About contrast and color spaces

[Vesku]

i found a very good article about all possible color spaces:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pointers_gamut.htm

It has an interesting table of contrast ratios. Is it true that in cinema we can see 11-13 stops DR and larger color gamut than with a good vivid TV? In my experience the image in cinema is normally faint and low contrast compared to bright TV. A cinema standard for pure white is only 48nits.

It is also a surprise that film negative and film projection has very large DR (15 stops). My experience in not confirming that either.

 

[sondreg]

Take contrast ratios in displays with a grain of salt. The thing that makes a difference are the amount of nits.

[webrunner5]

This article, towards the bottom, shows some DR ratings between Film and Digital cameras.

https://wolfcrow.com/blog/where-cameras-stand-in-dynamic-range-film-vs-digital/

[Vesku]

1 hour ago, sondreg said:

Take contrast ratios in displays with a grain of salt. The thing that makes a difference are the amount of nits.

Yes it is the thing I wonder when cinema has only 48nits and gray blacks but still huge color space and DR?

[Vesku]

I think there is no HDR in cinema yet. The brightness and contrast in cinema projection is not good enough. Even if the cinema projector has very high contrast the light reflecting from theater pollutes the contrast ratio.

[sondreg]

On 7.12.2017 at 2:53 PM, Vesku said:

Yes it is the thing I wonder when cinema has only 48nits and gray blacks but still huge color space and DR?

Just like how the screen on your phone still looks great (depending on phone ofcourse) even when dimmed all the way down indoors. You don't need a lot of nits if the environment is dark.

[Vesku]

I just found a new cinema tech introducing 10 times more light than current best cinema projectors. In dark theater the reflecting light pollution ruins the contrast but this will be interesting.

 

[kaylee]

3 hours ago, Vesku said:

I just found a new cinema tech introducing 10 times more light than current best cinema projectors. In dark theater the reflecting light pollution ruins the contrast but this will be interesting.

 

totally the future. i have zero interest in my films being "projected". im like a reverse tarantino – quentin hates this stuff so much lol

[maxotics]

Take out your spot meter and put all that rubbish in perspective

[Vesku]

I watched the new Star Wars in big premium theater with Barcos newest 4k laser projector. The projected image was quite bright but the contrast was poor. The black level was "gray" and colors has no vivid DCI-P3 look. My rec709 TV has better contrast and more vivid colors. The theater has  very black interior so the poor black level comes from projector. Surprisingly the 4k image quality was also noisy, something like GH5 iso3200 look. I think they have added tons of film grain because the IQ cant be so noisy otherwise. It may be some kind of retro thing.

Dolby Atmos was good but very loud. Explosions sounded realistic and my fingers went to my ears automatically in some scenes. Everything was too loud and the otherwise pure and good sound distorted in my ears. Even dialogues was unpleasant and hard.

 

[Julien416]

5 hours ago, Vesku said:

I think they have added tons of film grain because the IQ cant be so noisy otherwise. It may be some kind of retro thing

That retro thing is called film... *sigh*

[maxotics]

6 hours ago, Vesku said:

I think they have added tons of film grain because the IQ cant be so noisy otherwise

Film-grain, or noise, is added to reduce visual distortion.  Imagine someone is going to drop you on a desert island for 20 years and you have two choices of what music system to bring with you.  A) You can bring an old phonograph player with 100 scratched records (vinyl say).  B) You can bring a stereo with unlimited scratch-free songs; however, the sound level is set just 5 db above where the sound gets distorted.  Which would you choose?

We (humans) can tolerate huge levels of noise in sound and vision.  Yet we can barely tolerate the smallest amounts of distortion.  All digital media is inherently distorted.  All values in 0s and 1s.  The only reason it doesn't sound/look distorted, is we sample enough to remove the effect.  HOWEVER,  as many audiophiles will tell you, subconsciously the distortion may still bother you. 

I've written in many other posts that many don't get, that it's more important we have reduced color distortion in 6 stops of dynamic range, than higher dynamic range with more color distortion.   Bottom line, I don't care how new/expensive the equipment is, in a theater or in your camera bag, if you operate it without understanding the issues you can get very poor results.