Shooting Epic @ 80 ISO??

[Steve Sherrick]

Is there any adverse effects when shooting Epic or MX at 80 ISO? Client has no ND's, and wants to keep focus REAL shallow.

I agree with Jim. If shooting at this ISO works in your tests, I suppose you can do it. But I would much rather use some other approaches, including using filtering when necessary.

I won't turn the ISO below 800. In my opinion the camera shouldn't even have ISO settings below 640 or maybe 500.

I think 320 is legitimate and even down to 200 if some people like to work with that ISO for certain situations. For the most part I am between 320-1600, and quite often I am using RAW view, the metering tools, etc.

I shoot quite comfortably at 320 asa, very single job. (unless dark), I never ever look at histograms either.. I never have a single issue.
Am I doing something wrong?

Not doing anything wrong if your images come out looking good, and yours always seem to look good Mark, so I say keep doing whatever you are doing.

My biggest fear is the soundbite... "shoot EPIC at ISO 80. No problem." So many people will get in trouble.

Jim

Jim, I understand your dilemma. The people who take the time to test and care about their images will learn best practices (and that can be subjective) for exposing RED images. Those who don't test and perhaps apply techniques used with other formats, may be disappointed. But what can you do?

[Dan Kanes]

Curious what the T Stop was to be shooting at 80 iso. I don't understand this "has to be shot at t1.3 all the time thing"

[Eric Haase]

If you are looking for an even disctribution of highlights and shadows above and below key then shoot 800 or more. Even at 800 you've got more stops below key than above. If youre at 320 you are really short changing yourself with highlight latitude. Don't you find at 320 that just a couple/few stops above key starts to blow out? I once tested the highlight/shadow distribution at all available isos in redcolor space and found that around 1280 to 1600 you get an even over/under. This is not to say that this is the optimal iso at all but it's good to know how many stops over/under you have to work with at given iso settings.

[ericyoung]

Please don't take away ISO 320 as a setting. I often work with a DP who likes to use it all the time - he does high end tabletop food commercial filming in very controlled lighting situations for national TV spots. Clipping the RAW highlights is never an issue and he wants the ISO to match the exposure of the RAW.

hi eric,
may i ask what you mean by this ?

thanks

g

Basically he wants to use the Exposure faise colour to monitor highlight clipping and lowlight shadow areas - this shows what's happening in the RAW, but he wants the Redcolor image to match that exposure closely (as we view Redcolor all the time to keep the onset clients happy), which means setting ISO to 320 or thereabouts.

Shooting ISO800 underexposes the sensor to protect highlights, so Exposure false color becomes less useful as a tool for exposing up to, but not clipping, highlights. Protecting highlights by underexposing is great for many situations, but in this DP's super controlled studio lighting setups we don't need or want to underexpose for highlights as we have complete control of those, and we might want to grade up shadow detail in post which would not be served by underexposing.

[Jim McKinney]

I find I use ISO less and less, and rely more on the other exposure tools (false color and histogram).