Standard Exposure Boost

I must have missed a conversation somewhere …
Filmic RBG sets an automatic exposure boost of 0.500 EV on all images. Can somebody enlighten me for the reason.

Filmic is mapping around middle grey and this boost is a typical bump to get closer…some cameras might be better at say 1 or 1.5…you just expt and then set it for that if necessary…some images can need 2 or even 3 ev added…

Tks … understood

It also depends on how you personally expose your shots.

But the reason that small exposure correction was made a default:
some cameras “cheat”: they under-expose and then correct that in their jpeg treatment. Once you notice you always have to add a given amount of exposure, it makes sense to have it as a default (or in my case, a preset, as Sony is “special” again and needs 1EV :stuck_out_tongue: )

Note that this is a basic exposure correction to correct for what the camera does to a “middle gray” scene. Specific images may of course need an extra correction (either in-camera, or in post), e.g. snow scenes, or very dark coloured subjects…

Oh, and the automatic boost is done in the exposure module, not filmic (which doesn’t touch the middle gray)

1 Like

I have always found that my current camera (Fuji X-Pro2) was providing a correct exposure (for the 18% gray) and I rarely needed to touch the exposure module at all. My corrections were then only made through the ‘compensation’ dial.
I think that the camera can make a better assessment of scene mid gray than I can.

Adjust the exposure to you liking and make it a preset for all images.
I assume it is there for the “expose to the right” workflow, but in my opinion it is a questionable default.

Its also about how filmic will usually darken the photo so I am surprised if you use filmic you don’t find the need to add some exposure… as long as you get what you want… I thought most often people had to really boost fuji raws from what I recall…

Possibly (not convinced of that once in post…) but that’s not what happens…
Some cameras “underexpose” and correct for that in their post-production treatment (aka in-camera jpeg) to get back to the “correct” middle gray (as seen in the in-camera jpeg…). This probably gives a bit more room in the highlights, needed for those extended dynamic range modes.

Nothing to do with the camera not correctly estimating middle gray or ETTR workflows. ETTR is not something the average camera user would know about, but they do see burned-out skies…

Huh? In my experience, filmic respects the exposure I set (for the midtones, which is what this is all about)
The darkening is there from the start (see below)

Sony too (at least their DLSR and transparant mirror models, don’t know about their mirrorless models). I noticed that already before filmic: the Sony basecurve is very aggressive, and not using it almost always implied an extra EV in exposure correction. And the basecurves are constructed to mimic the in-camera rendering…

I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone who thinks 0.5EV is enough for their camera. I typically add 0.75-1.0EV for my (Canon) cameras. We could probably get away with increasing the default.

1 Like

Ya it respects gray for sure but over all the compression darkens the image once you enable it. The bump is for sure about setting the middle gray and you can see that on a gray patch it stays pretty much the same when applying filmic, but I think most people are looking at a range on either side as the “midtones” and overall adding filmic at least to me makes the image darker looking overall…maybe I don’t boost my images enough :slight_smile: