white promist with digital

[illia]

This is not the first time I use a soft white promist as a way of avoiding the whites to clip while using digital. I used it on a commertial we shot under an overcasted sky, as I wanted the most latitude I coul obtain on digital I set the camera (sw-750P) on minus 3dB of gain and used a soft white promist. The result was a washed out image we could fix on color correction by increasing the contrast. We finaly had a good image but my question is if this method is worthy or is it just a stupid idea.
I have to shoot some scenes on a beach and I'm a little concerned about the whites and so but I don't want the final image to have the soft wedding look that the promist gives...
Do you think it still being a good idea..?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The only reason the ProMist is helping you reduce clipping is that it is lifting the blacks and lowering the contrast of the shadows, so you have more room to underexpose a little for the highlights while not losing too much shadow detail.

However, there are better contrast-lowering filters. Tiffen UltraCons, for example, or the new Schneider DigiCons, which have a slight ND component (don't know if it is specks or overall) with an UltraCon-type filter.

These don't soften the image (other than the fact that any lower-contrast image looks softer) and don't "halate" (bloom) around bright areas.