FS7: Overexposing on the FS7 for cleaner shadows
- Thread starter RASL
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Mitch Gross
Veteran
If a chip is weak in blue sensitivity, then it is good to add a blue filter. Why? Because the more sensitive red and green channels could clip faster if you don't block some of those wavelengths. That's the theory behind using the color filter. This is a different matter from overall sensitivity and underrating a sensor ISO. A color filter is for balancing the channels, changing ISO is for boosting exposure so that you can then darken the image in post and reduce noise overall.
The reason that sensors were balanced to tungsten and then an 85A filter added to them was simple: tungsten light bulbs. Pretty much everything that was lit back in the day was lit by tungsten. Cameras weren't that sensitive anyway, so you didn't want to add an exposure-chomping filter for indoors when you already needed to blast the lights in order to get up to 125 ISO back then (or should I say 125 ASA back then?). When you went outdoors it was bright daylight and you could afford the 2/3 of a stop the filter cut.
The reason that sensors were balanced to tungsten and then an 85A filter added to them was simple: tungsten light bulbs. Pretty much everything that was lit back in the day was lit by tungsten. Cameras weren't that sensitive anyway, so you didn't want to add an exposure-chomping filter for indoors when you already needed to blast the lights in order to get up to 125 ISO back then (or should I say 125 ASA back then?). When you went outdoors it was bright daylight and you could afford the 2/3 of a stop the filter cut.
Mitch Gross
Veteran
You'd be surprised.
Let it be noted that all sensors, CCD and CMOS, are actually analog devices. The output of each photo site goes through an A-D converter, where the analog signal is transformed into digital data. We may have refined many things over the years, but those pesky laws of physics remain fairly steady.
Mitch, wouldn't it still have been cleaner for them to have had a switch for balancing to a preset in daylight instead of continuing the overweighted red balance that was used for tungsten by adding that 85 filter? Or was that a matter of cost - that it was cheaper to have a filter than another white balancing circuit for daylight?
Mitch Gross
Veteran
Depending on the model and manufacturer you did have that option. I used cameras back in the 80s that would allow a preset to be either 3200 or 5600. Others did it all on the filter wheel.
You must remember that these cameras were originally designed and built for news gathering, and they offered very few controls. There was a power switch, a gain switch, a white balance button and a filter wheel and that was usually about it. If you wanted to adjust anything else it meant opening up the side of the camera and tweaking some pots that Sony only expected "qualified engineers" to ever touch. A camera menu was one or maybe two screens and it gave you precious little info or control. In that respect there has been a massive change in the use of these tools, and let me tell you, it was not wrung easily out of the Japanese designers and engineers.
Doug Jensen
Carbonite Member
And that is the beauty of shooting RAW, which is even more simple because you don't even need to deal with gain.
Mitch Gross
Veteran
Weeeeellll, not entirely true. There's sensor gain and there's processor gain. If you're shooting on the FS7 and you're underexposed and really do need to gain up the signal, then it is better to do it on the camera than it is to wait until post. It does effect the RAW signal. Gain applied in camera v in post means the finished image will have less noise and will be much less prone to banding due to poor bit application.
But yeah, not having to bother with a bazillion other little settings that mostly just distract you from the real work at hand (you know, lighting & framing & just generally paying attention to the subject matter) is a nice thing about shooting RAW.
Doug Jensen
Carbonite Member
I'll have to admit that don't really think about the FS7 when I think of RAW, even though this thread is about that camera. When I think of RAW I'm thinking of the F55/F5 where any gain changes made onboard the camera are just smoke and mirrors. It really is as close to shooting on film stock as you can get with an electronic camera. Choose indoors or outdoor color, decide how you're going to rate the sensitivity, set the shutter angle, and then get to work.
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Ben Scott
Veteran
"There was a power switch, a gain switch, a white balance button and a filter wheel and that was usually about it."
There are times when I am nostalgic for that simplicity.
Power up, set W/B, shoot, hand the tape off to someone else, go have a cold beer.
Gain switch? Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at six o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of ‘ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
Ben Scott
Veteran
I've never shot on 'proper' Sony raw as opposed to Red R3Ds. Is WB still baked in or is it a metadata adjustment?
Doug Jensen
Carbonite Member
For RAW, it is metadata. You can choose your white balance setting when the footage is brought into Resolve. But of course, the choice of the WB setting onboard the camera does affect what is being baked into proxies and how the image looks in the EVF and external monitors so it's still something that needs to be paid attention to.
Doug Jensen
Carbonite Member
Cool that's good to hear. I had assumed it was baked in. 'Raw' seems to mean very different things to different manufacturers so worth finding out.
The F55 shooting RAW is a dream machine.