Best Practices. Obtaining Proper Exposure. Share your methods please.

[Troy Bakewell]

As someone who is new to RED and about to be proud new owner of a Scarlett, I'm trying to wrap my head around the Raw/metadata concept. It seems to me to be quite different from what I'm used to. It's not a floating ISO exactly but from what I've read so far, choosing the ISO to rate your exposure at can be counter intuitive sometimes. To protect highlights rate and expose faster for example?


I don't have my Scarlett yet so I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet. For the benefit of us RED newbies, please share your method of obtaining proper exposure.

[Pawel Achtel]

Exposure setting with the in-built exposure meters and stop lights is easier than making babies. Once you play with it for 1 minute you will realise it is very intuitive and you have great control if/what you clip or how much noise you are going to have in the shadows. Don't worry about it.

[Joseph Hutson]

False Color is my best friend and what I use constantly to know exactly what is happening to the image. It goes beyond just "stoplights", and allows me to choose what I'm losing, or how to best expose without losing anything at all.

If you expose the RED correctly, the possibilities are endless in the grading suite...

[Phil Holland]

I'll second what Hutson just said.

The one bit I can note is the interesting aspect of adding HDRx into the mix is that you have a bit more flexibility in extreme situations. For instance if you have a hard shadow covering a building and a bright sky yet exposed for mid tones, flip on HDRx and over expose a bit to reveal more deep shadow detail and through your grade you have a lot of flexibility. Play around at 4 and 6 stops HDRx and you have a lot more room to play in those tough shots.

It's still on the plate that we might get HDRx at 4k on Scarlet X at 24fps.

[Paul Russell]

There are quite a few pages in the Epic owners manual on how to expose correctly. Histograms are your friend, and it's what is hitting the sensor at its native ISO (800) that counts.

[Matthew Scott]

So apart from exposing the image properly, are there any advantages to using certain ISO's or WB settings in camera?


Anyone help me here?
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...e-of-questions

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I've been shooting 320 ISO and just watching my histogram. False color is too slow and awkward imo to turn on/off for documentary/travel so I just watch the histogram. It'll tell you everything you need to know about what the highlights are doing.

[Uli Plank]

Playing with ISO in the camera just helps you to see how far the sensor is looking into highlights and shadow, but it can be deceiving.

Rely on the stop lights (they are always RAW), expose to the right and check the histogram, everything else can be done in post.

[Erich Roland]

q

I've been shooting 320 ISO and just watching my histogram. False color is too slow and awkward imo to turn on/off for documentary/travel so I just watch the histogram. It'll tell you everything you need to know about what the highlights are doing.

IMO False color is good for some things like putting a green screen at the level you want and getting it lit even, but otherwise FC is too much info and an extra step that's tough to look at and generally not needed. The histogram "goal posts" and stop lights are great exposure tools and tells you most things you need to know (except how does it look?). I also add zebra at 70% which gives me a general idea where I might want a face to land and I can leave it on without getting in the way (this is important when working fast).

When in doubt have a good monitor and some faith in what you see. There is nothing wrong with a burned out sky or window if you like the way the image looks.....there is nothing wrong with a black hole if there is no detail there of interest..... Black and white is beautiful also. "How do you want it to look" should always be considered rather then just looking at exposure tools. If you cant get where you want to go with the light controls you have on location is where the Raw recording and exposure science can assist you and more education/testing the edges will help your cause.

[Matthew Scott]

Playing with ISO in the camera just helps you to see how far the sensor is looking into highlights and shadow, but it can be deceiving.

Rely on the stop lights (they are always RAW), expose to the right and check the histogram, everything else can be done in post.

Thank you :)