It's 2021 and digital capture still looks like sh

[Tyler Purcell]

3 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Do you have a list of the 7 film labs in the US? I’m only aware of Fotokem and Cinelab. Thanks!

- Fotokem
- Pro 8mm
- Spectra
- Kodak NY
- Kodak Atlanta
- Color Lab
- Cine Lab

I believe there is going to be one more lab launching very soon, I'm kinda shocked it hasn't yet. The pandemic has set everyone back a year of course. 

[Heikki Repo]

Re: "young people and film" my experience is that there is definitely interest in film among younger than 30 who are also working professionals here in Finland (I'm 33 and I don't earn my wage in this field -- though I have made paid projects that have also included parts shot on film -- so I don't count myself among them).

Some young, talented professional cinematographers from Finland who use film include Pyry Pelkonen (https://www.instagram.com/pyrypelkonen/) and Ari Virem (https://www.instagram.com/arivirem/). Arsen Sarkisiants is a successful, bit older DoP who also shoots projects on film (https://www.instagram.com/arsen.sarkisiants/?hl=fi -- including a feature film on 35mm very recently). They are also very talented with digital.

These are just some names (of people I personally don't know) from a Nordic country that became predominantly digital cinema oriented already around 13 years ago.

So do young people have interest in film? Some do, some don't. Digital is still the easiest and cheapest option so it does require some dedication to take the film route. Nonetheless, my gut feeling is that film is nowadays much more interesting option than it was ten years ago. Back then digital was new and full of wonders. Now digital is the standard. It's not bad, it's used by everyone, it is very convenient and often looks very good. But on the other hand, film no longer has the stigma of musty past. I was totally convinced of that when I saw these youngish people running a film lab... (https://www.instagram.com/silbersalz35/)

Last anecdote: Last Spring when I did some tests on my Eclair ACL my elementary school age daughter got the chance to use the camera as well. Her question after shooting on 16mm film? "Dad, may I inherit that camera in the future?" 😁

[Ryan Emanuel]

18 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

 

2. Color saturation in the shadows - look at the skin tones and deeper saturated colors in the lower midtones and Zone 2-3 areas. Depending on the lens’s contrast and lighting, of course. The trade-off is visible film grain, especially with 500T (more digitally-orientated folk may say ‘noise’ - you either love it or hate it). 

 

This is one of those use the variable issues.  Saturation from the HSL color space is the traditional variable people change for saturation on digital, but if you want digital to function like film, its the wrong variable for perceptible saturation.  Film saturation is dependent on luminance and hue changes, so anybody adding HSL saturation to the shadows of digital won't get the right results.    The tools in color grading applications aren't built for that.   Its one of the biggest reasons why the common looks of digital are different than film, its the digital video engineers deciding the structure of how the color grading tools work.  Its definitely not that its impossible to get it right,  but in HSL its a square object trying to go through a circle.  We'd all like to transform the square to a circle, but davinci won't do that, at least not easily.

http://www.yedlin.net/NerdyFilmTechStuff/TwoKindsOfSatuartion.html

[Satsuki Murashige]

8 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

- Fotokem
- Pro 8mm
- Spectra
- Kodak NY
- Kodak Atlanta
- Color Lab
- Cine Lab

I believe there is going to be one more lab launching very soon, I'm kinda shocked it hasn't yet. The pandemic has set everyone back a year of course. 

Thanks Tyler! Much appreciated.

[Satsuki Murashige]

2 hours ago, Ryan Emanuel said:

This is one of those use the variable issues.  Saturation from the HSL color space is the traditional variable people change for saturation on digital, but if you want digital to function like film, its the wrong variable for perceptible saturation.  Film saturation is dependent on luminance and hue changes, so anybody adding HSL saturation to the shadows of digital won't get the right results.    The tools in color grading applications aren't built for that.   Its one of the biggest reasons why the common looks of digital are different than film, its the digital video engineers deciding the structure of how the color grading tools work.  Its definitely not that its impossible to get it right,  but in HSL its a square object trying to go through a circle.  We'd all like to transform the square to a circle, but davinci won't do that, at least not easily.

http://www.yedlin.net/NerdyFilmTechStuff/TwoKindsOfSatuartion.html

This is interesting, and it’s definitely part of it. But I think it’s also an issue of how much data is being captured in the first place.

As you know, with color film there is a color record for full RGB with its color-sensitive layers. Whereas on a Bayer sensor there are much fewer red and blue photosites per eventual pixel, with the rest of the data having to be interpolated from the green channel by the de-bayering algorithm. As a trade-off, film will be softer due to the slightly different FFD of each color layer and also any scattering of photons as the light travels thru the film. 

It makes sense to me that as you underexpose the Bayer sensor and increasingly starve it of photons, the color saturation will drop (much like our eyes). I don’t have any science to back that up so I’m happy to be corrected on this, but it feels correct based on my shooting experience.

[Satsuki Murashige]

8 hours ago, Heikki Repo said:

Re: "young people and film" my experience is that there is definitely interest in film among younger than 30 who are also working professionals here in Finland

I’ve also noticed an uptick over the last several years in under-30 camera department folk wanting to renting my film cameras, or to simply play with them and learn about them. Unfortunately, the material costs of 4-perf 35mm usually push their productions toward 16mm or Alexa. Or they have a budget, but they want more mags and accessories than I can provide, so I send them to Keslow or Panavision. 

When I go to the rental house, I do now occasionally see someone prepping a film camera package in the prep bays, either a sub-rental from LA or a privately owned local package, as the rental houses up here no longer own film cameras.

[Satsuki Murashige]

8 hours ago, Heikki Repo said:

Last anecdote: Last Spring when I did some tests on my Eclair ACL my elementary school age daughter got the chance to use the camera as well. Her question after shooting on 16mm film? "Dad, may I inherit that camera in the future?" 😁

Lovely! I hope you are getting some home movies of your kid growing up on film like Uli. Make sure to freeze some raw stock for her, just in case! 🙂

[Satsuki Murashige]

13 hours ago, Robino Jones said:

I found 6..

 

http://colorlab.com/contacts.html

 

http://www.cinelab.com/

 

https://www.fotokem.com/#/

 

https://www.spectrafilmandvideo.com/Lab.html

 

https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/page/kodak-film-labs

Kodak = 2 Labs in USA

Thanks for the links Robino!

[M Joel W]

4 hours ago, Ryan Emanuel said:

This is one of those use the variable issues.  Saturation from the HSL color space is the traditional variable people change for saturation on digital, but if you want digital to function like film, its the wrong variable for perceptible saturation.  Film saturation is dependent on luminance and hue changes, so anybody adding HSL saturation to the shadows of digital won't get the right results.    The tools in color grading applications aren't built for that.   Its one of the biggest reasons why the common looks of digital are different than film, its the digital video engineers deciding the structure of how the color grading tools work.  Its definitely not that its impossible to get it right,  but in HSL its a square object trying to go through a circle.  We'd all like to transform the square to a circle, but davinci won't do that, at least not easily.

http://www.yedlin.net/NerdyFilmTechStuff/TwoKindsOfSatuartion.html

This has always confused me. Maybe I'm conflating two separate issues.

Arri (and now most other video camera manufacturers it seems) rolls off saturation in the highlights and midtowns (starting around 30 IRE or so I think) so the shadows are more saturated than the highlights are. This is not the case with traditional video cameras. The best comparison I have of this is an A7S clipping a red light source in frame as pure red (or yellow in this case?) before white and an Alexa clipping the same source as a very pale shade of pink before white. Apparently this is kind of highlight rolloff is modeled off of color negative film.

But Alexa doesn't look like color negative. Arri's old discontinued film emulation mode was closer and the other is the difference between those shades of red is video (including Alexa) will give you that red color in the link whereas film won't, it will give you a darker color. More saturated areas appear darker in film. And I don't know if this has to do with video vs film or Arri modeling their color more off an additive model rather than a subtractive model, in which case Alexa is closer to reversal film? But doesn't saturation in reversal film behave more like the A7S does? There's a description here about additive vs subtractive but it's a sales page so hard to know:

https://www.thebrim.pictures/sucomo.html

It doesn't add up. Velvia (which is an additive model, being slide film) is far more saturated than Portra or even Ektar IMO:

https://photojottings.com/color-negative-vs-slide-film/

https://www.alexburkephoto.com/blog/2013/02/25/color-film-choices-for-landscapes

Sort of regretting selling my 6X12 back and view camera. 😞

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by M Joel W

[Satsuki Murashige]

Fuji Velvia is more saturated than color negative partly because it’s much more contrasty. But Provia is (was?) less saturated and contrasty, and Astia was even less so. All Fujichrome reversal stocks. I don’t think Alexa looks anything like reversal film!

[aapo lettinen]

19 minutes ago, M Joel W said:

This has always confused me. Maybe I'm conflating two separate issues.

Arri (and now most other video camera manufacturers it seems) rolls off saturation in the highlights and midtowns (starting around 30 IRE or so I think) so the shadows are more saturated than the highlights are. This is not the case with traditional video cameras. The best comparison I have of this is an A7S clipping a red light source in frame as pure red (or yellow in this case?) before white and an Alexa clipping the same source as a very pale shade of pink before white. Apparently this is kind of highlight rolloff is modeled off of color negative film.

saturation roll off is actually pretty easy to do in post as well (the accuracy may not be the same depending on your capturing format but it is possible to do with standard grading programs)

[M Joel W]

I don't think it does either but my only experience with reversal is with Velvia 50 and 100. 

Saturation roll off is harder to adjust (imo at least) once the color channels clip but even in the example here I think you could address the issue in post pretty well.

[Satsuki Murashige]

5 minutes ago, M Joel W said:

I don't think it does either but my only experience with reversal is with Velvia 50 and 100. 

Saturation roll off is harder to adjust (imo at least) once the color channels clip but even in the example here I think you could address the issue in post pretty well.

I dunno, the colorist and I tried pretty hard with the clipped Alexa shot I posted previously, and I could never get it to my satisfaction. But maybe others can.

Graded: 

Log: 

 

[Tyler Purcell]

3 minutes ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

I dunno, the colorist and I tried pretty hard with the clipped Alexa shot I posted previously, and I could never get it to my satisfaction. But maybe others can.

Graded: 

I forgot to ask, or maybe I didn't see. Do you recall what ISO this was shot at? 

[Satsuki Murashige]

5 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I forgot to ask, or maybe I didn't see. Do you recall what ISO this was shot at? 

Alexa Mini, 3.8K, PR422HQ. *800EI*

*Sorry, my mistake - we shot this whole project at 1600EI. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by Satsuki Murashige
Error

[aapo lettinen]

45 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

saturation roll off is actually pretty easy to do in post as well (the accuracy may not be the same depending on your capturing format but it is possible to do with standard grading programs)

a quickly made test example:

the original shot with just the basic LUT and some saturation added:

[Tyler Purcell]

20 minutes ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Alexa Mini, 3.8K, PR422HQ. *800EI*

*Sorry, my mistake - we shot this whole project at 1600EI. 

OHHHHH interesting, so I guess it wasn't an ISO issue.

Shane Hurlbut did a really nice comparison of a C500 and 35mm film many years ago and he had some good thoughts on this exact problem with digital cinema cameras. It is a "problem" for sure, but many people would never notice or care.  

Lovely shot btw. 

[Satsuki Murashige]

3 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

OHHHHH interesting, so I guess it wasn't an ISO issue.

Shane Hurlbut did a really nice comparison of a C500 and 35mm film many years ago and he had some good thoughts on this exact problem with digital cinema cameras. It is a "problem" for sure, but many people would never notice or care.  

Lovely shot btw. 

Thanks. Yep, 90% of this project was Steadicam with a compressed shooting schedule, so I lit more generally and tried to squeeze as much DR out of the camera as possible with 1600EI and a LowCon filter. I guess maybe Arriraw would have helped, but that wasn’t really an option for us. 

[Satsuki Murashige]

22 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

a quickly made test example:

the original shot with just the basic LUT and some saturation added:

That’s a nice shot! Yes, basically as long as you don’t clip the highlights you can do quite a lot in grading.

[Heikki Repo]

2 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

Lovely! I hope you are getting some home movies of your kid growing up on film like Uli. Make sure to freeze some raw stock for her, just in case! 🙂

Definitely! There is already a nice collection of super-8 and 16mm color ecp prints struck from negs in addition to 35mm slides. There is magic in watching them with a projector, whole family (she's my eldest) in a darkened room. Last year we shot some family short (fiction) films with BMPCC, I'll probably have those transferred to 16mm just to better preserve them.

Since we are talking about digital in this thread I dare to put this piece of our digital family fiction stuff for a while here, it's absolutely off-topic and just some fun time spent as a family so skip it if you'd rather continue the real topic. I'll pull this film from here in two days as I might try our luck with it in some festival, perhaps.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

34 minutes ago, Heikki Repo said:

Definitely! There is already a nice collection of super-8 and 16mm color ecp prints struck from negs in addition to 35mm slides. There is magic in watching them with a projector, whole family (she's my eldest) in a darkened room. Last year we shot some family short (fiction) films with BMPCC, I'll probably have those transferred to 16mm just to better preserve them.

Since we are talking about digital in this thread I dare to put this piece of our digital family fiction stuff for a while here, it's absolutely off-topic and just some fun time spent as a family so skip it if you'd rather continue the real topic. I'll pull this film from here in two days as I might try our luck with it in some festival, perhaps.

 

That was cute, I had a good laugh! Your kids are gamers for jumping into the filmmaking life with you, congrats 🙂

[Heikki Repo]

37 minutes ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

That was cute, I had a good laugh! Your kids are gamers for jumping into the filmmaking life with you, congrats 🙂

Thanks Satsuki! They really are quite something. To be honest, at times their father and mother were much more enthusiastic about it all! 😜 But they persevered through it, even if they themselves would have wanted to take off the costumes a bit earlier or if they weren't quite happy to have to endure yet another take 😅

Edited March 3, 2021 by Heikki Repo

[M Joel W]

2 hours ago, Satsuki Murashige said:

I dunno, the colorist and I tried pretty hard with the clipped Alexa shot I posted previously, and I could never get it to my satisfaction. But maybe others can.

Graded: 

Log: 

 

I agree once the highlights are clipped there's not much you can do to recover them but if the saturation isn't clipping I think a Lum vs saturation adjustment can approve their appearance and make them feel less "digital." I'm not a colorist and the difference is subtle but this is what I had in mind re: desaturating highlights. 

[Satsuki Murashige]

1 hour ago, M Joel W said:

I agree once the highlights are clipped there's not much you can do to recover them but if the saturation isn't clipping I think a Lum vs saturation adjustment can approve their appearance and make them feel less "digital." I'm not a colorist and the difference is subtle but this is what I had in mind re: desaturating highlights. 

That does look pretty good. Did you do a secondary mask on just the sky, or just a global adjustment? When I tried masking myself, the luma key was difficult to pull due to the camera movement and LowCon filter. 

[M Joel W]

Thanks, I didn’t key it. It’s just a lum vs sat curve roughly like the image attached.

That’s from Lumetri but Resolve has the same curve.