HD-DSLR: Post

As many hardened production companies are learning, these popular HD-DSLRs are less than flexible in post, specifically in the area of acquisition, grading, and exposure correction.

Dealing with that DSLR in POST! « Life through the Viewfinder

The crux of the situation is that the cameras (for this conversation, we are talking about Canon cameras) they output a compressed / rendered image from the RAW data coming off the chip.

The best analogy is to use the stills world to explain this. When shooting digital stills, you can choose to capture either RAW or jpgs. RAW is the “raw” data off the chip, unprocessed, offering a very wide range of adjustments over several stops. Capturing jpgs, means that in camera the raw data is being processed into a file with set parameters that can barely be adjusted afterwards. You know what happens when you try to correct a wildly over or under exposed jpg image. There is generally no information to actually recover.

Shooting HD on a 5dMK2 / 7d / 1dMK4 is exactly the same: you are essentially shooting a string of jpgs. And when it comes to editing / grading or recovery, you are generally limited to maybe a 5-10% range.

What this comes down to in practice, is that you need to nail your exposure and color / lighting “in-camera”, every time.

Until Canon / Nikon offer a less compressed or RAW output, we are stuck with the current situation. This recent story emphatically suggests that a better option is going to be offered within the next twelve months, (thanks Tom for the tip)

We recommend you actually take the card out of your camera, and get it onto a computer where you can properly check exposure, etc. For critical lighting effects this would be mandatory before hitting record.

Here is a great article on Digital Workflow for HD-DSLR productions.

When ingesting footage there are issues of transcoding, time code, etc. General opinion is that transcoding to 422LT is good enough for 99.9% of us.

Here is another break down of the process, well worth a read, focusing on Avid vs. Final Cut or Premiere.