Exposing Night Interiors/Exteriors?

[Nick Gardner]

No, I light it by the monitor with the camera set to 500 asa. I will tell my gaffer that we need to get to x number of foot candles for the keys, and he will prelight with a meter to get in the ball park. The camera is it's own best meter. I think that when set to 500 asa the camera behaves how I would expect a 500 asa film stock or video camera to behave. I use the same instruments that I would on anything else, and get comparable results.

I once showed up for a large night exterior for which we were already slightly under powered (2 x 4ks, a couple of 9 lights and a few 1200s and 575s to light about 2 blocks of street), when the director decided the whole scene would be much better in slow motion. I had to go to 800 asa, and this was back on build 17, and the stuff came out looking great, again, you just have to have solid blacks.

Nick

[Eric Haase]

What colorspace are you viewing?

[Nick Gardner]

Rec 709

[Mark Allen]

Eric, Having shot a few low light interior things, if I were in your shoes I'd be assuming a 125ish ISO and using as fast lenses as possible. Also I would be monitoring the RAW when setting up the shot quite often to know what is really being shot.

[Guidofilippi]

I also would like to know what techniques people use with RED ONE when shooting night work to remedy the sensor sensitivity issue. Are there any processing tricks (apart from crushing the shadows)?

A very simple and handy way to get a true extra stop: set shutter to 360º; thus you "double" exposure from the standard 180º. Unless you have running people, etc. you wouldn´t notice anything.
Guido

[Hans von Sonntag]

But most importantly, I've lit night scenes with RED ONE and noticed it requires a lot of light. It does not feel anywhere close to ISO 320. Does anyone just put their meter at 320 and light a night scene with it? It seems to me this would yield disappointing if unacceptable results. Don't get me wrong- i LOVE my Red One and am looking forward to Epic as much as the next guy, but I just want to know what is meant by ISO 800-2000? I also would like to know what techniques people use with RED ONE when shooting night work to remedy the sensor sensitivity issue. Are there any processing tricks (apart from crushing the shadows)?

Recently I've shot a commercial for cinema release. The task was a night interior/exterior scene featuring a guy entering a hotel lobby. I rated the camera 500 ASA which is about 1 stop underexposed to what I normally do. I had to do that otherwise the lights of the cars, the city lights in general, etc... were not bright enough. To support all those practicals I made sure that as many reflections were visible as possible. Positioning cars with lights on, wet-down, glass, etc... helped a lot. Additionally we used backlights and other accents, mainly practicals. Fill was about T 0.7 and lower. We had some parts were we met the needed T1.4 in light stripes that hit the talent's face just in the right moment, sometimes in a short moment even at almost T 2.8.

The result was working well for us. Noise was there but in no way distracting. Shooting wide open, especially at T 1.4 is always a challenge when talent or the camera (in our case steadicam, crane) is moving. We had soft parts, but the action and the story bought that. The 35mm print was again a great experience I already had before with other projects.

A year earlier I would have shot this one on 35mm. But not to be limited by stock is a freedom I don't want to dispense. On 35mm I would have shot this on T 1.4 as well, gaining probably more detail in the lower mids and of course in the highlights, but having the same focus issues.

We processed the footage at 250 ASA (320 ASA cuts off highlights), 5000K CameraRGB and RedLog. This way you can be sure to meet the sensor's specs closest.

I find the RedOne not particular fast, a Sony F-23 would have been the better choice. But you can shoot at 500 ASA if you have enough contrast and in the action important skintones meet approx. 320 ASA from time to time. Shining eye lights help a lot as well, anything reflective is a clever plan.

Hans

[Nick Gardner]

Forgive the jpeg compression, but you get the idea. 1st build 17 500 asa. 2nd build 20 500 asa. 3rd build 17 800asa.

[Nick Gardner]

First and last pic are from a feature that isn't released yet, middle one is from a music video that's still in post, so in short, no ;-) The music video was 500 asa because I had to do speed ramps, and needed the stop at 96 fps.

Nick

[Eric Haase]

Thanks for the replies. It is interesting to hear such varied experiences. I'm going to do a simple test.

Light a closeup for RED ONE at 500 ISO on my meter- lighting it with contrast ratios as I would for film, which would look good to eye as well. Specifically, I will probably put caucasian skin tone keyed with a side or 3/4 frontlight reflected at a 2.8 2/3 or 4.0, fill at a 1.0 1/2 and some edge lights measuring with an incident meter at 2.8 or 2.0. I'll set the lens to a 2.8. I'll look at the image at camera ISO 320 and 500 in REC709 on Build 20 and examine the false color and report the results. I'll also post process the image these ways in RedAlert and try to dial in a curve to make the image look good.

If the camera were behaving like a 500 ISO medium one would expect the skin tone to look "normally exposed" or at the very least 40 IRE. If anyone has done anything similar I'd be interested to know your findings. From my previous testing I would think this image would be very underexposed and need to be brought up a lot in post processing, resulting in a lot of noise. But I want to at least give it a shot...

[Charles Angus]

I just shot some night interior stuff on RED a couple of weeks ago.

For most of it, the histograms showed almost everything in the left half. That was wide open at T2.6 on an Arri/Zeiss LWZ-1.

Looked fine. Less noisy than 500asa film.

FWIW...