Tricks to avoid the digital look on artificial lighting

O

Ooze3d

Active member
Hi all,

There's something I wanted to ask you. HDSLR shooting really changed my life as happened to many others as well. It allowed us to get as close to real cinema look as we've ever been for an extremely low price. We all know that, but I still have a problem. A problem supposedly impossible to overcome since I've seen it's effects in high end cameras like the Epic and even on mainstream digital movies under certain conditions.


That problem is, of course, highlights under artificial lighting. I'm always trying to avoid it because it goes from cinematic straight to cheap looking digital video and there's not much you can do about it. As I said, you can even notice the effect in mainstream movies when they have to shoot in low light conditions. The motion feeling suffers, but the highlights become extremely digital looking.


I've been reading about picture styles to raise low lights, cut highlights and give an overall "raw cinema" look, but all examples I can find are shot in natural light conditions, so I don't know how they behave under artificial lights.


I wanted to ask you:


What are your tricks to avoid the digital look even under artificial lights with your EOS? Are those picture styles a real help or you end up having the same look after grading?


Thanks a lot.
 
With DSLRs, I light for the final product. I typically shoot in Portrait style and tweak the lights until I get the look I want. Mild grading in post gets me right where I want.

You don't have a lot of leeway with DSLRs - high noise floor, high s/n ratio, compression artifacts, short dynamic range, and muddy highlight clipping. So, it works best for me to light within half a stop of what I want it to look like on screen.

In artificial light, I light and expose for skin, and then go from there, filling in shadows or bringing down highlights as needed. Typically, I use the DP4's False Color feature and the Highlight Warning and Histogram features of the 7D.
 
Like Jordan, I use "False Color" on the monitor and light until the talent is perfectly exposed (if that's the look I'm going for) and the rest of the scene is within the DR of the camera. The old school way to do this is run all over the scene with the light meter and take readings for all the different parts of the frame. Highlights are the issue for sure. Clipped highlights just look terrible to me.
 
With better cameras, I tend to play it safe and expose for highlights, stopping down a bit, if needed. I don't let skin fall under 40 IRE, though, and only let blacks clip, if I want them to be black black in the final product. I know I can pull contrast later and get a true white a true black with good skin.

With a DSLR, that's doable, but at cost, typically. After trying all kinds of methods espoused on this forum, I found the best is to light for exactly what I want. Saves time and works best for the camera, in my opinion.
 
I also avoid light sources I can't control. If the window doesn't HAVE to be in frame, black that SOB out and don't show it. If it does, have the ND film handy.
 
i shoot cinestyle (with my own variation) and use false colour and zebras on my Zacuto EVF. I usually expose for the highlights as much as is possible and bring in lights to bring back the skin tone where i need it. clearly i cant do this all the time given the tools i have to work with however you just kinda have to work with what you have as best as possible.
 
Canon DSLRs have low range above mid gray (around 3 1/3 stops). If you need more there is really not much you can do (picture styles won't help here directly) other than underexpose with a flatter picture and then bring the image up. This will also bring hoise up, of course. BTW, default live view matrix metering has a tendency to slightly underexpose (compared to my taste), but this serves the limited highlights range well.
ML has a very useful spotmeter (the best ML feature for film-style exposure in my opinion) that shows a small square in the middle and labels it with either the corresponding IRE or 0-255 value, depending on how you set it. I don't care for IRE (obsolete legacy stuff that needs to die; the sooner, the better) so I use the true values. If you know your picture style distribution you can immediately tell exactly where the measured spot falls in terms of f-stops (and relative to mid-gray).
 
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