Color - SOOC vs. LUTs/Grading

[SRV1981]

13 hours ago, kye said:

The image is too diffused and too cream and pastel green/brown for me

I tend to agree. I associate green/brown with Sony and you’re saying that more magenta (canon?) images can be had in Sony? Simple correction in camera white balance? Or only in post? 

 

13 hours ago, kye said:

Riza uses a huge amount of diffusion so everything looks hazy.

Maybe a 1/4 black mist? 1/8 may be better? Makes it look less sharp

 

13 hours ago, kye said:

People of this age are having climate anxiety in a big way, so it's a real thing in their world.

maybe - I fear existential crisis but like c70 colors lol. 

[kye]

15 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

@ac6000cw I find your example very harsh in contrast relations of certain tones and also in regard of saturation relations between some of the tones, like they are emitting light themselves. Just saying:)

When you say "like they are emitting light themselves" you have absolutely nailed the main problem of the video look.  I don't know if you are aware of this, so maybe you're already way ahead of the discussion here, but here's a link to something that explains it way better than I ever could (linked to timestamp):

This is why implementing subtractive saturation of some kind in post is a very effective way to reduce the "video look".  I have recently been doing a lot of experimenting and a recent experiment I did showed that reducing the brightness of the saturated areas, combined with reducing the saturation of the higher brightness areas (desaturating the highlights) really shifted the image towards a more natural look.

For those of us that aren't chasing a strong look, you have to be careful with how much of these you apply because it's very easy to go too far and it starts to seem like you're applying a "look" to the footage.  I'm yet to complete my experiments, but I think this might be something I would adjust on a per-shot basis.

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

I tend to agree. I associate green/brown with Sony and you’re saying that more magenta (canon?) images can be had in Sony? Simple correction in camera white balance? Or only in post? 

You'd have to see if you can adjust the Sony to be how you wanted, I'd imagine it would just do a gain adjustment on the linear reading off the sensor and then put it through the same colour profile, so maybe you can compensate for it and maybe not.  

TBH it's pretty much impossible to evaluate colour science online.  This is because:

• If you look at a bunch of videos online and they all look the same, is this because the camera can only create this look? or is this the default look and no-one knows how to change it?  or is this the current trend?
• If you find a single video and you like it, you can't know if it was just that particular location and time and lighting conditions where the colours were like this, or if the person is a very skilled colourist, or if it involved great looking skin-tones then maybe the person had great skin or great skill in applying makeup, or even if they somehow screwed up the lighting and it actually worked out brilliantly just by accident (in an infinite group of monkeys with typewriters one will eventually type Shakespeare) and the internet is very very much like an infinite group of monkeys with typewriters!
• The camera might be being used on an incredible number of amazing looking projects, but these people aren't posting to YT.  Think about it - there could be 10,000 reality TV shows shot with whatever camera you're looking at and you'd never know that they were shot on that camera because these people aren't all over YT talking about their equipment - they're at work creating solid images and then going home to spend whatever spare time they have with family and friends.  The only time we hear about what equipment is being used is if the person is a camera YouTuber, if they're an amateur who is taking 5 years to shoot their film, if they're a professional who doesn't have enough work on to keep them busy, or if the project is so high-level that the crew get interviewed and these questions get asked.
  There are literally millions of moderately successful TV shows, movies, YouTube channels that look great and there is no information available about what equipment they use.
• Let's imagine that you find a camera that is capable of great results - this doesn't tell you what kind of results YOU will get with it.  Some cameras are just incredibly forgiving and it's easy to get great images from, and there are other cameras that are absolute PIGS to work with, and only the worlds best are able to really make the most of them.  For the people in the middle (ie. not a noob and not a god) the forgiving ones will create much nicer images than the pigs, but in the hands of the worlds best, the pig camera might even have more potential.

14 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Maybe a 1/4 black mist? 1/8 may be better? Makes it look less sharp

It's hard to tell, but it looks like it might even be 1/2.  You have to change the amount when you change the focal length, but I suspect Riza isn't doing that because of how she spoke about the gear.

It's also possible to add diffusion in post.  Also, lifting the shadows with a softer contrast curve can also have a similar effect.

 

[SRV1981]

7 hours ago, kye said:

If you find a single video and you like it

Agree! Been watching hours of footage and notice a personal bias toward canon images - and it seems to be the way they render color and skin regardless of user - it’s over hours of footage. 

 

7 hours ago, kye said:

the internet is very very much like an infinite group of monkeys with typewriters!

That’s us! 

 

7 hours ago, kye said:

YOU will get with it

Yes I get this, after feeling a little dejected from the original question and response I checked the subreddit “colorists” and there’s tons of threads and comments noting that they prefer to receive images from some cameras and brands over others. 
 

it seems to come down to difficulty - if you have the same face, scene, lighting etc and 5 different cameras or brands - these colorists had noted that to get the desirable look was much easier than others and frustrating and painstaking on others.  Which is why I felt it difficult to accept notions of makeup or learn color grading. The tools themselves can aid in that journey. 
 

I’ve learned through this that the way canon renders color, specifically skin, is my favorite look. That doesn’t mean I’ll go run out to grab an r5 or r8 - the feature set is far inferior to an a7s3 or a7iv, I think. 

I was curious what more knowledgeable folks preferred as their starting point tool. Do you use a gx85 for your travel and fs7 for work? Or is it an r5 for travel and fx6 for work, etc? That’s all I was hoping to discuss here and then follow with - “why did you choose that tool”. 
 

sometimes we bring our own gripes and biases to a question and don’t answer the quesirtin. 
 

that said, now my next question is can you achieve the same appeal of color on mid-level Sony bodies as you can on the canons that produce color I love. And if so, how easy is it to do? 
 

7 hours ago, kye said:

It's hard to tell, but it looks like it might even be 1/2

Great video - saw this years back I believe. That said. I loved the 1/8 look for general purpose filming but anything more was very stylized for my taste. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, SRV1981 said:

there’s tons of threads and comments noting that they prefer to receive images from some cameras and brands over others.

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

[SRV1981]

51 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

Yea and to clarify they’re referring to 10-bit cameras mostly. They do have preferences of canon Sony etc. 

[kye]

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Agree! Been watching hours of footage and notice a personal bias toward canon images - and it seems to be the way they render color and skin regardless of user - it’s over hours of footage. 

I understand that a person can look at a larger quantity of footage and notice similarities and themes, but there are still a great number of un-accounted-for variables that can always bite you in the ass if you were to actually get that camera.

The general look that cameras have online is likely to be the default look, partly because most people don't know the first thing about colour grading and mostly because the people who are posting videos and specifying the model number of the camera are likely in the shallow end of the skills pool, so to speak.  The exception is cinematographers doing camera tests, but these have their own issues.

The challenge comes in when you try and change the image in post.  Try to add a bit more contrast and you might find that the image doesn't keep the things you liked about the look.  In fact, the nicer the image looks SOOC or with the default LUT on it, the more fragile the image might be because the more pushed it will be.  The most flexible images are the most neutral, and our brain doesn't like neutral images, it wants ones with the right herbs and spices already added.

There really is no substitute for actually shooting with the camera the way that you shoot, in the situations you shoot in, and then grade it the way you grade it, trying to get the look you want, with your level of skill.

TBH, most of the videos I see that have the name of the camera in them, that are graded with a "look", actually look pretty awful and amateurish to me.  Either this is their lack of skill as colourist to not be able to get the look they wanted, or they did get the look they wanted and the look is just awful, but it's not a promising picture either way.

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Yes I get this, after feeling a little dejected from the original question and response I checked the subreddit “colorists” and there’s tons of threads and comments noting that they prefer to receive images from some cameras and brands over others. 

it seems to come down to difficulty - if you have the same face, scene, lighting etc and 5 different cameras or brands - these colorists had noted that to get the desirable look was much easier than others and frustrating and painstaking on others.  Which is why I felt it difficult to accept notions of makeup or learn color grading. The tools themselves can aid in that journey. 

I wonder how many of them are using colour management.

If a camera is a 10-bit LOG with decent bitrate then the camera is one CST away from being almost indistinguishable from any other camera.  Skin tones are a challenge of course, but when well-shot on capable equipment these are pretty straight-forward.

There's a few principles I think are at play here:

1. What I hear from high-level colourists is that if a project is well shot on capable equipment (without a "we'll fix it in post" mindset) then you can get your colour management setup, put a look in place, and 80% of the shots just fall into place.  Then the time can be spent refining the overall look, adding a specific look to certain scenes (night scenes, dream sequences, etc), fixing any problem shots, and then you'd do a fine-tune pass on all shots with very minor adjustments.
   If it's not well shot to get it mostly right in-camera then you're in all sorts of trouble for post.
    
2. If the client is inexperienced and doesn't know what they want, or they want something that is very different to how they shot the project.  It's very easy to see colour grading make big changes (e.g. shooting day for night) or see the amazing VFX work done by Hollywood etc, and assume that anyone with a grading panel and calibrated reference monitor can do anything with any footage.
    
3. If the client is a diva, or is somehow mentally unbalanced.  Film-making is difficult enough to make almost anyone mentally unbalanced by the time they get to post-production and they're sitting with the colourist and every mistake done at any point on the project is becoming clearly visible on the huge TV in their studio.  Throwing a fit at this point is perhaps a predictable human reaction!

One colourist I heard interviewed said that when they were colour grading rap videos in the 80's they had to tell one client who had about 20 people in the colour grading suite that the strippers, cocaine, and machine guns had to go back into the limo otherwise they wouldn't be able to colour grade the project.

Of course, none of this is the fault of the camera.

I'd even theorise that the brand of camera might be a predictor of how much the colour grading process was setup to fail - if people shot something on a Sony rather than a Canon you might find they're more likely to be a clueless and self-entitled influencer etc.  God help the colourists that are going to face a barrage of projects over the next few years shot on the FX3 where the person thinks the colourist can duplicate The Creator in post for a few thousand dollars! 

Also, the stronger the look you apply in post, the more those small colour science differences get lost in the wash.

It's also worth asking, do you think the colourists on reddit are the ones who are fully-booked with more professional clients who have realistic expectations, or the ones out there dealing with the stressed masses and going online to learn and vent?  My experience on the colourist forums is that the most experienced folks burn out from answering the same questions over and over again, and arguing with people who don't want to learn or put in the work, so the people who are there are mostly those early in their journeys.

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

that said, now my next question is can you achieve the same appeal of color on mid-level Sony bodies as you can on the canons that produce color I love. And if so, how easy is it to do? 

Only you can know this, because what you love will be different to what anyone else loves.

But don't ask random strangers online, actually try it.... 

https://sonycine.com/testfootage/

https://zsyst.com/sony-4k-camera-page/sony-f55-sample-footage-downloadable-samples/

🙂 

[SRV1981]

11 hours ago, kye said:

Only you can know this, because what you love will be different to what anyone else loves.

Haha I’d imagine some folks who own Sonys also love canon skintones. I’ll do some digging on the interwebs if nobody here has don’t it. 

[Evgeniy85]

On 4/25/2024 at 10:18 AM, eatstoomuchjam said:

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

Hollywood shoots ProRes for the most part, except for VFX plates.