Final Cut Pro X and FS700 - Question about Noise and Shooting a little over-exposed

[Scott Goldberg]

I come from the DSLR world and hate noise, as I am sure a lot of you do as well..my question is, with the FS700, I've decided to shoot on non-PP mode. So I am using in image "out of the box" and I'm not doing PP because I have deadlines, etc and a feature to shoot and would rather go the safer route.

 

With that said, I'm curious on what everything thinks about and feels on shooting a little over-exposed (only slightly, maybe by a few stops and then bringing it down in post production through Final Cut Pro X color correction "exposure" settings? I ask because I did some tests on a cloudy day and it looks good. It might not be how everyone does it but I'm curious if anyone else does the same?

 

My main concern is noise. I'm shooting at 500 ISO and not going any more than 500 ISO. 

 

My question is, will I lose a lot of aspects to the image if shooting a few exposures over and then bringing it down in post?

 

The positives of doing this is to have less noise in the darks. 

 

The negatives might be you might lose some of the detail.

 

I'm curious on how other FS700 users go about this.

 

I suppose, I'm thinking more in the vein of how film stock would shoot a little over-exposed and then they would bring down the tone and saturation and exposure in the editing process...

[Bruno]

Shooting at 500 ISO might be a good idea as that's the camera's base ISO, but I don't know about overexposing it by 2 shots.

It totally depends on what you're shooting, but if by overexposing by 2 stops you're getting blown out highlights, it's quite likely they'll be gone forever since you're shooting (highly) compressed footage.

 

If you want to brighten the dark areas to avoid noise issues, using a flat profile would be a much better option, or even better, light the scenes properly! :)

[jgharding]

You can shift the master black level up, to keep the lowest lows away from the noisiest codec area.

[Scott Goldberg]

You can shift the master black level up, to keep the lowest lows away from the noisiest codec area.

 

Is camera or in post?