Airliners.net

I was watching videos on log profiles for video, and the creator brought up some points I found interesting. I was wondering if anyone knew whether or not tweaking picture profiles to match a log profile would improve the quality of images; when exposing for dark shadows and bright highlights (think of a day cockpit show facing out, where the panel is either underexposed, or the windows are blown out), even when shooting raw.

At least for Nikon cameras the picture control profile used only affects how your out of camera JPG looks like and doesn't affect RAW exposure at all. However if you enable D-lightning, a sort of in-camera HDR feature, it'll cause your RAW to be underexposed around -1EV compared to normal mode.

In video LOG curves are very important as most cameras don't support something equivalent to uncompressed RAW video output or you simply don't have the luxury of having enough storage to save on that format so by using a compressed format you're a bit limited on what you can do in post processing compared to RAW for stills so getting it as close as the desired results is critical.

When it comes to that kind of situation of a cockpit with with light facing you there's no magic trick really as your camera dynamic range is what it is so you should try to expose to avoid blowouts in the windows and then even if you underexpose the panels you can bring up shadows. Given today's camera and noise reduction software capabilities it shouldn't be much of an issue.

Thank you for your response!