Which exposure is better?

I wounder if there is a difference with this tiny little of difference. Do I want to get more light in dark areas and get clipping in the sky or do I want no clips at all for such a scene?

less light. histogram more to the left



more light. histogram more to the right.

https://gofile.io/?c=9rCy4O This contains still frames.

Preview:

It depends on the effect you want, and whether you choose to lift the shadows (too noisy if you do?) or crush them. Hollywood movies over the past 120 years are full of 100% clipped skies and crushed shadows, horrifying though that is to youtubers.

If you're shooting, say, "Breaking Bad", you'd want vibrant mostly unclipped skies. But an overcast day in some drab social realist movie? Who needs the sky?

It depends on the effect you want, and whether you choose to lift the shadows (too noisy if you do?) or crush them. Hollywood movies over the past 120 years are full of 100% clipped skies and crushed shadows, horrifying though that is to youtubers.

If you're shooting, say, "Breaking Bad", you'd want vibrant mostly unclipped skies. But an overcast day in some drab social realist movie? Who needs the sky?

If they clip the highlights, how can they crush the shadows? Wouldn't the shadows go up? And bcs. highlights are clipping, it would mean that the shadows get a lot information?

In this shot, the first is best as you are not clipping highlights or shadows. The second shot is clipping highlights very slightly.

^ But if I pan down, the dark green fence and other pretty dark objects, which are under the black lamp, will be very dark, if I don't clip the sky.

^ But if I pan down, the dark green fence and other pretty dark objects, which are under the black lamp, will be very dark, if I don't clip the sky.

So you transition the grade over time, so that you lift the exposure of the low end slightly when it pans down.

Or you use a tracked window to protect the sky highlights.

Or you can simply not worry about clipping some sky highlights, if the lower part of the frame is more important to the story at that moment in time, and if the clipping doesn’t call too much attention to itself, when played on context with other shots in the sequence.

Highlights are not holy. It’s okay to clip data, as long as it doesn’t detract from the creative/story intent. The human eye is much more sensitive to details in shadows than it is to highlights (which is one of the principles behind the way that Log based images are recorded).

And while analyzing your imagery using the scopes and histograms is important, don’t be a slave to them, either. Technical perfection and creative intent are often mutually exclusive.

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