Mon May 20, 2024 12:46 pm
First of all guys, thank you so much for taking the time to help and teach me. I am learning a lot from all of you and I am very thankful for your contribution.
Regarding ETTR, I do it most of the time because I am shooting in bright sunny days at peak hour ( unfortunately ), with scenes with a lot of highlights and shadows. I used to have this big pockets of shadow and was kind of reluctant to push them up in post and bringing back detail. I never clip my images, I never ever touch yellow on my false color. I always exposed to 400 or 800 ( if it was more highlights than shadows), applied a Cst or a Rec709 conversion Lut and brought back the Iso as low as possible in the Raw tab ( just like Howard did ). I will stop using ETTR because either way, I am never exposing skin to middle grey, my skin is usually the same as my highlights ( all the image is light grey ).
I think maybe my problem is mostly with curves? after seeing your edits, they are so much better than mine because I am also always afraid to push my image ( I am also still learning about what makes a good image ( I know my composition is bad ), but the relationship between shadows, highlights, IRE levels, etc, and everything is so subtle that I overthink everything and feel like the more I do to the image, the less ok it will be. As I mentioned, my sigma was so bad ( they had to fix it ) that I thought I had to do all the extra things to make it pop and look ok because it was lacking detail and kind of blending the image together and make it very uniform ( not just like how log feels ). That was my main concern. I don't know how to explain because I was expecting that just a small Rec 709 transformation+ raw tab, would give me a good image, but it was always missing something, not color wise because the habillity to push colors is amazing on this camera, it was just a feeling that the image was never there, just did not felt real you know? It always felt low compression. I cant explain better, this is very amateur language but yeah.
Mr Bunk Timmer , I never saw someone approach curves like this, I don't know about all of you but the curves having a relationship with the histogram it self and how it is showing is something I never realized! I used to do a small S curve or maybe push the blacks up and then do a heel and do the same every time no matter the scenario.. I think the contrast on those edits is really good! Did you also de-noise the image?
I think I will just start to expose normally, somehow I always felt more confident in pushing the image to the right before clipping and doing that for everything, rather than maybe ( using a day time scenario ), exposing for skin because then when I shoot an establishing shot or a detail, I did not know what exactly to expose for and ended up with images very different from each other. Are buildings / most of the image supposed to be green? I want to expose for the result to be honest, or at least a normal exposure, that always seemed right for me, but I never felt like I could trust the monitor that much since it gives me more detailed and more HQ image vs: the same Lut on my monitor at home ( which displays HQ images and it looks well vs my mac screen and comparing with everybody's work), and sometimes the false color said I was clipping the blacks when in fact I was not clipping, so I just thought, I am just going to give it as much light as possible and that is it.
Now I feel more confident with your help. Also those that messaged me and edited my clips, that told me my camera is fine and from now on I should be more efficient with my work instead of second guessing everything and that my gear is working fine ( even though the lens was giving problems ).
I am as amateur as someone can be, but still invested in this camera and workflow because I believe I can be better, but some people just have it, and I don't ( at least for now ) so I just want you to know that this forum is a very important place for people like me, and what for some is basic stuff, for others is still a big learning curve and learning how to grow their eye and be one with their work.