Day Exterior Metering on Film

[gcconnelly]

Hi Roger and James — I’ve been curious to learn more about your methodology when exposing film, in particular when it comes to day exteriors. I know that some cinematographers have different light metering techniques for sunny exteriors. For instance some DPs choose to split the highlights and shadows, where as others try to keep fill side around 1.5 stops under, and key light 3 stops over.

Obviously, the way you set exposure varies depending on the intended look of the image, but I was hoping you might be able to break down a few shots. I feel like cinematographers talk a lot about how they rate film, but rarely get into the specifics of how they are actually metering shots:

For a shot like this with full hard front light, how are you choosing to place your exposure?

And then for the reverse, where we are now looking at the shadow side, are you keeping the same exposure, or opening up?

For a shot light this, are you taking the sky reading into consideration when setting exposure?

Alternatively, for an interior shot with strong contrast, how did you decide on your exposure? Are you just taking a incident reading on the face, or are you taking direct incident readings of the key and fill side and choosing something in the middle?

Really curious to hear your thoughts!

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[dmullenasc]

There are no rules for exposing since that is a creative choice but when you are doing a sequence, sometimes it helps to imagine a 360 degree circular camera move around the actor in sunlight, then imagine what it would look like if you only set one f-stop for the whole move, then imagine opening up a little for the shadows, etc. then closing down again in frontal sunlight, etc.

My general rule is that the shadow side of a face should feel like it is the shadow side, so I wouldn’t normally expose a face in backlight at full exposure, I’d decide how many stops under key would look natural.

I find myself often leaning towards a face in bright frontal sunlight being a 1/2-stop over or more and in backlight, the face being 1-stop to 1 1/2-stops under, sometimes 2-stops under. But it depends on the face — I’ve worked with very pale actors who look overexposed even at normal exposure!

I recall an interview with Douglas Slocombe about filming “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and he said he overexposed the desert scenes in general to retain the feeling of heat, but it had the benefit of opening up the shadow detail. But I also remember that the sand dune scenes in “Four Feathers” shot by Robert Richardson were often shot with the exposure set to silhouette the actors, enhanced by using large frames of negative fill. So it all depends on the look you are going for.

[Roger Deakins]

I would agree with David’s thoughts on exposure. For NCFOM in particular I exposed a front lit subject by more than a 1/2-stop, probably double that (although the posted frames don’t seem to reflect that). And I would allow a backlit subject to be some 2-stops under. But this can only be a generalization. Is a subject lit by an intense side light or are they far from a source? And how do you want the overall feeling of the imagery? For NCFOM we were trying to depict a harsh, almost bleached looking, landscape. On another film, The Assassination of Jesse James is one example, I might set exposures closer to the actual reading on my meter. Exposure, like any other part of the process, is a personal choice.

[gcconnelly]

Thank you both for the replies! Very useful.

Speaking of side light, I’m curious if you could elaborate on how your exposure changes in a harsh side light condition like in these shots:

[Author]

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