Dragon - Simple exposure thoughts.

[Wes Howell]

Just wanted to share a couple thoughts. No charts - just a bit of feedback and some personal thoughts on exposing with the Dragon compared to the Epic.


Background / shooting on Epic:

I used to lean towards shooting at 800 ISO when shooting outdoors / contrasty / bright situations. This gave me a bit of a cushion in post / to avoid unsightly blowouts. There were also times when it caused parts of the image to be generally, slightly underexposed - which is why I would never tell someone to always shoot at 800 ISO.

When shooting in well controlled or low light, I would typically set my ISO to 320 as it was the closest approximation of what you'd see in RAW mode and I'd want to lean towards exposing more in these conditions. Setting ISO to 320 would generally result in opening the iris a touch more or exposing longer - which in these scenarios was useful.


Shooting on Dragon.

Because of the way that Dragon handles highlights - IMO, shooting is SIMPLER when compared to the Epic.

I feel much more freedom to shoot at a 320 ISO because of how much more capable and flexible the camera is when it comes to capturing highlights. Highlights roll off smoothly and they look so much better. I'm essentially exposing longer or capturing more light when the ISO is referenced at 320 and this gives me a super clean, rich signal. After a few shoots, I'm much less inclined to shoot at higher ISO's. I'll save that for post / when needed.

With that said, on a really bright shoot at mid-day at the beach I did set my ISO to 500 as I figured it would give me just a little more wiggle room - but this was just being conservative. The highlight are so much more manageable - it's really liberating. On the shoot, I watched my goal posts and exposed much of the shoot simply referencing my touch screen. I'm very happy with the results. The footage is cleaner, there's better colors and more info to work with. Not scared of blowouts anymore

IMO, it's liberating to shoot at lower ISOs on the Dragon. It also affords me wiggle room to bump up shadows, mid tones in post. They're cleaner.

I will be shooting at lower ISO's on my Dragon as a general rule - I'm very happy with the results.

My .02 cents.

Wes

 

[Zeb B]

Thx!

 

[luigivaltulini]

Dragon sensor have Much DR, Much better color, Much better roll-off , Much resolution , another world for working in post production

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

IMO, it's liberating to shoot at lower ISOs on the Dragon. It also affords me wiggle room to bump up shadows, mid tones in post. They're cleaner.

I will be shooting at lower ISO's on my Dragon as a general rule - I'm very happy with the results.

Wes

Hard to go back to MX after you rock that Dragon for a little while

Yes, I have become a big fan of rating at lower ISOs Dragon.

 

[Ivan Kovax]

Likewise. I have found myself rating ISO lower with dragon, even at night, simply because I see an extra few stops into the blacks. It is scary. I am still trying to work out how to adapt dragon to my style, but I think it will be a quick learning curve.

Anybody else here ecstatic over how dragon handles MIXED LIGHTING? This has impressed the crap out of me. I will no longer hesitate in whipping out a variety of gels and mixing up the colours any more...

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Likewise. I have found myself rating ISO lower with dragon, even at night, simply because I see an extra few stops into the blacks. It is scary. I am still trying to work out how to adapt dragon to my style, but I think it will be a quick learning curve.

Anybody else here ecstatic over how dragon handles MIXED LIGHTING? This has impressed the crap out of me. I will no longer hesitate in whipping out a variety of gels and mixing up the colours any more...

What do you mean? In what way does Dragon handle this better? (I ask because our cam is not upgraded yet and i've done just a few tests on Dragon.)