Stuart Brereton

50 minutes ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

I'm pretty sure you can emulate halation. At least in Baselight you can.

What you can do in Baselight and what you can do in a LUT are not the same thing.

3 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Over 20 years of progress and we still can't manage to capture light sources properly, even in daylight. Even Sony hasn't done it yet. That's the point of the thread.

And over 100 years of film, and it still can’t capture shadow detail properly. You have a huge double standard here.

14 hours ago, Jay Young said:

I have always had issues with Yedlin's work.  Yes, what he did was impressive. But to what end?  He won't share the workflow, or his computer programming with others. In the end, I found no point in his work.  

 

The point of his work was to provide himself with a workflow that he felt recreated the look of film. As he has used it professionally on films like Knives Out, I guess he feels he succeeded. Why should the fact that it’s a proprietary process mean that it doesn’t count?

6 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

This is not news, and we've always known that digital RAW files are better at this. Film users would love it if film had a couple of more stops of DR. 

Clipped highlights with digital is not news either, but you saw fit to start a thread about it. You’ve just illustrated my point for me; film’s shortcomings are ignored, while digital is constantly complained about in order to make unfavorable comparisons.

6 hours ago, Ryan Emanuel said:

technology is allowing further and further transformation of color spaces,

Digital technology is already capable of accurately reproducing film color spaces; if it wasn’t, film scanners would be useless. Steve Yedlin, ASC (among others) has devised and demonstrated his approach for transforming digital primaries to match film. He has created gamma tables to match film. He has written his own randomized adaptive grain algorithms. His work is extremely impressive.

6 hours ago, Ryan Emanuel said:

When you say digital can't match film, you are really saying there does not exist a function that can transform digital camera RGB color space, into film color space, it can't even be approximated. 

No, what they are saying is that they refuse to believe that it’s possible, that you will not convince them, that no matter how mathematically perfect the emulation is, they will somehow still be able to tell the difference.

31 minutes ago, Gabriel Devereux said:

I found that a frame (6x6' frame of Ultrabounce) when 6ft away from the subject (distance is the same as source size). With the frame evenly lit by a source (again another variable, however I found it gave minor discrepancies) placed 3-4' in front of the frame (in-between the subject and the frame). The light loss - is around 2 1/3 stops - 2 2/3 stops in relation to the fixture at the combined distance from source to frame and frame to subject

If you'd stated all of that in your original post, instead of vaguely mentioning "a distance", it might have made more sense.

It’s a common complaint, that digital doesn’t handle highlights like film does, and no matter how much it improves, it never seems to be enough for some people. It’s funny that we never hear complaints about the problems that film has with under exposure detail. No one is berating Kodak for not having fixed this issue. It’s just accepted. In fact, when improvements are made to film stock, it’s usually decried by the purists.

The problem with these discussions is that they are generally bad faith arguments on the part of the people starting them, and it’s always the film fans who start them. There are a substantial number of zealots within that group who will never be convinced, for whom no improvement to digital will ever be sufficient. For them, film has taken on the status of a holy grail, an untouchably high standard that can never be equaled. It’s a fantasy that’s sustained by the fact that most of them never actually shoot any.

38 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

I thought diopters did not actually change DOF 

If they do, it's marginal. If you look at the word Canon in the pictures, you can see that it is very slightly less blurred in the second one, which was taken without the diopter. It's such a slight difference that it's hardly noticeable.

17 minutes ago, Gabriel Devereux said:

Emphasise on the word 'guesstimate' - of course you're correct but I find it helps better than nothing. 

I just wonder how useful it is to post something that unknown other people told you, saying that it is possible to "somewhat guesstimate" a bounce level without specifying how far away from the bounce your subject is. Other people who are looking for information might read this and not knowing any better, spread this misinformation even further.

33 minutes ago, Daniel Klockenkemper said:

So perhaps the idea was to use the lenses closer to their 'sweet spot,' ignoring the effect that adding a diopter has on lens performance?  Of course, the minor side effects of adding an extra, presumably uncoated, lens to the optical path could be the entire point, too.

This is a reasonable explanation, although I'm not sure how much of a net gain in sharpness there would be after adding the diopter. Also, a lot of lens designs (even older ones) incorporate floating elements to improve close focus, so there may not be much to be gained from this approach at all.

3 hours ago, Gabriel Devereux said:

Ultra bounce just cut 2 1/2 stops from your original output - this isn't accurate when your measuring close to the bounce however at a distance it is somewhat a good guesstimate). 

It's not accurate at any distance, except the precise one that yields this result.

This is an interesting question. 

I just had a quick play around with an old Sigma Achromatic close up diopter. I have no idea of its power. It was bargain bin find some years ago. I set up a little still life, and took two pics. First was with the lens (50mm f1.4) focused at infinity, with the achromat, which brought the focus to 2' 6". Second frame was without the achromat and focused at 2' 6". There was tiny shift in image magnification between the two, with the diopter shot being slightly larger in frame. DoF appeared very slightly shallower on the diopter shot.There was a marginal difference in sharpness, but that was more than likely down to focusing error on my part. The differences were small enough to make no difference in my opinion, but of course, others might say otherwise.

As to why your DP was doing it, there may be a good reason, or it could just be down to a personal shooting quirk.

42 minutes ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

I just don't know why the Film vs Digital conversation is irritating so many?

It's irritating because it's been essentially the same argument over and over since at least 2008. Nothing new is ever said. No-one ever changes their mind. A complete waste of bandwidth.

At least in 2008 there were legitimate comments to be made about the quality of HD-Cam, or the RED One sensor. Here in 2021, people are reduced to arguing about the proper reproduction of car tail lights.

It's disappointing to see just how many people are still obsessed with format after all this time.

7 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

You'd think someone would have solved this problem by now. 

They have. It’s called exposing for highlights.

Both film and digital work best within a certain dynamic range. Often this means that a shot must be lit properly in order to look the way we want it to. Too many people assume that because digital cameras have high iso capability, they don’t need lighting. So they shoot scenes in ways that they would never dream of with film, and then complain that digital doesn’t look as good. The idea that a poorly lit and exposed shot will somehow look great just because it’s shot on film can be debunked by just a few minutes of looking at some of the awful film footage available for all to see on YouTube.

A few years back, there was a semi serious suggestion on this site that we should have an unofficial ban on Film vs Digital discussions. The general feeling was that they contribute absolutely nothing worthwhile and just start pointless arguments. It was true then, it’s even more true now.

19 hours ago, Raymond Zananiri said:

So the convention (for spherical 2.35) is to shoot 4-perf and crop rather than use 2-perf?

As David says, 3 perf s35 is the most common format to crop. It uses less stock than cropping 4 perf, and offers flexibility to reframe, which 2 perf does not.

Is it time for another film vs digital debate? Wow, they come around so quickly, don't they?

Karim, setting aside the clickbait title of the thread, and the fact that your complaint about barrel distortion has nothing to do with the format the clip was shot on, you're talking about an old and well-known issue with digital cameras. You're using a fairly mediocre looking clip to illustrate this argument, and one where we have no idea what camera system was used. Both shots in that video show ugly clipping of an overexposed rear light, which could easily be mitigated by stopping down the aperture and then raising the ambient light levels of the shot to compensate. Controlling contrast ratios is something we do all the time with both film and video. Ugly artifacts from the extremes of exposure are not confined to digital video, as anyone who has ever tried to lift up a heavily underexposed shadow area on film will tell you. Both film and digital have their achilles heels, and constantly comparing them, then complaining that X is not Y really serves no purpose.

5 hours ago, Miguel Roman said:

does that mean that they shot super 35 and then cropped the image, therefore loosing some part of the original frame?

Simply, yes.

Some cinematographers prefer to create 2.35:1 by using spherical lenses and cropping. Like Lubezki, Roger Deakins does this because he prefers the look of Master Primes. Other cinematographers have done it because they dislike anamorphic lenses. David Watkin once described them as an "optical nightmare". Sometimes there are other practical considerations, like close focus or weight, that preclude using anamorphic lenses.

9 hours ago, Matthew Parnell said:

You can also purchase Magic Cloth, or Halo Cloth, which is the beautiful heavy diffusion used on chimeras. 

Magic Cloth is great for big, multi lamp rigs like overhead soft boxes, but I think it’s overkill for things like Chimeras and Octos. It cuts an awful lot of light, and it’s not actually any softer than grid cloth.

On 2/20/2021 at 6:57 PM, Nicolas POISSON said:

When shooting with the full sensor width, 16:9 uses a greater surface than "17:9" or "DCI"  (other ways to say 1.85:1). 

This is not always true. Sony cameras like the the F55, f5, and FS7 have native 17:9 sensors.

29 minutes ago, Frank Wylie said:

I think this has to do more with the color science employed by Red VS Blackmagic and that you'd have a better experience customizing whatever color transform you use to covert your log footage to working color space rather than using filtration to emulate the look.

If I am correct, this is essentially the same advice Stuart is giving. 

Yeah, that is what I'm saying. The vimeo clip doesn't say what format was originally shot. The RED material was obviously some flavor of RED Raw, but there's no mention which 709 LUT was used. The BM footage might have been BRAW, or could have been ProRes, again no mention of what LUT was used.  Not all LUTs are created equal, and all this video really shows is that some LUTs work better with some cameras than others. I don't have a lot of experience with BM cameras, but I do remember thinking that their own 709 LUT wasn't that great.

With regards to using polarizers, as Satsuki has already pointed out, they only work at certain angles, which might be fine for a still frame, but as soon as the actor moves, the highlight will return.

57 minutes ago, David Pritchard said:

That's some beautiful work Satsuki! Yes I guess I'm clutching at straws for getting the same look on my Ursa Mini Pro lol. 

It might be nothing more complicated than what LUT was used for the transform from Log to Rec709. I’ve seen Alexa footage with atrocious highlights because of a poorly executed transform.

1 hour ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Besides 1.85 vs. 1.78, what's annoying today is the 2048 / 4096 pixel 24P / P3 standards for DCI versus the 1920 / 3840 pixel 23.976P / Rec.709 standards for HD/UHD...

And as TV manufacturers have conflated 4K & UHD, there are many, many producers who don't know the difference.

2 minutes ago, Phil Rhodes said:

It seems I might be in a position to answer this definitively fairly soon; wait out!

Good! The earliest Amazon can deliver a sheet of this is sometime in March ?

23 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

I would expect it to turn the whole frame into a smeared spectral mess, splitting up the whole picture.

Yet the filter he's holding in the picture on his website appears to have diffracted light across the whole surface.

52 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The quote was directed to Daniel, who was talking about 35mm film. 

 

Riiiiiight.