What did I do wrong here...?

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Ok So I went and filmed the Fashion Show and here is my results. Other than the focus issue when I tried to bring in the speaker. I notice that the faces on the light complected women are washed out. What Adjustment did i need to make on my EA50 to prevent this next time? I was using my Canon 17-50mm f/2.8. I added Denoiser to get rid of most of the grain (There was not a lot by the way). I also have a Magic Bullet color tweak to darken the environment a bit to give a little more of a dramatic look.

WALK 10th Edition Fashion Show | ILE Videos

[Noa Put]

I think it's mainly overexposure, the ea50 doesn't handle highlights very well so you need to get your exposure right, the lights at that show also can give harsh contrasts so you might be better of using a preset that doesn't crush the blacks so much.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Aaron

For me the link takes me to a blank screen with a progress bar than goes on and one and on!! I got tired of waiting.

What profile were you using? You also might have to kick in PP3 and then use negative EV values cos the camera is exposing on a huge black background probably so it wants lots of light which washes out the much better lit faces. If you have zebras at 90% on light areas then you are over-exposing!!

Pity the video doesn't run for me!

Chris

[Joel Corral]

ouch that was bad. probably better of using AE.... i have used in uneven lighting and has panned out quite well....

[Chris Medico]

Can you post some video of the source media?

[Steven Digges]

Hi Aaron,
That shoot was a classic painful but common mistake. Your result has nothing to do with the characteristics of the EA50 or any other camera. First of all your overall scene was way beyond the exposure latitude of any camera. And your subjects were in the brightest light of all. It looked to me like you exposed for the scene instead of the subject. Camera meters and auto functions read every scene as “average” you need to know when you are not shooting an average scene, you had a common but extreme stage lighting scenario. The model in the pure white skirt was completely blown out. Clipping like that is irreversible.

Here is what I would do. I would never expose that scene with ANY auto functions activated. I shoot most things manually anyway. I would also know to expose for the subject (including high lights) and not worry about anything else. I would also know that the camera is going to be fooled by that lighting and every exposure tool it has will be wrong except one…..Zebra Stripes. Zebra stripes measure the reflectance of light on the IRE scale from black to white. They are not averaging the whole scene. They take some experience to get a feel for but they are awesome.

I don’t have time right now to explain them in detail but here are the basics. As a rule of thumb an average Caucasian facial skin tone should show zebra stripes on the highlights if they are set to 70 or 80 IRE and you have your exposure set correctly. There is more to it than that but that is the old starting point. A common misunderstanding is to think that everything above your set point will have stripes, it won’t. If you choose 80% then they will stripe areas in the frame that are around 80% IRE, nothing above and nothing less. They are a guide and a great tool but they take practice and an understanding of how they work. I hope this helps Aaron. Learn the stripes and then learn how to use them along with the histogram. I can write more later.

Noa, he crushed the blacks in post on purpose because he overexposed.

Steve

[Joel Corral]

i want to reiterate that AE works well when you are working with uneven lighting. if i have time i will post a shoot i did with AE last week. subject was walking all over the place, basically going from bright lights to dim lights and thankfully i had AE, did a decent job adjusting....

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Originally Posted by Chris Medico

Can you post some video of the source media?

Hi Chris, I dropped all the effects off the models including the denoiser. Here is a youtube link of raw models on the runway:

Fashion show - NoEffect - YouTube

Originally Posted by Joel Corral

ouch that was bad. probably better of using AE.... i have used in uneven lighting and has panned out quite well....

Hi Joel,

I have A, What did you do to even the light in AE?

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

Hi Aaron

For me the link takes me to a blank screen with a progress bar than goes on and one and on!! I got tired of waiting.

What profile were you using? You also might have to kick in PP3 and then use negative EV values cos the camera is exposing on a huge black background probably so it wants lots of light which washes out the much better lit faces. If you have zebras at 90% on light areas then you are over-exposing!!

Hi Chris,

I was not using a profile at all.

Originally Posted by Steven Digges

Hi Aaron,
That shoot was a classic painful but common mistake. Your result has nothing to do with the characteristics of the EA50 or any other camera. First of all your overall scene was way beyond the exposure latitude of any camera. And your subjects were in the brightest light of all. It looked to me like you exposed for the scene instead of the subject. Camera meters and auto functions read every scene as “average” you need to know when you are not shooting an average scene, you had a common but extreme stage lighting scenario. The model in the pure white skirt was completely blown out. Clipping like that is irreversible.

Here is what I would do. I would never expose that scene with ANY auto functions activated. I shoot most things manually anyway. I would also know to expose for the subject (including high lights) and not worry about anything else. I would also know that the camera is going to be fooled by that lighting and every exposure tool it has will be wrong except one…..Zebra Stripes. Zebra stripes measure the reflectance of light on the IRE scale from black to white. They are not averaging the whole scene. They take some experience to get a feel for but they are awesome.

I don’t have time right now to explain them in detail but here are the basics. As a rule of thumb an average Caucasian facial skin tone should show zebra stripes on the highlights if they are set to 70 or 80 IRE and you have your exposure set correctly. There is more to it than that but that is the old starting point. A common misunderstanding is to think that everything above your set point will have stripes, it won’t. If you choose 80% then they will stripe areas in the frame that are around 80% IRE, nothing above and nothing less. They are a guide and a great tool but they take practice and an understanding of how they work. I hope this helps Aaron. Learn the stripes and then learn how to use them along with the histogram. I can write more later.

Noa, he crushed the blacks in post on purpose because he overexposed.

Steve

Hi Steve, Thanks for the advice... I did not use zebra at all on this one and it bit me pretty good. From where i was sitting it was hard to see that i was overexposed in the Viewfinder unitil I got home and looked at the footage. When i render out it makes the washed out faces worse, LOL! I was in MF Focus and i was using peaking if that matters...

[Chris Medico]

For sure its overexposed to the hot side. The skin tones are getting up into the KNEE area and that is part of what makes them look like that. Whats making this worse is that its oversaturated by a good bit. In that render the chroma channels are all clipped. That could be the render or it could be how the camera is setup. I can't tell for sure without seeing the video straight out of the camera.

If you want to send me a clip to take a look at feel free to drop me a note offline. I'd be happy to take a look at it and give you some thoughts.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Hi Chris,

That would be awesome. I'm really not sure how to handle an instance like this. Seeing this what adjustments would you have made with the cam to keep this from happening?

[Chris Harding]

Hey Aaron

PP3 profile and if you are using auto expose then set an ev of around -1 stop ..the camera is seeing the massive black curtain and needs lots of light to expose it correctly so the faces are blown out. I think I would have gone the manual iris route, make sure you have no zebras on the faces at 90% and also limit gain to 18db

Chris

[Steven Digges]

Originally Posted by Aaron Jones Sr.

Hi Chris,

That would be awesome. I'm really not sure how to handle an instance like this. Seeing this what adjustments would you have made with the cam to keep this from happening?

Hi Aaron,

I have read all of your posts and been to your site. You are asking a lot of good questions. For this video I hope you don't miss the point (everyone is saying) that the camera settings that mater here are exposure control. First and foremost it is over exposed. Picture profiles and other custom settings will not do you any good unless the fundamentals are correct.

Steve

[Joel Corral]

Aaron, you can see the 3 camera shoot i did a week ago with AE... iso was auto as well but maxed @ iso2000, i think.. as you see the subject gets a little over exposed in some areas but nothing too bad (she has very fair skin and cheeks often are too exposed), this venue has the worst lighting, good lighting only in one small area which makes shoots like this a mess... trying out AE and Auto ISO for the first time was a huge improvement and actually was able to broadcast...

Live "church service" this show is broadcast weekly on the Word Network

YouTube (Short URL)

Joel

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your advice it is always appreciated and well received. My question is what is the proper way to adjust the exposure. From what I am gathering from this thread i could have used Zebra and adjusted mt aperture accordingly.

[Aaron Jones Sr.]

Hi Joel,

I'm sorry i misunderstood your first post. I was under the impression that your were talking about After Effects when you mentioned AE. I thought you were saying that it could be fixed by using After Effects. I now see you were talking about a setting in the camera.