dark grade...lines

so john brawley posted a picture of a nightshot that looked so dark, and some how his colorist brought it back to looking very very usable. i shot this on a porch with lights and look how bad it looks haha. i shot in 1080p at prores 444xq ... should be able to stretch it a bit

i added 0.09 in mids and 1.34 in highlights and .02 in darks to try and added contrast... looks so much worse in the video.

I believe John said he downsampled from 4K on his shots, reducing the noise.

Also his shot is in a wide open space with even light ratios throughout 90% of the scene, with the sky only jumping up slightly in exposure, hiding a lot of the issues. I'm sure this is why he gets paid the big bucks for using experience to overcome problems.

Best tip I've have gained from the two BMD forums is watch out for and work with your light ratios in dark scenes (actually every scene but dark ones show it the most). I've learned adding to much light (ratio wise) to just one area of a shot can make dark portions harder to work with if I would have just brought down the main source light.

Major TV Studio level colorist also worked on his footage with studio level tools.

I'm saying maybe on this one: But you have shot with a dark wall right up against the talent with a considerable brighter door (light ratio) in between the two walls. I'm thinking the compressed FG and BG isn't helping you out here either.

And John shoots with crazy expensive speciality built Panasonic lenses. How fast was the Lens you were using and what T-stop?

But all of this could be due to your original being in 1080 and not downsampled from 4K.
And there is always the possibility of having a defective sensor. It happens.

Garbage in, garbage out. What are you expecting this to look like? I get that lighting can be a bother but did you even consider white balancing? Why 1.34 in the highlights? What highlights, trying to make that door pop? Post a frame I can probably get something usable, the primaries aren't the best tools for grading. Good luck.

Also with John's example. Though it was at dusk it was still feeding the sensor predominantly blue light which digital sensors respond better to. I'm not saying that you can't take a low contrast interior tungsten lit scene and lift it but you will more often than not fair better with daylight balanced light when your having to lift things. Hook and Brawley could probably do a more technical job of explaining it if they have the time to jump in.

You can't underexpose Ursa and bring it back this much without fpn. It's not like other cinema cameras. Some Ursa bodies might have better factory calibration and are less prone to fpn, but for most this looks normal.

Add light, open the aperture or don't lift the image. That's all there is to be done at the moment. And yes, fpn seems to appear more in tungsten territory than daylight.