Balancing light and dark in your image – the cinematic way.
StudioBinder introduces the concept of Chiaroscuro Lighting in Film — Balancing Cinematic Light & Darkness:
Cinematographer wolfcrow identifies nine combinations of overexposed, underexposed and middle exposed lighting…
… or nine combinations of white, black and grey exposure (click to enlarge):









Try It Yourself
Aputure demonstrates using tools such as false colour monitoring to Create Depth With Your Light [Contrast Ratios]:
Rob Ellis goes through, step by step, how to use contrast ratio to achieve a scene which looks dark, but also looks correctly exposed – and, in the process, reveals how, contrary to what one may expect, noise in the shadows can be reduced if lit for a lower ISO:
Further Viewing
Sit in on an entire light metering, film-making, Q&A workshop:
A more detailed look at the camera assist tools mentioned here, and how that leads into post-production: