Zebra lines 2 / filters to correct underexposure

First of all, my thanks to all who gave me input on the zebra lines. I set zebras to 100% and tried to stay below this at all times. Shots were much better.

One type of shot that I had a hard time with was with the talents in the shade under a roofed terrace with the bright sky as a backdrop. The reflector was hard to use because there was no sun coming in from above, so there was very little light I could reflect back onto the faces. When I opened the iris, the faces were great but the sky buzzed with zebras. When I closed the iris, the sky was wonderful but the subjects were dark. What do you usually do in this situation?

Also, how should I color correct the subjects in FCP to decrease the darkness without losing the tones of the backdrop? Should I just play with the brightness and contrast filters?

OMU

<<<When I opened the iris, the faces were great>>>

Which is precisely where you should have left it. In the absence of a Lighting Director (separate from you), you have to go with what you have.

The movie people have a phrase that works here. "Shoot The Money." The people in the shot are paying you to make them look good. The sky isn't paying you squat.

<<<color correct the subjects in FCP to decrease the darkness without losing the tones of the backdrop?>>>

None of the Color Corrector tools are going to help you here. You need multiple pass gamma correction and possibly masking to solve this one--although I would simply abandon any idea of keeping the background. Go with the people.

Still photography has a similar rule. Shoot the eyes. If you critically examine some of the very old photographic portraits, the eyes are the only thing in focus.

Go with people--almost always.

Koz

there's a pretty good free filter from lyric for under-exposed footage
[www.lyric.com].

but it might not be up to your task.

there's 2 other ways to deal with your shot:

1) broadcast safe
don't know if anyone mentioned this to you before,
but you can crank your levels right up in FCP, then make it "legal" (no zebra stripes) by applying the broadcast safe filter (Video Filters > Colour Correction)
this will pretty much keep your look, but make it legal

2) mask/matte ("power-window"
here you isolate the various areas and apply different CCs to each.
the simplest way is to use some dedicated filters.
here's free vignete and "face-light" filters:
[www.haiku.com.au]

the more complicated approach is to actually use 2 layers in fcp,
and add a mask or matte filter to the upper one (along with a mask feather filter to soften the edges)
and you can create totally independent looks on each layer, if you like.

in a pro colour correction suite these areas are known as "power windows"


cheers,
nick

Is there an FCP version of Photoshop Curves Tool? This tool lets you change the brightnesses, contrasts, and gammas ad-lib as many times in the same image as you want.

This would be the curve to rescue OMu:



I count three maybe four different gammas necessary to correct the picture with multiple errors.

Koz

Thanks, all. As always, you are right on the money.

OMU

If the skyline above the terrace was giving you a hard time, why didn't you just use graduated filters?