shooting stills with Scarlet

[Maik Müller]

That newly added exposure assistant is really interesting, not only for stills, but it has potential to make shooting stills more comfortable. You should take a look.

 

[Mike P.]

Is that in the beta firmware Maik? What exactly is it?

I've recently had the most consistent success using "raw exposure check" (purple for crushed, green for 18%, and red for blown) and leaving skin-tones at ~18% (I think they look better a stop under)... I don't rely exclusively on one RED exposure tool, since I get in consistent results (that is, inconsistent stylistically given the scene, which should NOT be the case -- if I use a meter, it should give proper exposure most, if not all, of the time but it definitely can be hit and miss with MX.)

So, yeah, what is the Exposure Assistant that you speak of?

 

[Maik Müller]

Is that in the beta firmware Maik? What exactly is it?

Yes, its in the beta. It does what DSLRs do to get automatic exposure, automatically changing shutter and iris. You have various options, metering area and reaction speed can be set, and you can lock iris or shutter (or both). You can manually trigger it, you can use it for preview only and you can enable it during recording. What i don't know yet is if the ND of a Motion-Mount gets controlled by this too. I assume it is, why not and why would you like to disable iris and shutter, if there isn't something else left for this feature? This electronic ND-thing brings the whole feature to a new level.

I miss options to limit the shutter-/iris-shifts. For now it's only full freedom (way too much) or off. I would like to give the camera some control to that.

With all the meta-data and the possibilities of REDRAW we might even see something like automatic compensation in RCX, to avoid visible exposure shifts. That would be killer.

I've recently had the most consistent success using "raw exposure check" (purple for crushed, green for 18%, and red for blown) and leaving skin-tones at ~18% (I think they look better a stop under)... I don't rely exclusively on one RED exposure tool, since I get in consistent results (that is, inconsistent stylistically given the scene, which should NOT be the case -- if I use a meter, it should give proper exposure most, if not all, of the time but it definitely can be hit and miss with MX.)

Hehe, this assistant will not help with anything here, but it might be good for situations with heavily changing light conditions, and stills, and situations where you don't have direct access to the camera.

Getting exposure right is a science, without light in control i mostly try to ETTR, avoiding the stoplights, using zebras. It's almost everytime too much light or way too less, hehe. If i have control over the light, then yes, the RAW exposure tool comes in handy.

 

[Tom Van]

I'm going to look like a total ditz for this but I have to ask anyway...

ETTR - expose to the right. What exactly does that mean? I've gotten 2 different interpretations for reading the histogram/goalpost.

 

[Peter Majtan]

I'm going to look like a total ditz for this but I have to ask anyway...

ETTR - expose to the right. What exactly does that mean? I've gotten 2 different interpretations for reading the histogram/goalpost.

Basically you want to stretch you histogram as wide as possible and peg it to the right (highlights) without actually clipping. (Make sure your histogram is RAW!)
But this is one of those rules that does not fit all situations. Evenly lit images work well with ETTR, but I treat low-key and high-key images differently...

:sifone: Peter

 

[Patrick Grossien]

I'm going to look like a total ditz for this but I have to ask anyway...

ETTR - expose to the right. What exactly does that mean? I've gotten 2 different interpretations for reading the histogram/goalpost.

Peter said it nicely. But do take the time and go to http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/archive/all and read these. It's a wealth of information. Not only useful for RED cameras but in general. But of course RED centric. There's one article about ETTR and exposure practices. Check it out.

 

[Tom Van]

Thanks Peter. As soon as this AE Assist that Maik speaks of gets out of beta I'll have to play around with it. Curious about whether this will be a viable option to have on the job. If you can lock shutter, aperture and/or iso, I think using this in conjunction with a variable ND would be very useful.

 

[Maik Müller]

Peter said it nicely. But do take the time and go to http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/archive/all and read these. It's a wealth of information. Not only useful for RED cameras but in general. But of course RED centric. There's one article about ETTR and exposure practices. Check it out.

+1!

I always forget to post links to those articles, but they're really good. Everyone should have read them.

Thanks Peter. As soon as this AE Assist that Maik speaks of gets out of beta I'll have to play around with it. Curious about whether this will be a viable option to have on the job. If you can lock shutter, aperture and/or iso, I think using this in conjunction with a variable ND would be very useful.

ISO doesn't make sense, it's just meta-data. Actually it could be used to automatically compensate for changes made to ND/aperture/shutter. But RCX already has the option to adjust "exposure" in post, this would be the perfect way to handle this and get rid of visible brightness-changes.

So far, besides the missing limiting-feature, i would also like a way to set priorities. What get's changed first? ND is obvious, but shutter vs aperture?

 

[Maik Müller]

Just a idea for a different AE-mode.

Wouldn't it be cool if something like HDRx gets used here? As soon as the camera detects over/under-exposure it could automatically record HDRx-like additional frames, but on demand and with a variable shutter-speed, while the shutter of the A-stream stays at whatever you have set.