Axel

I guess it's not a sensor problem, it must have to do with profiles. So there will be an answer, don't worry.

I didn't know the FS5 could record anything in 10-bit.

You don't seem to have a scope image at all. Perhaps it's actually a 1:3,55 image, (16x2)x9. More than even Cinerama (which needed a curved screen in any case), almost Polyvision. Very unfortunate to frame, impossible, really impossible for any kind of storytelling, because every cut becomes a jump cut. Why don't you just crop the image to get the AR?

Every picture profile, as shown in Dons pdf, favors certain ranges of colors at the cost of others which are then thinned out. They almost disappear, they're not recorded, gone. Skin is not a color, it's layers of different shades, dull surfaces, shiny surfaces, all reflect light of different colors, these things make skin in HD and UHD look alive (wasn't that important in SD, because you seldom could see skin texture). In 8-bit, those values are thinned out too much (16 million colors vs. 1 billion in 10-bit, 68 billions in 12-bit and 4 trillions in 14-bit). And especially if you go for an HDR approach (S-log). This is the solution. It's hard to do just by trial and error. Maybe the settings exist already in another forum or blog. For our old EX-3, we copied settings from BBC experts which set our minds at rest. As I wrote, I don't own the FS5, I just googled and found this. You might not finde these settings appropriate for your taste, and you will need some patience to find the right ones.

With just about every Sony camera I know (after correct WB setting), the skin always perfectly hits the skinline in the vectorscope. It's not a matter of wrong colors, it's a matter of too few warm colors, particularly in 8-bit. It's a matter of quantization. You can't invent richer skintones in Resolve if they aren't there in the first place. So you better look for a 'portrait mode'.

We don't own the FS5 but A7s and FS7. FS7 has the least 'problems' with skintones because of 10-bit, but out of the box they disappoint as well. For the A7s, the solution is: *no profile*, let alone Slog. Just a creative style called autumn leaves. The name describes what it does to the colors. There are a lot (unusual for Sony) of warm nuances, but subdued. Enough green to render convincing spring leaves and just enough blue, see this thread. There must be something like this for the FS5.

Well, the old 4:3 aspect ratio (which is, use your calculator, 1:1,33) multipiled by itself, equals 1:1,77, which is known as 16:9, the Pocket's only AR. Which again, multpiled by 1,33 makes 1:2,37. Why not 1:2,35, a.k.a. cinemascope? Because CS is an obsolete AR of analog cinema. Today it's called scope, 1:2,39. Or digital allegedly - Wikipedia - 1:2,36 (although in reality it's 1:2,38). Confusing? Don't let this stuff bother you. Your sequence preset should be either 2048 x 858 (cinema servers' "2k scope") or 1920 x 804 (most cinema servers will play this back too as long as that preset is correctly flagged in the DCP), with square pixels only. So: you don't squeeze the pixels, you squeeze the whole 1920 x 1080 image in Premiere, like a cinema anamorphic lens would have done so that it fits into the scope frame. Two pixels or so off won't be noticed by anybody.

It's done in grading software that way. Actually every node in Resolve treats it's successor as if it was a new, original footage, and you can also mix them.

Allegedly there are elements within those old colorimeters that age (don't know about the new ones). I had the Spyder3Pro, but lately I got better results by using the system's monitor calibration - and this means something, since I consider myself not very good at judging colors. So I guess you should better buy a new colorimeter. As long as it's supported by DisplayCAL, it doesn't need to be an expensive one.

Yes, exactly. People whose monitors have a blue cast will still be able to distinguish a well-graded Hollywood film from uncle Harry's wedding video. Because he has so many pin-up-centerfolds on the wall behind his desk with the monitor, he subconsciously drags all colors towards blue in Resolve. So the bridal couple will be too blue on the said people's screen.

I use Xrite i1 with i1 Profiler. For the Resolve monitor via Decklink mini monitor, I had a friend help me choose a cheap monitor (LG somewhat), with which you can change RGB levels individually, then it was first hardware calibrated with assistance of DispCalGUI (free) and i1 Profiler (the Xrite measures the color, then the software says i.e. add green until this mark is reached) and a monitor LUT was generated for Resolve. Complicated procedure. Funny, the colors on my program monitor look the same.

You don't mention your camera. I once had the GH2 (loved it). Users stated, they had more noise @ Iso200 than Iso640. In fact, tests with lens cap on proved Iso320 to have the least noise. This may very well have been the camera's so-called native Iso. That's also where you'd have the highest dynamic range. You should then only choose higher Isos that are dividable by that (i.e, 160, 320, 640, 1280, not 100, 200 etc.). Panasonic cameras also have a feature called "iDyn". Even in bright sunlight, the shadows are boosted separately, causing noise. Put it off. Test it with the demo (it will render a crossfade). You won't be able to play back the clip you applied Photon Pro to in real time, you will have to render it (ctrl + r), but at least it won't slow down FCP X's general performance (as Neat does to some extend, but not as much as the otherwise wonderful CoreMelt plugins, i.e. TrackX with the Mocha tracker). Rule of thumb: Use every API-plugin you want, but before you install something with own GUI, make a test and be sure you know how to de-install it. Known exception: ColorFinale won't slow down FCP X. > Run FCP X on El Capitan. It really makes the app run smoother, a streamlined OS for a streamlined NLE. Allegedly it boosts performance on older MBPs by 15%, but judging by my old MP, it's more. > Follow these advices to make FCP X more responsive (watch to the end where it says don't max out your disc space, this is in my experience the biggest factor in improving speed: fastest and biggest drives and the footage (read speed) always on a separate drive: > do use optimized media if your CPU is weak, but turn off background rendering. Individually render clips with lots of (or slow, such as denoising) effects. Render files can easily fill your limited disk space in the background. Then keep in mind, that even on a tiny MB (not "P"), people can edit 4k video, so don't despair:

Why wouldn't you buy a plugin? Neat Video certainly is the best, but it's not the cheapest. For just noisy shadows, Photon Pro (~ $30) can be sufficient, and it's faster in FCP X, because it has no alien GUI, it seems to have been made with Motion (one could build a lot of fast plugins for FCP X within Motion, but you'd need knowledge, experience and patience). You are right about the precision (or lack of) of the colorboards of FCP X. On the other hand, crushing blacks won't help much. Many use Resolve as FCP X's color-app, where you have unlimited precision. But what really helps is to avoid the 'noise floor' during the shoot. Visible noise is low SNR.

I am actually giving sponge baths to the elderly ... :-(

We are not on this earth to avoid suffering, we are here to wear ourselves out for the things we deem important (paraphrasing Kant). We shouldn't try to add more days to life but more life to the day (s.o. else). A friend of mine is always careful not to lose the clients' favor and makes too many compromises. With that behavior, I often told him (when again he complained about the stupidity of a demand), he had lost the clients' respect from the very start. It's like you said, a vicious cycle. If one thinks (he should better know) that he (or she of course) knows better, he should say so. Video is my domain, I am the one in charge. Make up your mind what you want to accomplish and leave the rest to me. I am not cheap, but if you want it cheap, get it done by your nephew (because those clients often seem to have a nephew with a DSLR). Kubrick once said (see my motto) Either you care - or you don't. Like many of Kubricks cryptic one-liners, it's almost taoistic wisdom. There are things that are worth every effort, subjectively and personally. One should fight for them and never compromise or give up. Then there are other things, things that don't feel important or at least important enough to invest too much time in them. Or any time at all. Then one shouldn't care.

Evidence still seems to be the most reliable thing, DNA evidence in particular. Yet scientific experiments prove the opposite, because evidence is not so evident after being interpreted by he police. In staged scenarios, interpreted by real crime scene investigators the bias rate still was around 5%. Doesn't this count as reasonable doubt? It's worse with confessions, especially if the suspects are family members. Subconscious guilt in conjunction with leading questions by interrogators who are prejudiced and psychologically poorly trained result in the, er, inception of wrong memories. Completely wrong in 15-20 % in tests. The suspects develop detailed plots of how they did it. Witnesses shouldn't be allowed in court anymore. Of all people who were asked about specific facts of a staged crime they witnessed, first only those reports were counted that the witnesses were sure about. 80 % of them failed in the most important respects! The fragmentary memories of the unsure rest were more often correct, but only if recorded immediately afterwards. Memory betrayes us. Everone states they knew exactly what they did when they first heard of 9-11. This turned out to be wrong too. People merge those connections to a coherent story, and those stories vary dependant on who asks them and how intense the interview gets. Details are left out or added. And if they were in a group at that time but interviewed seperately, the testimonies contradict each other. Minority reports everywhere. And 'standpoints', but little else ...

I had heard mixed reviews on The Revenant. So I went to see it with great expectations. Because if it's controversial, it might me interesting. If everybody likes it, it's probably dull, collective unconsciousness. I bought row 5, close to the screen (which I always do, regardless of the resolution), and I was immersed. When that special lucky horse fell and died, I felt sorry. When Glass used the corpse as a shelter, I physically felt the warmth and consolidation and hope and love and respect as I had felt the cold and despair before. The longer you live, the more you get the chance to develop taste. Taste needs comparison, background, context, open-mindedness, patience. I am 52 now, and when I saw the first Star Wars, I was overwhelmed. It was the biggest revelation in my (already with age 14) long history of love for cinema. There were more revelations to come, such as A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Blue Velvet (just the biggest three), but those needed the innocence of the former experiences to work. If you are 14 now, it seems you have no chance to understand my excitement. There was nothing comparable in the world, it was absolutely unexpected and fresh and new. But that's wrong. One can easily set aside all knowledge of what came later and see old films from the position of the contemporary audience. For that, of course, you need the knowledge of the historical background, the cultural atmosphere. And just the willingness to try. It's really rewarding. You can see The Gold Rush, a silent movie, as if it was new. Then you will also see the The H8ful 8 in a different light, it's qualities as well as it's (perhaps, it didn't start yet in my area) mediocrity. The need to tell each other stories is inherent. To me it seems, subjectively, that younger people don't have the patience to endure two hours of traditional 3-act-narrations. But neither do I. Particularly if the narrations keep repeating. Abrams' Star Wars was okay, it could have been worse, but it was old stuff nonetheless (since we discuss age here). The narrations young people prefer are their facebook profiles, which let them exchange mutual illusions (term from True Detective), uphold the fictions of their lifes. I don't subscribe to the theory that their attention span gets shorter. But undoubtedly they don't fall for tasteless remakes much longer.

With the appropriate effort, controlled lighting, make up, costumes, production design and digital re-lighting, you can do this with almost any camera. I saw a very sophisticated ad, shot with the A7s, and I would share the link, but unfortunately I have to leave for work now ...

Arguable. That's why I wrote popular philosophy. It's also known as the blockbuster look, as advertized by MagicBullet guru Stu Maschwitz. The pro arguments are valid. But others (among them the author of the Resolve manuals, Alexis vanHurkman) claim that skin should always be allowed to reflect light and therefore shouldn't be of a specific color (and also that light always should have a color, a "mood-cast" if you will), which makes the whole o/t approach useless. Another point is that this kind of grading is so common now that it makes films almost indistinguishable in terms of visual style. But don't mistake this grading for the BM sensor's "color science".

No. It's orange/teal grading, which by a popular philosophy optimizes the color contrast and heightens overall clarity of the image. Background is, that when you grade perfect and vivid skintones (which is really very easy with BM footage, as well in ProRes as in raw of course), turquois is the contrasting color, the opposite on the color wheel. This can be done with GH4 and A7s as well, only that both (particularly the Sony) can't capture this range of skintones in the first place, so it will never look that good.

Breathtaking images. The outrageous subject of them make them even stronger. The riders of the Apocalypse. But, to be honest, in order to make the point, the film should have shown more empathy for the anxiety of the animals. Because this ritual really violates their primal instincts, and in the way you presented it, there is still too much understanding for the dark fascination that let the tradition survive.

Very good.

I agree, very good visuals.

I forgot to notice the cameras you used whilst watching this. It's a very well-told and well-made film. What sequencer do you use? BTW: you are right with the 4k viewing, but there are still a lot of compression artifacts left. You might try to dither the scenes with black shadows in them with a small dose of 'film grain'. Then you could upload again as ProResLT or DNxHD. Yeah, I know, a very massive file for almost 19 minutes, but no need to go over 1080 then.

@j.f.r. That's what I said. See those colors. Now the said FS7 - with cards, batteries and one good lens (that means speedbooster!) is just below €10.000. And despite all the advantages, built-in ND, a zillion profiles and auto modes, native 4k, you won't reach this quality (or can someone, please!, show me an example?). Raw or ProRes? Graded from scratch or with (which) Lut?