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

[Trevor Meeks]

Joseph, for no black shading and (I assume) no adjustments in post, the 2500ISO sample looks VERY usable... nice! A bit of the Phil Holland treatment and that'll pop nicely! Very cool.

[Brett Clements]

Thank you Joseph. I really appreciate you taking the time to post this stuff and also answer my questions. If it wasn't for Ketchi, I wouldn't know how to mount a Spinner....the older you get, the dumber you get. Anyway. Much appreciated.

[Brandon S]

That video link was awesome. I've been trying to get a grasp on exposure on the Epic as well. Like how do you balance out the two "goalposts"? What's an acceptable level on the RAW Noise Meter and the Clip Meter next to the stop lights?

[daniel caruso]

Hello everyone,

The past week while getting adjusted to the exposure techniques needed for Red, I have gotten a wide range of results in the image quality. One I thought was camera error, but after this thread and amounts of testing, it is clear that this camera needs a completely different approach.

I have a shoot this weekend and it is about a kidnapping which takes place in a back warehouse. Lighting will be overhead practicals, typical raw hanging bulb over main subject and action, with slits on shelving and light from the back door opening. Contrast will be hard and I WILL have a lot of dark spots in the shots. No doubt I will get the noise floor up with the amoutn on blacks and dark shadows I will have in the frame.

My question is, if my base exposure is on my subject/action, say 2.9 (what I have for lens), 800ISO, shooting RedLogFilm, should I be lighting the shadows up a bit more than I would for say an F3? It seems that with Red it is better to not crush in camera, but give your blacks some more light, then in post the curve will crush and the image will be fairly clean. I am still trying to find the correct approach to exposing my Scarlet, but from tests thus far, it seems under exposing in camera -3 stops would not be the cleanest way to capture black for the RAW sensor. For this I will also set my meter to 800, unless some think it is goo practice to go down even a 1/3 or 2/3 stop in ISO and expose 800ISO for 500, give it a bit more?

Coming from the AF100 and have worked with the F3, both these cameras have been cleaner in the blacks, but they also sort of post process the color in camera, so I would always get my ratio and hard contrast in the blacks in camera. But with this RAW format, I have gathered that it is better to get my ratio, but as hard as the noise bar will allow me.

Any help to put me on the right track, or tell me if my thinking is correct would be great, Thanks!

[Elsie N]

I tend to look for easy. And for me, easy is turning on zebras, viewing in grayscale mode, and exposing to the right and then backing off a bit. This seems to work well in all situations including low light. As the light changes, I just expose a little more to get the histogram back to where it was before the light changed.

Viewing in greyscale and using zebras, I get a bright red in the blown areas of the zebras and in low light, a blue tint in the areas that are in danger of excessive noise. Using 800 iso, I'm alright seeing the zebra pattern in a few areas such as white clouds in an otherwise blue sky, but when I see red I adjust exposure immediately... or consider turning on HDRx

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Neat video for low light mistakes.

[daniel caruso]

Great Elsie, thanks! I will give that viewing mode a try.

[Elsie N]

Great Elsie, thanks! I will give that viewing mode a try.

You're welcome. Bottom button on the Redmote.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

You are monitoring in and lighting for RedlogFilm? How come? With RED it seems there is no reason not to monitor with a look that shows you images as close as possible to your final image. If you monitor and shoot in Redlogfilm you could end up with some big surprises when you go to grade the footage and return it to proper contrast and proper black levels.

I would recommend, especially for content where contrast and noise are of concern, getting your look as close as possible in camera as it may save you time in post and it will also allow you to judge properly how your contrast and noise is looking on set. You can always just apply a redlogfilm look to your footage later in just a few seconds using RC-X.

One of the big differences between RED's gamma curves and those of an F3/AF100 is that RED's curves are designed not to throw any information/dynamic range out, so they have quite high, milky black levels and give you access to the lower shadow stops even if they have some noise. The F3 (non-slog) and AF100, on the other hand, have far less overexposure latitude than MX at ISO800, and less dynamic range in general. You could apply a user curve to redgamma2 or redlogfilm in camera that would set proper black levels and/or crush out the noisier couple of stops on the low end and make things look a bit more like an F3 or AF100.

As Elsie mentioned, you'll get the most out of your camera if you expose to the right. I would say for the kind of stuff you are shooting, expose to the right as much as possible such that your highlights are not blown out, and then if your subject is too hot at ISO800, turn down your ISO until it looks the way you want. This will maximize the dynamic range of your camera for that scene and give you as clean blacks as you can get while still holding your highlights. Generally, if you want a very underexposed look, I would say get it by turning down your iso, not depriving the sensor of light just so you can shoot ISO800 underexposed and not use the cleaner top end of the sensor's range.

[Jake Wilganowski]

What Noah said is sooooo right

[Matt Ryan]

You are monitoring in and lighting for RedlogFilm? How come? With RED it seems there is no reason not to monitor with a look that shows you images as close as possible to your final image. If you monitor and shoot in Redlogfilm you could end up with some big surprises when you go to grade the footage and return it to proper contrast and proper black levels.

I would recommend, especially for content where contrast and noise are of concern, getting your look as close as possible in camera as it may save you time in post and it will also allow you to judge properly how your contrast and noise is looking on set. You can always just apply a redlogfilm look to your footage later in just a few seconds using RC-X.

One of the big differences between RED's gamma curves and those of an F3/AF100 is that RED's curves are designed not to throw any information/dynamic range out, so they have quite high, milky black levels and give you access to the lower shadow stops even if they have some noise. The F3 (non-slog) and AF100, on the other hand, have far less overexposure latitude than MX at ISO800, and less dynamic range in general. You could apply a user curve to redgamma2 or redlogfilm in camera that would set proper black levels and/or crush out the noisier couple of stops on the low end and make things look a bit more like an F3 or AF100.

As Elsie mentioned, you'll get the most out of your camera if you expose to the right. I would say for the kind of stuff you are shooting, expose to the right as much as possible such that your highlights are not blown out, and then if your subject is too hot at ISO800, turn down your ISO until it looks the way you want. This will maximize the dynamic range of your camera for that scene and give you as clean blacks as you can get while still holding your highlights. Generally, if you want a very underexposed look, I would say get it by turning down your iso, not depriving the sensor of light just so you can shoot ISO800 underexposed and not use the cleaner top end of the sensor's range.

+1 on what Noah said