Exposure, highlights and the WFM

[Khalil Omer]

Hi All,

 

I've noticing on my dailies for recent projects that I am underexposing skin tones. It is mostly intentional as I just find "balanced" shots quite ugly and digital looking - less so on the Dragon and Alexa, most significantly on the C300. I end up putting skin tones around 30% IRE and highlights (say 90% IRE) at about 60% IRE. These projects have all been narratives obviously as I wouldn't be able to get away with this in commercials.

 

I'm wondering if any one else has experienced this with highlights. I'd rather not underexpose as it can make things tough in the grade, but I just find that I prefer everything lower.

 

Khalil

[Phil Rhodes]

They call me the prince of darkness, or, when they're feeling less complimentary, Negative Phil.

[Khalil Omer]

They call me the prince of darkness, or, when they're feeling less complimentary, Negative Phil.

The Willis defence has not worked too well for me with producers... :)

[Satsuki Murashige]

How about using a LUT box between the camera and video village and making your own custom LUTs in Resolve? That way, you get to show clients the look you prefer and still record a "thick negative." Or use a monitor/recorder like an Odessey or Shogun that can apply custom LUTs to Prores proxies and give those to client as reference. Or worst case, do your own dailies transcodes after the shoot. This is all assuming there's no budget to hire a DIT to do these things for you.

[Robin R Probyn]

You don't have any MLUTS to VF or monitor.. ? LOG will always look dark and lacking in contrast on Rec 709.. is that what your saying ..? sorry if Ive got it wrong..