Too much exposure

mikcheck said:
Is there any way to reduce all of this exposure?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDSK5qKQS1A&feature=youtu.be

I know I can't recover any detail but can I reduce all that exposure, even if a little?
Click to expand...

Blown out highlights are blown out highlights. You can reduce the value, but then you'll end up with gray instead of white, which isn't much if any improvement. You can do this in PPro is you want, one way is to use the Luma Curve effect. Drop it on your clip, then pull the highlight end of the curve back. You can watch the image become increasingly gray. Not pretty IMHO, but sometimes that's what one wants, IDK. While you are in the Luma Curve effect, you might as well use it to build a curve for your image to give it more mid-tone contrast. That'll help more than pulling the whites down to gray, again IMHO.

The problem isn't exposure; your faces are if anything somewhat under exposed. The problem is that the scene you are trying to capture has more dynamic range than your camera, so something gets clipped. Highlights in this case. I think your camera did a creditable job of trying to come up with a compromise given that your talent was in shadow and your background was in full direct sunlight. Almost a worst case scenario for any camera. About the only way out of that would be to change your angles so that the talent isn't shown against that dazzling bright background. Or use a full lighting and grip crew to wrangle that background into submission. :D
 
Não, pepino, não pode fazer nada :(

But it's not really that bad for handheld documentary work. It's better that everything indoors is properly exposed.
 
Thank you for your input Bruce. Youre right, i've tried it and, as you've said, it isn't much pretty. I guess there not much i can really do, just try to do things better next time!

Finn thank you. Yes i guess my indoors are not that exposed but could be much better also.

Amadou the problem is that by doing it, the subject become too under exposed.
 
mikcheck said:
Thank you for your input Bruce. Youre right, i've tried it and, as you've said, it isn't much pretty. I guess there not much i can really do, just try to do things better next time!
Click to expand...

Here's a thought. Go with what you've got. IOW, the highlights are already blown, so don't worry about them. Use an effect like the Luma Curve to pull up the level on the talent's face -- use a waveform monitor, pull the talent's face up to, say, 50-60 IRE. Let this stretch out the lower levels, but still keep a solid black. Yes, it will compress the highlights, but they are already blown out so who cares? Pull the whites back to, say, 95 IRE. This will cut most of the "glare factor" but any lower and it just starts to look ugly. The easiest way to start maybe is to just put a point on the Luma Curve at around 30 IRE, and pull it straight up to around 50 IRE. Watch what this does on the waveform monitor, then switch to the actual image and see what it does. Click it on and off, look at the face, the shadow detail, the tonality all around the image. Itterate until you get what you want.

This should (you'll have to play with it to make it look the way you want of course) give you a more consistent look -- what you're trying to do is match the levels on talent's face when you go inside where your exposure is better. Set a couple of temporary markers on the timeline -- one with the blown out highlights, one where you move inside, and click back and forth between them so you can how close of a match you need to make.

As side benefit of doing this is that it will increase gamma (contrast) too which will breathe a little more life into that part of the footage.

But the important point is to just let the blown out highlights go. If you pull the actual important content up, the difference in levels between the talent's face and the background will be smaller, and it will therefore look better. Try it and see.
 
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