Video: ' Why Hard Light Disappeared In Hollywood'

[Karim D. Ghantous]

(12:35)

[Jon O'Brien]

Yes, he says in the video what I've been saying for a while now: old industry knowledge and talent has faded away in movie making because the new people running the industry now got their start in videography. And naturally they brought their videography level of artistic taste with them.

Edited February 15 by Jon O'Brien

[Steve Switaj]

Yeah, but we've been moving toward a softer look for decades now.

One of the first features I worked on was Interview With The Vampire, in 1994

I was blown away that the DP,  Philippe Rousselot, lit the entire thing with China balls.

Ironically, for a film about creatures that live their lives in the shadows... there were no shadows.

[Robin Phillips]

the industry is actually moving somewhat back toward hard(er) light, in large part because you can now get good LED fresnels now. the skypanels + the realization that soft light makes for easier digital relights largely got us where we are now. 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

FWIW, it is making a comeback in commercial photography, too. It works for some subjects and it works quite well. Not everything has to be soft soft. I think you've all seen examples of that.

[Tyler Purcell]

I love hard lighting, absolutely adore it. 

[Jon O'Brien]

Filmmaking is an amazing world.

We basically have iPhone cinematography in many current movies, but shot on Alexa 35s that cost a fortune. And I can hardly tell the difference. Sure, no doubt there's some benefit to the Alexa 35, just not sure it's worth all that. Wouldn't a Canon or something else do, just fine? Yes they go on about how the Arri is so much more dependable. Yes, well just take two Canons along to the shoot. Or three. You'd still be ahead.

Just pointing out how nutty digital cinematography is. Because those digital dudes are always telling me it's nutty to shoot on film. So, straight back at ya.

Edited February 17 by Jon O'Brien

[Karim D. Ghantous]

1 hour ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Filmmaking is an amazing world.

We basically have iPhone cinematography in many current movies, but shot on Alexa 35s that cost a fortune. And I can hardly tell the difference. Sure, no doubt there's some benefit to the Alexa 35, just not sure it's worth all that. Wouldn't a Canon or something else do, just fine? Yes they go on about how the Arri is so much more dependable. Yes, well just take two Canons along to the shoot. Or three. You'd still be ahead.

Just pointing out how nutty digital cinematography is. Because those digital dudes are always telling me it's nutty to shoot on film. So, straight back at ya.

Good point. Although to be fair, the Alexa has 50% more DR than the hybrid cameras. I mean I wouldn't choose a Canon over an ARRI, but then again I would prefer shooting on Red (not that I'm in any position to shoot on these cameras).

[Jon O'Brien]

30 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Good point. Although to be fair, the Alexa has 50% more DR than the hybrid cameras. I mean I wouldn't choose a Canon over an ARRI, but then again I would prefer shooting on Red (not that I'm in any position to shoot on these cameras).

The Canon C300 Mark III digital cinema camera has excellent DR when shot in, if I remember correctly, CLog2. I've used it. It has a dual gain sensor which is said to be very close to what Arri can achieve with their patent-protected sensors. A C300 Mark III can be picked up for quite a good price comparatively speaking. I get what you're saying though. Sure, the Arri line is great. But when you factor in rental cost it probably works out not much more expensive to shoot a short film on a 16mm Bolex compared with renting an Alexa 35, and I'd argue with a more interesting look onscreen. That's pretty much what I'm on about. Other's mileage may vary. I haven't crunched the numbers. I could be wrong.

Edited February 17 by Jon O'Brien

[Tyler Purcell]

48 minutes ago, Jon O'Brien said:

The Canon C300 Mark III digital cinema camera has excellent DR when shot in, if I remember correctly, CLog2. I've used it. It has a dual gain sensor which is said to be very close to what Arri can achieve with their patent-protected sensors.

The MKIII is a good camera, I shot with its predecessor quite a bit and it was very nice for what it was. I feel Canon's color science out of the box is pretty complementary to their lenses. If you use an entire Canon package, it really sings. When you go outside of the wheelhouse and start using 3rd party cinema primes, the camera system kinda falls apart. It's really overly tuned for the Canon lenses and that's how all of the modern Canon cameras are. 

Dynamic range on the MKIII is around 12.5 stops at standard speeds, but the dual gain function shuts off when you go over 60fps, dropping it down to 11 stops. 12.5 measured stops is pretty good especially for that size camera. Rolling shutter is around 15ms, which reduces to 7.7ms when you're in overcrank mode, with that lower DR. 

I feel in post you may be able to get more out of something a bit more modern, but the pricing of the C300MKIII kinda make it a pretty good bargain, especially if you use Canon lenses. 

 

[Jon O'Brien]

23 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The MKIII is a good camera. Dynamic range on the MKIII is around 12.5 stops at standard speeds, but the dual gain function shuts off when you go over 60fps, dropping it down to 11 stops.

 

Au contraire. Canon disagrees with you. Their official website says the EOS C300 Mark III has over 16 stops of dynamic range when filming at normal fps speeds in CLog2.

It's a hell of a lot better than 12.5 stops. 12.5 stops sounds like a cheap camcorder from 15 years ago.

[Nicolas POISSON]

Beware of comparing dynamic range.

DR is the ratio of clipping to a certain acceptable level of dark signal. Engineers define that level as being the noise floor. You will find this described as "SNR = 1", which means the minimum acceptable signal is equal to the noise floor. For most cinematographers though, objects in the image should be at least twice the amplitude of the noise floor to be of acceptable quality, described as "SNR = 2".

Since users pay attention to DR, manufacturers try to get the highest figure possible. Most publish DR at SNR = 1 (I think Arri uses SNR = 2). Some publish the number of grey pattern visible on a Xyla 21 chart. Due to the capacity of our visual system to recognize patterns, one can detect grey rectangles below the noise floor. This means some DR figures may correspond to SNR = 0.5 or even 0.25. The problem is this only applies to the wide and uniform rectangles of a chart. For real world images, the smaller the details, the higher above noise floor it should be. Take a look at that paper from Arri:

https://www.arri.com/resource/blob/295460/e10ff8a5b3abf26c33f8754379b57442/2022-09-28-arri-dynamic-range-whitepaper-data.pdf

Moreover, many cameras apply internal de-noising which improves DR but may remove details or create artefacts. This is more pronounced on consumer cameras / DSLR, and at higher ISOs.

Taking the definition of DR as "SNR = 2", and looking at cinema cameras that have little to no de-noising, DR figures are often much lower than 16 stops. The Sony Burano exhibits around 11-12 stops of DR:

https://www.cined.com/sony-burano-8k-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-exposure-latitude/

Note that Imatest seems to report the DR with noise as a fraction of the signal. Thus their "slope based DR" at 0.5 is equivalent to "SNR = 2".

Another interesting source is to look at RAW files, which bypass the de-noising. Again, figures are not that impressive:

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

DR in photo mode is usually lower than in video, because the reduction in definition averages several pixels and lowers the noise floor.

12 stops is similar to a modern DSLR, which usually applies some de-noising to get this kind of figure. My Canon HF-M46, a cheap camcorder from 13 years ago, has 8-9 stops of DR. I was blown away with such a good performance when I bought it in replacement of my DV Camcorder peaking at 5-6 stops of DR.

Edited February 18 by Nicolas POISSON

[Tyler Purcell]

14 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Au contraire. Canon disagrees with you. Their official website says the EOS C300 Mark III has over 16 stops of dynamic range when filming at normal fps speeds in CLog2.

It's a hell of a lot better than 12.5 stops. 12.5 stops sounds like a cheap camcorder from 15 years ago.

Yea, well... companies will use any unrealistic testing method possible to get people to buy their cameras. For the record, Canon has never made an imager even close to 14 stops of actual usable DR.

Cine D has done multiple tests, including over/under tests in real life (SNR 2). It's 4 stops over, 4 stops under, with 5 stops under with NR being acceptable without much color shift. They have a special DR chart they shoot as well, which puts the camera at 12.5 stops of DR. I'm simply reporting what their very comprehensive tests are reporting. The only camera in the world with greater than 14 stops of DR are the new ALEV 4 imagers from Arri. In fact, my URSA Cine 12k, tests better than the original Alexa's, but one stop under the ALEV 4 imager cameras. This makes a lot of sense because the URSA cine 12k is the best low-cost camera for DR in existence today and Canon has NOTHING that comes even remotely close, neither does Nikon or Sony outside of the Venice 2. This is why I carry around a heavy camera, because the results are more important than the weight. 

Edited February 18 by Tyler Purcell

[Alejandro Ramirez]

There are trends shaped by taste and technical accessibility, and then there are pioneers who shift the language entirely — think of Gregg Toland or Brian Young. They don’t just follow the wave; they redraw the shoreline.

Like fashion, cinematography goes through cycles. Sometimes something has to declare itself as the new thing in order to move both taste and technique forward. A look becomes dominant not just because it’s beautiful, but because it’s possible — and because someone pushes it hard enough to make it feel inevitable.

Hard light will come back. It always does. And when it does, some will miss the soft, diffused days we’re living in now. That’s the rhythm of visual culture.

The good news? Nothing truly disappears. The tools, the knowledge, the workflows — they accumulate. We don’t replace aesthetics; we archive them. And that gives us freedom: to experiment, to hybridize, to argue about it over coffee or beer: Your pick.

Edited February 25 by Alejandro Ramirez
Spelling

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

4 hours ago, Alejandro Ramirez said:

There are trends shaped by taste and technical accessibility, and then there are pioneers who shift the language entirely — think of Gregg Toland or Brian Young. They don’t just follow the wave; they redraw the shoreline.

Like fashion, cinematography goes through cycles. Sometimes something has to declare itself as the new thing in order to move both taste and technique forward. A look becomes dominant not just because it’s beautiful, but because it’s possible — and because someone pushes it hard enough to make it feel inevitable.

Hard light will come back. It always does. And when it does, some will miss the soft, diffused days we’re living in now. That’s the rhythm of visual culture.

The good news? Nothing truly disappears. The tools, the knowledge, the workflows — they accumulate. We don’t replace aesthetics; we archive them. And that gives us freedom: to experiment, to hybridize, to argue about it over coffee or beer: Your pick.

You might say that this is the case and it may well be (hopefully). But if you look at what's going on in the world of art and architecture including interior design, there's a lot of drive toward grey and black, lack of round areas, mostly exposed cement (which in it self is more of a 70's nod one could say) and so on.

Cinematography, bar very specific types of creators is at a Nadir currently...We're not talking different trends here...it looks like crews spend all this money and equipment to deliver grey mud.

I posted screenshots from "Nomadland" the other day which is already an "old" movie at this stage - I mean, I can't believe that people were standing there at the post suite looking at this overly underexposed under-accentuated, non-story-supported mud with any degree of seriousness on their faces.

If by any chance we manage to see a shift, it will be a long and arduous road. My hope is on people like Paul Thomas Anderson which proved it can be done again and of course the European, Asian and North/South American movie festival circuit reminding the world again to grow a spine. It will definitely not come from big budget TV/Cinema productions they are more like investing entities anyway, they won't risk that.

[Karim D. Ghantous]

12 hours ago, Alejandro Ramirez said:

Like fashion, cinematography goes through cycles.

True. But good taste never goes out of style.

[Alejandro Ramirez]

6 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

True. But good taste never goes out of style.

Exactly — and then we enter the endless (and necessary) conversation about taste. It’s a valuable discussion because it forces us to revisit what the collective has agreed to call “standard.” Aesthetics rarely exist in isolation; they tend to move alongside technical availability and economic feasibility — the three usually travel together. Taste often carries ethical echoes as well.

As for beauty, I find both Joshua James Richards’ naturalism in Nomadland (yes, this one’s for Karim D.) and Jarin Blaschke’s highly controlled world in Nosferatu equally compelling. They couldn’t be more different, yet both are coherent and purposeful. The style serves the story — not the other way around.

Taste may live in the eye of the beholder, but endurance does not. Some images resonate beyond their moment; others are tightly bound to the trend that produced them. Time has a way of separating the two.

And that, perhaps, is the real test.

 

Edited February 26 by Alejandro Ramirez
editing

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

2 hours ago, Alejandro Ramirez said:

As for beauty, I find both Joshua James Richards’ naturalism in Nomadland...

I struggle to find examples of naturalism in Nomadland, can you please provide examples of that being the case?

It feels that I really need to take a mental leap to artistically justify the story driving that cinematography.

Nomadland explores multiple themes including that of loss and independence and I really liked that movie but none of the themes I experienced were necessarily a justification for the lighting decisions I saw, nor the lack of any lighting variance within the movie, which was really unexplained - it was as if the characters were suspended in a void visually, whereas the story was much more nuanced in its progression.

The cinematography of the "The Killing"  TV show (2014) which has in many ways similar blue and muted tones, there's plenty of justification because the weight of the events could for the most part, justify it.

I'd argue that mood, lighting and story are equals and are not always "statically" placed as servants of one or the other. But I agree with some broader areas you bring forth.

Edited February 26 by Aristeidis Tyropolis

[Jon O'Brien]

This dark muddy look that you mention is, I think, a variation on the theme of minimalism. Or just straight out minimalism.

It seems to be peddled by those who go on about elitism in art. The ones who produce this kind of minimalist cinematography, I think you will find are the same ones inclined to say that film is overly rich and self-indulgent.

The poor souls. They forgot, somewhere along the way, that filmmaking is for the audience. They lost the plot. But it doesn't matter, because they live within an artistic bubble and are supported by their like-minded filmmaker friends. It's a mediocracy.

That's the real 'elitism'.

[Jon O'Brien]

Or, to be more positive, it's simply a fashion.

A pretty crummy one in my opinion. But there you go.

[Karim D. Ghantous]

17 hours ago, Alejandro Ramirez said:

The style serves the story — not the other way around.

You are not wrong. But we are in danger of begging the question. Also, we are in danger of using what I call 'literal' cinematography. "It's cold so let's use a blue filter." "It's sad and contemplative so let's underexpose everything." "It's a dingy city so let's put a yucky green cast over the image."

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

16 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

You are not wrong. But we are in danger of begging the question. Also, we are in danger of using what I call 'literal' cinematography. "It's cold so let's use a blue filter." "It's sad and contemplative so let's underexpose everything." "It's a dingy city so let's put a yucky green cast over the image."

I agree, if you look at cinematography break-downs over the past years, you'll see really professional people explain away all the motivational aspects of their lighting, in pretty similar ways, i.e., green cast on faces is about a person's psychology and/or situation being problematic, etc. It's all very clinical and straight out of a cinematography class that isn't interested in being particularly layered or deep.

Having also difficulties accepting the placement of "everywhere" diffuse being some form of naturalism as it "refuses" even simple hard hitting sun rays as part of the image, pools of lights are simply forbidden.

Wong Kar-Wai, as part of the select few that mastered mood, proved that you can introduce it as a character and make the story work through that.