Auto settings on backlit top table. Tips?

[Clive McLaughlin]

There was a surprised singing event happening during the meal at a wedding yesterday. I had to be ready and didn't know exactly when it would kick off. I would be operating a gimbal around the room but need a reaction shot of the B&G and a safety wide shot of the floor. I was expecting the venue to raise the lights (which they didn't in the end). But this dictated my need to use auto ISO.

Sadly however, as you can see the blasted fairylight wall meant this camera and my other wide camera underexposed the foreground.

I'm actually surprised how much I can pull back in post but it has added a considerable bit of noise (not to the point the client would be annoyed).

Any advice on how to treat scenarios like this where can't check settings until the lights are raised, and that might be too late to be running around?

[Chris Harding]

Hi Clive

Surely even in full auto your camera has an ev correction?? On my Panny's I can instantly dial in up to 3 stops over or under so in backlit situations usually just going one stop over helps a lot to get the people exposed right in auto but of course it tends to blow out the background!! I'd rather have the guests correctly exposed and the fairy light curtain a bit washed out. I had a stinker last week where the venue had ceiling to floor windows behind the bridal table. Sadly venues don't think about us when they set up tables!!

I have no clue about correcting a backlit imagein other NLE's but in Sony Vegas what helps a lot is inverting the image (blacks to whites) first and then using a colour corrector to get the front back balance better and then finally invert again to bring it back to normal ...it's a well know plug-in chain usage ... invert - correct - invert

[Clive McLaughlin]

Thanks Chris, I'd not heard of that method before - I'll take a look!

As for the EV, I had thought about that, but like I said I expected the hotel to raise the lights again, so +3 EV might have overexposed teh foreground in auto had I it set that way! Turns out they decided to do this part in near darkness for some reason anyway despite the speeches ten minutes earlier having the lights up for them!

[Noa Put]

If I had to shoot this I would start with a locked off 4K camera on a tripod pointed towards the singing event set wide and adjust the exposure manually when the singing starts, in this case I can crop in post to choose different compositions if needed, then I would move to my second camera pointing towards the bride and set that camera up in the same way and then take my steadicam for other creative angles. The singing is most important, the reactions come second and the steadicam is just icing on the cake.

Ofcourse if the venue or DJ starts messing with the light intensity during the singing event then I just would concentrate operating one camera only, there are limits when you work alone and then I rather come home with footage from one camera that is good then 3 which are not good.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Craig

I find it makes the best result from a bad situation but it makes it better, not best! The obvious answer is simply don't shoot into the light but we have little choice at weddings sometimes don't we?

Good luck with the edit ..just get it as good as you can without spending too much time ..You might think the end result still sucks but the bride will love it anyway!!

[Nathan Buck]

I had one of those fairy light backdrops in my second wedding:

https://vimeo.com/album/3696380/video/147132724

and the first wedding I did they were in a marquee against the window on a sunny day:

https://vimeo.com/album/3696380/video/145038251

In the first video, it was quite dark and my camera is dreadful in low light, so I couldn't really get much brighter than that without seriously upping the gain. In the second video, there was tons of light, so I just exposed for the people and didn't worry too much about the backdrop.

[Peter Rush]

I hate them things - recently I knew the speakers were going to be fairly close to me so, even though it pained me, i used a light. The only lights in the room were the fairly lights, candles ad 2 picture lights. Backlit top tables are horrible but pretty much common so I'm used to them - Marquees in bright sunshine are the worst.

The most difficult lighting I find is dark bars with bright downlighters - it's almost impossible to expose so as not to blow out the tops of people's heads/faces without rendering the rest of the scene completely underexposed

[Jim Arco]

It is nearly impossible to compensate for strong backlighting without overpowering it with a lot of front fill lighting... nearly impossible in a typical wedding reception situation.

We have had some luck in post-production with a combination of filters (shadow/highlights, curves, and noise-reduction) in Premiere Pro and After Effects.

We also have some complicated techniques for severe problems.

Jim
Colorburst Video

[Peter Rush]

Same here Jim - Premiere has a good shadow/highlights filter, using that with a combination of Neat Video can salvage somewhat but at the expense of slow rendering - for a full speeches chapter I can leave it overnight on my otherwise fast system