Hello everyone,
I find myself a bit in the weeds of things and I would greatly appreciate it if someone would help me find my way again.
I recently listened to the Team Deakins podcast with Matthew Libatique, and at one point, he said that there is no relationship anymore between his meter and the camera's exposure setting, unless you use a LUT.
Now, I am a cinematography student and my program unfortunately does not spend a lot of time on LUT workflows - we shoot on RED Epic Ws with a Helium sensor and use one of RED's LOG-to-Rec709 LUTs.
I almost entirely rely on my light meter to evaluate exposure because I know the LUT we use tends to crush my blacks and clip my whites before they actually are - the saturation is also a little excessive to my taste. And since I am still wrapping my head around how to build an effective LUT and how to apply it on set, I trust my meter more.
However, when I hear someone like Matthew Libatique talk about the disassociation between light meter readings and camera, I find myself questioning my exposure method, and I feel like I need to start from scratch when it comes to understanding exposure.
And so, I am wondering if I need to change my approach, or if I can stick with it while considering additional exposure-reading tools, or if my meter is indeed outdated and "all" I need to do is build my own LUT to use in camera to determine my exposure on set.
There is so much contradicting information online and even in cinematography books about this topic, and I was hoping that this forum would be able to help me see the light.
Thank you!