What happened here ?

May 27, 2006

Do you ever shoot 1-2 stops over as a rule?

Indoors with low light I always shoot at least a full stop over what the meter says and I've never been burned. Pretty tough in low light to over expose, even with a 500ASA stock. You can always bring things down in transfer if needed and have a perfect looking image.

Being under exposed is the worst, you have to bring things up, and this usually introduces un-wanted grain to the image. If you have a high light that is very hot, you can open a power window on it and bring it down and leave the rest higher. Of course you may lose some detail if it's too hot, it's always a tricky one :)

I'm doing a low light feature with Fuji Eterna 500T in four months, so I have test rolls here that I'm shooting. I'm testing it with a flashlight, artifical lightning, small lights, etc. Then I'll do a proper transfer and take a look. I'm sure it will be ok, but I don't want any surprises.

In the event it's a technical issue with the transfer, then that will be an easy fix.

R,

Dominik Muench · May 27, 2006

richard: as a rul eof thumb i learned....and thats what i did on all my previous productions, to overexpose by around 2/3 to 1 stop.

i guess i didnt do it on that production because i allready shot most of the scenes WAA and we wanted a really dark look and i was scared that if i introduce more light into the scene i might ruin the look.

Dominik Muench · June 10, 2006

theres a quicktime version of the clip available now at: http://www.dark-love-poems.com/

the roses on the right are the navigation

hit me, i deserve it :/

Sam Wells · June 10, 2006

It's not a question of rating the film it's a question of the film's dynamic range.

-Sam

Dominik Muench · June 10, 2006

It's not a question of rating the film it's a question of the film's dynamic range.

-Sam

well, whatever the cause was, i screwed it up badly.

Dominik Muench · June 11, 2006

what im confused about, if i would have wanted more detail in the shadows....shouldnt i have exposed for the darker areas ? cause if i would have overexposed half a stop ontop of the highlights, then wouldnt be the blacks be crushed even more?

or should i have taken the exposre reading of the shadow area and overexposed that ?

Charles MacDonald · June 11, 2006

what im confused about, if i would have wanted more detail in the shadows....shouldnt i have exposed for the darker areas ? cause if i would have overexposed half a stop ontop of the highlights, then wouldnt be the blacks be crushed even more?
or should i have taken the exposre reading of the shadow area and overexposed that ?

More light, (overexposure) everything comes out brighter on reversal, (and their is a deser negative wich will print lighter if the printer lights are not changed to compensate.)

Underexpose, less light, shadows (and everything else) goes darker on reversal, "thiner" negative which will apper to have more grain the shadows. again one can change the printer lights, but the range is on a different part of the curve.

For you digital edit folks, change telecine setings for printer lights.

Old rule is that you can get away with underexposure in reveral, and over exposure on negative if you have ot make an error, as long as the reversal is being scanned, or printed. Negative HAS to have some conversion so their is always a chance to play at thet stage. (only a stop or so if you don't want to see the effects of being off the curve, crushed blacks or crushed whites depending which way you are off.

I had a vidid demonstartion of that recently. My meter was off and I over exposed negative by a couple of stops on one roll. I flaged it when I sent it in to Niagra customs lab. The nice folks made an extra workpint of that one group of shots, and the original best list print the over exposuse shot was almost clear film, the corected print was the right overall density, but the lighlights looked "crushed"

I am still learning. one expensive mistake at a time, fortunatly my family is tolerant of my shooting home movies that require a projector.

Canney · June 18, 2006

What is up with all the emo kids taking over the world lately? Anyways the video was nicely done I say.

Edited June 18, 2006 by Canney

Filip Plesha · June 18, 2006

Old rule is that you can get away with underexposure in reveral, and over exposure on negative if you have ot make an error, as long as the reversal is being scanned

For scanning reversal, it helps to overexpose by 1/3 stop or 1/5 stop, because the shadows can get so dense that the scanner can't make out anything but noise in them.

If you take a simple google image search for any reversal film you will see 90% of all images with ugly contrast, color casts etc. It's because most people don't have access to quality scanning for E6.

On a bad scan, when you zoom into the shadows you just see black area with noise in it and no detail.

But then you put the slide on the lightbox, and whoila, there is a whole image hidden in the shadows that your scanner just "overlooked", and you see even more detail if you put the slide agains a really bright source like sun or a bulb. All this detail is just impossible to scan without a drum scan or a CCD scanner that costs like a new car.

Underexposing works better if you are projecting it or have access to a drum scan or imacon or something as good as that.

But for 90% of all other scanners, it helps to overexpose a bit with the risk of loosing some highlights detail.

Sam Wells · June 18, 2006

what im confused about, if i would have wanted more detail in the shadows....shouldnt i have exposed for the darker areas ? cause if i would have overexposed half a stop ontop of the highlights, then wouldnt be the blacks be crushed even more?
or should i have taken the exposre reading of the shadow area and overexposed that ?

What you need to think about is the brightness, or contrast *ratio*

If you have no control over this, say available light etc, then yes you have to play favorites and make a choice, the one that captues your intention as best you can.

But if you are lighting this then you solve the problem by where and how much light you put in these respective areas; you *control* your exposure in this manner..

-Sam

Dominik Muench · June 19, 2006

What is up with all the emo kids taking over the world lately? Anyways the video was nicely done I say.

emo ? thats gothic metal...trust me, theyve done music lon befoire the first emo kids came up;)

Dominik Muench · June 19, 2006

sam & filip: thanks for the advice :)

Morgan Peline · June 19, 2006

what im confused about, if i would have wanted more detail in the shadows....shouldnt i have exposed for the darker areas ? cause if i would have overexposed half a stop ontop of the highlights, then wouldnt be the blacks be crushed even more?
or should i have taken the exposre reading of the shadow area and overexposed that ?

Hi,

I've come to this conversation a bit late so maybe I have the wrong end of the stick...it's not necessarily just how you exposed it, it's also how you lit it maybe. As far as I understand it, with my student knowledge, maybe you just didn't use enough fill light. I haven't used the Fuji 500T before but say you had tested it and you knew that it had a contrast range of approx. 7 stops e.g. 2 1/2 stops over your exposure, to get pure white and 4 1/2 stops under your exposure, to get pure black. If you wanted to get details in your shadows maybe you need to add more fill light to your shadows (if it was possible) until the shadows read say 3 1/2 stops under so you knew that they were very black but also had a tiny bit of detail.

Dominik Muench · June 19, 2006

Hi,

I've come to this conversation a bit late so maybe I have the wrong end of the stick...it's not necessarily just how you exposed it, it's also how you lit it maybe. As far as I understand it, with my student knowledge, maybe you just didn't use enough fill light. I haven't used the Fuji 500T before but say you had tested it and you knew that it had a contrast range of approx. 7 stops e.g. 2 1/2 stops over your exposure, to get pure white and 4 1/2 stops under your exposure, to get pure black. If you wanted to get details in your shadows maybe you need to add more fill light to your shadows (if it was possible) until the shadows read say 3 1/2 stops under so you knew that they were very black but also had a tiny bit of detail.

i think thats what went wrong yes, i trusted the ambient light in the shadows too much and i kept the key light too low, so there wanst much to go into the shadows anyway.