Axel

I don't expect BM to deliver a meter for color temperature for a future firmware (BTW: What about this? I only found it this minute, can't test it though, because I have only iPhone4, but it says: "in this versione is included a color spectrum analyzer for color temperature mesurement. the value of color temperature is showed in Kelvin from 2000K to 10000K."). But you are right. Having both a correct measure and values in steps of at least 300°K would make things a lot easier (I read somewhere years ago that the human eye was practically incapable of judging color temperature, but that a difference of 300°K - i.e, through mix of different light sources - would start to be noticable as a cast on film).

Now the penny has dropped. Thank you for patiently explaining it all again. As some FAQ-sites ask: Was this answer helpful? It was. Thread bookmarked.

This is the way to go. It's what you learn in every CC tutorial, you need to enhance the image step by step, in logic order, be it through a line of stacked corrections (FCP X), rooms and multiple secondary CCs (Color) or a node tree (Resolve). Enhancing means knowing what you want to achieve before and get there by successively 'destroying' (in the sense a sculptor takes away material, not as degrading) and /or adding and changing values. And why not take a neutralized (optimized for exposure and color fidelity) primary CC and apply an FC stock emulation? This could add a very subtle look. The most prestigious task is not finding a pleasing look (it may be for a music video), it is getting the style right. No haphazard experiments with flavours one has no idea from which elements they are composed. For a feature film, the director and the production designer often start with moodboards. Those are collages of photographs, sketches and bits of fabrics that help define how the film should feel. This predetermines a lot of all the things (including costumes, sets and lighting) contributing to the look, let's rather say style, desired for the final film. Ideally, imo, I am aware what I want before I start grading. Obviously I was wrong when I accused FC of muddying the water. But it can, if you are not aware of what it's all about.

Do they? Even with Chromes translator, I find it hard to follow. But I doubt this very much. It's a good example though how 8-bit can't reproduce a high dynamic range. One of the shortcomings of this camera (I came to love so deeply) was the banding in contrasty grades, a thing I didn't encounter with my BMPCC.

The GH3 can record up to 11 stops, spread in adventurous curves over the (less than) 256 steps. If the BMPCC can only record 9 stops, it does so in 1024 linear steps (Film-LOG). There is way more detail between the stops, and there is way more color information (16 million nuances vs. over a trillion). Take the image from this post from a german thread. Does this picture contain 13 stops dynamic range? I doubt so. I believe the test is correct.

Yes. Would the one who reads this thread and does best already please stand up? I know you are standing. The proper way to deal with it seems to have to do with an understanding of the workflow, right? I don't think there is actually a danger with 8-bit processing, because all CC-apps can calculate in 32-bit, and most modern NLEs use it too (there were, however, filters and effects in legacy FCP and older versions of Premiere that were 8-bit, and one of them allegedly made everything 8-bit). The destruction isn't done by the software. It's done by us. I change parameters with every stage of the process, and from there I go on, in great parts in a WYSIWYG-fashion. Doesn't help much that everything remains reversible, there are just too many ingredients. The difference between me and a good colorist is a lot of botching around, trial and error and a growing uncertainness here and a goal-oriented, sensible order of operations there. We want to be able to hit the nail on the head with any given look. So, understand, I'm not 'critizising' FC.

The difference between a LUT and a Look in the strictest sense is that the purpose of the first is to convert a 100% defined A to a 100% known B. FC offers 'lotsa looks'. LUTs as looks can be created in many applications, most CC suites (such as Apples Color, the AAE plugin Color Finesse and of course Resolve) can export LUTs. With the aid of something like 'Lut buddy', every host app can also export LUTs. These tiny files are freeware or shareware, or at least they should be. Beware to apply a look-LUT before actual color correction, because: Adding a print LUT actually degrades your image. You’ll notice it removes a lot of colour contrast and hue variation. And the film effect is actually quite strong. So if you’re after a clean, slick look or your after neutral images it might be easier to achieve without using the LUT. Cited from here. Google for more free lut files. Buy Filmconvert, because it comes with a GUI and the most-desired 'film grain'. And, as my link says (scroll down), it does give better results!

True, be inspired by great works of art in painting. How many of them rely on high resolution? In cinema, high resolution (comparable to 4k) existed since at least six decades. The true masterpieces can be counted with the hands (you don't need fingers). BTW: I found a good use for LUT utility for FCP X with my pocket. I can apply a Rec709 LUT (it's in the standard version) with the adjustment layer. It's a Motion title, that can be connected, easily prolonged or trimmed and filled with all filters you want to apply to a whole sequence or single clips that you can toggle on or off in their entirety by choosing the layer and hitting "v". Also available from Alex4D. I recommend that you try this template when you experiment with Osiris. It's extremely useful (of course the name derives from Adobe).

"Sorry, there was problem loading this video" The Pocket runs > 3 hours at room temperature (colder = longer, warmer = shorter) with 8 AA cells with 2700mAh. (image from slasCAM user "ruessel" from this original thread) ... not recording though. After ~80 minutes the sensor has a temperatur of 42°C, and hot/dead pixels begin to appear on the display (they are gone again when the camera cooled down). I'd say it's best to limit continuous operation to 20 minutes. BTW: Yes, interested in pictures, and an Amazon link!

All in all, it seems to say: It's a bogus 12-bit raw, and *in many instances* ProRes in Film Log is even better. My suspicion anyway.

Depends on the camera. Make your own tests. There is a free Motion template (to be used as an effect in FCP X) that can be used subtly (not like in this demo), and it seems to sometimes do better than just "sharpen":

Quite a pity it's french. My vocabulary is too limited, and the Google translator makes a mess of it.

I found out for myself: Grading luma (my first primary CC step as well) is easier for me when I have a grayscale image. Where should the midtones be? Since I know the old Color well and played around with Resolve (guided by vanHurkman's Lynda tut), I know that it's best to follow the processing logic of primarily optimizing all values. In the first step ("Color 1") I want to see every detail. In a later step ("Color x") I decide whether I go for a pseudo HDR look or i.e. crush the blacks for effect. Therefore I first go to the saturation tab and pull all color from the image before switching to the exposure tab. I also tried LUT utility and Osiris. Like skiphunt, I found a mix of some LUTs with my pre-"graded" images pleasing. Not sure what to think about that. Whatever helps? My goal is to be able to find the right look all by myself. I think color is the most demanding craft, and I'd like to know what it's all about (see controversial discussion >here).

I try. It was from Color Grading Central, but it wasn't in the title, so not easy to find. They applied a Blackmagic Rec709 LUT, and suddenly the washed-out (I think it was:) ProRes looked normal. No news to us. They said, but notice how the details on the bright wall disappeared as well. Sure, you can 'bring them back', but what good is a starting point you have to reverse in parts to get best DR? They did a manual primary CC - no subjective procedure at all, you use the scopes!), took a few seconds, and then they compared the results. I wrote "imho", and I meant it. Knowledge has to substitute opinion. I have the greatest respect for your knowledge, and I wasn't stubborn. It's just literally as I wrote: "I fail to grasp the need" to use FC.

All engineers for the broadcast industry strife to let their cameras (lenses, post-pipelines etc.) reproduce reality as best as possible. All fictional filmmakers try to make their images look as stylized as possible. The approach is different. Reality is where you park your car.

This correct representation is arguable in the first place. And if it was granted, you only drew near by primary CC, that is: Finding balance. You need to do this anyway. From a glance at the FC demo, I'd guess under the hood RGB is split to channels and filtered to get the characteristic *cast* of magenta/cyan/yellow resp. red/green/purple layers of different grain sizes and in different foci of the film stock in question. However scientifically exact this 'conversion' works, it can't be anything else than a distortion of values. If you put that first in the pipeline, you start with limited options. I forgot to bookmark one Resolve tutorial from youtube, which compared the MO to start grading with a LUT and 'from scratch'. The latter was proven to be risky for beginners but pushes the boundaries for the experts. Final argument for me against buying FC: It should be cheaper or free. The GUI (at least of the stand-alone-version I know) looks crappy, horrible, that "100% film grain" is the default position of the lever, for grain surely is only suitable for a very crude 'old film' effect. What is more, all filters could be build within Resolve or After Effects (in theory, of course. No one can measure this at home. But again, I fail to grasp the need to be precise, unless the task was to cut digital inserts in a DI, scanned from a specific stock). So this is one for the compulsive plugin collectors, imho.

Reasonable. I see your point.

@BurnetRhoades I will consider this. But what are the chances that the majority uses FC in that way? You are right about the highly subjective and not very succesful approaches to raw (and I don't single me out!), but isn't this what everyone asked for? Buy a $999 camera that brings you (Leonardo) DaVincis studio, complete with unmixed , "raw" pigments and empty canvases and next spend $200 - $300 for a can of fast sfumato? - No WAY! I could better stay with my filmmodes, cinestyles and all the other baked-in formulas I came to know with DSLRs. For FC is a simulation of a bygone technique. @brianl I think there can be two ways to use the BMPCC: With it's 'stealth factor', without cage, but just with Dr. John R. Brinkleys pistol grip (I love pistol grips) and some pancake or so. Requires concentration, training and fine motor skills (play Mikado!), but it's your only chance to get shots, say, on the airport or in the subway without an explicit permission. Or: Take the cage and screw everything to it that helps. Look in the mirror: Any chance you will go unnoticed?

More 'evidence' to consider. I do not particularly like the motifs of Tom ("ETTR") Majerski from blackmagicdesign.com (my test shots aren't better though), but I came to a similar conclusion: As this test with the BMCC (more or less same sensor) implies ... raw has a little more DR compared to ProRes, but the result is misleading. This is only valid for extreme ETTR, when the noise floor is avoided. So definitely not in low light, where raw looks very noisy. How about being able to set white balance in post? No issue at all, if you roughly stay in the right ballpark with ProRes. Only with very difficult light conditions such as mixed color temperatures do you gain anything with raw, imho. Then why the heck are there so many ugly, washed-out ProRes-clips on the net? Because people don't know how to grade. The shots may be somewhat oversaturated, I was searching for an extreme example of exorcising the flat look. And in this example, pre-grading in Resolve makes no sense at all. Keep in mind, the guy had to render everything to get the stuff back to FCP X, he renders twice. FCP X doesn't appear to be exact enough for it's 0-100% levels in CC, but it actually computes in 32-bit floating point accuracy. Also you can't grade in one step, you have to add and stack corrections - like, er, nodes. Experts say, it's unusable, because other than for vignettes, corrections can't be keyframed. You pan from the window into the room, everything changes in one shot, needs to be keyframed. Though I admit, no keyframes for color are a no-go and this definitely should be changed in future updates, I find myself dividing the clip in two with the blade and adjusting the start and end of a cross dissolve instead. Does it take more time? On the contrary. Is it less accurate? Let me think about it. Hmm, why should it? These are just thoughts on postponing the need to spent a fortune for a new machine, not a rant against Resolve or raw.

To keep things in perspective, taste developes slowly. People now might look down on "Reverie" with it's videoish 30p and the "bokeh" stuff, now seen in great profusion, but back then it was a revelation. In 2009, a 7D clip was posted in my favorite forum, and it was the reason why I bought the 7D: Can you imagine? People raved about this! The times they are a-changing, but the fundamental things apply as time goes by.

I used to see a lot of such trash when I was 16. Rutger Hauer as van Helsing looks like the B-version of Anthony Hopkins in Coppolas Dracula. My, what a fine film that is! See the DVD/BD and turn on Coppolas comments. They were advised to use greenscreen instead of old school matte paintings, multiple in-camera exposures through matte boxes (the original purpose, hence the name), on-set light effects, stop motion, reverse time and many other Méliès-like tricks, but Coppola had it his way. Watch this scene: The extremely artificial colors, daring. Carefully, almost lovingly composed. What powerful performances of all! Note, how at 3:07 Reeves' face is distorted by short focal length. Note, how sparingly and appropriately sDoF is used. Just for fun compare the Argento trailer to this scene. Two years ago, I helped a friend of mine to dress a set for a student film (big budgeted for a student film, but we weren't paid). It featured a canary, the pet of a lonesome old man, who kills all his 'birds' in despair when the solitude becomes unbearable. The rooms were supposed to reflect the sentimental hell of this character, dark oak furniture like coffins, light from outside (fat HMIs on a scaffold), much bibelot. When finally the vet arrived with the canary in the (of course) golden cage, we immediately felt pity for it. A professional TV DoP (actually less than a DoP, in german Kamera means more or less operator of main camera) filmed with a Red. During the shoot I mused if with all these high contrasts I could have done anything with my then new GH2, and decided, no, there would be banding and videoish clipping most of the time. Some months later, we were invited to the premiere, but I was there anyway, because I was the projectionist. Big letdown. Nothing of the depressing atmosphere we created was in the final film. I know I'm a lousy photographer, but now I'm convinced that without the fancy HMIs I could have done better with my GH2. Looked as videoish as the Argento trailer above. Therefore: Yes, the HDSLR-look is somewhat more pleasing at first glance compared to ordinary small-chip camcorders. But in the end, this makes less than 10% of the overall production value.

It's nothing special any more. Just to counterbalance this, here is an example of ungraded film stock, from those ages when people tried very hard to make their footage cleaner:

I recently witnessed a conversation in a shop, where the customer was impressed by the fact that the Nikon of her choice had no video functions at all. She was willing to pay quite a lot for an additional slow Tamron zoom, which made me doubt if she was actually well-informed. Nothing against Tamron, it's just that it doesn't fit the whole concept of serious analog-like photography that sold the camera. It's like having the still marvellous GH2 for cinematic videography and buying an expensive automatic system lens. Glad I found EOSHD!

Camera: Everything mentioned above. Film look = either just a look as a combination of the parameters listed or Not a fancy look at all, but *style*, deliberate changes that help to make you feel what the filmmaker wants you to feel.

5D MII and 5D MIII with open apertures (sDoF) and @ 24/25p will provide aestetics that are as cinematic (as a parody almost) as it gets. Run&gun with said cameras, with clipping highlights, inappropriate shutter, shaking and shivering, small apertures, big DoF and no or boring motifs will say 'video'. Careful lighting, good framing, interesting motifs - in short, creation of images - and an old HDV-camcorder ....