Hi All,

After doing some tests and reading I have found that under slightly under exposing footage makes life a lot easier in post. I did a test today f5.6 ISO 400, 25p and was wondering what you would do in a situation where the sun is beaming directly behind the object (in this case my wife).

Her coat was jet black but when trying to bring the details of the coat back using FCPX it gets extremely noisy.Any tips for situations like this?

Open the iris to expose on the subject, the background will nuke out, but your subject will be perfectly exposed The alternative is to use lights, there is no other way. You can only expose on one light source. A quick analogy. Watch a football match on TV, on bright sunny days there is a shadow cast across half the pitch, the wide shot camera can only expose on one thing, light or shadow, check it out on Match Of The Day.
Why make work for yourself with having to work in post, simply expose correctly on the subject in the first place.

This is a perfect example of what happens when the dynamic range of the scene exceeds the dynamic range of the camera.

You have a choice here, either expose for whats important and let the rest fall where it does or you have to change the dynamic range of the shot by adding or removing light until you get within the range the camera can record.

There is no magic bullet in the computer to fix it. You are dealing with a limitation of the equipment.

Tariq, I know that you are going to be shooting weddings so remember to always, always expose for the skin tones. Nobody gives a hoot what is outside the window but they do care what the bride looks like.

In an ideal world you would either add light on the subject or even put ND filter material on the windows but it's not ideal so you need to expose for what is important.

Any tips for situations like this?
move the subject so you're not shooting against the light, if you can't - add light, if you don't have light - expose for the skin tone, but - exposing to the subject in situation like this you gona end up with very ugly image

Tariq, when shooting a wedding, as you know, you will usually have to shoot in a backlit situation several times during the day, (the speeches, the greeting line, etc etc). these are all situations that cry out for a light. A small onboard light saves the day every time. People are becoming obsessed with filming in low light, without using any form of lighting, that may be fine for creating the atmosphere in feature films, but your bride and groom want to be able to see themselves and their guests. In the one shot enviroment of a wedding, a light is as essential as your mics, tripod etc, it really is a must have

For this scene, you would want to use CineStyle or some other very flat picture style. That helps keep the person and background exposed, but can only go so far.

However, there is another way to approach this. Reduce the exposure further and keep the subject in front of the window for a silhouette look. It's an artistic choice that might work best with slow motion. For that, one can use a high contrast picture style like Standard.

Other than that, your two options are to use very bright lights or gel the window.