Hey cinametogs! I want to know whether I’m being cleverly minimalist or just plain cheap and delusional.
I’m after a slow move from a dark, gloomy passage between buildings out into an open street with a proper shift in light. I do not want the camera helpfully “fixing” the exposure for me like some over-eager youTuber with a content-creator complex. I want the passage to stay underexposed and murky, and the street properly exposed when I come out into it.
So: can a pocket cam or action cam actually pull that off if you lock things down and don’t shoot like a caffeinated baboon, or do I quit pretending and drag out the full cine rig?
I’m looking at a GoPro 13 Black with the anamorphic mod, but I’m really wondering is if anyone with an action or pocket cam has pulled this off? Has anyone got this sort of shot to work without the camera doing something “helpful” and bollocking it, or am I trying to make a Swiss Army knife perform brain surgury?
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In case it's not too late since I just found this post, it's probably better just to use a small cinema camera... rent/borrow a Black Magic Pyxis or Pocket cinema camera, or a Red Komodo or Komodo-X. The control you'll get since those cameras do what they're told rather than second guessing everything, but also you'll get a smoother and less noisy image that you will need much less work on in the noise reduction department later. Also remember that bringing exposure down in post is very easy to do, so putting a bit of ambient light in the passage will help; crush the blacks in post and you'll get nicely silky shadows rather than the block compressed FPN noise that underexposure gets you.
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I'm in agreement with Rakesh Malik
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Ha! "Caffeinated baboon" is my new favorite camera term. Honestly, if you lock exposure manually and the GoPro doesn't try to "help" (big if), you might pull it off. But for a slow, intentional move like that—where the exposure shift is the story—I'd lean toward the cine rig. Not because of image quality, but because you'll actually trust the tool and focus on the shot. Have you tested the GoPro with full manual exposure locked yet? Some action cams still sneak in auto-correction.
I have tried the GoPro on manual but it is a pain to use, requiring an iPad or similar along for the shoot to change settings. Incidentally, I did finally shoot with a cine-cam, I actually shot the scene twice, once with an appropriate f-stop for the dark passageway, and then again stopped down for the street scene. Now it's post's problem to marry the two shots.
Let us know how it turns out!