» Posts Tagged ‘colorscience’
Knowing Your Scopes: When to Trust Your Eye and the Most Useful Scopes of All
Depending on the acquisition system, waveform monitors and vectorscopes can guide quality control of your imagery from shooting all the way down the pipeline to grading, mastering, and compression for delivery. Scopes can seem a little intimidating and esoteric to the new user, but getting the basics down can really help in owning your image. Recently, Alexis Van Hurkman over at ProVideo Coalition has answered some key questions about scopes: find out which ones he considers the most indispensable below, plus when it may be a good idea to trust your own pair of eyes in making adjustments — even when your scopes are reading ‘A-Okay.’ More »
Building Color Models and Exploring Color Spaces in Three Dimensions with Blender
Color spaces and color models can be difficult to wrap your head around completely. There are additive and subtractive spaces, like RGB vs. CMYK, and different format/display technologies, like analog’s YUV vs. digital’s YCbCr — all of which you may have to traverse to achieve the final ‘look’ you want for your imagery. Not to mention that many color spaces are not absolute, meaning they don’t profile device-specific color representation. This can certainly induce a bit of a headache for newcomers to the color science realm. A great post by photographer Mark Meyer, featured recently on PetaPixel, explains how you can quite literally better-orient yourself to color spaces and models by, well, modeling them — in 3D open suite Blender, no less. More »
Panasonic's Revolutionary New 'Micro Color Splitter' Sensor Filter Doubles Light Sensitivity
The most common way we get color images with digital cameras is with a Bayer pattern CMOS sensor, but there are plenty of variations on that design being used today. The upcoming Aaton Penelope Delta uses a Bayer pattern over a Dalsa CCD, for example, while the RED EPIC-M Monochrome uses the MX CMOS sensor foregoing color filtration entirely. By their very nature, though, color filters of any kind cut down the amount of light transmitted to the sensor. That’s why Panasonic is developing a brand new type of color filter that will employ diffraction to split up the color spectrum, instead of filtration, and thus will be capable of doubling the light sensitivity of the sensor. More »
Tutorials Galore: Dailies in DaVinci Resolve, CinemaDNG to ACES Conversion, Plus What's a LUT?
Ever asked yourself, “What in the f#$% is a LUT?!” Or what a LUT’s relationship is with color space? Or what a color space is? If “yes,” not to worry — these concepts can be fairly confusing. Fortunately, engineering can and will work for you as an artist, so long as your understanding of it covers the fundamentals. And even if you answered “no” to all the above, you should still check out some of outstanding basic-breakdowns of these concepts below — including how to convert CinemaDNG footage into the Academy Color Encoding Spec color space (ACES) in Davinci Resolve, plus how to use that very program to generate dailies (like a boss). More »
Getting Started with Color Correction: Using Waveforms and Scopes with Colorist Steve Hullfish
The colorist’s job has gotten a whole lot easier since chemical baths stepped out of the picture in many cases. Non-destructive color timing is the future in which we now live — that said, the principles at work in creating properly balanced imagery is as important as ever. Each camera we may be shooting on has its own unique implications in chromatic reproduction, and the ability to delicately correct a given color mixture (regardless of its source) is key. Ironically, or not, tools such as waveform monitors and vectorscopes — staples of the bygone analog video world — are as relevant today as ever in filmmaking, if not more so. A recent presentation by noted color correction author Steve Hullfish demonstrates precisely this point, as well as the basics in using your scopes to full advantage. More »
As artists of a visual medium, we know when something looks “good” or “right” and we know something doesn’t. Of course, “good” is a lot more subjective than “right,” and that’s part of the beauty of what we do. One of the things that directly determines such qualities of an image is the color science of the given camera we’re working with. The color science of every manufacturer is different, and depending on the guts of the camera, each camera may differ as well. Art Adams at ProVideo Coalition has just posted a great, in-depth analysis of the various color matrices of the Canon C300 and what individual flair they bring to your imagery. Read on for some of his findings. More »
If you’re a RED owner or you’ve been following the company, you know that they’re constantly updating their hardware and software to add more functionality as well as fix bugs. One of the bigger releases recently was an update to their color science which included a new color preset that supposedly can give great results without much fiddling. It should be noted that the other cameras competing in the high-end cinema space, the Sony F65 and the Arri Alexa, have both also been receiving a steady stream of firmware updates that also add functionality. For example, the F65 added playback in-camera not too long ago — so it’s clear that these high-resolution cameras require a bit more engineering since they are basically computers with lenses. For what’s new in version 3.3, check out the video below: More »
As noted previously, RED has a new color science and gamma curve for their RAW-shooting cameras: REDgamma3 and REDcolor3. The new color science comes with a new camera firmware — version 3.0.0, which is a release build (not beta) for both EPIC and SCARLET — and there’s a new version of REDCINE-X as well. RED’s Jim Jannard explained the color science updates with the following — note that if you’re doing a full grade, your gamma setting will still be REDlogfilm, but you should expect to employ the new color science alongside that gamma curve: More »
The good and bad thing about RED cameras is, more so than most, they’re always getting better. RED fanboys espouse the free updates as “getting a new camera in a software update” whereas RED haters call the cameras “always in beta.” The truth is somewhere in the middle, but even taking into account the usual hype on REDUSER, it’s worth noting a few things coming down the line from Jim Jannard, et al. The first is a $10K home/grading suite projector that is 4K and 3D (one or the other, or both at the same time?), and the other is REDgamma3 and REDcolor3, which will be a color science update for both the cameras and REDCINE-X. More »
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