Anyone have any tips for shooting night interiors/exteriors on RED ONE? For a moody night interior, I would want latitude in the shadows, which on the RED ONE means rating the camera ISO 200 or 160. (setting the light meter at 120 or 160 and leaving camera metadata at 320). It seems impractical to light night interiors (not to mention exteriors) at these light levels for a lens capable of T2.8.
I understand how rating the camera differently changes how much latitude you have in the highlights or shadows, as has been discussed on these boards. And I find that the camera's "basic" sensitivity is around 160 or 200, meaning that if you spot meter an 18% grey card under 3200K light and set your stop to that meter reading (while camera is set at 320 and viewing Build 20 REC 709), the exposure will yield about the same amount of latitude for highlights and shadows, while putting middle grey a bit under where it should be on the IRE scale. Incidentally, I have found that to get false color to read green (43-46 IRE) in Build 20 REC709 color space, you must put your light meter to 120 (leaving the camera ISO at 320). So, shooting an 18% grey card (lit to a reflected T4 under 3200K light) at a T4 will give you green false color if your meter is set to ISO 120 and the camera is set to ISO 320 viewing REC709 in Build 20. Try it and let me know if you get the same result.
If you rate the camera faster by changing your light meter to say 320, you will have more latitude in the highlights and less in the shadows. If you shoot that same grey card with your meter at 320, middle grey will be pushed down to around 27 IRE, leaving little room for latitude under it. So, shooting a moody night interior is extremely challenging with lenses only as fast as T2.8. Most of the information in a moody night interior scene will be maybe half a stop to one stop above key and under. At 320 on your meter and camera, this means that almost all of the information of your scene will be 27 IRE and under. It gets pretty noisy when most of the scene is at these levels, even with the new Build 20 color science.
How are people dealing with this issue? Faster lenses (T1.3, T2)? More light?
And finally, what does it really mean that Epic X will be ISO800? Because RED ONE is not really ISO 320. Maybe for day exteriors that rating will work fine because it puts all the latitude in the highlights- but you cannot get away with rating the camera ISO 320 for night exteriors which is when you really need it. Even shooting ISO 500 film on a night exterior there have been many times when I'm just getting by with enough light from the BeeBee light or LRX. On RED One, it seems you cannot light by meter on a night exterior for ISO 320- putting faces half a stop to a stop over key and having fill light be 3 and a half to 4 stops down.
Originally Posted by Jannard
