There are a couple things I can think of straight off that happen when a camera captures a sudden bright light.
Firstly, the explosion itself will often be virtually colorless, due to the fact that it is massively overexposed. The camera's exposure will never be set to properly capture the intensity of an explosion, unless you have tremendously intense lights illuminating the scene, so you will end up with a big white flash, with hints of color around the edges.
Secondly, the intensity of the light is going to wash out the colors in the rest of the frame as well. They will gradually fade back in as the initial intensity of the blast wears off, but in that first moment the blacks will be much lighter than they would otherwise be. I say gradually, but it will probably be less than a second before the intensity of the light is back in the range of the camera, depending on the size of the explosion, possibly only a few frames.
Whether the camera is set to auto exposure or manual exposure would impact how quickly the exposure comes back in line, so that is something to consider as well. When integrating effects, you need their behavior to harmonize with the actual camerawork of the scene.
Last edited by Axeman on Thu Nov 05, 2009 4:07 am; edited 1 time in total
