Best Practices. Obtaining Proper Exposure. Share your methods please.

[Antony M]

And so, I caution people against changing the ISO on a Red camera because it's too easy to fall into the mentality that it's actually altering your "film stock" when it really isn't. My personal word of advice is to do as much as you can without altering the ISO. For me, it's the last thing I would tweak to get the look I'm going for.

I agree with you 100%.

 

[Timur Civan]

Gavin,

I agree with you. There seems to be a dogmatic 800 is best. But after shooting my Epic-M 12 hrs a day for 30 day's on my most recent project. The footage simply looks better and cleaner for me when exposed for 320iso. I agree that 800 is still clean and when you shoot exposed for that you give yourself "highlight protection" but really that's saving range for imprecision or mistakes. The theory is that set at 800 the camera tools tells you "uh oh, you're going to clip" but in reality you aren't. So if you do go there, you can recover later. But you still are giving up a range and amount of light that you could otherwise have. This is not a conversation about the dynamic range of the camera (saw a recent post piss Jim off there), nor the usability of the cameras at higher iso (I have gone up to 1600 before), but rather the idea that 800 is best. I equate it to shooting slide film. There really isn't much pushing and pulling in the development of slide film. What you shoot is what you get. If you want to operate with that precision, then you shoot 320iso and you will get all the stops of range the camera has, but if you burn or clip there, you're screwed. Better use false color, stop lights, histogram, all of them. It's gone if you miss. If you want an awesome balance between range and safety (more like negative film stock), set at 800 and go. You can fix some clip mistakes later because there is actually more range up top than some of the tools are telling you there is. It's personally much easier for me to shoot watching for clipped highlights, because I can register what that will look like in the footage, vs. noisy shadows because my brain can't process "how noisy?" until I get back to the shop (the purple predator view just tells you "where").

My advice. Shoot at 320, view exposure mode (recommended), traffic lights (they don't light up unless a certain percentage of the image clips that channel), and histogram. And don't clip anything that you can't lose forever (I prefer to clip nothing when at 320). And you will have the fattest negs out there.

If you are just starting, shooting fast, can't control your lighting (through filtration or otherwise), have large swatches of skies and snow, or just want a little insurance. Shoot 800. It will still look awesome and you will be "highlight protected".

And note when you click raw view, what settings it mirrors

What I want to know that I can't seem to find, is that imperially when set at 320 and at 800, what is the distribution around middle gray of the camera's dynamic range? Any help there would be appreciated.

Thanks, this definitly makes the most sense to me. 320 Sounds about right.... I shot some stuff yesterday @ ISO 1250, and was horrified by the results.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Thanks Randall, great explanation and we do seem to be in complete agreement.

800 will give you some "wiggle room". But I'm so used to protecting highlights as it is that I would prefer to see exactly what the sensor is seeing and do my own in brain protection. 500 ISO I think would be perfect for shooting.

Certainly two different alternatives for working. But if you work in 320 ISO you will have cleaner images when you don't screw up.

 

[Joseph Hutson]

Thanks, this definitly makes the most sense to me. 320 Sounds about right.... I shot some stuff yesterday @ ISO 1250, and was horrified by the results.

Hmm. In my experience, I can get pretty good results up to at least 1600 or 2000...sometimes even 2500ISO.

The rare times I didn't get pleasing results at 1250 was when I underexposed to begin with.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Perhaps a calibration is in order.

Thanks, this definitly makes the most sense to me. 320 Sounds about right.... I shot some stuff yesterday @ ISO 1250, and was horrified by the results.

 

[Timur Civan]

did that....

Check the footage in the "Ghengis arrived" thread.

Shot some stuff @ ISO 320 today... worlds better. just gonna keep it there.

 

[Brett Clements]

Hmm. In my experience, I can get pretty good results up to at least 1600 or 2000...sometimes even 2500ISO.

The rare times I didn't get pleasing results at 1250 was when I underexposed to begin with.

Any chance of you posting something you shot up around 2500ISO Joseph? Brett.

 

[Joseph Hutson]

Any chance of you posting something you shot up around 2500ISO Joseph? Brett.

Let me see what I can find at 2500ISO. In the meantime, most of the night stuff in this piece was 1600ISO or 2000ISO...

http://vimeo.com/29281836

 

[Brett Clements]

Thanks Brother.

 

[Joseph Hutson]

Any chance of you posting something you shot up around 2500ISO Joseph? Brett.

FIRST: Unfortunately the JPG compression becomes more apparent in these kind of samples when posted on REDuser. However, I wasn't going to keep that as an excuse from me posting anything...

This was one of my first times to shoot with the EPIC. It was unfortunately before I did my first Black Calibration.

First frame is set to 800ISO to show how little light there was...

2500ISO

And here's 3200ISO. A bit more than what you asked for...

 

[Trevor Meeks]

Joseph, for no black shading and (I assume) no adjustments in post, the 2500ISO sample looks VERY usable... nice! A bit of the Phil Holland treatment and that'll pop nicely! Very cool.

 

[Brett Clements]

Thank you Joseph. I really appreciate you taking the time to post this stuff and also answer my questions. If it wasn't for Ketchi, I wouldn't know how to mount a Spinner....the older you get, the dumber you get. Anyway. Much appreciated.

 

[Brandon S]

That video link was awesome. I've been trying to get a grasp on exposure on the Epic as well. Like how do you balance out the two "goalposts"? What's an acceptable level on the RAW Noise Meter and the Clip Meter next to the stop lights?

 

[daniel caruso]

Hello everyone,

The past week while getting adjusted to the exposure techniques needed for Red, I have gotten a wide range of results in the image quality. One I thought was camera error, but after this thread and amounts of testing, it is clear that this camera needs a completely different approach.

I have a shoot this weekend and it is about a kidnapping which takes place in a back warehouse. Lighting will be overhead practicals, typical raw hanging bulb over main subject and action, with slits on shelving and light from the back door opening. Contrast will be hard and I WILL have a lot of dark spots in the shots. No doubt I will get the noise floor up with the amoutn on blacks and dark shadows I will have in the frame.

My question is, if my base exposure is on my subject/action, say 2.9 (what I have for lens), 800ISO, shooting RedLogFilm, should I be lighting the shadows up a bit more than I would for say an F3? It seems that with Red it is better to not crush in camera, but give your blacks some more light, then in post the curve will crush and the image will be fairly clean. I am still trying to find the correct approach to exposing my Scarlet, but from tests thus far, it seems under exposing in camera -3 stops would not be the cleanest way to capture black for the RAW sensor. For this I will also set my meter to 800, unless some think it is goo practice to go down even a 1/3 or 2/3 stop in ISO and expose 800ISO for 500, give it a bit more?

Coming from the AF100 and have worked with the F3, both these cameras have been cleaner in the blacks, but they also sort of post process the color in camera, so I would always get my ratio and hard contrast in the blacks in camera. But with this RAW format, I have gathered that it is better to get my ratio, but as hard as the noise bar will allow me.

Any help to put me on the right track, or tell me if my thinking is correct would be great, Thanks!

 

[Elsie N]

I tend to look for easy. And for me, easy is turning on zebras, viewing in grayscale mode, and exposing to the right and then backing off a bit. This seems to work well in all situations including low light. As the light changes, I just expose a little more to get the histogram back to where it was before the light changed.

Viewing in greyscale and using zebras, I get a bright red in the blown areas of the zebras and in low light, a blue tint in the areas that are in danger of excessive noise. Using 800 iso, I'm alright seeing the zebra pattern in a few areas such as white clouds in an otherwise blue sky, but when I see red I adjust exposure immediately... or consider turning on HDRx

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Neat video for low light mistakes.

 

[daniel caruso]

Great Elsie, thanks! I will give that viewing mode a try.

 

[Elsie N]

Great Elsie, thanks! I will give that viewing mode a try.

You're welcome. Bottom button on the Redmote.

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

You are monitoring in and lighting for RedlogFilm? How come? With RED it seems there is no reason not to monitor with a look that shows you images as close as possible to your final image. If you monitor and shoot in Redlogfilm you could end up with some big surprises when you go to grade the footage and return it to proper contrast and proper black levels.

I would recommend, especially for content where contrast and noise are of concern, getting your look as close as possible in camera as it may save you time in post and it will also allow you to judge properly how your contrast and noise is looking on set. You can always just apply a redlogfilm look to your footage later in just a few seconds using RC-X.

One of the big differences between RED's gamma curves and those of an F3/AF100 is that RED's curves are designed not to throw any information/dynamic range out, so they have quite high, milky black levels and give you access to the lower shadow stops even if they have some noise. The F3 (non-slog) and AF100, on the other hand, have far less overexposure latitude than MX at ISO800, and less dynamic range in general. You could apply a user curve to redgamma2 or redlogfilm in camera that would set proper black levels and/or crush out the noisier couple of stops on the low end and make things look a bit more like an F3 or AF100.

As Elsie mentioned, you'll get the most out of your camera if you expose to the right. I would say for the kind of stuff you are shooting, expose to the right as much as possible such that your highlights are not blown out, and then if your subject is too hot at ISO800, turn down your ISO until it looks the way you want. This will maximize the dynamic range of your camera for that scene and give you as clean blacks as you can get while still holding your highlights. Generally, if you want a very underexposed look, I would say get it by turning down your iso, not depriving the sensor of light just so you can shoot ISO800 underexposed and not use the cleaner top end of the sensor's range.

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

What Noah said is sooooo right

 

[Matt Ryan]

You are monitoring in and lighting for RedlogFilm? How come? With RED it seems there is no reason not to monitor with a look that shows you images as close as possible to your final image. If you monitor and shoot in Redlogfilm you could end up with some big surprises when you go to grade the footage and return it to proper contrast and proper black levels.

I would recommend, especially for content where contrast and noise are of concern, getting your look as close as possible in camera as it may save you time in post and it will also allow you to judge properly how your contrast and noise is looking on set. You can always just apply a redlogfilm look to your footage later in just a few seconds using RC-X.

One of the big differences between RED's gamma curves and those of an F3/AF100 is that RED's curves are designed not to throw any information/dynamic range out, so they have quite high, milky black levels and give you access to the lower shadow stops even if they have some noise. The F3 (non-slog) and AF100, on the other hand, have far less overexposure latitude than MX at ISO800, and less dynamic range in general. You could apply a user curve to redgamma2 or redlogfilm in camera that would set proper black levels and/or crush out the noisier couple of stops on the low end and make things look a bit more like an F3 or AF100.

As Elsie mentioned, you'll get the most out of your camera if you expose to the right. I would say for the kind of stuff you are shooting, expose to the right as much as possible such that your highlights are not blown out, and then if your subject is too hot at ISO800, turn down your ISO until it looks the way you want. This will maximize the dynamic range of your camera for that scene and give you as clean blacks as you can get while still holding your highlights. Generally, if you want a very underexposed look, I would say get it by turning down your iso, not depriving the sensor of light just so you can shoot ISO800 underexposed and not use the cleaner top end of the sensor's range.

+1 on what Noah said