Karim D. Ghantous

This question is for anyone, particularly colorists. What's your favourite or preferred method of the four options below? Assume that the sensor or the negative has in all cases encapsulated the full DR of the scene, so the histogram will show 100% of the image well within its boundaries. 1. Expose for the shadows and bring down the highlights 2. Expose for the highlights and bring up the shadows 3. Expose for the mid point between highlights and shadows, and adjust both 4. Expose between highlights and shadows with bias towards one or the other, and adjust both Would your choice be different if you were shooting ProRes vs RAW vs 10bit 4:2:2 compressed?

Yes, particularly the Canons. If you want the best possible image quality, buy a Fuji GFX 100s, or a Sony A7SIII, shoot RAW, and underexpose as much as you can get away with. I am working on a general solution to this kind of problem, but I won't have the ability to do anything for several months. I will of course post my attempts on this site. Even if it isn't practical it might lead to something that is.

FWIW you got your branding right! I have a dream... to make a set of manual focus lenses for mirrorless cameras (with unique attributes that you won't get anywhere else). Can I get there? With a good team, yes. I will be providing the seed capital, but that can only go so far. The project will be crowdfunded. I have the branding and the idea. Now all I have to do is wait for my investments to pay off...

Thanks, Frank. Amazing how some films just disappeared forever. I know we can't and shouldn't keep literally everything, but... you don't always know what you should and shouldn't preserve until much later. And Hollywood wasn't concerned with that philosophy back then, I don't think.

I'm not sure in which forum this question belongs, but this one will do I think. Have a look at this photo posted by The ASC on Twitter: Look at the device placed behind the viewfinder. It looks like it could be an optical viewing screen. What do you think it could be?

I really wasn't prepared for the ending! Very well made, very well written. Quite haunting, too - I guess that's kind of the point of the story, right? ? So this was 2-perf S35? Anyway, it looked damned, damned good.

Well, I'm not so sure. I would not object to shooting in VV or 65mm!

That looks FANTASTIC. Light sources were captured very well, and the overall image quality is terrific. It goes to show that you don't need to push it in the lab. I have said this before, but Downton Abbey, as nice as it looks, would have looked a little better if it were shot on 16mm. I truly think that it's too early to move to digital. Even 2021 is too early (Edit: i.e. for narrative, not for commercials or documentary). I really do love this medium, although at the same time I'm thinking about an idea which might fix the last problem with digital: light sources. It doesn't matter how much DR there is in a digital sensor, it cannot capture light sources properly. If that gets fixed, the motivation to shoot film might be tempered. We'll see.

How do I join? LOL Lucky bum! BTW what scanners do you have?

To the best of my knowledge, 500T film needs an 85b filter to warm up a daylight source. That's at a cost of 2/3 of a stop. So in that case, the ASA comes down to 320, which is 1/3 of a stop faster than 250. Given that Kodak makes a 250D stock, is there room in modern productions for a 500T stock? I suppose that a lot of LED panels have a variable temperature, and that's another thing to think about. But, if it's just easier to standardise to daylight, maybe productions will eventually just do that. The counterpoint would be that Kodak could tweak 5219 and make it daylight balanced, thus giving it relevance again. Also, 500T might push better than 250D. But I don't have any idea about that. What are your thoughts?

I haven't seen a direct comparison with colour film, but I have with b&w film, and there was no difference. I would not be surprised if colour film behaved very differently. Alberto, I look forward to seeing the video. I found this, which may be of interest. I think it looks great:

I discovered this while searching for examples of Super 8 footage. This makes me wish that I had documented my surroundings more in the 1990s. I was born in the '70s and I remember nothing about them. The early '80s had a bit of the '70s vibe which I remember very, very well. There is a warmth to the '70s which many people overlook on account of the flared pants and big collars. The houses, just the normal ones, are wonderful. A friend of mine lives in a two storey townhouse were literally nothing has been renovated. Short of Art Deco, there is nothing like it. 1970s graphic design was amazing, too, and some of the clothes are amazing even today. I could go on and on!

That's nowhere near as objectionable as ratty highlights. I'd like it fixed, anyway. I think it can be done easily with b&w film, but then you'd be making it more expensive. I see. But I was led to understand that you can emulate halation with Baselight's native scripting language. No. I think you might have done something to the wedding shots. If not, something went wrong somewhere. The anamorphic shots were ruined slightly by the lens aberrations. In any case, none of those photos were challenged in the way that I described in the original post. Phew! There is a bit of that philosophy going around. I'm all for ambient light if that's what you want, but you do still have to think about it.

I'm pretty sure you can emulate halation. At least in Baselight you can. 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. The wedding shots were not to my taste. The second two were okay, but the lens ruined them for me. The final ones were very nice indeed.

That's surprising.

I don't think that anyone owes us anything. It's not that hard to make a LUT. We don't need Yedlin to make it for us. Even then, a LUT is not going to solve the light source problem. I like sharing, although I will keep one or two small secrets to myself for the longer term. If I can come up with something to mitigate the light source problem, I guarantee you I will be rushing back here to share it. A few years ago, someone on the Red forum said that the LUT is not the problem, it's the characteristics of movement that's the hard thing to match, if that makes any sense. Maybe that can be solved, too - I have an idea about that, but I can't share it unless I try it for myself first. I don't shoot a lot of video so don't hold your breath! I am not very knowledgeable about cinema software, but Baselight and Resolve will let you create a LUT. You just need a colour chart, plus a few frames of film scanned properly, and boom, you're off. Just search for "how to make a LUT in x/y/z" and you're off. Again, nobody needs an ASC DP, or a film school, to tell them how to get what they want. Forget all that. You can do a lot either by yourself or with a group of casual but dedicated collaborators on Web forums. Not that long ago, most people made their own clothes from patterns. Before that, some people built their own homes with logs. If 1940s Westerners with no TV, or air conditioning, or advanced communications can make their own clothes, **(obscenity removed)** hell, we can make our own LUTs. TELL ME I'M WRONG.

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. It doesn't matter where those stops are, either. Technically, the Monstro has more DR than film but it too fails with light sources IIRC. You don't need a data scientist. ? You just create a LUT. Fuji has film profiles built into their cameras. So there's no problem as far as colour goes.

I have seen full sized frames of 7219 at ASA 1000 and it looks terrific. I'm pretty sure that negative film does not need to be pushed - I am fairly sure that they used to push film to make it simpler to do contact prints. Someone, please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

I totally agree with that statement, although the gap has closed over the past two decades. I recall seeing Prometheus on the big screen (the second-last last movie I saw in a cinema) and it looked great. If you know how to wrangle digital images, you really can make them shine. Having 16-bit RAW does help. ?

I'm no expert on scanning, but if you can afford it, always go for a better scan than you need. That way, you only have to scan the film once. Just IMHO.

Says who? What evidence do you have for this claim? Yes. What an odd thing to say. Who said that all the new digital movies look like crap? Please point me to the exact quote. That is absolutely true. Examples are everywhere. That can work. But one cannot put an ND gel on every light. There must be a better way. I am thinking of one right now, but someone might get there first. Or, even better, a sensor will be made which makes this entire conversation moot. I think Sony had an idea where every other pair of lines on the sensor would be less sensitive by two stops. I don't know if they ever made this.

The scene you showed me is not the best way to show off a digital camera! But I did check out two further scenes from this film and I certainly cannot fault the colour and tonality. I looked up the specs and oh boy this camera is huge. I believe that people also liked the F65, which also didn't do that well commercially. Maybe both types of sensor will be replaced. I am pretty sure that Sigma is going to give us a new Foveon sensor eventually. It will probably be a CMOS but maybe eliminating the Bayer array is the key. I know little about electronics so I have no idea what could replace CMOS. I bet that Sony will lead the way on that one.

I don't know how on a sensor level, but perhaps I do on a high level. I am not in a position to do any experimenting just now, but in the medium term future I will be able to. Unless, of course, someone else beats me to it. True.

Interesting comment. I mean, CCDs can give nicer images out-of-camera, but all you need is a LUT, and your CMOS image now looks pretty much the same. But, that's not a technology thing, it's an aesthetic thing. I am also led to believe that some CCDs have global shutters, although I'm not sure. I don't know if you ever followed the Leica M9 vs M 240 debate? It's true that the M9 had nicer colour OOC, not to mention a more natural sharpness, but you could wrangle the colour from the M 240 to look pretty much the same. The M 240 also had more DR, which may have contributed to the 'thinner' OOC look. But on a tech level, the CCD vs CMOS debate is very interesting. The camera used here was probably something like a GH5. But they all behave like this - so far. You'd think someone would have solved this problem by now. I guess I'll have to come up with my own high level solution, and if I do before someone else does, I'll post it on this site.

I think so. Has anyone tried HDRX for this kind of situation? Does it work? How would you solve this problem? I'd like to know. You can't do two passes on uncontrolled, moving subjects, and you can't always shoot film. Perhaps a transparent LCD in front of the lens that takes live input from the sensor? I think you're right for the most part. Rolling shutter is solved. And there are LUTs that actually look good. Red's DSMC3 system could be very, very interesting when it's released. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the way this commercial was shot, but that has nothing to do with the camera. I just don't think it has enough commercial-ness in it. It's not terrible, but it's not what I expect. That digital zoom shot, if you noticed it, stuck out too much. And sometimes I felt like I was watching a car commercial (I know, you can't have tyres without cars!).