Filming welding - avoid highlight clipping

Question

I'm filming TIG welding on Sony A7 III without a welding mask.
The best results with auto-focus and automatic exposure I was able to get are below - using PP10 HLG3 with Knee set to 75% slope -5 and exposure adjustment to -2 - as you see, highlights are still blown.
Is there any way I can preserve the highlights without using manual exposure? Many thanks.

user94347 · Accepted Answer

Frankly, I'd at least use ND-filters certified for solar photography.  Welding plasma is not fun: it emits a brutal amount of high energy UV light.  I'd not trust the camera-internal filters to be able to deal with it gracefully.  I've seen a guy who thought welding gloves were unnecessary and worked without them for some task.  If you think you have seen bad sunburn, think again.
You don't want this shit to make it into your camera: it would probably wreak ruin on non-glass lenses and other parts possibly not 100% impervious to very hard UV light.  You also want to definitely protect your eyes from exposure.
While you won't damage them using an electronic viewfinder, a DSLR with an optical viewfinder would be a different matter.

agtoever · Answer

As suggested by the other answer: use a ND (Neutral Density) filter qualified for broad spectrum high intensity EM radiation, because TIG welding radiates a nasty amount of energy. I’d suggest a filter between 12 and 16 stops.
If you really don’t want to manual expose, turn down the exposure compensation.

Note that the the dynamic range of your scene is huge. Don’t expect the darkest and the brightest parts to be visible at the same time!

Filming welding - avoid highlight clipping

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