the face might be illustrated by this image I shot.

One would not expose for the sky. or the forest behind. One exposes for the face

You could place a white card where the face will be or place the skin at a certain level or whatever.. but the frame is exposed for the face.

It happens also that skin tends to be a certain level.. so you could set your zebras at that level and not bother with the card or the meter.

Now if a darker girl was the next shot would I have changed my iris? of course not

View attachment 118913
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The white shirt and hair is clipped all over the place. I would have tried to use some bounce to bring up her fill level a bit so that I could maintain that porcelain quality to her skin without having so much overexposed. Or I might have shot it in a Log or RAW mode and then used some power windows to retain some detail in the highlights. I like where you have set exposure for the face, but I feel there are other parts of the image that therefore suffer.

To me zebras, waveforms, etc. are useful in that they tell me where certain parts of the image are too bright or too dark. Landing a face where you want it is nice and all, but there's actually a lot of forgiveness to that. But a clipped highlight is a clipped highlight. If you were going for a dreamy quality and used a halting diffusion filter like a Classic Frost or a ProMist then I could see having a big chunk of blown highlights in order to trigger a nice glow out of the filter. But shot clean it just looks clippy.

Sorry Sam, it's a lovely shot but you used it as an example in a discussion on exposure, so I discussed its exposure.
 
Chaps I picked it not as an exple of great work - more an expample where stopping down to hold the Sky would have put her about 8 stops under :)

The product being sold is wool
 
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"I've been shooting for over XX years and..."

There are shooters who have been shooting for more than 20, 30 years and still do crap work. That is not directed at Doug J. Repeat: Not directed at Mr.Jensen. Just pointing out that having decades of experience doesn't in and of itself mean one is especially knowledgable, particularly skilled, or any good. I know some guys who have been shooting for 20 years and have done sucky work the entire 20 years. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

Oh, and as for myself, I've been shooting roundabout 25 years. As to whether I'm any good at what I do, I just know that the phone keeps ringing. And I got to work with Sophia Coppola yesterday. Which is just insane and a personal dream come true so forgive me my name dropping.
 
Whatever happened to just splitting the difference between the incident reading of the sun hitting the back of your subject, and the ambient fill reaching the front?
 
JPNola said:
"I've been shooting for over XX years and..."

There are shooters who have been shooting for more than 20, 30 years and still do crap work. That is not directed at Doug J. Repeat: Not directed at Mr.Jensen. Just pointing out that having decades of experience doesn't in and of itself mean one is especially knowledgable, particularly skilled, or any good. I know some guys who have been shooting for 20 years and have done sucky work the entire 20 years. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

Oh, and as for myself, I've been shooting roundabout 25 years. As to whether I'm any good at what I do, I just know that the phone keeps ringing. And I got to work with Sophia Coppola yesterday. Which is just insane and a personal dream come true so forgive me my name dropping.
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Lol so true. I also have no idea whether I'm good or not, but somehow I never stop working:-)
 
Grug said:
Whatever happened to just splitting the difference between the incident reading of the sun hitting the back of your subject, and the ambient fill reaching the front?
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Nothing. Ultimately, there's no right or wrong with exposure if you get the look you intended. But having a method that gives you consistent and predictable results is a key requirement of each and every DoP.
 
Yup, at best I can say I'm 'good enough' as I've not missed a mortgage payment yet while doing this ridiculous job. As for whether I'm 'good', that's for other people to say.

Re exposure, good to have system. Lots of different systems can work but you just have to have continuity and a system that will give you repeatable results
 
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As both a DP and colorist I feel like I have a slightly different perception on this issue.
Imagine for a moment that there is a tool that will allow you to accurately translate what you see on set into what the audience sees on the theater screen. It's called a light meter. I'm not being facetious here.... theaters will regularly meter the light reflectance of a screen to the DCI spec and working with images that are too bright or dark in a theater is a problem for the audience.
You can rate the camera to any ISO that works for your look and let everyone downstream know that that is where you where. You can run a exposure test and see where you want to land the image with noise vs dynamic range. The recommended ISO is just that... a recommendation and it's a one size fits all recommendation that should certainly be tailored to your film.
Some cameras are seeing a noise floor that extends higher up into the image... If you prefer a cleaner image and don't need the range it's possible to rate the camera at a lower ISO effectively parking your lower shadows and darker parts of the image higher up above where the noise floor on that sensor extends to. The tradeoff is a loss of dynamic range towards highlights and that is why the manufacturer set's a "Base" ISO as that is the place they think exposing the camera for 18 percent grey will give the best noise vs range dynamic.
This is a working method that DP's have use and probably will use forever.
Where things start to get wonky is when we start ETTR without a meter or backing off zebras or exposing for a fat negative etc. These are imprecise methods of exposure that lead to matching problems for the colorist, and may compromise the footage as a whole.
Overall exposure changes with angle to the subject so as we move through a scene it's important to meter for one variable ie. the skin of our actor, and imprecise ETTR will lead to different levels of exposure.
ETTR may not take into account the effect of losing dynamic range on the appearance of skin which the human eye is very sensitive to and benefits greatly from being parked in the middle or slightly above the center of the range of exposure with its highlights at the forehead and shadows under cheeks etc expanding around the center of that range while allowing sky a few stops at the top of the range and dark clothing and deep shadows a few more stops at the bottom. Again a tradeoff can be made at the expense of noise but this would simply lead to rating the camera lower not ETTR etc.
When not using a meter or waveform for skin we actually run in to more noise as skin is often not sufficiently lit relative to brighter areas of the scene resulting in a "fat negative" for instance of lots of bright sky behind a unlit and underexposed face, bringing up the face = noise.
Lastly it's far more common to see noise as a result of shooting at 3200k white balance and then correcting to a cleaner look. As the sensor sees the least amount of gain across RGB at 5600k and the most gain in blue at 3200K (around 2x) adding more blue to a 3200k image can push the blue channel to 3x and increase noise in that channel dramatically. A better approach would be to shoot using filtration to correct to 5600k and leave the sensor at 5600k or 4500k.
Hope this is helpful,
 
Aharon's post brings up an important and critical question that is far more relevant to the original OP than this I think pointless arguing over how one determines exposure. His main points I take it are - whatever your methods, be consistent between shots and give the colorist decent facial tone exposure.

The last point about 3200 or 5600 however is a big deal . The RED sensor we know is balanced for 5600, thus shooting at 3200 boosts the noise on the blue channel as he states. So what ISO you rate the camera should take color temp into account. However I've been unable to find out if 5600 is true for all video camera sensors. Somewhere in my memory i seem to recall hearing that the Sony's might be 3200 balanced. This is very important for green screen in particular. Anyone know more about this?
 
And yet you have plenty of people deliberately shooting Dragons at higher ISOs and employing NDs because they prefer the texture of the noise. When I've shot on Red MX sensors I would shoot at 5600k but change it in Redcine-X afterwards

Daredevil and The Knick were great examples of Re Dragon images with noise that added to the effect. Both made use of a lot of tungsten balanced light as well.

It just goes to show there are many routes to getting the look you want. You just need continuity of approach from one shot to the next.
 
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Lenny - in the camera spec section of fs7 manual:

Sensitivity
Video Gamma: T14@24p
(2000 lx, 89.9% reflectance, 3200K)

ISO sensitivity
S-Log3 Gamma ISO2000 (D55 light
source)

Minimum subject illumination
0.7 lx (18 dB, 23.98P, Shutter: OFF, ND
Clear, F1.4)

Latitude
14-stop

Video S/N
57 dB (Video Gamma/Noise
Suppression: off)
 
Those specs don't mean much to me, and doesn't it look like one is at 3200 and the other at D55 which I assume is daylight?
 
Cos the f3 used to boot in 3200 ive harboured a suspicion about native 3200 on some sony sensors

Actually it would makes sense to have a mode (5500) that filters out blue rather than boosting when in 3200 mode - could also explain the horrific over sensitivity to blue led

But I have no kmowlege of this at all :)
 
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