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What could this brightness problem be?

H

harmonica44

I am doing color correction on my short film, to the best of my ability, and trying to learn. I've noticed that on a close up shot of a character the brightness is darker, than on the medium shot. Same scene, almost the same angle, but different distances. If I cut from a medium to a close up, I can tell the next shot is darker. I'm color correcting it to match as best I can, but my friends say they don't notice unless pointed out to them.

For next time I shoot, what could be the mistake that was made? I have done shots to compare but the brightness is the same. I was not the one shooting on set, so can't be completely sure, if the DP did something in between shots.
 
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If you used a cheap zoom lens, they're higher aperture on the long end. So if you did a shot at f/3.5 zoomed all the way out then immediately zoomed all the way in without adjusting anything you'd be at f/5.6 or f/6.5 or whatever your lens does.
 
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Not sure what camera you're using, but if you have zebras (visible exposure metering), you can usually set it to 85% (correctly exposed light skin) and use that as a guide when setting your exposure for EVERY SINGLE SHOT! If you use the meters every time, you'll always hit the mark right.. and if you can't get it to pop zebras at the right spots (key side cheek), then you also know you need to adjust lighting.

Set your key light
Set your exposure
Light everything else to match those two things (fill, rim, background, et cetera)
 
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Thanks. For my next projects I will have be able to tell these things during shooting. How do you guys tell these things. Like during shooting a lot of times the shots look good, when viewing them on a monitor. But then later, in editing, once I put two shots together, it's only then I realize they don't look enough the same, or there is a continuity flaw or something. Same with sound, it all sounds good coming through the headphones, but then in the editing, it all doesn't sound enough alike. How do you guys tell these things on set, before editing?
 
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