Shooting - white level

[Craig Howard]

My first shoot with RED coming up and it happpens to be close up food with pours. Television commercial.

It also happens to be white on white! ie white chocolate on white icecream.

FWIW. I have shot film for over 30 years plus a lot of tape, HD etc (but nothing with a motion camera that shoots RAW). Normally I would trust my meter, my IRE spotmeter, my eye (and a waveform monitor for tape)

I am curious how I should establish exactly what and where I am on the white scale. The waveform monitor differs when I look at the raw data and I have not had enough experience of the small viewfinder histograms on a RED.

Obviously I want to avoid white clipping and I need to keepo my whites in the broadcast TV "range" - Not superwhite.

Does the RED clamp?

Any advice will be appreciated.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Just make sure you don't clip and you're fine... -

If you view raw and have a waveform, you should be pretty safe.

 

[Kim Frank]

If you are used to IRE you can use the zebras meter to set it to your desired IRE values. Check the manual for setting them up and general metering. There are a lot of possibilities besides zebras to avoid clipping. Histogram, raw ample, false color, clip bars, etc. all explained in depth in the manual you can find at red.com
You can still trust your meter if camera settings are the same, but to be sure with the Raw image you should use the in camera meters.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

The in-camera waveform works well with flat/raw settings...

 

[Craig Howard]

Thanx to both of you.

Reading the manual now.

Luckily I also do have a Camera Assistant that is offay with the RED and how it is set up.

For me...I just neeeded the confidence to get the white on white thing working as I want . That means I need to be confident that the white is "true" and not a result of clipping or clamping.

I find white to be more of a challenge with the advent of "digital" capture and digital TV. (LCD, LED). With analogue (and film). white was white. Today it can be "grey" so easily.

 

[David Birdy]

The IRE spot meter works well also...I use 105 IRE for the highest white level.