What is cine ei mode?
How does it work on Sony cameras like the fx3 and F X30.
And most importantly,
should you use it to film weddings or documentaries or other situations
where you need to film fast and get great dynamic range and color from your camera?
Hey, my name is Matt Johnson, and I'm going to explain all that to you.
But before I do, I did just mention getting great color from your camera,
and I've created a set of video
presets called Who is Matt Lutz that worked great with Slug three footage.
Regardless of whether you use cine ei mode or not.
And I will link to them down below for you to check out.
Starting off then, what is cine ei?
Well, cine is short for cinema and ei is short for exposure index.
What's an exposure index?
It's a term from way back when cameras used film
and it would be like a five minute tangent to explain.
And it's not going to be
super helpful to explain, so we're not going to worry about it.
I'll link to an article down below
if you want to glaze your eyes over with film speed ratings.
On the other hand, the more important questions
that you should be asking are one How does Sin II work?
And two, what is the simplest way to understand it?
Here's your answer.
In short, when you switch to cinema mode, it basically makes
your camera only have two ISOs to choose from instead of 20 or more.
Yes, when you switch your camera to cinema mode instead of having ISO 200,
406 hundred, 800 all the way up to 32,000 or higher
like you would normally see, cinema mode gets rid of nearly all of them
and it leaves you with the two base isos of the camera that make your footage
look its absolute best with the most dynamic range
and the least amount of noise on the F three.
These two ISOs are ISO 800 and ISO 12,800
and on the FCC's 30, these isos are ISO 800 and ISO 2500.
Now it may look like your camera has more exposure options than that
in cinema mode.
You can set your camera to cinema quick mode
and adjust your camera's exposure while using the same.
We'll use to control your ISO and you can bring the exposure
all the way down to II 200 or up to 10,000.
But this is a big but here.
These brightness changes are only affecting the preview
that you were seeing on the back of your camera screen.
When you import your footage into your editing software
that L or H at the end of those numbers on your camera
are the only letters that actually matter because the footage you import
is only going to be at ISO 800 if it says L or ISO 2500 on the FCC's
30 and ISO 12,800 on the first three if it says H.
Also say note I would never use the cinema quick mode.
The mode that you want is just the regular cinema mode
because you only want to be able to switch between the low and high base isos.
Now white, does this matter?
Why would you want to strip away all of your options to use
all these other ISOs and use just these two base ISOs?
As I said earlier, these are the two ISOs
that give you the most dynamic range and the least amount of noise.
And this means that cinema mode basically streamlines filming in
Slug three with your camera instead of you needing to worry about your ISO
and dialing it in perfectly correctly, you only have to answer one question.
Do you need to set your camera to the lower base ISO of 800
or the higher base ISO of 2500 on the F 30 or 12,800 on the fx3?
What this looks like in practice when you are filming in Sin II is that
all you need to do is dial in your lens aperture to whatever f stop you want
so you can get that pretty bouquet in the background.
Then adjust the exposure index to low or high using low.
If you're filming
in a well-lit environment or high if you're filming in a darker environment.
Here's a huge time saving tip for you too.
You can customize one of the buttons on your Sony cameras that support cinema
mode to enable you to instantly toggle between the low
and high base isos of your camera.
Just go into the custom button settings of your camera
and change one of your buttons to be this base iso switch.
Then any time you press this button, your camera will switch between the low
and high base isos.
Anyways, you've dialed in your aperture and chosen a low or high exposure index.
Now all you have to do
is make finer adjustments to your exposure by using an indie filter or cranking
your shutter speed to make things darker or using lights to make things brighter.
With the end goal of having your camera read between 1.7 and 2.0 stops
overexposed.
By doing this, there's no fine tuning or worrying
about setting your ISO too high and introducing noise into your footage
because cinema is limiting you to the two cleanest ISO levels
your camera can produce.
So cinema sounds pretty cool, right? Yes.
I think we can all get behind making Slug three easier to film with,
but should you use it?
Especially if you film weddings or documentaries or other events
where you need to film fast in Slug three?
And the answer is it's complicated,
but I'm leaning more towards saying, No, you shouldn't use it.
To be clear, I know wedding filmmakers that do use Sin II and love it,
but I also know others that say
that it's to restrictive and I fall more on that side.
Here's why.
To properly film in cinema, you ideally need to have full control
over your lighting.
When filmmaking.
Ideally, you would want to use a gray card
in front of your camera and set your zebras to 41% grace.
You can dial in your exposure to precisely that amount of dynamic range
and if it's too bright, you can add an indie filter and it's too dark.
You'd add more lights to your scene.
But this is a huge pain.
Once you leave the confines of a studio or a set where you have full control
over your lighting with a wedding or other fast paced filmmaking,
you don't have time for a gray card and you don't have the ability
or time to add lights to every scene either.
You oftentimes have 2 seconds to adjust your exposure properly
before you press record, otherwise you're going to miss the moment.
That's why I recommend between 1.7 and 2.0 stops overexposed.
It's a general guideline that will get you close to the proper exposure level.
This also means that you're going to need to do more work in post
because you're going to need
to tweak the exposure of every single clip that you use in your video
to make sure that's at the brightness level that you want
because you can't fine tune those ISOs in cinema,
meaning that you are potentially going to add a lot of time to your editing.
And more importantly, if you're scene is too dark
and you didn't have a chance to add lights and your camera's underexposed,
you're going to have noise whenever you bring up the exposure.
Compare that now to not using cinema mode where you are going to be able
to more precisely dial in your camera's ISO values
and get the exact exposure that you want in your camera.
You may not have as much dynamic range, but you're going to spend
less time in post color grading, which I think that's important.
Saving time is important, right?
And in addition, remember that cinema mode locks you into two ISOs
because it wants to maximize the dynamic range of your camera,
showing you details in the shadows without also blowing out your highlights.
When you're filming a wedding, though, at least a third of the wedding day
is most likely going to take place after dark at the reception
where you have much less control over the lighting.
It's at this point that I would be much less concerned about dynamic range
because when things get darker,
you don't need to worry about things like highlights being overexposed,
and that would be far more concerned with being able to increase the brightness
of your camera enough to compensate for the darkness in shadow noise.
I oftentimes find myself filming at ISO 16,000,
25,000 or 32,000 at a wedding reception.
But if I was using cinema mode, I would be limited to 12,800 plus whatever.
I could raise the exposure of the footage to an post,
which would definitely introduce a lot of noise.
So what do you do?
Well, keeping in mind that the only thing cinema is doing
is limiting you to the two base isos of your camera.
There's nothing stopping you from choosing the flexible ISO option in your camera.
Instead, which disables cinema mode and gives you the full range of ISOs
that you can use.
If you do this, you can try to keep
your camera close to your base ISOs, which will give you more dynamic range
while also giving you the flexibility to increase your ISO much higher
if you need to.
So you can hit that one point out of 2.0 stops over.
This is going to save you time when editing and still give you a great image.
So there you go.
That's how cinema mode works and whether you should use it to film weddings.
The choice is really up to you.
And this is a complicated topic, but I hope this video made it clear.
Keep in mind that my color presets that work great with your Sony cameras,
regardless of which picture profile you use or cinema mode are not.
Those presets are linked down below and I will also put a link down below
to a free guide that I've put together called Level Up Your Wedding Films.
This guy is going to show you some of the steps
you can take to improve the quality of your wedding films
and you can download completely for free at the link down in the video description.
Speaking of things, link down in the video description.
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Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.
Incidentally, if you follow along with my custom button setup
tutorial for the F 30, which also applies to the fix three as well,
that tutorial will show you how to set up your camera to switch between the low
and high exposure index with one button press.
I'll take that video up in the corner and down in the video description.