Dark Image

[Jimmy Scanlon]

Hello there,

I could use some advice some advice about device brightness... I shoot with a Komodo and edit on a iMac Pro 5K screen. To me, when editing, everything looks great.. but when I export projects and upload to vimeo for viewing, sometimes clients are saying the video is "a little dark" or "too dark." I've sampled this myself, and sometimes on laptops it does look dark until you turn the brightness all the way up.

Is this something relating to my actually in-camera filming techniques? My traffic-signals exposure is always great, so maybe it's my basic color-corrections I'm doing.. I'm not sure. Also, sometimes I'm filming with the PolaePro Matte Box system w/variable NDs. I like to shoot wide-open during the day.. so I'm guessing this could be the issue too?

Here's a few of those projects for examples:
https://vimeo.com/803303284/64da1896bc?share=copy
https://vimeo.com/815106128/9bece368a9?share=copy

Appreciate everyone's time. If you feel there's a better thread for this topic, please let me know!

Thank you!

 

[Thomas B.]

Hi Jimmy,

I might be wrong, but I guess it could be the different display technologies (HDR > SDR). It would be great to know what kind of display your client was using when he watched the ad.
The laptop I'm using right now has an SDR display with "HDR streaming" function. *cough*
But to be honest, even after Windows' "HDR calibration" (is it some minimalistic kind of tone mapping, or what?!) and max. brightness, the shadows of your first ad really looked a bit too dark imo.
Then I watched it on my HDR TV and everything looked fine. :eagerness:

 

[Leonardo Newman]

The images seem to be graded pretty dark. It’s not necessarily how you are shooting, monitor your scopes when grading, it seems like the meat of your image sits within the toe of the scopes. Additionally if you have to turn screen brightness all the way up for the image to look bright enough, then it’s too dark. Typically you want your image to look fine at about 50% screen brightness. Most people will be watching the videos in a bright environment so take that into account when you grade. Lastly, what seems to me to be the biggest issue, when I look at the stake on the grill, or the beer cans, they are begging to be lit. Sometimes when clients say an image is dark, what there really saying is the subject of the image is too dark. So your exposure level of the sky could be fine, but if bringing your sky to that level causes the beer can to be dark and dull, clients are going to wonder why it’s so dark. I learnt this from experience. Oh, you need a calibrated display, if your grading for 709, your display needs to be set to 100nits brightness, all the time. This will give you a much better grasp on if your image is too bright too dark.

 

[Jimmy Scanlon]

Thank you both for your help!
thomas, I'm not entirely sure what type of device they were watching it on.. but there were many eyes on it; agency, client, etc. that I'm sure it was many different devices.
@Leonardo, this makes a lot of sense. Thank you for all your advice!