Simple colour grading > Camera colour science (Why you should learn to colour grade)

[kye]

On 11/13/2023 at 12:57 AM, PannySVHS said:

-Deleted by request

My advice is to take this as a learning opportunity and tighten up your business practices.

I've heard this story over and over again in every industry you can think of, where someone acts in good faith and then gets ripped off, and it happens time and time again until they learn to push back and say no, and start enforcing the terms of their contract (and having a contract) and not starting work without up-front payments etc.  As soon as you do that, the people will test you and push you, then once you hold your ground the leeches realise you're not a soft target anymore and either they start treating you with respect or you never hear from them again.

The most memorable example was a person who recorded an entire album in their recording studio for a band, only charging them $500 for a weeks work because they liked the band and wanted to help them out and they had no money etc.  The band refused to pay, claiming poverty, etc etc.  Then one day the band turns up in a limousine, with a $2000 per day PR / Management executive in a suit, and still wanted the master recording for free.....

Speaking of how life can be difficult for colourists, I was watching an interview with a colourist the other day and he said that in the 80s/90s he was colour grading rap videos and the rappers used to rock up to his colour grading suite for the session with cocaine and Uzi machine guns!  He told them to put the cocaine away and to put the Uzi's back in the limo!!

[MrSMW]

3 hours ago, kye said:

I've heard this story over and over again in every industry you can think of, where someone acts in good faith and then gets ripped off, and it happens time and time again until they learn to push back and say no, and start enforcing the terms of their contract (and having a contract) and not starting work without up-front payments etc.  As soon as you do that, the people will test you and push you, then once you hold your ground the leeches realise you're not a soft target anymore and either they start treating you with respect or you never hear from them again.

This for 23 years.

Since I moved to a payment up front system (for me it’s 1/3rd at the time of booking, 1/3rd 6 months to job date and final 1/3rd 1 month prior), I have never had a single issue with payment.

But payment of course is not the whole story and booking the ‘right’ kind of clients is the rest of it.

OK easier said than done in some industries and some financial situations but as Kye says, having a contract with T&C’s is key when it comes to any dispute.

Not opinion or any other factor, but what does the contract state that in my case reads, “We the undersigned have read, understood and agree to be bound by the T&C’s of this contract”. The T&C’s are essentially 10 points on a single side of A4 for clarity.

In business, some folks will try and test you from time to time and it feels personal and there is always that concern in your mind about how far someone might take something and whether your case will stand up.

But if it’s clear and it’s factual and you remain calm and professional, they always go away empty handed.

I have been tested I think 7 times now out of 800+ clients and despite the threats and blustering from some, not a single one took it beyond that when I said very politely, “no”.

Sadly it is just part of running any business and you have to make sure you have covered your own back.

Fortunately…at least on my case, awful people are a rarity.

[TomTheDP]

On 11/12/2023 at 6:36 PM, kye said:

I am reviewing my lineup and decided to compare the OG BMPCC to the GH5, and ended up filming shot-by-shot duplicates and matching them in post.  The results were surprising.  I noticed that lots of shots had differences because the vNDs on the two setups were in different orientations and polarised the scene differently, but unless you were doing a direct comparison then that wouldn't be noticeable.

GH5 was with 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens, shooting wide-open in 150Mbps UHD / HLG.  P2K was with 12-35mm F2.8, shooting wide-open RAW.  1080p timeline as always.

I graded each P2K shot and then graded the GH5 to match.

Biggest difference is the one looks softer, would assume it's the Pocket. The color of the foliage also looks different but it's not as noticeable. 

[kye]

1 hour ago, TomTheDP said:

Biggest difference is the one looks softer, would assume it's the Pocket. The color of the foliage also looks different but it's not as noticeable. 

The order of each pair is the same, cam A then cam B.  Were your observations consistent?

I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't perfectly match the softness, considering the difference in lenses and resolutions.

When I was done I noticed that in some shots the greens were more blue and others were more yellow, but I also noticed that it wasn't consistent which way around it was.  I went back and checked, and it wasn't consistent, so it was just my grading.

For my purposes, I concluded that it was irrelevant, even if I was using them both on the same shoot.  If someone watches your video and their comment was "the hues of the trees didn't match" then that's a comment about your ability to tell an engaging story, not on your colour grading!!

[TomTheDP]

20 minutes ago, kye said:

The order of each pair is the same, cam A then cam B.  Were your observations consistent?

I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't perfectly match the softness, considering the difference in lenses and resolutions.

When I was done I noticed that in some shots the greens were more blue and others were more yellow, but I also noticed that it wasn't consistent which way around it was.  I went back and checked, and it wasn't consistent, so it was just my grading.

For my purposes, I concluded that it was irrelevant, even if I was using them both on the same shoot.  If someone watches your video and their comment was "the hues of the trees didn't match" then that's a comment about your ability to tell an engaging story, not on your colour grading!!

Second image has a lot more detail each time but that certainly could be the lens. The GH5 resolves a lot more detail though as its 5k downsampled to 4K or HD, over just straight up HD. 

I am still a fan of HD as unless its a side by side it looks detailed enough. Though the GH5 was great with having no moire. 

[kye]

5 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

Second image has a lot more detail each time but that certainly could be the lens. The GH5 resolves a lot more detail though as its 5k downsampled to 4K or HD, over just straight up HD. 

I am still a fan of HD as unless its a side by side it looks detailed enough. Though the GH5 was great with having no moire. 

Well, this is a bit embarrassing!

I did a detailed comparison between then when I was grading, but I must have picked an area that was slightly out of focus or something, because looking at the images I posted they're not even close!!

Here are some updated images with a couple of blurs added.    Just for fun I added a slightly emphasised halation-like one so I've tipped the balance slightly in the opposite direction now.....

 

[PannySVHS]

Looking great! @kyeGh5 is indeed a great performer. Btw I haf mentioned a bug before about its performance in Vlog, big pink uniform blotches on skin while using the 10bit Long Gop. I found one example again and it is not funny revising it. Have you encountered that artefact?

[kye]

3 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Looking great! @kyeGh5 is indeed a great performer. Btw I haf mentioned a bug before about its performance in Vlog, big pink uniform blotches on skin while using the 10bit Long Gop. I found one example again and it is not funny revising it. Have you encountered that artefact?

I don't have V-LOG on the GH5 - I just use the HLG profile and CST using rec2100 which works fine 🙂

[PannySVHS]

I liked the results I got from the GH5 in HLG, the few times I was using it instead of VLog, same for the S1. I will revise that footage some time soon. Don't recall, if I did a cst to VLog or directly to 709. Btw, what's the difference between idt and cst? cheers

5 hours ago, kye said:

I don't have V-LOG on the GH5 - I just use the HLG profile and CST using rec2100 which works fine 🙂

 

[kye]

6 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I liked the results I got from the GH5 in HLG, the few times I was using it instead of VLog, same for the S1. I will revise that footage some time soon. Don't recall, if I did a cst to VLog or directly to 709. Btw, what's the difference between idt and cst? cheers

In this context IDT and CST are the same thing.

I think that IDT is an acronym from ACES (Input Device Transform) which obviously is used to transform from the input devices' colour space to ACES, whereas CST is a Colour Space Transform which can go from any space to any other space, and you might use them in various places in the node graph for various purposes.

I've seen colourists put a CST as their first node transforming from camera to working colour space, but label it IDT, and the output one ODT, so it's more of a terminology thing at this point.  I've heard colourists say that you can tell that people who use IDT and ODT learned colour management at a certain time period or on certain equipment, so it sort-of dates you in a sense.

The other reason you might use the IDT / ODT acronyms is that Resolve only displays very short node labels (if they're too long it chops the end off) so IDT and ODT are short and useful node names.