HD Night Exterior Techniques

[R Walker]

Hi!

 

I'm primarily a film shooter, however, I did shoot an HD feature last summer on the F900. (It was my first time working with HD). I think all in all I got a lot of good practice with the camera, but one thing I still don't like is the look of HD in night exteriors. I know there must be some tricks to keeping it from looking muddy and I was hoping I could get some advice on that. I'm shooting HD again at the end of the month and it's going to be all night exteriors so I want to get the best look possible. Also, I'm wondering what everyone thinks about using 35 lenses to get more of the wider film look. I wanted to try that if the budget allows. One last thing, last time I shot HD I used the 1/4 Black Pro-Mist. Anyone have any other filters they like with the HD in terms of softening the edges and getting more of the film look? Thanks in advance for your help!

[Michael Nash]

I'm not sure why your night exteriors looked muddy, or what exactly you mean by "muddy" (that can mean different things to different people). You can control the master black level, black gamma, master gamma and of course exposure to shape the contrast in any lighting situation. It's possible that your master black (pedestal) was set too high, making black night skies gray instead of black. Or the black gamma may have been set too high, filling in the shadows too much and flattening out the overall contrast. Or the footage you viewed may have been dubbed or the monitor setup incorrectly.

 

Generally for any type of video I set up the camera for a gamma curve that I like for that project, and leave it alone regardless of day or night. But there are times of course I'll tweak the camera a little to help make the best of a challenging lighting sitaution. Use a waveform monitor when you initially set up the camera so that you can see exactly where your master black and shadows fall. If black is way up at something like 10-15% then it's never going to look crisp, until you crush it back down in post.

 

For the night exteriors you're already unhappy with, you can do a lot in post to massage the contrast to make it look better. There are limits of course, before you start creating too much visible noise and artifacts in the image.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the "wider" film look of 35mm lenses -- there are wide angle lenses made for HD, and the depth of field of 35 lenses is narrower than that of 2/3" video lenses. Is there a particular optical characteristic of 35mm lenses you're looking to apply to HD? Mitch has posted a bit here about his experiences with the PS+Teknic pro-35 adapter on HD.

 

Regarding filters, everyone has their own favorites. Personally I don't like anything that lowers the resolution of HD, so if I want diffusion to the highlights I'll go to a lighter grade of White Pro Mist rather than a heavier BPM. So maybe a 1/8 WPM instead of a 1/4 BPM. You have to test to see what you like. I think the grittiness of ProMists helps add subtle tactile texture to the otherwise ultra-smooth HD image. It just depends on what you want. I'll advocate again that mixing optical controls with digital controls (combining filters & menu settings) creates a more organic painterly look that's not so electronic looking. Yet filters alone can look really "fake" or obvious on video, so you have to carefully blend the two.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Video does go mushy in the dark especially if it is compressed; this is fairly obvious. I think it's a case of shooting it much brighter than you intend then taking it down later - that way you're still using all the data space and quantisation the codec can give you.

 

Phil