DaVinci Resolve question. Your favorite way to bring up very underexposed subject?

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Dave63401

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I'm a newcomer to DaVinci Resolve free edition ( 6 months or so). I recently videoed a Eaglet on a limb with a brighter background. I was just getting my camera on the tripod when it landed. Had no idea how long it would stay.
So in a hurry I shot a few clips. I use manual with auto ISO and IS to adjust exposure. First clip was plus 2/3 stop. 2nd clip plus 1 1/3 stop. 3rd and 4th clips was plus 2 stops.
All clips had bird underexposed by a lot.
Since up to now I have not had to bring up exposure that much in video, I'm wondering what you would do to brighten the bird and not mess with the background much in that situation using post processing?
My finished video is a few posts below this one if you want to see what the composition was (Ready for its close-up!).
 
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Dave63401 said:
I'm a newcomer to DaVinci Resolve free edition ( 6 months or so). I recently videoed a Eaglet on a limb with a brighter background. I was just getting my camera on the tripod when it landed. Had no idea how long it would stay.
So in a hurry I shot a few clips. I use manual with auto ISO and IS to adjust exposure. First clip was plus 2/3 stop. 2nd clip plus 1 1/3 stop. 3rd and 4th clips was plus 2 stops.
All clips had bird underexposed by a lot.
Since up to now I have not had to bring up exposure that much in video, I'm wondering what you would do to brighten the bird and not mess with the background much in that situation using post processing?
My finished video is a few posts below this one if you want to see what the composition was (Ready for its close-up!).
Click to expand...

Up the Lift in Color Correction wheels.

Depending on what format you shot, the camera, and where ISO landed relative to the native ISO, you might get noise, and there isn't much you can do about it. As a "rule," auto ISO for vid isn't a good idea. There are noise cliffs on either sides of the native ISO(s).
 
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Dave63401 said:
I'm a newcomer to DaVinci Resolve free edition ( 6 months or so). I recently videoed a Eaglet on a limb with a brighter background. I was just getting my camera on the tripod when it landed. Had no idea how long it would stay.
So in a hurry I shot a few clips. I use manual with auto ISO and IS to adjust exposure. First clip was plus 2/3 stop. 2nd clip plus 1 1/3 stop. 3rd and 4th clips was plus 2 stops.
All clips had bird underexposed by a lot.
Since up to now I have not had to bring up exposure that much in video, I'm wondering what you would do to brighten the bird and not mess with the background much in that situation using post processing?
My finished video is a few posts below this one if you want to see what the composition was (Ready for its close-up!).
Click to expand...
Hi Dave,

I don't know which tutorials or online courses you used to learn Davinci Resolve, but I primarily used training videos by Alex Jordan, a 10-year Davinci professional film editor and instructor who I think is a great teacher. He has a free online course for beginners and has many intermediate and advanced video lessons. His emphasis is on keeping things simple. You can find his youTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@LearnColorGrading/videos

Cheers,
Rudy
 
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Rudy Pohl said:
Hi Dave,

I don't know which tutorials or online courses you used to learn Davinci Resolve, but I primarily used training videos by Alex Jordan, a 10-year Davinci professional film editor and instructor who I think is a great teacher. He has a free online course for beginners and has many intermediate and advanced video lessons. His emphasis is on keeping things simple. You can find his youTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@LearnColorGrading/videos

Cheers,
Rudy
Click to expand...
Thanks Rudy,
I looked his videos over and have subscribed to him. Looks like several interesting ones.
I have seen 3 or 4 ways videos have said to do it (raise shadows) and was hoping folks would say how they do it.
How would you go about it if you had a bird like I did.
Dave
 
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Dave63401 said:
Thanks Rudy,
I looked his videos over and have subscribed to him. Looks like several interesting ones.
I have seen 3 or 4 ways videos have said to do it (raise shadows) and was hoping folks would say how they do it.
How would you go about it if you had a bird like I did.
Dave
Click to expand...
You'd want to mask it, edit it separately by upping the lift, probably a little more gamma (contrast), and finally a touch of exposure.
 
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Dave63401 said:
Thanks Rudy,
I looked his videos over and have subscribed to him. Looks like several interesting ones.
I have seen 3 or 4 ways videos have said to do it (raise shadows) and was hoping folks would say how they do it.
How would you go about it if you had a bird like I did.
Dave
Click to expand...
Hi Dave,

I concur with Nimi. I would use the Lift and/or Gamma depending on how dark certain sections are. The free version of DR does nor have masking, but there is a way to do it in the free version using power windows that I can show you. If you are able to do Zoom calls I would be happy to do a Zoom call with you and we could share our screens and I can show you some stuff in real time. Let me know.

Cheers,
Rudy
 
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Rudy Pohl said:
Hi Dave,

I concur with Nimi. I would use the Lift and/or Gamma depending on how dark certain sections are. The free version of DR does nor have masking, but there is a way to do it in the free version using power windows that I can show you. If you are able to do Zoom calls I would be happy to do a Zoom call with you and we could share our screens and I can show you some stuff in real time. Let me know.

Cheers,
Rudy
Click to expand...
Thanks Rudy. I have never done a Zoom call. Been retired a while and never needed to. I can probably figure power windows out. Is that how you would approach it? Power window and the lift adjustment inside that? I was also wondering if anyone on here used curves for that? or , I wondered if anyone used the shadow adjustment just below the color wheels. That is the one I had best luck with on this video but wondered if other ways were maybe better. Hoping to get several folks ideas. I would guess resolve is like lightroom, many ways to somewhat get the different adjustments done.
 
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Dave63401 said:
Thanks Rudy. I have never done a Zoom call. Been retired a while and never needed to. I can probably figure power windows out. Is that how you would approach it? Power window and the lift adjustment inside that? I was also wondering if anyone on here used curves for that? or , I wondered if anyone used the shadow adjustment just below the color wheels. That is the one I had best luck with on this video but wondered if other ways were maybe better. Hoping to get several folks ideas. I would guess resolve is like lightroom, many ways to somewhat get the different adjustments done.
Click to expand...
Hi Dave,

Sorry, yes I forgot about the Shadow adjustment, that's actually the one I should have mentioned along with the Lift wheel. And I do use Curves but I feel I get more fine control with Lift and Shadows.
 
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Dave63401 said:
Thanks Rudy. I have never done a Zoom call. Been retired a while and never needed to. I can probably figure power windows out. Is that how you would approach it? Power window and the lift adjustment inside that? I was also wondering if anyone on here used curves for that? or , I wondered if anyone used the shadow adjustment just below the color wheels. That is the one I had best luck with on this video but wondered if other ways were maybe better. Hoping to get several folks ideas. I would guess resolve is like lightroom, many ways to somewhat get the different adjustments done.
Click to expand...
Hi Dave,

Your mention of Curves yesterday motivated me to go back to trying Curves again last night and I'm happy to report that I had great success with this adjustment tool that I stopped using for shadow-lifting a while back. Thanks!

Cheers, :) (y)
Rudy
 
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Hi Dave;
It seems we're all approaching correcting exposure in a similar fashion. My routine is to rely on a combination of colour wheels adjustments and fine tune using curves.

First of all I select a representative part of the clip to work on. Even when shooting manual if the ISO is allowed to float the exposure can vary between different parts of the clip so unless I break the clip up I need to choose a representative portion to target for adjustment, typically with the main subject well represented.

For a "rough cut" I'll first raise the exposure using the gamma wheel (mid-tones) to adjust the exposure to an acceptable mid-point, then I'll bring down the highlights using gain. I'll only adjust the lift (shadows) if I need to because I find the lift control heavy handed and prefer to rely on gamma.

So my initial goal is "squeeze" the entire scene between 128 and 896 on the waveform monitor to start, and tweak as needed.

Once I get the exposure more or less "balanced" without losing too much shadow detail or highlights I'll pull up the curve tool to fine-tune the contrast in different parts of the scene.

If the scene is too dynamic and I have to sacrifice either the shadows or highlights, I'll favour the subject and sacrifice the background.

With a little practice it becomes fairly quick and easy to do, but there are no miracles if the shadows or highlights are clipped to begin with, which will be come immediately obvious in the scopes.

Good luck!
 
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Rudy Pohl said:
Hi Dave,

Your mention of Curves yesterday motivated me to go back to trying Curves again last night and I'm happy to report that I had great success with this adjustment tool that I stopped using for shadow-lifting a while back. Thanks!

Cheers, :) (y)
Rudy
Click to expand...
Rudy,
It seems there are so many ways to do post processing, it sure can get overwhelming easy.
I did not use curves on this video I'm talking about, but may on the next one.
Glad it spurred you to revisit curves.
Dave
 
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Garfield said:
Hi Dave;
It seems we're all approaching correcting exposure in a similar fashion. My routine is to rely on a combination of colour wheels adjustments and fine tune using curves.

First of all I select a representative part of the clip to work on. Even when shooting manual if the ISO is allowed to float the exposure can vary between different parts of the clip so unless I break the clip up I need to choose a representative portion to target for adjustment, typically with the main subject well represented.

For a "rough cut" I'll first raise the exposure using the gamma wheel (mid-tones) to adjust the exposure to an acceptable mid-point, then I'll bring down the highlights using gain. I'll only adjust the lift (shadows) if I need to because I find the lift control heavy handed and prefer to rely on gamma.

So my initial goal is "squeeze" the entire scene between 128 and 896 on the waveform monitor to start, and tweak as needed.

Once I get the exposure more or less "balanced" without losing too much shadow detail or highlights I'll pull up the curve tool to fine-tune the contrast in different parts of the scene.

If the scene is too dynamic and I have to sacrifice either the shadows or highlights, I'll favour the subject and sacrifice the background.

With a little practice it becomes fairly quick and easy to do, but there are no miracles if the shadows or highlights are clipped to begin with, which will be come immediately obvious in the scopes.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
Gary,
Thanks for your info. I've gleaned a few things from your post to try going forward. I did not use the gamma wheel, but I did look at the waveform monitor. On part of the clips I did not raise it as high 128, but will try that in future ones.I did try to get highlights down to 896. This was one of my worst exposed videos out of camera, but I really had to hurry as this eaglet had never been anywhere near this close. I had not set up yet when it landed.
Again, Thanks.
Dave
 
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Dave63401 said:
Rudy,
It seems there are so many ways to do post processing, it sure can get overwhelming easy.
I did not use curves on this video I'm talking about, but may on the next one.
Glad it spurred you to revisit curves.
Dave
Click to expand...
Hi Dave,

Yes, there sure are a lot of ways to do similar things in Davinci and I find that a good thing. As you know, I like to do slightly longer themed wildlife videos which tell a story which usually requires me getting a lot of different clips over several outings, which means having to somehow take footage shot in various lighting and weather conditions and harmonize them into a more-or-less unified, watchable video. Dealing with back lighting, front lighting, side lighting, full sun, overcast and even rain and extreme wind makes for a huge amount of editing work (and periodic digital magic). Plus, there's having to deal with subject material that is WAY beyond the optical-reach limits of my gear (700mm), such as the Grebe nests and newly-hatched chicks that I'm shooting right now that are 450 feet from shore. The video is called "The Secret Lives of Pied-billed Grebes" and without the nest and chicks footage the video just doesn't work, so to see what the chicks are doing I have to digitally magnify and enhance the footage to the point of negatively affecting the image quality - it's always a trade-off, such is life.

Anyways, please don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining - I actually love all these challenges and the video-editing which I find very enjoyable and relaxing.

Take care,
Rudy
 
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