Transcription
Cine EI. I see way too many people over complicating it and not actually understanding how it should be used. So today I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about Cine EI.
So to expose your SLOG 3, you generally want to overexpose the image. And that's because SLOG 3 has a lot of flexibility in the highlights. So you want to overexpose the image as much as you can without clipping the highlights. And that makes sure that your shadows are very clean, which is a very common problem when people are exposing for SLOG 3. And while you can still get clean images using the flexible ISO mode, Cine EI is just the exposure tool to help you monitor your exposure and make sure that you overexpose your image as much as possible while still retaining all of your details.
So Cine EI has two modes, a low and high base ISO. And on my Sony FX3, that's going to be ISO 800 and 12,800. And you can see that it's dictated here on the screen using the L for low, which is 800 ISO, and the H for high, which is 12,800 ISO. And I have a button mapped on my camera so that I can easily toggle between the two. So Cine EI makes you stick to these two base ISOs because that's where you get the cleanest image. But if I move my ISO dial, you can see that I can still adjust my ISO. And I'll throw the actual video on the screen right here. And I'll put text so that you can see if the image is just a Rec.709 conversion or if I'm adjusting the exposure in post. And you'll see why this is super important in a second.
One important thing to note is that when you change your ISO, this is just a preview. If you see on the monitor screen here, I can change the ISO and you can see that the exposure looks like it's changing on the monitor. But if you compare it to the actual video, the output stays the same. It does not change at all. And this is the one thing you have to remember.
So why is this useful? By dialing down the ISO, I can monitor how much I can actually bring my exposure down in post-production. And this makes sure that I'm overexposing enough to get the cleanest image possible while still retaining highlight details and keeping my shadows very grain-free.
So, I have an example here. I'm going to throw it on the screen. But in this example, I'm on the low ISO of 800. And you can see that on the screen again where it says L. And if I just look at how my screen preview is right now, it actually looks pretty good. But when I lower the EI preview, which is just adjusting the ISO wheel all the way down as much as I can to 200, you can actually see how underexposed I am. And this tells me that I could actually be exposing way higher.
So, I'm going to press the button that I mapped on my camera. And this is going to jump to the high ISO 12,800. Again, you can see it on the screen because the L then turns to an H. And when I bring down my EI preview to 3200, which is the lowest it can go in the high ISO setting. And then I adjust my ND so that the preview looks good. You can see that even though my actual image looks very overexposed, I can bring down the exposure in post and it actually looks great. I'm still retaining all the highlight details and keeping my shadows clean. But if I want to bring the exposure back up at any point in post-production, I can do that while still keeping the shadows clean. And you can see here if I compare the video with the low ISO setting and the high ISO setting, you can see that even though they both do look great, you can see that I definitely have more grain in the shadows of the low ISO setting, especially if I happen to want to bring up the exposure.
Now, there's a few important things to note about Cine EI, though. You want to make sure that when you're changing the EI preview, you are not increasing the ISO higher than the base ISO. When you're at the low base ISO setting, you do not want to increase it higher than 800. And when you're on the high base ISO setting, you do not want to increase it higher than 12,800. Remember, changing the EI preview does not change the actual final video. So, if you're on the low ISO setting of 800, and you increase the EI preview all the way to 12,800, it might look good on your monitor, but when you're actually outputting the video, it is still at 800 ISO, so it's going to be very underexposed.
Another thing to note is that people don't think that you get as much flexibility as flexible ISO when you're using Cine EI. And while it is true to some extent because in flexible ISO mode, you're able to use the full range of ISO settings, when you're using Cine EI, if you get used to exposing it, you can very quickly change between your low and high base ISO setting. And even though it will be overexposed, you can still bring it down in post. The only drawback to that is that in some scenarios, you will need a strong enough ND just to be able to bring down your exposure enough, especially when you're shooting some things in brighter environments on the high ISO setting.
So, how do I actually use an EI in my daily workflow? So, most of the time I want to keep as much detail as possible. So, I'm going to lower my EI preview as far as I can go. So, again, on the low ISO setting of 800, the lowest EI preview is going to be 200. And then on the high ISO setting of 12,800, the lowest EI preview will be 3200. So basically, I keep my preview all the time. And that allows me to expose from an image by just looking at the monitor because I don't have to worry about if I'm overexposing because my preview is already underexposed. When I actually output the video, it's going to be overexposed, which means that I can then adjust my preview so that it just looks good. I don't have to make sure that my exposure on my monitor looks overexposed. And you can see that in this example, if I was just on my high ISO setting and just trying to expose it that way, it actually looks very blown out and it's kind of hard to tell if I'm actually clipping anything. But if I bring my preview down to 3,200, you can see that I'm perfectly exposed. And then I can just leave it like this. And now I can just use my eye to expose it properly. I don't have to worry about overexposing because I already know that my final video will be overexposed enough so that I can still retain all the highlight details while keeping the shadow details very clean. Again, with this example here, you can see how fast I can expose. All I have to do is flick my camera to the ISO setting of 12,800. Lower my EI preview to 3200, which is the lowest it can go. Adjust my ND so that it looks good. And now my final video will be overexposed properly so that I can still bring back all that detail in post.
One thing I do do sometimes is that if I'm in very high dynamic range situations, maybe the sky is super bright and my subject is a little darker, I might not lower my EI preview all the way as low as it can go because I might want a little flexibility both ways. And I'm willing to sacrifice like the cleanest image just to make sure that I do get enough details if I do want to raise or lower the shadows or raise and lower the highlights later in post.
So here's another real-world example for you to take a look at. So, right now I'm on my high ISO setting of 12,800. And my EI preview is also at 12,800. And if we freeze a frame right here, the highlights of this frame look overexposed. And if you're in flexible ISO mode, this is what it would look like. And a lot of people might be worried that their highlights are clipping. So then they would underexpose the image a little too much. And that will help you retain your highlight details, but now your shadows will be too dark. But if we lower our EI preview to 3,200, we can actually see that at that same exposure, all the highlight details are still there, which means I can still keep that same exposure and know that if I want to bring the exposure down in post, all my details will still be there. And if we play the actual clip, you can see that the Rec.709 conversion is actually super bright because again, the EI preview does not affect the actual image. So it will still look overexposed when you convert to Rec.709. But you can see how much I can actually bring down the exposure in post. And now all my highlight details are still there. But if we zoom into the shadows, we can see that the shadow details are also super clean. And this is the power of Cine EI.
So again, just to recap, Cine EI will make sure that you're always shooting at the base ISOs of your camera just to get the cleanest image possible. But you can still adjust your EI preview so that you can see how much you can bring it down later in post. And by doing this, it allows me to overexpose my image while still giving me confidence that I know I can bring it back later in post because of the EI preview is showing me how much I can do that. And this helps me overexpose my image, but still giving me a lot of confidence that I can still bring back the exposure in post because I can see the preview will let me do that. And this helps make sure that you get the cleanest image possible. And that's pretty much it. I do recommend giving Cine EI a try because I always used to use flexible ISO, but once I learned how to actually use Cine EI properly, I've been stuck on that mode ever since. And I kind of wish my other cameras like my Sony A7 IV has Cine EI as well. If you have any questions about it, definitely let me know in the comments below. If this video is useful, remember to give it a like, subscribe to see more photo video content, and I'll see you in the next video. Peace.