2x Oscar-nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC
(The Avengers, Anna Karenina, Atonement, Nocturnal Animals)
2x Oscar-nominated cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC
(The Avengers, Anna Karenina, Atonement, Nocturnal Animals)
Here’s how it works.
Sweet Spot monitors the "sweet spot" for your scene's subject, revealing the part of your image that sits between ½ stop below mid gray and 1 stop above, and letting everything else fall off to gray.
It comes packaged as a LUT and easily integrates into your workflow, working equally well in your camera or your monitor. You'll simply download the LUT for the log space you’re using and install it into your camera or monitor. (Currently Sweet Spot supports LogC3, LogC4, Slog3, Log3G10, and Apple log, and it comes with instructions to help you install it quickly.)
This setup also means that no matter what camera or monitor you're using, Sweet Spot will always look, feel, and work the exact same way while giving you a measurement that's 100% accurate in every shooting scenario.
No more relearning a different type of false color every time you switch camera packages, no more crazy colors covering your image while you're trying to shape it, no more dealing with IRE instead of stops, and no more metering the display image when you should be measuring the light hitting your sensor.
You've got your scene set up, and you take a look at your monitor to see your image.
Good start, but it feels a little under exposed, so you turn on Sweet Spot to see where you’re at.
Way under — almost none of your talent is appearing in the sweet spot zone. Having just a touch of your talent appearing like this would be fine if this were meant to be a more moody image, but it’s not.
So, you adjust your exposure to bring more of your subject into the “sweet spot”.
You’ll know you’ve gone too far when your subject starts disappearing from the zone again – this time due to overexposure.
You open up until you can better see your talent's face.
Much better. There’s still a good amount of the subject's face that is sitting outside the Sweet Spot range, but these areas were lit to fall below key.
From here, you can switch off Sweet Spot and feel confident in where you’ve set your exposure. If you decide you want to add fill, you can now just use your monitor to make further adjustments since your exposure is accurately set.
So you turn off Sweet Spot and...
Voila — the image looks great.
In what would take only seconds in a real life scenario, you’ve nailed your base exposure and can spend the rest of your time focusing on the creative part of exposing your image instead of on the technical part of it.
And since you know your subject is properly exposed, confirmed by Sweet Spot, you’re now free to use your monitor instead of digital metering as you create your image and paint with light.
Here’s another example:
This time, it’s quite clear to you that you’re under.
So you flip on Sweet Spot…
It’s time to adjust. Whether through more light or changing your iris, you increase the exposure until the key-lit areas of your subject come into view.
Much better.
You turn off Sweet Spot to see the result…
Bingo. Amazing what just getting the right things into the sweet spot zone will do for your image.
And now that your exposure is nailed, you're free to use your monitor to make any final adjustments to sweeten the image.
With Sweet Spot, you'll more of your time creating images instead of measuring, double-checking, and second-guessing them (and will keep you from second guessing yourself, too).
It’s yours for free, all I ask is that if you love it you share it by sending people to this page.
Just put in your name, email address, and select which version(s) of Sweet Spot you need delivered to your inbox in the form below.