@shian

Great video! I had no idea that you could change the mood SO much with grading like that. I always figured that if you wanted a dark scene, you had to shoot in the dark... (or close to it...)

So, to achieve the look from the still image above, you would for example:

Use your light meter to take a reading of the brightest part of your subject Use your meter to take a reading of the darkest portion of what is in frame Make sure that it all falls within 4 stops? Then set your aperture on the camera to split the middle?

The zone system was created by Ansel Adams I believe (at least perfected). He's written a few books (The Camera, The Negative, and one called The Print) which cover it in detail. He's a very entertaining read as well as super informative. Even though he worked with film the techniques still apply to digital as well. I highly recommend these books for anyone looking to improve their "eye".

Sorry, ya I didn't mean for that to seem arrogant or anything, your post just reminded me of reading the books and mainly how surprisingly entertaining Adams writing was. I definitely agree that videos with examples are much better for learning. This is something I need to go back and refresh on for sure. Thanks for the quick video, I look forward to more!

@shian This is really useful, and I think I'll be signing up as a paid member, now that I've found a job. Question though: you're using FCPX in the video, but you also mention AE in the video -- which tools do you use for which parts of the process? Do you ever color grade in FCPX, or does your plugin only work in AE? Do you use Premier as well?

Edit: I read the FAQ on your site, so it's clearer now. Hopefully there will be enough interest in ColorGHear to make it work in FCPX too.

@Psyco if you are planning on doing any serious grading on the image, yes. You'll notice that I actually stretched the 2nd shot from 20-80 to 10-90. And even though it's a dark contrasty shot, I still retain the fine grain and detail in the shadows - no macro blocking, and no mud, and my highlights aren't blown out, which is the first thing to go on Digital video and DSLR footage. Also the histogram will lie to you. on that wide shot, I would have had a histogram that stretched across the full spectrum but the meat of that shot was between 20-80. I would get a meter. http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2840/affordable-and-effective-light-meter#Item_47 Or, if you've got the cash, get a TV Logic monitor - VFM-056WP. My 1st AC won't even show up on a set unless we have one in the package. :)

Now in natural light, this will be very, very hard to do. It becomes exceedingly difficult to capture the full range of light in nature (22 stops), so you have no choice but to use the full DR of the camera, maybe some gradient ND filters, and do your best to retain highlight detail. It's not such a problem with close-ups, but in wide shots, unless you've got some really big guns (lighting wise) you're not gonna fit your scene into 6 stops, let alone 4. Without HDR, no motion picture production camera in the world can capture the full range of light in the real world. So for now, forget trying to do that, and focus on getting the best looking images into your computer. And then bend them into what you want. When possible squeeze it into the 4 stop range.

important note this technique is mainly for maximizing control in post. It is better to take the load off the camera and it's internal engine. Give it something it can easily process and write to the card, and let your more powerful and comprehensive render engines on your computer, and algorithms in your software handle the heavy lifting. I'd like to find out from @driftwood what exactly footage shot with this technique is actually doing in the matrix and the quantization in terms of encoding. Cuz I never experience many of the issues others have with their footage, but they are shooting across the full DR, which I hardly ever do.

@ahbleza - I mainly used X for this video because the WFM has color, so you can more easily see what I'm talking about when referring to different parts of the waveform. I use FCP-X for editing. Xto7 to get it into FCP7. And XML to get it from FCP7 to AE. (Hopefully Adobe will get off their asses soon, and add .fcpxml support like Resolve has, so I can go straight from X to AE.)

So put simply:

I edit in FCP-X, Export to FCP7 (using Xto7)

I export an XML from FCP7.

I import that XML into After Effects.

(Vegas users can export an AAF to AE. PP users can simply import their PP project into AE, but all three workflows are lossless.)

Then I grade and do whatever titles and effects are needed in After Effects.

And I always render out of AE 32bit 444.

I just went out and measured just to be sure my memory wasn't off, and in a medium-wide frame, it is possible to fit the 12.3 stops of light during magic hour into a 6 stop range with just reflectors, which is one of the many reasons so many prefer it. But to get detail on the wet dirt and the shadows outside the reflector's range into the exposure and still retain highlights you'd need need the full 12.3 stops, or some pretty bright lights. But throwing-out all white and black objects, you can get it to around 8.6, which if you remember is where I said the GH2 maxed out for exposure.

Like I said in the important note - don't get caught up in the 4 stop zone for everything. There will be times when you just can't pull it off. And then knowing the full zone system, and where all your colors are suppose to fall will be very useful. And I'll cover that in the full Zone System tutorial.

@gabel - yeah, ColorGHear users already know - there's a link to it on the tutorial page and here as well - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/65441#Comment_65441

I'm not a member, but feel free.

nevermind, I just joined...FB made it easy.

@Gabel Wow, those douchenozzles over at xxx really can't handle someone challenging their little empire. So, after I got into it with B (Who is not a Cinematographer by the way) over my findings, and then presented proof of what I was saying, which completely countered what he was declaring, they deleted the thread, and claimed I was advertising without their permission. But... before I defended myself effectively no one had a problem with the thread being there. Because... what I'm really doing is threatening their little cottage industry of selling overpriced, shitty, how-to DVDs to noobs. Fucking self-entitled pricks!

(the findings I'm referring to being from here - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1937/finding-face-exposure-on-gh2#Item_55)

The whole ColorGHear system, and my tutorials are something they can't get in on, and something that competes with their shit - so they now want me to pay to advertise on their site in order to post videos. Fuck them.

CGT is also such a threat to Colorista and MB, and so much cheaper, that I'm constantly taking it on the chin like Tesla did from Edison. All their little drones running around trying to discredit me. CGT and CGFS WORK!!! My methods are easy to learn, easy to use, and even beginners can get great results on a gentle learning curve. But they are threatened by more mouths at the table. I am not. I enjoy and invite more competition, it makes me work harder, makes me better, makes ColorGHear better.

"I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall always gets bloodied, always. It's threatening not just the way they do business, but in their minds it's threatening the game. But really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs, it's threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it's the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins, who have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy." - John Henry in 'Moneyball'

I saw parts of it, such a shame. Here you come with a great way of working around limitations of a camera, but well...

@shian I just found my wife's old Sekonic L398 meter in a drawer. So excited to be able to take incident light readings - and just one experiment on taking incident readings on skin has convinced me of just how much fun and how good this is going to be for working on getting my images properly exposed. Thanks for inspiring us. And I'm going to work the word "Douchenozzle" into my next conversation somewhere, so thanks for that too!