How to Master Your Exposure Like a Real Cinematographer

Learn to expose for the uncontrollable

Mastering Exposure Challenges:
3 Steps to Achieve
Perfect Cinematic Shots

On 99% of shoots, there is some combination of elements you can't control. Ever gotten to the editing suite only to be frustrated by overexposed or underexposed footage? Unless you’re filming on-set, you’ll always have some mix of uncontrollable factors your camera exposure has to consider.

In an outdoor setting, the uncontrollable might be cloud-cover. Indoors? Numerous light sources you’re unable to turn off. Every filmmaker has had their fair share of frustration with exposure. But these three powerful keys can help you master exposure challenges to create masterful cinematic shots if taken step by step.

1. Prioritize Your Creative Decisions

Before exposing your shot, you need to make creative decisions about what you want your shot to look like. These decisions will determine your priority setting (aperture, shutter speed).

Aperture Priority

Shutter Priority

For example, if I want to shoot with a shallow depth of field, then Aperture becomes my priority setting. If instead, I want to shoot long exposure? Shutter Speed becomes my priority setting. Let's say I want to film with a very shallow depth of field — I would set my aperture to be wide open and then apply the other settings to achieve correct exposure of the uncontrollable elements.

2. Use Your Exposure Tools

When it comes to exposure, the separation of highlights, midtones, and shadows or contrast ratios; you can't simply guess. You need to use tools to measure the level of brightness in your image. Luckily, tools like False Color precisely measure exposure by overlaying colors over different brightness levels in the picture. Some cameras have false color built-in, or, like me, you can use an external monitor with false color.

Adjust the slider
to apply False Color

3. Adjust Lighting for Optimal Exposure

Once your camera settings are in place, you might find that the adjustments to shutter speed or ND filters in step 2 caused a different object in the frame to become underexposed. But don’t be frustrated. This last step is the final key to a balanced cinematic shot.

Without changing your camera settings (yes, you heard that right) now add or remove lights to expose the rest of your scene. To address objects that now are underexposed, turn on a light and adjust its intensity while checking the false color until you reach the desired brightness. Many lights today can be controlled using an app on your phone, so you can stay close to your camera or monitor and adjust the levels remotely.

Once the light is at the correct level, you can proceed with setting the camera’s white balance. 

That’s it! Now, everything is exposed properly with the correct level and separation. And you’ve mastered the uncontrollables of exposure instead of uncontrollables mastering you. You can see this in action in this 3-minute video on exposure.

For your toolkit, here’s a free camera settings cheat sheet.

Happy filming!