Jump to content

maxotics

Members
  • Posts

    957
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from webrunner5 in Please color grading advice needed!   
    A friend once remarked to me that he enjoyed reading Edgar Allan Poe because he could tell when Poe wrote one paragraph in a good mood, then the next day, he's in a crap mood, and would then write a depressing paragraph.  In other words, our emotions change hourly, daily, and they will change our emotional choice in colors.  So not surprised you're driving yourself crazy There is NO perfect color.  LUTs are just another person's color opinion, emotion.  As @hijodeibn said, calibrating your monitor is your first step.  I have a ColorRite but it creates more problems than it solves for me, so I just use a color chart I find on the internet.  First use your software's calibration of brightness/contrast though (gamma).   If you don't know a lot about how cameras create color, I did a video on YouTube, search "Camera RAW is Color Blind".  After that, try to decide on a look, create a few reference shots, and grade to them.

  2. Thanks
    maxotics reacted to TheRenaissanceMan in Matching Colors Between Cameras.   
    The ACES workflow in DaVinci makes matching your cameras easy as hell--as it should, since that's what it was designed for. If you haven't tried it, go give the tools a spin. You'll be stunned what you can get out of it.
  3. Like
    maxotics reacted to kaylee in Casey Strikes Again.   
    @webrunner5 must be doing something right i always see him at the top of the Popular Contributors™
     

  4. Like
    maxotics reacted to webrunner5 in Matching Colors Between Cameras.   
    Well your "experiment" will fall on deaf ears on here. I would not bother either. But it does sound somewhat complicated, but interesting also so... But that "simple" system seems to have worked for longer than we have been doing this.. Not saying there is not room for improvement.
  5. Haha
    maxotics got a reaction from EthanAlexander in Casey Strikes Again.   
    Let's not shoot the messenger? He's already short one eye What the heck is happening with EOSHD?  I get the sense Andrew is burnt out.  Not that I don't sympathize.  It seems consumer video has reached a plateau.  
  6. Like
    maxotics reacted to webrunner5 in Casey Strikes Again.   
    Sounds like a plan. I don't want to piss anyone off on here. I want people to learn new stuff. We are Not the experts on everything on here. I would argue that every Video on here that shows a test of the GH5s, or a DJI drone, etc. etc. is a link to a Blog, even people that are on here all the times Blog!
    But I will stop, let things just go the way it has been going, and well, not sure.
  7. Like
    maxotics reacted to Cinegain in Casey Strikes Again.   
    Oh noes, it's the max police! Haha, nah, I mean, it's alright, everyone can do whatever they want of course. It's not my place to say what one can or can not do, just a friendly request, I just came back from being out and about and I just noticed all these new threads. One after another. Maybe a little exaggerated response from my side, but just my 2 bitcoins of course.
    And Andrew is under a non-disclosure agreement and he doesn't want to slip up, I bet that's all.
  8. Like
    maxotics reacted to Sage in ARRI Alexa cheap enough to own now?   
    A year ago, I was contemplating picking one up when it hit the 12.5k mark. I priced it out at time, and looked at what I would need to get it in motion (all that I shoot), and decided to hold off. That decision ended up setting in motion the conversion idea for a somewhat smaller camera ;). I will still likely get one eventually, as I am a nutty fan, but it won't really be practical for personal shooting for me, because of the weight (the motion tools and crew needed for them etc.). It would still be nice to have one however, and I spoke to Roman Alaivi a while back about it (someone who ended up getting one when it hit 12k). Here are his thoughts:
    Hey man, yeah I did get a classic Alexa last December. I've loved it so far. Basically, in terms of functionality it is a beast and not quite as simple as the URSA logistically. It's big, uses lots of power and can be a bit of a pain in terms of getting up and running smoothly once you buy the camera.
    Here's what I had to get off the bat to make it just as useful / practical as the URSA. 
    - 6 * 155WH Anton Bauer batteries. Each battery giving me approximately 1hr 15m. 6 batteries was the minimum to run a normal shoot for me. $1600
    -O'Connor 2060HD head used $6k. O'Connor sticks, $1500. I suppose you could skimp out here and get another head... but man... this thing is no joke lol. You need a serious head. There's older versions of the O'Connor you could probably use though
    -4 * 64GB SxS media: $1k. This was the dumbest purchase, because I could have literally gotten a Gemini with an ARRI Raw licence for about that much, and multiple 512GB cards... so silly. Either way, look to spend about that much to make it useful media-wise
    -Hot swap battery plate, to run 2 batteries $300
    -Good telescoping rosette arms. With other cameras, I could care less, but with how big the Alexa is, I pretty much needed exactly the right length of arm to make handheld feel as natural as URSA or other cameras. I got the shape handles for $1k. Might sound like overkill, but other rosette handles just don't hold up with how much weight you're bouncing around. The solid Tilta handles I had eventually wore-down and the rosettes didn't even lock into place properly because of the bumps and jolts they'd get tossing the camera around sometimes.
    There's a few more things for sure, but those were the main purchases.
    In the end, once I had everything I needed, it wasn't bad at all. Takes more time to setup for shoots, but less time in post. Footage looks so good, and just the ARRI REC709 LUT looks like a movie every time lol. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't worth it just for the look and how consistent it is no matter what I shoot. I've been loving it so far.
  9. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from webrunner5 in In praise of AUTO.... for RAW stills   
    Welcome to my world   When I read people talking about getting 14 stops of DR with a camera, in video mode no less, I can only roll my eyes.  Nikon/Sony cameras can get sort of close to 14 stops at ISO 100, but nowhere near at ISO 400/800 say (which is where most video is shot) 
    To extend what you're saying.  Even if you ignore the camera's suggested exposure, which I agree, is tweaked according to what mode you're in (unlike what a light meter would say) , you have to consider the sensitivity as pixel exposure decreases as you go from brightest to lowest light.   So if your middle gray, or wherever the sensor can most accurately read light, is moved up or down, it effects the NOISE 2 stops below it.  That is, if you you expose to avoid clipping you may add noise below the image.  If you clip, you may get better saturation (less noise) below--AT ANY ISO, because again, ISO just considers your center exposure.  
    Cameras today are truly marvels.  That said, it's still very difficult, for me at least, to really nail exposure.  It's an art, for sure.  Getting a really good exposure, both in setting up lights, and setting the camera up, is no trivial matter.   I believe the best photographers really SWEAT those details--getting the center 6 stops in the optimum range.
    Like Andrew's latest video.  The way the lights were blowing out drove me a bit nuts.  I wonder, why can't the camera just figure that out?  It has a computer in it   But it can't.   To get the image Andrew really wants, I assume, he'd have to replace all those practicals with low watt bulbs and then bring up the room light to the right ambient level for the camera.   The camera, any camera, is really the least of one's problems  
    So when I read people saying they want 10bit, or LOG gammas, I think, I have enough trouble getting 8bit normal gammas working well!  I mean think about it, why should we have to set a LOG profile and all those parameters.  Why can't the camera analyze the scene and give us some options?  Maybe one day.
    For now, I agree with your last post.  You either A) sweat the exposure if you're looking for a certain level of color fidelity or B) put it on Auto and focus on composition.  Doing both at the same time.  I can't do it.  Not even close.
  10. Like
    maxotics reacted to Dave Maze in Sony A7R III review - the BBC fixed Sony's colour!   
    I need to test the HLG but even with EOSHD color profile I wasn’t happy with the color on the r3. I know it’s subjective but I just can’t get over it. I’m in alaska right now shooting on my 1DC and I’m so happy with the color and image quality. Also using a big hefty body in -3 degree weather that’s designed to withstand that temperature is so nice. 




  11. Like
    maxotics reacted to tigerbengal in waiting for the one - thinking aloud   
    If you live from making videos...it might be the time to get a Video Camera instead and keep your nikon for stills, I have heard from this forum good words for Sony F3, FS5 perhaps Canon C200,C300 Mi, or MII, or blackmagic ones. It will be hard to find one camera that do everything that you want, it will never exist. Every time we get an excellent new camera then suddenly the competition make something different, new feature the other doesn't has and the wheel start again...
  12. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from PannySVHS in Best cinema camera for me?   
    I sympathize with your comments.  I don't shoot enough with high end cameras to speak from experience.  From my analysis, however, I believe that the "don't-shoot-well in low light" reputation of BM cameras is a distortion.  All 8-bit video requires a fair bit of noise-reduction.  Add to that the chroma softening inherent in 422 or 420 video compression, and you're going to end up with an image that is going to look fairly similar from good light and down.  So on an FS5, for example, you won't see much of a color difference between low light and good light, only a difference in noise.
    With the BM cameras, (or any RAW camera) the god light image is going to look significantly more detailed than the FS5 image.  On this I have tested over and over again.  I can see the difference between RAW source and compressed.  Not a difference most people would recognize, but if you work with video you can see it.  So when you look at low-light RAW on a BM and low-light on the FS5, the FS5 will look more quickly usable, but I'm not sure if it would look that different from the BM if the BM was built to process 8-bit NOISE REDUCTION video.  Or, if the FS5 did shoot RAW natively, not sure it wouldn't get a bad reputation too.
    Put another way, the kind of detail a BM camera records in RAW is something one wants to maintain, but is impossible in low light.  It feels a negative of the camera, but it's really a matter of EXPECTATIONS LEAD TO RESENTMENT
     
  13. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from PannySVHS in In praise of AUTO.... for RAW stills   
    Welcome to my world   When I read people talking about getting 14 stops of DR with a camera, in video mode no less, I can only roll my eyes.  Nikon/Sony cameras can get sort of close to 14 stops at ISO 100, but nowhere near at ISO 400/800 say (which is where most video is shot) 
    To extend what you're saying.  Even if you ignore the camera's suggested exposure, which I agree, is tweaked according to what mode you're in (unlike what a light meter would say) , you have to consider the sensitivity as pixel exposure decreases as you go from brightest to lowest light.   So if your middle gray, or wherever the sensor can most accurately read light, is moved up or down, it effects the NOISE 2 stops below it.  That is, if you you expose to avoid clipping you may add noise below the image.  If you clip, you may get better saturation (less noise) below--AT ANY ISO, because again, ISO just considers your center exposure.  
    Cameras today are truly marvels.  That said, it's still very difficult, for me at least, to really nail exposure.  It's an art, for sure.  Getting a really good exposure, both in setting up lights, and setting the camera up, is no trivial matter.   I believe the best photographers really SWEAT those details--getting the center 6 stops in the optimum range.
    Like Andrew's latest video.  The way the lights were blowing out drove me a bit nuts.  I wonder, why can't the camera just figure that out?  It has a computer in it   But it can't.   To get the image Andrew really wants, I assume, he'd have to replace all those practicals with low watt bulbs and then bring up the room light to the right ambient level for the camera.   The camera, any camera, is really the least of one's problems  
    So when I read people saying they want 10bit, or LOG gammas, I think, I have enough trouble getting 8bit normal gammas working well!  I mean think about it, why should we have to set a LOG profile and all those parameters.  Why can't the camera analyze the scene and give us some options?  Maybe one day.
    For now, I agree with your last post.  You either A) sweat the exposure if you're looking for a certain level of color fidelity or B) put it on Auto and focus on composition.  Doing both at the same time.  I can't do it.  Not even close.
  14. Like
    maxotics reacted to PannySVHS in In praise of AUTO.... for RAW stills   
    @mercer, you beat me with the first Like by one second!
    @hyalinejim, massively great color. Pics don´t look good but fantastic! Awesome write up. Super fun to read. One of the most interesting and enjoyable posts of the last weeks. Thank you!
  15. Like
    maxotics reacted to hyalinejim in In praise of AUTO.... for RAW stills   
    Today I grabbed my DSLR and went for a short walk around the neighbourhood to take some pics. I wanted to get some shots to test a film look DCP profile I've been working on. As part of my research for this I discovered that most contemporary DSLRs deliberately underexpose when using in-camera metering. This is because for most sensors there aren't actually that many stops between middle grey and totally blown out. For example, my 5D3 will clip at around 3.3 stops above middle grey. I know this because if I shoot a white sheet of paper at 1/3 stop increments and examine the linear RAW values, the exposure that gives me 18% of the maximum RAW value is around 3.3 stops below the one that clips... and that, by definition, is middle grey.
    However, this leaves very little room in the highlights. The DR of the 5D3 is around 11.5 stops. So there's three and a bit above middle grey, and around eight below. If you were to meter correctly, you would be very much in danger of blowing out highlights. To help combat this, it appears that most camera manufacturers use 12% grey as the basis for metering. The effect of this is to provide an extra stop or so of highlight headroom. And in fact, this is borne out by checking values in ACR, where actual 18% grey sits at around 185 and 12% grey sits at around 119 (the given RGB number for middle grey in a 2.2 gamma).
    Anyway, that's all very interesting or very dull, depending on your point of view. But for some reason it inspired me to shoot on auto exposure on my walk. Even though I normally think of manual exposure control as being the absolute best, I was now considering that Canon have probably tested this a lot and perhaps auto isn't so bad. So I put the camera on aperture priority with auto ISO and started snapping. At first I was kind of worried as I could immediately see two things happening that I would have rectified straight away if I had been shooting manual:
    Low contrast shots were looking a bit underexposed (I would normally ETTR in these situations to minimise noise) In high contrast scenes some sky was getting blown out (I would normally protect highlights as much as I can) However, I just went with it. When I got back to my computer I also did something that I never usually do and that was to click the "Auto" button on the ACR exposure tab. I was really surprised with how well everything turned out. ACR's best guess did a great job at expanding or contracting shadows and highlights automatically. All I had to do was tweak overall exposure, and sometimes highlights or blacks as well. Here are some of the results:

    Are there clipped highlights and crushed blacks? Absolutely. But the pics still look good.
    Now, I don't know if I would shoot this way for a client. However, I've got to say that it was such a blessed relief to not be constantly chimping the histogram and re-taking shots to get the ideal exposure. And it was also a very good feeling to get the processing done in two or three clicks. It made both shooting and processing a lot more fun.
    Who knows, maybe I'm ready for auto white balance next!
     
  16. Like
    maxotics reacted to Emanuel in Sony A7R III review - the BBC fixed Sony's colour!   
    At 8-bit for video, yes.
  17. Like
    maxotics reacted to Andrew Reid in Sony A7R III review - the BBC fixed Sony's colour!   
    So I can update EOSHD Pro Color for Sony's latest colour science tweaks yours truly bought the new A7R III from Berlin's one and only Sony Store this week. Yes, 3500 euros seems to be Sony's new standard price and yes I am finally broke... but the improvements over the old model turn out to be quite special - especially the new Hybrid LOG Gamma picture profiles.
    Read the full article
  18. Like
    maxotics reacted to Emanuel in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Sure, as much as a billionaire will miss anything if only millionaire... : D I recall when people were used to shoot on film, besides the fact I concur noise can look very filmic too, Blackmagic noise @ low light included.
  19. Like
    maxotics reacted to webrunner5 in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Home Depot has Everything you need for lighting! Cheap also.
    https://digital-photography-school.com/shooting-products-and-video-using-home-depot-lighting/
  20. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from IronFilm in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Yep, LEDs get hotter and hotter and they still have color spikes, etc.  I have Fiilex lights and I notice in some clips that the color temperature shifts here and there.  That never happens with Tungsten.  And of course, again, tungsten, though reddish, delivers a nice smooth color spectrum.  Of course you know all that.  But for any newbie reading, if you see some cheap tungstens jump on them!  I see some lowell kits going for near nothing.  Except for the heat and their hunger for watts, the quality of the light cannot be beat!  Young filmmakers have no idea how lucky they are to have all these quality lights available for pennies on the dollar.
  21. Like
    maxotics reacted to TheRenaissanceMan in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Haha, good catch Max! Living in SE Wisconsin, the winter aspect of it comes into play more often than not.
    It's still the most consistent, reliable, good-looking light source out there, especially for the money they sell for nowadays.
  22. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from Ricardo Constantino in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Sorry to interrupt this fine threat, but did you guys notice @TheRenaissanceMan's signature
    "Tungtsen fo' life"
    HA HA HA! (and agree, at least in the winter)
  23. Like
    maxotics reacted to PannySVHS in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Max, please feel free to interrupt! The original request is a rather odd one, I might say. I fell for it. Odd too, I must say.
  24. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from Damphousse in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Sorry to interrupt this fine threat, but did you guys notice @TheRenaissanceMan's signature
    "Tungtsen fo' life"
    HA HA HA! (and agree, at least in the winter)
  25. Like
    maxotics got a reaction from noone in Best cinema camera for me?   
    Sorry to interrupt this fine threat, but did you guys notice @TheRenaissanceMan's signature
    "Tungtsen fo' life"
    HA HA HA! (and agree, at least in the winter)
×
×
  • Create New...