Dumbing down surgical light (hospital theatre)

Hi all

So i've just filmed an operation, and some of it came out way to bright! Is there a way to target the bright lit surgical lamp and dumb it down in FCP ?

Please see screen shot

Thanks in advance

Welcome James to fcp.co

… Please see screen shot

please resize & reformat any pics to max 1000pix wide/jpg before posting here …

…it came out way to bright …

hmm, hit cmd-7 to pop-up the scopes, choose Waveform/Luma … if the peaks form a straight horizontal flat line (pun intended) beyond 100IRE…



… then there's no hope to fix that: sure you can lower the 'Whites' to some grayish, but, sorry to tell you, details are lost on recording. No way to fix that.
Next time: if you use a consumer cam, they often offer some 'stage light/theatre' mode … or, if you're an advanced photog, avoid auto-modes, switchOn your cams Histogram, or so-called 'Zebra' to check exposure while recording … hope, you're not the surgeon - both hands to the patient, please!!
(sorry, serious attack of weird German humor…)


If there's no/little flat-lines, use the Color Board/Exposure and lower the Highlight puck down…