Day For Night with Red Epic HDR X

[Jonas Spitzenhuber]

Hallo!

 

At the moment i am planning a music video where we will shoot a lot of day for night exteriors. I´ll be using the epic camera for the first time but since its super low budget i wont really have the ability to test the camera in advance. So i´d like to ask you friends..

 

My question is: Will the hdrx mode allow me to even take the sky into the frame and then pull it down that far that it gets darker than skin tone? Even if faces are crossing the sky?

 

I thought about using all 5 hdr stops. I think it's important to keep the tones clearly seperated - The sky needs to be some stops brighter than the faces to be able to grab the sky in grading. Has anybody tried it before?

 

How do the transitions between hdrx-treated an normal exposed areas look like (Hair in front of the sky)? Will it look like a bad compositing?

 

 

Thanks a lot,

 

Jonas

[David Mullen ASC]

What HDRx will allow is for you to hold most of the detail in the bright sky. Being able to color-correct it separately from the face is a completely other issue, but certainly it will help if you don't have detail clipped in the sky.

 

Sky replacement for Day-for-Night can be a complicated process depending on the shot. Even just darkening the sky depends on the type of keying you have to do around the subject, if at all. This is one reason that it helps to avoid the sky completely whenever possible with Day-for-Night.

[Joshua Reis]

Hallo!

 

At the moment i am planning a music video where we will shoot a lot of day for night exteriors. I´ll be using the epic camera for the first time but since its super low budget i wont really have the ability to test the camera in advance. So i´d like to ask you friends..

 

My question is: Will the hdrx mode allow me to even take the sky into the frame and then pull it down that far that it gets darker than skin tone? Even if faces are crossing the sky?

 

I thought about using all 5 hdr stops. I think it's important to keep the tones clearly seperated - The sky needs to be some stops brighter than the faces to be able to grab the sky in grading. Has anybody tried it before?

 

How do the transitions between hdrx-treated an normal exposed areas look like (Hair in front of the sky)? Will it look like a bad compositing?

 

 

Thanks a lot,

 

Jonas

 

Will you be shooting a lot of handheld or will the camera be mostly steady and locked off? The reason that I ask is that HDRX requires the blending of two separate exposures so that your normal exposure and second "under exposed" image may not exactly line up since they were exposed at different durations in time. The Epic camera compensates for the second exposure by narrowing the shutter. For example, if you were shooting with a 180 degree shutter, the HDRX or second frame would be at 45 degrees if the camera was set to expose for 2 stops under. Many post facilities have different processes to solve this issue, but in my experience it requires some manual and time consuming attention. HDRX works great for wide landscapes and static compositions, but can get tricky when there is a lot of movement within the frame. I'm sure this will change over time as new software comes to release. As long as the sky doesn't clip, you may be able to chroma key? Or you can intentional under expose to save the sky, but then increase the key lighting to your subjects?

 

Even though you don't have access to an Epic, you could shoot some stills with a 7D or 5D and perform your own test? You could manually bracket and find what works best for you?

Edited May 16, 2012 by Joshua Reis