desaturated but with strong reds - best workflow

[Heiko Saele]

I'll be DP and operator for a no budget short, shooting with the HVX200. We want to have an overall desaturated look (greyish, "boring") but highlight red tones in some shots (red lip-gloss, red clothing).
What would you say is better: Shoot desaturated and enhance the reds in post, or shoot with normal or high color saturation and de-saturate everything except the reds in post?

I'd like to go the first route (shoot de-saturated) because it will probably be less work in post. Or do you think we'll run into problems in post because maybe there's not enough color information left in the reds to enhance them? Depends a lot on the level of de-saturation, I guess (I wouldn't want too much de-saturation anyways).

[Jon Fairhurst]

I'd shoot normal colors. That way the reds will be hot enough to pull without introducing noise at the edges. If you desaturate first, then you won't have many bits of red to work with.

[Brian Sargent]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unlike say setting proper exposure/white balance, isn't de-saturating in-camera the equivalent of tossing out good info?

[Jon Fairhurst]

Originally Posted by Brian Sargent

Correct me if I'm wrong, but unlike say setting proper exposure/white balance, isn't de-saturating in-camera the equivalent of tossing out good info?

It can be.

If you like the B&W look from the camera, go ahead and de-saturate, if that's the end result that you want.

One advantage of keeping the color is that you can use, say, only the green channel as the black and white source. In this case, a green object ends up white. If you were to choose the red channel as the luma output, the green object would be dark gray. Both choices give B&W outputs, but the look can be radically different.

You only get that choice in post if you keep the color from the camera.

[Heiko Saele]

Thank you all, it makes sense to keep all the info. I think you convinced me :)