under exposing video

[siddharth diwan]

I'm shooting on Canon Xl1 frame rate mode. If i under expose all the scene at put it right on post will i get good contrast and colour saturation or it won't make any difference.

[Jay Gladwell]

Why not play around with it? Shoot a test with several different settings (keep good notes) and find out for yourself. Instead of asking questions, go out and DO!

 

Jay

[Joshua Provost]

Sid, underexposure on video is different than film. On film you can under or overexposure to some degree and then push or pull during processing.

 

With video, if you underexpose, you are simply throwing away detail in shadows. You should expose as good a balance of capturing shadow and highlight detail as you can manage, and light and fill where necessary to get within the limited exposure latitude of video.

 

Josh

[Guest Ben Simpson]

I find that when I shoot with my Xl1s it has a lot of mosquito noise in the dark spots in the shot. So thereby I overexpose everything and go for a natural look. If you want a high contrast you can do it on a XL but I would want something like a PD series for that.

[Josh Hill]

Get a monitor. Thinking about this post and my XL1s, I never seem to worried about if it is "exposed" properly, since it's not film and does not have the same light sensitivity. I simply fire up a monitor (or I just trust myself and look through the not-great XL1s viewfinder) and adjust settings/lights/etc. until it is the look I want.

 

Get the look you want, or as close to it as possible, in camera before you start jacking around with it in post.