Over Exposed Image
by Colin Wiencek
on
May 19, 2008 at 2:21:58 am
I shot a live music video with a band and three of the 9 cameras came out over exposed. Is there anyway to compensate for this in either combustion or FCP? I know it won't be as good as if I had done it in camera but please tell me there is a way to do it.
-Colin
Re: Over Exposed Image by Jeff Brown on May 19, 2008 at 3:31:07 pm
I'd start by reducing gamma, but once the whites are clipped, there's nothing left, so you might be disappointed.
Alternative: "If you can't fix it, feature it"-- make the other cameras blown out too, and play with a high-key look for the music video...
Re: Over Exposed Image by heath firestone on May 27, 2008 at 4:33:41 am
When you say over exposed, I assume you mean some of your footage was blown out, not just exposed brighter than the other cameras. Sadly, any time you lose detail, by either blowing out, of dropping to black, there is no way of bringing back detail, with any program. Once it's lost, it's lost. Bringing down the levels will just make the blown out areas darker, but will not bring back in color or detail. There is a reason cameras have Zebra striping. I like to set my zebras to 95%, that way I know when I'm close to losing detail, but leave myself a little overhead. When Zebra stripes appear, I back off ever so slightly, and if something pops a little into the Zebra, I know I have the headroom to keep detail.
Some people use Zebras to tell them if they have proper exposure. I can usually tell if I have good exposure. I'm more interested in pushing my camera to it's limit, but knowing when I've pushed it too far. It sucks that some of your camera operators didn't realize they were overexposing, but with six good cameras, I hope you have enough coverage that you don't have to rely on the overexposed cameras too much.
