This week something really strange happened. We were having one of those chaotic days shooting a music video. We finished the lighting and I was testing different gammas to record the shot. I made a few scene files for the test. But then we started running out of time and I just decided to stick with the profile I have been using. Barry Green's scene file with the cinelike D gamma. During the shoot I was really, really liking what I was seeing on the big monitor we had on the location. I was working with the under exposure strategy I learned here on the forums. I was like, wow, this under exposing thing really works fine. The images are looking really nice. It was a very dark scene and indoors. The background was pretty dark, but talent was keyed properly. Once I got back I checked my material with the waveform and saw a lot of the blacks were really crushed. Lost really. But this was fine as this is the look we were going for. I just thought I would get it in post instead of in camera since cinelike D is flat. It looked pretty high contrast too in the monitor but it wasn't a production monitor. Then I found out I had actually mistakenly shot it all with b.press and auto knee. All with a -5 master pedestal since this is what I use with cinelike D. But I had tested b.press before with low, mid and high knees and really didn't care for it. I just felt it looked more like video. But this footage on the other hand is really nice. Very sharp with very nice skin tones and very much detail on the skin too. There were a lot of highlights on the skins and they look fine. I can only think it was the auto knee doing it's work. I hate anything auto and would never use auto knee if this wasn't an accident. But now I'm thinking of experimenting with it more. It truly looks like material from a much more expensive camera. It's the best footage I ever got out of the AF100. I don't think I can get the same results with cinelike D and color correcting in post. Because I think what made the difference was how the auto knee worked with the highlights. Crushing blacks with cinelike D doesn't get the same results. I'm not even sure I can repeat the results as I'm not really sure why it looks that way.
What do you think of the auto knee? Have you used it much? Any ideas why the material came out looking so great?
I know it's hard to imagine without frames. But I will try to post some material once we are finished and the artist is fine with it. But this will take a while. So any guesses?
What do you think of the auto knee? Have you used it much? Any ideas why the material came out looking so great?
I know it's hard to imagine without frames. But I will try to post some material once we are finished and the artist is fine with it. But this will take a while. So any guesses?
