Ideal exposure for skin tone

I've been really studying up on how to get ideal skin tones and exposure when shooting with my BMMCC.

So my question is, what do you all do in camera settings to get the perfect exposure for your shots?

The first method that comes to mind for me are to use false color in my video assist to shoot and keep the face in the pink range.

The second method is to set zebra to 75% and adjust until there is barely a highlight on the face at or under 75% exposure.

The third method would be to expose the whole shot to the right until the brightest part of my image is right under 100% and then adjust down in post. I wonder if this is the best method considering the higher the stop, the more level of detail you can retain in the shot.

Thanks! Looking for any and all feedback.

Your third method was popular for a few years particularly if you were shooting raw. But I think now the first method has become the preferred method to handle light skin. And if your subjects are primarily dark skinned, the green false colour for those subjects may be best.

The great advantages of the first method:
- it's a consistent way of exposing skin across shots and scenes which can be important in post when grading your film
- you can clearly see your exposure levels for brighter highlights and mid-tones and shadows for which you may want to add or subtract light
- zebras are unreliable as you may be clipping a colour channel without zebras showing so using red false colour may be a safer approach because red means you may be clipping and you may not (more of a warning than a conclusion)
- it's more important to use false colour when shooting ProRes since ETTR may not give you the best results; there's a myth that ETTR is going to be better for your shadows, but in testing, I've found ETTR can give you a lower exposure than false colour readings (in some situations),
- remember not all shadow or highlight detail may be important to your shots, you can adjust light as you wish but sometimes it's not necessary and you let those areas fall where they may in camera while you are confident your skin is good
- any rule is made to be broken, pink skin is also too simple a view; there are shots in which you only want facial highlights to be pink and other shots you want the facial highlights to be bright with pink or grey facial shadows--you decide what you want as it suits your film: a horror movie can have pink facial highlights and a wedding video can have pink facial shadows.



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Great response rick!

If you are using zebras put them at 85% and then adjust so there is just a hint of them in the hottest part of the face.

Totally depends on your visual style.

For example - if you want your look, like something like Ozark, all your methods except ETTR would fail.



It's all about your look, and where you want to go.

It's all about your look, and where you want to go.

I'd like to avoid a tragically subdued life, if at all possible...

Steve

Agree, Frank. Experience is the best teacher for using one technique over another. No hard rules.


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Great advices! Thank you Rick and Frank!