SLog3 or Hypergamma?

[Tim Sewell]

If I want to capture a sunrise on the beach (leaning more into silhouettes than shadow detail) does the hivemind think I should stick with SLog/CineEI or go to one of the highlight-oriented Hypergammas? This is on a FS7.

[kye]

12 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

If I want to capture a sunrise on the beach (leaning more into silhouettes than shadow detail) does the hivemind think I should stick with SLog/CineEI or go to one of the highlight-oriented Hypergammas? This is on a FS7.

Unless someone has specific experience of this exact challenge, I'd suggest just doing a test prior.  Any high DR environment should do, just shoot both profiles and then bring up the shadows in post and see which is cleaner.

If the sun is in shot then it's practically an infinite-DR scene, although if the sun is low enough in the sky then you might be able to expose such that everything except the disc of the sun is below clipping and still get non-zero shadow detail.  I've seen the latest high-DR cameras like A74 and FX3 do a passable job of having recognisable humans in the foreground with the sun in shot behind them, but it's still likely a stretch for whatever codec and colour space you're working with.

[Tim Sewell]

Thanks @kye. As mentioned, I'm looking for silhouettes so no shadow detail is necessary, which was why I was thinking of going down the HG route. I think you're right, of course, in that I should do a test.

[kye]

3 hours ago, Tim Sewell said:

Thanks @kye. As mentioned, I'm looking for silhouettes so no shadow detail is necessary, which was why I was thinking of going down the HG route. I think you're right, of course, in that I should do a test.

Depending on the DR of the scene and the DR of the FS7, you might find that to create silhouettes you need to pull the shadows down, which creates a new challenge, as you'll be adding contrast and stretching the image.  If this is the case then you might want to test an ETTR exposure vs a normal exposure vs underexposing so that the silhouettes are down near where you want them and then you get more headroom.

All these things really are situational, and would be difficult to predict.

In reality, you've probably got a decent amount of flexibility, especially if you're not afraid to use a bit of NR.  Internet camera folks seem to be allergic to any form of noise in the image, but professional colourists use it regularly, and cinema cameras are a lot noisier than internet people would even believe.