GH2 shooting underexposed?

[Azmyth]

lol a little less confusing yes.

so to add..

a "dark" mood shot.. such as the one from the screenshot of daniel radcliffe.. can have enough light to have proper exposure, but still "look" dark by way of using contrast.

I guess my initial question would have been, in my examples.. we had plenty of light to lighten up the scene.. but would I have been able to create a "dark" mood had I put in enough light for the camera's meter to tell me its exposed properly?

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

lol a little less confusing yes.

so to add..

a "dark" mood shot.. such as the one from the screenshot of daniel radcliffe.. can have enough light to have proper exposure, but still "look" dark by way of using contrast.

I guess my initial question would have been, in my examples.. we had plenty of light to lighten up the scene.. but would I have been able to create a "dark" mood had I put in enough light for the camera's meter to tell me its exposed properly?

My guess is yes you could have used a shot with more 'density' to use a film term... then in post darkened and increased the contrast for your mood.

However, there is no free lunch, so there are limits on this sort of thing, but if you are not getting 'untextured' whites, you can darken and increase the contrast a bit. The reason why there is the qualifier of 'a bit', is due to the fact that DSLR cameras are not giving you 'raw 10/12 bit' data... so, there may be artifacts that show up by increasing contrast which would be objectionable...

It does take some amount of experimentation to find out the limits. 'Blank' walls may show gradient artifacts, so that may mean, 'don't do this technique with blank walls... or dress or choose sets with something to break up blank walls...

Here's a test I did for something completely different but it sort of shows some of things I think about in a shot. The shot was exposed to place the 'white wall' at as close to 100% IRE as possible, but still not 'saturate', i.e. give blank white... If I had a person standing in the shaded area, I most likely would have had to 'bounce' light into their face, to maintain a good exposure on the human, while maintaining the 'textured' white of the wall. Alternatively I would have had to have 'rotoscoped' some adjustment masks to maintain the human 'tone' if I didn't use bounce or additional lighting.

 

[Shooter]

I concur with the "proper exposure" point.

When some one says over or under...its meaningless unless its given relevance. ie under/over exposed compared to something. eg. underexposed the green screen 2 stops from the subject exposure.

Without this I consider Under exposed or Over exposed to be something that is a "screw up"/ "error"/ "fault"

 

[Cosimo Bullo]

I think part of the delight of Nick's GOP1 hacks is that we can now expose for the scene more than for the camera. The grain and color is that good.

 

[DPStewart]

I'm all sorts of confused by this lol.

AZMYTH: I don't think this is the best comparison.

Regardless of all technical stuff, I see a MONSTER difference between your still and the other:

YOURS appears to suggest a setting of very early morning or evening TWILIGHT.
The other clearly suggest MID DAY BRIGHT SUN as is seen in the quality of the white light that does appear on the man, as well as the bits of window visible in the background.
I don't think these should really be compared at all.

Yes, it may be possible to achieve your look with settings, lighting, or higher-end camera, that give less noise and color distortion. That would be important if the REST of your film was really clean looking. But if not, then this is just fine.

 

[Oedipax]

I personally much prefer the first image, but like DPStewart said it's not really a fair comparison as the time of day seems much different. But being unfair and treating them as equivalents, the first image gives me a much better sense of a real space, a mood, an aesthetic, and a feeling, whereas the second just feels like generic overlit Hollywood stuff that's a dime a dozen.

 

[maranfilms]

The first still is great, Az. If you're going for an underexposed look and you aren't worried about getting any specific detail back then shooting like that is fine.

I agree Kholi, Especially for the type of scene, and genre of film. I like the look of the crushed shadows, gives a creepy feel here. Also the fine grain, and artifacts seem to inhance the image for the same reasons. This looks killer to me. Love the old wood slat walls minus the horse hair plaster. Looks like a perfect location for horror. I can't wait to see a finished scene.

 

[Azmyth]

I agree Kholi, Especially for the type of scene, and genre of film. I like the look of the crushed shadows, gives a creepy feel here. Also the fine grain, and artifacts seem to inhance the image for the same reasons. This looks killer to me. Love the old wood slat walls minus the horse hair plaster. Looks like a perfect location for horror. I can't wait to see a finished scene.

Nice! Yeah the house is amazing. It has 10 rooms, and they are all like that except for 2..

We incorporated that into the story by saying that the previous inhabitants could hear voices in the walls, it drove them mad causing them to strip off all the plaster to try and get to them.

Its supposed to be a thriller/horror film.. so hopefully we can maintain that.