Exposure Placement

[Jason Ing]

The whole ETTR thing is something I've been in discussions/agurements with DP's and it's like suggesting something obscene to them. It always comes down, from their persprective, to "you need to protect the hightlights, and give it that nice film like curve, as digital sensors clip highlights hard."

Sure I would never advocate destroying the highlights.

But to my mind, That basically means underexposing and raising the levels in post, which creates some nasty noise in the blacks. And if you forced to me to choose from one devil over another, I'd take the clipped highlights vs the noisy blacks.

That's what I don't get. Why does "not clipping" or "protecting the highlights" mean underexposing? It's overcompensation. Just back off a bit.

This is sort of a silly analogy, but imagine three lanes on a highway, the fast lane, the middle lane, and the slow lane. ETTRs say, in this case, drive in the fast lane. But some people say, "If I go too far over, I'll get clipped by oncoming traffic. That's too scary." But they then proceed to drive clear across the highway and drive in the slow lane... or maybe the middle lane if they feel daring.

Hey, there's a lot of safe space in the fast lane without going over... just drive more carefully.

 

[Irri]

Thanks for all the interesting replies. All the science seems to point to ETTR for Signal to noise, and data per stop, but...

I'm on the "expose to the right" group...
However, I recently spoke with Michael Cioni of Plastercity at NAB and he has the opposite opinion...

Yes, he's not the only one in post to feel that way either and I'm guessing he does the RA/RC transfers himself.

IRRI, we have 11.3 remember...

Yeah, I know. A 3rd of 11.3 isn't as tidy as 3 though. :biggrin:

Hi,

If you do that the final result is likely to look very boring, however it may be technically correct...

I agree.

It's a hypothetical question to help me understand what's happening in terms of exposure.

Unless you are absolutely, positively going to do the RAW corrections and post production personally I highly recommend you set your white balance as accurately as possible in the field. The full understanding of the concept "its only metadata" is very likely to be lost on at least one critical person who deals with the footage after it leaves your hands. Play the percentages and do your part to quell the RedOne FUD.

So true. I started working on the idea that we could do something on a shoot that relied on a change later in post. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to carry out the transfer so those changes were never made.

... Also with regards to ETTR, that works for DSLR's and RED but you'll be in trouble if you use that theory for a standard video camera. If you've ever noticed what happens when you push skin tones much above 60 or 70% depending on how your gamma is set, the skin will start looking quite unnatural well before it clips at 100%.

I've never been quite satisfied with skin tones on RED. Have you done any tests placing them at, above, and below 70?