It is better to underexpose on Red

[Duncan Hill]

The thread on "Red has 3 less stops..." is closed, so I just wanted to clarify that the quote on there, "It definitely favours overexposure and protecting the highlights rather than exposing for the low end." This statement is flat out wrong. It is definitely better to underexpose and then push in post than to overexpose and pull it down. The Red can replicate a great latitude, but you can't work with information that's lost forever or clipped. This seems to be backed up by most Red shooters and has been true in my experience. Sorry if someone else already corrected this, but I didn't see it anywhere. Thanks

 

[Imran Farouk]

quick question...underexposing seems better then overexposing in many respects...pulling highlights down sometimes look really odd to me so I'd rather push them up, but isn't there an issue with noise sometimes when pushing upwards?

 

[Jamison Stark]

I haven't had my RED very long, but so far I have noticed in some test shots that the footage can get noisy if there isn't enough light. I think that's all they meant. Make sure you feed your sensor, and better a little too much light than not enough. So far in my casual testing, I'd have to agree.

 

[Duncan Hill]

Yeah, you've got to have light to make an image, but that being said, when it comes to the Red it is best to shoot under what may look best on the monitor or VF. For instance, if you're shooting outside under a wide range of light, make sure your highlights don't blow out too much, if at all. Then again, it's all about what look you want. On some projects it's desired to blow out highlights more than others (like The Informant). If you underexpose too much, you will get a lot of grain. I'm talking about shooting under what you may have by a stop or two usually.

 

[Jamison Stark]

Good advice. I'll try it out as soon as I get my batteries and can go outside. So far I have been doing interiors. Hours of footage of my living room. I can't wait to try it out in a wide range environment like you mention. I think batteries shipped yesterday so it shouldn't be long!

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Yeah, you've got to have light to make an image, but that being said, when it comes to the Red it is best to shoot under what may look best on the monitor or VF. For instance, if you're shooting outside under a wide range of light, make sure your highlights don't blow out too much, if at all. Then again, it's all about what look you want. On some projects it's desired to blow out highlights more than others (like The Informant). If you underexpose too much, you will get a lot of grain. I'm talking about shooting under what you may have by a stop or two usually.

Hi.

This statement so depends on how you have setup your cam and how the post process is done.

If you shoot RedSpace and auto - WB... True, you cannot trust what you see in any respect.

If you shoot cam sensor-native in rec 709/RAW, you can trust your meters and expose properly, thus trust the DR and have little to none noise.

If you post directly from the first set of metadata, again you "get there" fast, but with less DR/more noise, more prone to under/over-exposure.

If you go through a DI with the latter exposure and develop either from a sensor-native linear RGB in 12+ bit, or a sensor-native log 10-bit image - more DR/less noise.

This is not a discussion of Geoff Boyles findings...

But just a staement that workflow and how you use the camera very much influences your results...

Cheers

 

[Daniel Browning]

Duncan,

It says "and protecting the highlights". If you have blown highlights, then you can't have "protected" them, and you weren't following the advice of your quote.

It is definitely better to underexpose and then push in post than to overexpose and pull it down.

This is flat out wrong. According to your advice, it is better to leave room on the right side of the histogram rather than push the exposure all the way to the right. The truth is that it's always better to increase exposure as much as possible without blowing important highlights, just as your quote says. Even if it means "overexposure" and being required to reduce brightness in post.

The Red can replicate a great latitude, but you can't work with information that's lost forever or clipped.

The text you quoted is not advising anyone to clip highlights. In fact it specifically says to "protect highlights". The contrast of the scene will determine how much one can overexpose while still protecting highlights. A low contrast scene can take as much as two stops overexposure without blowing any highlights. A high contrast scene might need one stop underexposure to avoid clipping. Either way, the exposure is as bright as possible without clipping.

 

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

In the end it depends on how bright are the highlights you are trying to protect and how much you can bring up in post without noise becoming an issue.

Can't say much... Now I remember the test Ted did for that website where the underexposed quite a bit.

Would love to see the results on that one.

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

its better to expose properly.

 

[David Battistella]

Is it Jeff Kilgore who, once in a while, post the graphic of a person beating a dead horse.

Personally. I move to close this thread as well.

Please!

David

 

[Duncan Hill]

Here's one of the developers of Red talking about how to expose on red...By underexposing. Yes the histogram and false color mode are your best bet regardless, but my statement is more targeted at the many people claiming that "What you see is what you get," which may be true, but will not give you room in post to end up with a prime exposure. Someone else posted this video the other day, it's got good info, not shot very well though.

http://www.macvideo.tv/camera-technology/features/index.cfm?articleId=106112

By the way, why would you want to close this topic. People are clearly still interested in it and it's a topic that can save people a lot of headaches in post.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Pretty much I read the quote to say. "Try to reduce your scene contrast as much as possible so that you can overexpose and use the least noisy range of the sensor. But watch your highlights so that the data isn't gone forever."

In other words if you can light your scene so there are only 8 stops of contrast and you only just barely protect your highlights then you'll get the cleanest, best result.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Which - in a weird way - pretty much makes absolute sense...

As you don't usually do exposure in post...

 

[Erwin Jaquez]

I did a test shooting outdoors. At noon, 2 actors, no lights to fill and no bouncing cards. We start exposing to the actors but the skies where completly blown out. So we underexpose from 1 to 3 steps.

We graded on scratch to 2383 film stock LUT and sent it to print.

Even the shots 3 steps ubderexpose looked great. The noise ratio projected was minimum sometimes not even noticeable.

In my experience it is better to underexpose than overexpose. You're not always able to get fill lights in actual conditions.

 

[PatC]

ETTR