Tips For High Contrast Filming In Direct Sun And Shadows?

[endurovlog]

I'm getting enough viewers now that I'm trying to lift my game with video quality. Unfortunately, lots of good weather and an enduro vlog means often filming under trees and the high contrast of sun and shadows messes things up a lot. And overseas photographers often say the Australian sun is about as bad as it gets.

Chasing tips for action videography where it's not possible to use screens to soften the light or reflectors to fill in the shadows. This is what I've picked up so far:

- try to leave the filming for cloudy days/early morning/late afternoon if possible
- otherwise try to film in direct sun with no shade
- a quality action cam (Gopro Black 4) to cope with the contrast
- film in Protune mode to bypass the automatic contrast applied by Gopro cams
- use colour curves in the editing software to minimise the contrast.

 

[Arctic Pride]

This is a hard one for me as well, lots of high/low light when I get into the trees. Play with angles, I noted the chest mount had way less shadow/direct light after viewing the same run from the helmet cam, probably from my head/upper torso blocking the sun from hitting the lens. You could also look into filters for the gopro housing

 

[Arctic Pride]

That's pretty easy to build out of some random stuff and a spare case, fiberglass comes to mind, maybe some plastic shaped with a heat gun...I wonder how far off the lens you can get before the camera picks up the hood.

 

[MotoNoob]

This is an old thread; however, if you use Premier (not sure if Vegas has similar options), you can turn Protune off, which is the equivalent of shooting in RAW with photography. Then, when you import into premier, you can use Lumetri to adjust contrast, blacks, whites, highlights, exposure, saturation, vibrancy, and individual colors as needed to tweak.

It's a bit more post-production work, but once you get the hang of it, you can bang it out in like 3 minutes.

 

[scooterwuf]

I agree with MotoNoob. Pretty much any cinematographer, or DP will know their work will change and look better once it’s been color corrected in Post. When I was in film school and actually shot with film it was better to slightly overexpose your negative as it would create more grain for the timer to work with in the lab when they were making an Answer print.

- Wuf