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Best Books for Digital Image Concepts


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Can anyone recommend a book, or online resource(s) that provides a clear, accurate and comprehensive overview of digital image concepts. The kind of thing I'm looking for would cover the following topics and show how they are related, how they are different and how they are actually applicable both during shooting, and then later how they affect the post-production pipeline.

  • Colour Model e.g. Hue, value, chroma, saturation, tint, shade etc
  • Colour Spaces
  • Colour Gamuts
  • Luminance
  • Gamma Curves
  • Bit Rates
  • Codecs
  • Transcoding
  • How different colour spaces look on different monitors
  • Wavelets
  • Scopes
  • Difference between RGB / CMYK / YCrCb

I'd really like to get a solid understanding about how all of this fits together so that I can be far more useful on set as an AC - I realise some of this is much more important for a DIT or those in post-production but there have numerous times where I've felt that having this information would be really useful and although I know many of the basics I'd like to expand that quite a bit.

 

I realise that there is also a "Books" section but thought that maybe it applied more to DIT's - please move if necessary.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...

I highly suggest Alexis Van Hurkman's "Color Correction Handbook." Make sure to get the most recent version that came out beginning of this year I believe. I just finished reading it and it has a wealth of knowledge. If you plan to use Davinci Resolve for any coloring or DIT work, which I find to be one of the better solutions for both, then I would suggest trying to get a hold of his Ripple Training videos. Unfortunately the videos are for version 9 of Resolve, but the techniques and practices he describes are still valid in Resolve 11

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Is this the book, Chandler?

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Color-Correction-Handbook-Professional-Techniques/dp/0321929667

 

 

I highly suggest Alexis Van Hurkman's "Color Correction Handbook." Make sure to get the most recent version that came out beginning of this year I believe. I just finished reading it and it has a wealth of knowledge. If you plan to use Davinci Resolve for any coloring or DIT work, which I find to be one of the better solutions for both, then I would suggest trying to get a hold of his Ripple Training videos. Unfortunately the videos are for version 9 of Resolve, but the techniques and practices he describes are still valid in Resolve 11

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Yes sir it is. Wonderful read. Unfortunately since it's print it can be hard to visually tell the difference in some of his examples of film clips, but he does a good enough job explaining the process that it shouldn't make much of a difference. He also explains color grading from a overall point of view instead of a one program specific process. Though he will give examples from different programs from time to time

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Thanks for the recommendation, I've actually had a few people suggest that now so i'll pick it up and give it a read. Given that the thread has resurfaced I should also recommend David Stumps "Digital Cinematography: Fundamentals, Tools, Techniques, and Workflows".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Stump/e/B00EP6D8PY

I'm only part way though it but it's very well written, easy to understand and covers a hugely comprehensive list of digital cinematography topics.

Edited by James Malamatinas
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