Gregormannschaft

Big thanks for this rec, I've gone ahead and bought the book as a paperback – I find the theoretical side of colour theory just as interesting as the technical side. Ripple was also the first course that I found on a cursory Google search and their free classes have been brilliant so paying for their full course sounds like a good place to get started.

@capitanazo (your English is great) @kye thanks for taking the time to post,  the LiftGamma forum recommendation looks great, too. No doubt I'll spend a long time lurking but that's often the best way to start learning.  

Have a search on LiftGammaGain.com where the professional colourists hang out - I've seen lots of threads where they give their training recommendations.
I'd suggest that you get a course that helps you with the part of grading that you aren't strong in.
ie:
what the dials and knobs do (eg, how to make qualifiers, use tracking, etc) what the aesthetic implications are for the various effects (eg, warmer colours are happier, etc) what aesthetics do for story and perception (eg, when to pop the colours and when not to) You need all of these to be a good colourist.  No point knowing exactly how to make footage look happy but doing it on horror films.

that book is the best you can get, it have a lot of technical info about screen, rooms, color gamut, profiles, ambient, hardware and more to set up a pro color grading workspace and how to work with it.

the theorical info is really nice too, so for start in color is the best way to go.
but, this book is aimed for multiple software, that its not bad. but i suggest you to buy this book, and then get an online courses for your software from scratch.
if you go for davinci, check it out too for the manual, and certificed online training centers.

then, i suggest to visit the liftgamagrain forum, and facebook colorist group to get fast answers to your questions.

reverse eingenieer is a good practice if you want to training your eyes and skills.
 
Do color grading to random shots, and then save and look in weeks- months after to see how your color knowledge has been grown and your "clinical eye" start to get more 
precisian.
 
that are my advice to get into color grading, sorry for my english too, hope it was useful info for you.

This book is very old and only covers the very very basics, but I believe it's the most well-established text on the subject, or was when I purchased it:
https://www.amazon.com/Color-Correction-Handbook-Professional-Techniques-ebook/dp/B004KKXNTQ
It's more a theoretical and aesthetic approach than a technical one. I should dig up my old copy.
I think on the technical side, the Ripple tutorial is well-regarded. 

Its at least a flop in the UK, because the FS7 was released and Canon couldn’t beat many of its features. Now, the FS7 is the most rented and requested camera. The C300 II is nowhere to be seen, where before the C300 was always No.1. 
For sure, the Canon has the prettiest image and DPAF, however with more productions calling for high quality HFR - Sony succeeded massively. The FS7 today still has sexier specs than cameras released now. 
Even on shoots now with many cameras and shooters (at least the ones I’m on)  - I’ve seen all the cameras being used are Sony now, where in 2012 it was all Canon. They’ve simply lost their hold. 
I love the C200 image, it’s stunning. I’d have bought one if the HFR was better. I could see it working with the X-T3 nicely.  But with a lot of my clients asking for high quality HFR, EVA1 it is. 
Like the topic title, camera choice is important. My advice - stick to a brand and just go for it. Minimise swapping them around and only change if the difference is greatly beneficial. 
 

Stumbled upon this reddit post today.
Love the results - definitely worth looking at if you crave for an analogue feel.
 

Oh for Hobby. I am 71 years old. I retired a long time ago. I want nothing to do that involves work anymore LoL. Did that stuff for over 50 years. Thank god for legal drugs, ehh prescriptions.
I had a Panasonic AF100A and really sort of regretted selling it. Hard to not have a Cine camera for the convenience.they offer. I have worked with, and owned a lot of ENG cameras years ago. My A7s is really nice, but not great for my big hands. I am more of a tripod guy anyhow.  Running n Gunning Ain't in my vocabulary anymore! If i tried flying with a Gimbal I would fly alright, right off some cliff probably.

Thank you. I mostly just talk to the locals first and then ask to take their portrait. Then I get uncomfortably close . It's something that you have to get used to I suppose and can be very difficult at first. Also there are tricks to getting long takes like this without insulting the people. We didn't take a fixer, but that certainly does make it easier.

Not fair enough. This is ridiculous. As ridiculous as Peter Mckinon videos on Youtube. The guy says he is leaving his 1DX2 and switching to the EOS R, and that the limitations (no FH 120p, wait who shoots 720p?, big 4K crop,...) will actually force him to push his creativity. 
Most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. It goes as far as this to defend Canon. 

The fact is, pro or not pro, reliability or not, usability or not, those specs are unacceptable. Using a 2y old sensor is not acceptable especially when it was far behind the competition 2y ago. 
1.7x crop is not acceptable, no one does that. In all interviews Canon answer they could not do no crop. Well every manufacturer on the planet can except them. 3y old FF camera can do 120p in FHD but Canon say they could not with the EOS R. This is a joke, people should buy 0 EOS R to shake this freaking company and make them think about releasing something decent. 

Ok I understand, they have other advantages like ergonomics and so on. This does not and cannot justify the above. They do not need 4K120P RAW sure, just DECENT spec. Even if they have the lowest spec of the competition. But staying 5 years behind is so ridiculous. 
Stop defending what can't be. 
 

I did a quick skintone and motion test between the two cameras.  Will do a more thorough test tomorrow.
Let me know thoughts.
C200 was donated for the test by Friendly Films!
http://www.friendlyfilms.co/

Sharing a few pics

Cheers! It still looks a little darker here than it did in FCPX or in the exported still before upload. I was using the Sigma 18-35 at f2, ISO 800 with a Tiffen Black Pro Mist 1/4 filter. Used Neat Video to process the noise, dropping the high frequency noise reduction to about -50% to avoid that plastic look and added some sharpening. Neat Video is incredible.

@HockeyFan12 You've inspired me to do some more tests in the same spot and mess around a little with the exposure. I'll report back later this week.

Exposure is a funny old thing with this camera in RAW so far. I took it out for a walk last night around Friedrichshain in Berlin, tough conditions. The max ISO I'm wanting to push this too at the moment is around 1600, and when there isn't enough available light to overexpose the image you're going to have noisy shadows. Here's a screengrab before and after noise reduction – it's most obvious in the car windows. The noise reduction did an incredible job.

 

Either way, while middle grey should be exposed at around 38% with CLOG3, I'm tending to want to overexpose and bring down the exposure in post. The highlight retention is really impressive, and it helps combat the noisy shadows.

edit: The upload seems to have crushed the image a fair bit, but the noise is still visible.

It looks very underexposed to me but I wasn't there. And I haven't seen the ungraded image so I can't say. I found my light meter correlates pretty well with the C100 and C300's internal meters in Canon Log 1, and produces results similar to what Canon's white papers would predict, but that does result in a significantly darker image than most people shoot, and I wasn't very scientific about things at all. Pro DPs have informed me my meter (758 cine) might as well be junk, and the pros either use Pentax digital spot meters or Spectras.
Regardless, it matched pretty well, but I found myself underexposing significantly more than online sample footage.
Looking at Canon's white papers:
https://learn.usa.canon.com/app/pdfs/white_papers/White_Paper_Clog_optoelectronic.pdf (page 6)
The original C300 has a 5.3/6.7 over/under at base ISO (850) in Canon Log. So 5.3 stops in the highlights, 6.7 in the shadows.
The C300 Mk II (and C200, presumably) has an over/under of 6.3/8.7 in Canon Log 2 (at ISO 800):

So it gains a stop in the highlights, and gains two stops in the shadows. Not sure I buy it. The C300 seemed to have 12 stops for real, but the C200 doesn't seem to have 15 stops for real...
Arri Log has a 7.4/6.6 over/under, at 800 ISO on the Alexa Classic:

I don't trust that either. The Alexa Mini in my experience has FAR more highlight and shadow detail than that would indicate, and Arri's newer charts show 7.8 stops over at 800 ISO (and internally but not publicly Arri rate the Alexa Mini's sensor at 15+ stops, not 14+ stops–even 15+ seems conservative to me.) I'd guess 7.8/8+ for the Alexa Mini based on my experience with it, and with a more aesthetically clean noise pattern than the C200. That said, the Alexa has very noisy shadows, much like the C200, and much noisier than non-cinema cameras with noise reduction or highly compressed codecs like dSLRs, and possibly noisier than would be acceptable to most on this forum, especially at 3200K.
Based on what I've seen online (tests at CML), the C200 at base appears to have 1.5 stops less highlight detail than the Alexa Mini at base, but shadow detail is similar, which correlates with the numbers above. And based on my own experience shooting with the Alexa Classic and C300, this seems pretty consistent with that.
What I'm getting at, is when you rate the C200 two stops slower to get cleaner shadows, you might get more shadow detail but you're moving your over/under to 4.3/10.7. That's 3.5 stops less highlight detail than the Alexa Mini, which is the gold standard, and which still has far less highlight detail than 5219.
I know this is all complicated/unscientific since I'm trying to dig up random figures online from sources that get them in different ways and I also think Arri is super conservative on their shadow detail numbers, so I'm throwing my own bias into it. But for me, a 4.3 over seems about accurate for the C200 overexposed two stops or shot at 200 ISO and for me it's unacceptable. I know there are DPs who can light their way around this limitation, and many on this board do all the time, but I'm not one of them. I mostly work in post, for me this is hard!
I think it's also a matter of taste. Online, it seems there's a big aversion to digital noise. Whereas with film, grain was an aesthetic choice, and it doesn't really bother me, and it seems to be less of a concern on the tv shows and features I've worked on because those are being viewed in theaters or on tv, not being pixel-peeped. I'm a bit old school and come from a film background so for me I would probably just rate at 800 ISO or 640 ISO rather than ETTR, and embrace the noisy shadows, while realizing the C200's image is too noisy for most at base ISO. And definitely noisier than I wish it were.
Pick your poison I guess. For me, I'll take highlight detail over clean shadows, and I can't think of anything else other than the EVA1 maybe that would work for me.
That said, what you posted looks much more underexposed than I'd expect. I wish my meter were better calibrated and my lenses had t-stops rather than f-stops so I could investigate this myself in a way that might be useful to others, but I don't want to spread any misinformation online if I can avoid it. So while I plan to get my hands on a C200 and see how it works when I meter it with my 758cine, I'd rather not draw conclusions for others based on that experience, as I am biased and my equipment improperly calibrated for meaningful tests.
But you've inspired me to run my own tests to figure out how I'll meter in the future, since it's all internally consistent within my inconsistent ecosystem at least.  
Thanks for the measurements on the screen. Looks like the Kinotehnik loupes will be a bit too small.  The Hoodman loupes are much worse but their 4" riser might work and still be cheap.

Thanks, very interesting. In theory that should work almost exactly as an incident meter would (though with the limitation that whatever's facing the camera is lit by whatever source is hitting it frontally, so a bit trickier to meter for some lighting set ups that aren't front-lit, but if anything that would likely promote overexposure).
Are there zebras or false color for RAW clipping or just for CLOG3? I supposed the clipping point might overlap, so maybe either way would work. I wouldn't need a spot meter at all if I had false color, but I'm not talented enough to light without an incident meter.
I would personally expect a much brighter image than what you posted if the footage were exposed with an incident meter at key (or a gray card at key, same result), so perhaps overexposing a bit is a good idea. I do remember from my days shooting slide film I'd try to get the darkest part of the sky at 18% gray to get a vivid sunset, in which case everything else would be a black silhouette in lighting similar to what you posted. But I also noticed with the Sony F5 that 2000 ISO base was really more like 1000-1200 ISO and if you exposed that way you had a ton of DR, double what slide film had at least; the A7S also benefits from a stop or two pull (imo). I'm not a big ETTR fan because I think it changes the color of some objects and can cause banding with some codecs, but it does seem like a good idea with digital cameras to overexpose a bit, and the more experienced members of this forum all advocate ETTR.
5000 ISO maximum would be similar to the C500. I do think the C200 appears to have very noisy shadows, likely noisier than the C500 and certainly with a different (imo worse) texture.
 

You’ll smile when you read this. 
After a brain spasm of a meeting today - the choice has been made and has gone ahead. 
It’s the EVA1, GH5S and GH5. The Atomos Sumo will join the EVA1. (@Sage will love this). 
We also need to update our gimbal. At the moment it’s a toss up between the Ronin-S and Tilta G2X? Tough. 
After all is said and done, I’m going to cry for week as I’ll be living on instant noodles and cheap biscuits for a while! ?

Where'd you get such a good price? $6k US is about my cutoff so I would have jumped on that, too.
And Jeez... I might switch to FCPX. How good is its integration with After Effects and Resolve? I don't use dynamic link (I export to After Effects manually) so dynamic link isn't an advantage to me, but I'd want to be able to render out/export 4k 444 ProRes in Canon Log 2 without a LUT and then ingest that into a timeline that's otherwise raw light and edit online in raw light. Amazed to hear it's real time on an older machine... maybe I won't need to upgrade after all.  
Then again I don't even really need 4k, but the extra highlight dynamic range on this and 60p seem nice...
Or how is the online/offline workflow in FCPX?
I've used the 18-35mm on a C100 and a C300 and I noticed that, compared with the 17-55mm f2.8 IS (of which I think I had two copies) the image is shakier when using the viewfinder, and significantly. But if you rig up a shoulder rig (I love the Shape offset rig, not the standard one, but the offset one, though you need a loupe for the viewfinder imo) and balance it okay.... I think the 18-35mm is great handheld and even lenses up to 135mm are fine without IS. Most ops I know prefer not to use any IS at all and instead rely on shoulder rigs, but I have to admit the 55-250mm STM for instance is magic and rarely glitches out or misbehaves enough to ruin a shot, while being stable enough to use without any rig at all (not the case without IS).

Stoked to have bought the camera last week. Everything brand new in the box for around 5,500€ which I feel was a pretty good price. Bought a couple of Komputerbay CFAST cards which seem to be working out well so far. I've heard they can be hit and miss but didn't feel like paying 2x that price for the Sandisk.

The camera is a dream to operate, but I'm kind of surprised how tricky it is to shoot RAW at first. My first tests had a ton of noise, and the post-production workflow in FCPX makes things a little complicated by automatically applying a Canon CLOG 2 viewing LUT. Started grading the RAW footage first and then applying a standard Alexa Log LUT from IMPULZ and have been seeing some great results. The 4K 10bit 60fps is really beautiful and produces really smooth, rich results. Will be testing it out over the coming fortnight and will hopefully edit something together to show some results.

Oh, one thing. FCPX is magic. I'm on a maxed out 2014 Macbook Pro (yes, 2014) and I can smoothly playback and grade the RAW before transcoding. Which is insane. After creating proxies and throwing a little more footage on the timeline I've had hardly any issues at all.

Also, if anyone has used the C200 and the Sigma 18-35, could they share their experiences? I'm looking into grabbing that but not sure how it would be to operate handheld without lens IS. 

https://twitter.com/BRUCKHEIMERJB/status/1004433006822612992
 
 
This is what a DoP commented over on the DVXuser thread:

 
 

Stoked to have bought the camera last week. Everything brand new in the box for around 5,500€ which I feel was a pretty good price. Bought a couple of Komputerbay CFAST cards which seem to be working out well so far. I've heard they can be hit and miss but didn't feel like paying 2x that price for the Sandisk.

The camera is a dream to operate, but I'm kind of surprised how tricky it is to shoot RAW at first. My first tests had a ton of noise, and the post-production workflow in FCPX makes things a little complicated by automatically applying a Canon CLOG 2 viewing LUT. Started grading the RAW footage first and then applying a standard Alexa Log LUT from IMPULZ and have been seeing some great results. The 4K 10bit 60fps is really beautiful and produces really smooth, rich results. Will be testing it out over the coming fortnight and will hopefully edit something together to show some results.

Oh, one thing. FCPX is magic. I'm on a maxed out 2014 Macbook Pro (yes, 2014) and I can smoothly playback and grade the RAW before transcoding. Which is insane. After creating proxies and throwing a little more footage on the timeline I've had hardly any issues at all.

Also, if anyone has used the C200 and the Sigma 18-35, could they share their experiences? I'm looking into grabbing that but not sure how it would be to operate handheld without lens IS. 

Hi Guys,
Here are some screens from a short I recently wrote/directed. Originally planned to use the Varicam LT but availability was scarce at the time of our shooting days. All in all using the C200 was pretty cool to use. Our colorist said that there was some slight noise issues in the shadows but the color cleaned up well. I can post ungraded raw tiffs in here if anyone wants to see any.
peace

Maybe they tried that last time and are why they're getting me now ?

Now we all shoot at 800 asa. actually, I have heard some younger people get upset if they can't shoot at 1600 asa.  Pretty amazing to me.
Since most modern cameras can do this easily, and that gives you enough natural light in most locations, you just come in and shoot.  The style these days is use what already exists, and augment the lighting, and use grip to subtract light.
Subtracting light.  Before ASA 800, when many of us were shooting at around 200 ASA, you would add light.
Now we show up, use a window light - maybe put one light outside of it, and then 4-7 pieces of gripwear to cut it. 
Toppers, cutters, siders, eggcrates.   
But a recent job I did for a liquor commercial, we were shooting with the digital bolex as a b camera.  The bolex is a beautiful organic image, with a ccd sensor for beautiful motion and the ability to use 16mm glass, which is beautiful and lightweight.  We lit for this camera's low native iso, and the A camera, the alexa, we set at 200 ASA as well. 
At 200 ASA, I was back to where I started 10 years ago, and it was thrilling again.  
Light didn't spill all over the place - it faded into the darkness, had lots of falloff - and everything was deliberate. We Could liGHT up spaces deep in the bar with red color, and push light into areas we wanted, and hide the rest.  It was easier to do, since there were less stands to place on the ground and less rigging to do.
Grip takes up a lot of space and stands.   Lights -  not as much.
And we ended up making the bar more interesting than what it was - we transformed it. 
(I'll post videos and stills once the spots are released.
It was putting on a different brain from an earlier era - cause we had to move a different way. 
And we painted with 1k tungsten lights in a jem ball again and got that tungsten warmth again.  That color of a tungsten fresnel - it has a golden warmth to it.  Coming back to it, it reminded me of how unmatched by LEDs which have more green and yellow in them than that pure lovely orange glow are these chinese balls.
To rediscover those old tungsten fresnel units, that was also important to me.  These old lights you can now get as every grip house throws them out, as the world has moved onto led lighting like skypanels, these old lights are a thing of beauty.

And purchased. Very excited to put this camera through it's paces. If anyone had some specific technical questions they'd like investigated, happy to add them to my list when I get my hands on it next week. Looking to use it for my next doc, which will probably mix Raw Lite with the 8 bit codec.