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Great post and lots of good points. Research on preferences is possible and there are actually some great resources out there talking about what aberrations are preferable, and are likely what ARRI have included in their colour processing. You have probably come upon these before, but for those who haven't, some of the resources I've come across are.. Color image reproduction of scenes with preferential color mapping and scene-dependent tone scaling https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/41/0a/e5/0a78ae57552549/EP1158779A2.pdf It's a patent obviously, so it's very dry and technical, but it contains interesting phrases such as: "a visual color reproduction of a scene having preferred color reproduction" "It is well known in the art, that the best reproductions of original scenes do not constitute a 1:1 mapping of scene colorimetry." "Pre-ferred color reproduction is defined as a reproduction in which the colors depart from equality of appearance to those of the original, either absolutely or relative to white, in order to give a more pleasing result to the viewer." There are other patents from earlier (1995 and 1996) from the same authors, so you can see them developing their knowledge. Visible skin color distribution plays a role in the perception of age, attractiveness, and health in female faces LINK to PDF It's a research paper, so technical again, but contains: "Here, we show that facial skin color distribution significantly influences the perception of age and attractiveness of female faces, independent of facial form and skin surface topography." "The results presented suggest that visible skin color distribution plays an important role in subjective evaluation of female facial beauty." These can seem very theoretical, but they have direct application in colour grading and development of looks etc. This video below shows how adjustments in hue compression and tone manipulation can make skin tones far more pleasing. FilmLight and the work of Daniele Siragusano are really the most advanced that I've seen (published publicly anyway) so are incredible references. Video (linked to timestamp): If you can't be bothered watching, essentially he takes the following image: then alters it to be very unflattering by adding green under the eyes and increasing magenta on her nose and cheeks: but then applying a film look, the rendering of colour almost completely removes these unflattering alterations: The film look reduces the magenta/green in that area of skin tones, which is why the rendering is flattering. This is the film rendering of the image, but without the unflattering alterations: Obviously the image is nicer without the alterations, even with the film look applied, but the alterations are far less unflattering with the film look applied rather than just with the normal 709 style grade. This is a very simple example (compression of the magenta/green axis in the skin-tone area of the colour cube) and there are others too, such as the compression of the hue outright, to reduce the variation between yellow and red in the skin tone area. For example the ARRI Alexa 65 promo video shows a range of people and skin tones, including this older gentleman: Obviously this whole image is desaturated, but look at the variation in tone - there's a lot less than in real life, but it's in a way that is flattering, and it seems completely natural in the context of the video, where the whole video is quite muted: but compare that to the amount of skin tone variation that people actually have when they age, the lips and areas around the nose and eyes etc are far more red and contain far more yellow-red variation than the above image shows: There are all sort of other things - that's just two. Going back to the Kodak patent and seeing what the "preferred colour reproduction" is doing, we see it's doing all kinds of crazy stuff: This is a plot in L*a*b space, so is essentially the colour wheel (luma is the axis not plotted). The symbols are where the transformation puts the colours and the line points to where the colour used to be. So it's taking the more saturated colours and making them more saturated, but not doing this with the less saturated colours, however you'll note there are some exceptions in there. This is happening in a 3D space though, and some adjustments will be happening dependent on the luma values involved. HOWEVER, and I just realised this, because the Alexa outputs don't do luma-specific manipulations to hues, any such luma specific adjustments must be in the ARRI709 LUT, not in the camera. There's tonnes of stuff in here, for example, the paper shows this diagram - Figure 14: and the description of what it shows is: "Fig. 14 shows how the hue reproduction could be modified for a system including variability, so that the optimum system color reproduction is obtained including all the sources of processing variability. In this case, the memory colors skin 60, sky 58 and foliage 56 are consistently and smoothly moved towards a hue line, while yellow hues 62 are shifted towards orange." It doesn't talk about skin specifically, but the a*b* space is this: So the skin is in this area of the plot: Which doesn't seem to involve any hue compressions or alterations at all. I'm not sure why they omitted those. Anyway, fun stuff, but a very deep rabbit hole indeed. -
By Aussie Ash · Posted
ARRI have been able to focus on colour science for cinema whereas Canon and Nikon moving from film to digital was primarily colour science for stills "the capture of a single frame".It is not the same .Nikon must have had many died in the wool stills photographer old farts on their board that only began to change about six years ago towards "cameras are multimedia capture devices." Fujifilm is different -making motion picture film was an important part of their business from 1934 to 2013. Red have been in the game since 2005 but without the history and back ground that ARRI had with cinema meant their colour science developed in a different way(with American influences !) . There is also feature films like Dune-2021 and The Batman -2022 that used digital to film to digital (DFD) to give the final result a more film like appearance. -
By fuzzynormal · Posted
Yes, you're exactly right. Musing about this is interesting to us, obviously! Here's my rambling take. The Japanese engineers have long been pursuing a different path of imaging evolution, as they've been in "electronics" mode for generations. Their culture kept them away from deep considerations of what film does vs. what digital does. The Japanese simply have a different sensibility about image IQ. This reality in of itself is a fascinating dive, going all the way back to traditional feudalism culture, WWII, national pride, and their "High Increasing Stage" era of the mid 20th century. Their imaging tendencies emerged out of their unique cultural context. In other words, once their engineering IQ evolution preferences were set, there was not much room for it go off on tangents. ARRI took a different road and put people on the development team that understood the physics and chemistry of film and wanted that look. ARRI engineering cuts and adds different spectrums for very good reasons. Thus, as you say when you mention plugins, emulation of film behavior is the thing, the whole additive vs. subtractive thing, for instance. ARRI does their adjustments in camera. So cinema follows ARRI to chase the IQ they know best, and ARRI becomes the cinema standard. The phrase "color science" is amusing to me. Because, yes, the engineering is science, but ARRI is in fact making their cameras behave with purposeful (and insightful) aberrations. They aren't going for accuracy, they're striving for colors that evoke a certain perception of emotion by being "pretty" which could be considered an artistic pursuit in their engineering craft. "ColorArt" doesn't have the same ring to it though. It's all pretty wild. I mean, I'm on forums where there are darkroom alchemists chasing esoteric processes to heighten certain color dyes in film, and minimize others by changing their development chemistry -- which is weird as heck and an extremely hard way to affect an image (save that when choosing the stock or when doing the enlargement print imo) but hobbyists aren't rational, they're just playing. There's a whole sub culture of analog photographers that deliberately buy decades old expired film just to see what happens with the dye degradation. All in all, there are an infinite number of ways to achieve color rendition. But, yeah, I'm with you. Give me a decent camera and I'll affect the image with a plugin and get it in the ball park. I'm not positioned financially or emotionally to be chasing the refined fringes of things. I enjoy mulling it over in places like this, but none of this sophisticated color science could be a part of my career. I'm not nearly talented enough to indulge it, nor smart enough for that. -
Samyangs at f1.4 are not cheap plus they are big and heavy. As far as I remember you don't like big and heavy. Maybe older sigma lenses from HSM generation as Anaconda_ suggested. Sigma 24mm f1.8, 30mm f1.4, 50mm f1.4 HSM. They are all under 200 E/$. Not small though. If you want smaller and cheaper lenses then you have to accept they start at f1.8, f2 and f2.8. Then you have lots of option and not only with Canon. You can also adapt vintage lenses to EF adding second adapter. With speed booster they become f1.4 to f2 both quite usable in low light on m43 in my personal experience. I was in this place more than 5 years ago with BMPCC 4K. Went trough speed boosters, calculating focal lengths, spending lots of time researching and trying to build decent lens sets both vintage and modern. My frustration grew with time as I realized this won't be cheap nor ideal to my goals. Went FF and never looked back. My decision was driven specifically by lenses. I realized the hard way a well-known truth: We buy systems not cameras and lenses are more important than cameras. If I want to use vintage lenses, cheap lenses, have access to the largest pool of lenses - FF is the right choice. I may change one FF camera system with another, my vintage lens sets stay, lenses have the same focal length and character. Same is true for Canon EF lenses. A FF system is no longer more expensive than m43, especially when we include the lenses. Example Panasonic S5 vs Panasonic GX85 + speed booster. Paradoxically a FF system (body + lenses) may even come cheaper due to large pool of lenses than m43 + speed booster. -
By Samantha_Hong · Posted
There are a lot of great camera options right now, but I think the lens ecosystem and overall usability matter just as much as the camera body itself. A camera that fits your workflow and encourages you to shoot more is usually the better choice than chasing specs alone.
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