sunyata

The redshark writer David Sharpton is making a convincing argument for a nice 4k monitor as your primary desktop display, but he's leaving out one factor: speed. It's gonna slow down your overall OpenGL performance, rt simulations, and I would expect refresh issues. I think you're totally fine getting a < 4k Ezio monitor for many years to come. From discreet's DKU 8.0.2 (2014 products) -- you can customize, but this is the default config for your main monitor: # Screen 0 "Screen Lustre / EIZO CE24xW 6000 SDI 1920x1200" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen EIZO CG24xW K6000 SDI 1920x1200" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Lustre / EIZO CE24xW FX5800 SDI 1920x1200" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Lustre / EIZO CE24xW FX5600 SDI 1920x1200" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Sony SDM-P234 / EIZO CE240W FX4500G 1920x1154" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Sony SDM-P234 / EIZO CE240W FX5500G 1920x1154" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Sony SDM-P234 / EIZO CE240W FX4500G 1920x1200" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Sony SDM-P234 / EIZO CE240W FX5500G 1920x1200" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Default 1920x1200 EDID" 0 0 # Screen 0 "Screen Default 1920x1200 NO-EDID" 0 0 The Eizo CE 24" CG 24" and Sony SDM-P234? w/ various cards are indicated, nothing running higher than 1920x1200.

For changing contrast w/o saturation, converting to HSL and adjusting "L", then back to RGB can yield interesting results.

I went to this show with my parents when I was 13. Revealed today that he was suffering from early stages of Parkinson's disease.

This story has made me think a lot about an article that came out recently on the connection between creative genius and mental illness. Lucas and Vonnegut were participants in the study, among others. The full paper has yet to come out but the article is a preview of her research. Robin Williams seems to fit right in, very sad.

If you're willing to go full manual with vintage prime lenses, since the A7s is full frame, take a look at these double gauss lenses (see "History of Double Gauss Lens Designs" section), many of which you can get for a steal on ebay. I'm partial to Zeiss, not a controversial choice, but you have tons of options. The Zuiko 40mm f2 auto-s is a lens I'd love to see on the A7s, although not cheap.

Oh yea, my main beef with all these cameras is that they don't do good 10bit at 2k :) That's all I need, I don't need 8bit 4k. Are you listening to me Canon 5D mark IV (please no 4k)!

Believe it or not, there has been extensive testing on noticeable contrast or banding and test show that 12bit is the minimum for the "just noticeable difference" or JND. But I think 10bit is good enough for footage because footage has noise. CG really requires 12bit minimum. That test didn't have noise added before, so it's not exactly the same with footage.

I'm not sure what he meant by that comment, bit depth makes a huge difference with 4:2:2 compression, it could be that he was comparing it to 4:2:0? I did a video that shows the differences of these depths and chromatic compression. Each sequence was saved out at the respective bit depths as dpx, then in some cases, chromatic compression was applied via ffmpeg, then the sequences were imported as-is and 2nd half was a 4k to 2k reformat in float space test, then it was exported. you need to pause to see the differences in HD.. it goes pretty fast.

I think we are forgetting something in the quest for the perfect native in-camera color. Since we stopped cutting movies on movieola's, we have been able to freely adjust final color on computers. The real issue is the latitude of correction that you have in post, and that directly relates to image quality in terms of number of colors, random noise (grain), and usable dynamic range. If you have a high quality image that has color issues, you can easily fix that. Moire, banding, macroblocks or scanlines you can't... even with the add noise trick.

Yes, it's usually done by increasing blackpoint and contrast. Although when you increase saturation with a saturation op, you can increase saturation without changing luma. Changing only saturation will push pixel color values to their extremes, away from a relative center. You can also change luma and contrast, and then de-saturate, leaving luma and contrast unchanged. So basically, the two properties can be separated and thought of as independent, but are also affected together with most RGB color corrections. color => lum => RGB val of [".4",".1",".02"] with blackpoint + .2 = [".25","0","0"], saturation goes from .77 to 1, luma changes from .158 to .053. Luma is modified with saturation by changing blackpoint. color => lum => RGB val of [".4",".1",".02"] with saturation + 2 = [".64",".04","-0.11"] saturation goes from .77 to 1.5, luma unchanged .158. Saturation is changed but luma stays the same by using a saturation op.

I don't think the studios are going to keep doing this pre-purchase deal, maybe a good investment is to get some Kodak Vision3 film and just keep it on ice.

I'm not a purist when it comes to what is "technically better" even when you hit that magic number and go beyond whatever DR, its still subjective, but the camera that I think comes the closest to snuffing film, the Alexa, is $80k! So it's not a revolution yet. And just do grading tests in 32bit float on a Marcie if you want to examine the grain and range of a 10bit 2k/4k Kodak film scan: http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/Digital_LAD_dpx.zip http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/Digital_LAD_cin.zip

Telecine is a film to video transfer process, different from a DI film scan, which introduces more quality loss, both in illumination, scan timing, edge guiding and more (especially with fields introduced, which is very common). Also, when you get a telecine that has inconsistent fields, i.e. the 3:2 pulldown keeps changing, and you need to do work that requires de-interlacing; people often just do an all even, or all odd de-interlace, and that screws things up even more. I've seen that improperly de-interlaced footage, then get fields re-introduced back to 29.976 fps and then broadcast. Anyway, the argument for digital is really about freedom and the creativity that allows. Not a quality advantage yet, but probably soon. I know this is all off-topic.

CEO Frank Wang of DJI talking about their future plans, with a pretty massive drone in the background.. http://www.reuters.com/video/2014/07/30/chinas-drone-king-says-the-revolution-de?videoId=329444760

Yea, it is. But I have to do it..

Cool article Andrew, love the tap with the taped label... mmmm, "Sony/Pinewood" beer.

Rob Base reference and jazz dancing? I must be gettin old because this looks so wack to me, it makes me miss crackheads.

Based on the chart below, I'm not sure how much longer it can last, but for now, under pressure from several directors, including Quentin Tarantino (of course), Christopher Nolan, Judd Apatow, and J.J. Abrams; the studios have all agreed to pre-purchase film stock from Kodak. Article was in the WSJ, this after Kodak recently emerged from bankruptcy: http://online.wsj.com/articles/kodak-movie-film-at-deaths-door-gets-a-reprieve-1406674752?tesla=y

You're probably better off just tweaking this manually, as Aaron mentioned you can use a roto, or a comp using something like average, but here are some useful links: Here's wolfcrow's A7s S-Log2 LUT. <= good preservation of shadow details. Andrew's LUT's worked well for gamma conversion, but both of these appear to be also doing color transforms, so if you want to do colors separately, you can make the LUT for just the log to rec709 part on the Arri website, I found these settings to work, [set knee to 2, shoulder to 3, for better shadow details] or you can make your own. You will still need to add a gamma function after this, and you can fine tune levels. Then a couple different A7s color transforms help to bring back color. Not over-saturated: Sony's F35 to HDW-F900 gamut conversion. 1.30624 -0.233075 -0.073165 -0.126851 1.17838 -0.051526 0.00012 -0.085649 1.085529 More saturated: S-Gamut to sRGB gamut conversion (If you're shooting S-Gamut) taken from the Nuke 8 colorspace node. 1.87785 -0.794119 -0.0837315 -0.17681 1.35098 -0.17417 -0.0262054 -0.148442 1.17465 Link to these two 3D LUT's saved as cube files .

Ah, ic...

If you're outputting RAW, wouldn't it mainly be due to bad interpolation from your software? Maybe you need to make a custom color transform for that camera?

Once you go Linux, you won't go back. That's because you're too busy trying to write configuration scripts to see your monitor so that you can reboot a different operating system. But I do everything, minus the occasional Adobe job - in which case my life took a wrong turn - in Linux.

Turns out a lot of stuff I have was shot on an Alexa, so I thought I'd post two very different shows, 3 examples, to show how a wide range of final skin tone grades is typical. I think the main thing with the Alexa is it's flexibility, due in large part to how close they've come to a 2k film master in dynamic range, log-c profile, motion blur, sensor noise etc. In some cases all the stuff about pleasing skin tones is gone in favor of a dark, colder and often noisy look. In #1 you can see the softness of the 2k image - not just color science - helps with softening skin, concealing lines and make-up. In #2 you can see how grainy and dark the image can look - the cold fill light - the camera sensor isn't too dense. #3 almost no skin tone left in final grade. The motion blur overall looks like a film shutter. I have lots of examples of chase scenes, fights or explosions where this is really apparent. It's the opposite of the high density and sharp, but smaller sensor of the GH4, or the 4k with low bit depth, more compression of the A7s. Making an "Alexa-ish" LUT for the A7s couldn't hurt, but the image is still going to be totally different, especially with motion. But it doesn't really matter because soon we're all gonna be dead from Ebola, was just informed, have not yet verified. look at how blown out the neon sign is.. and no banding in the shadows.

Ouch, not even HD.. not surprising.

For sure, you will see re-releases of old material, but they won't start with Citizen Kane, it'll be Xmen, Fantastic 4, Spiderman, Thor, Iron Man, Batman, or anyone in colored tights.