Exposing for highlights

YuZheng Lim · October 21, 2015

Hi guys, I will be shooting a kitchen scene next month and I am very curious and would like to know how you guys will light it differently from me.

These are the photos of the exact same shot I am going to shoot

Wide shot,

For this shot, it will be a bit of silhouette and I don't want it to be too harsh on the high lights so I thought of having a 4x4 kino to fill those dark areas around the tables, the sunlight will bounce and fill the cast a little.

http://i58.tinypic.com/jry8h2.jpg

Mid shot,

For this tighter shot, I would use a negative fill (poly) on the left side to have the contrast on the male face. I might have to place a small light in front of them depending on the sun light during that time since I am making use of it.

Will be shooting on Sony Fs7 with Odyssey for 2k Prores 422 and A7s with Atomos Shogun 4k Proress 422.

Since A7s output only 8 Bits and I am still figuring out that some says by downscaling 4k to 2k, It will increase to 10bit... Both on Slog 3, Still trying to make them match. Any idea?

Sorry, Not sure is this the right place for me to post...

Regards,

Yuzheng

Edited October 21, 2015 by YuZheng Lim

YuZheng Lim · October 21, 2015

Sorry, Im unable to edit my post...

Wide shot,

For this shot, it will be a bit of silhouette and I don't want it to be too harsh on the high lights so I thought of having a 4x4 kino to fill those dark areas around the tables, the sunlight will bounce and fill the cast a little.

Mid shot,

For this tighter shot, I would use a negative fill (poly) on the left side to have the contrast on the male face. I might have to place a small light in front of them depending on the sun light during that time since I am making use of it.

David Mullen ASC · October 21, 2015

Looks pretty good in natural light to me...

Dennis Hingsberg · November 7, 2015

Downscaling 4K 8-bit to 2K will not increase the bit depth. Basically think of 8-bit as only having 256 levels of grey, the resolution doesn't matter, after any resolution scaling it will still only have 256 levels of grey.

Having said that, I've shot with the Sony F3 a lot to internal cards which was 8-bit and as long as your exposure is good you can still have a little room in post to color the footage and do a little style grading.

The natural lighting there does look pretty good as it is.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Dennis Hingsberg

Mihnea Snooker · November 7, 2015

Lets say you shot 4K 8bit. And you have 2 pixels next to each other. One is 135grey and the next one is 136 grey. When you scale down, the software will average between those numbers - 135,5. Of course this doesnt exist, so in 10bit will be 7xx. But you have more shades of grey than the original footage.

YuZheng Lim · November 7, 2015

Thanks guys! appreciate your replies. :)

Phil Rhodes · November 7, 2015

Lets say you shot 4K 8bit. And you have 2 pixels next to each other. One is 135grey and the next one is 136 grey. When you scale down, the software will average between those numbers - 135,5. Of course this doesnt exist, so in 10bit will be 7xx. But you have more shades of grey than the original footage.

This is true if the software understands how to do that properly. Reportedly it can be done in ffmpeg by setting up a filter chain that bumps the image to a higher bit depth then does the scaling.

At the risk of being seen as excessively self-promoting, see here.

But as I say, it has to be understood by the software.

P