KnightsFan

I disagree with this on many levels. If you need to make money right now, then yeah, do something that people will pay for, whether its a computer programming job or making coffee for other filmmakers. But if filmmaking is something you enjoy, then do it. You aren't born with talent, you develop it with hard work and experience. Which is exactly what Zach is asking for: how to get experience without access to like-minded people. That is a fantastic reason to make films. When automation and AI make human labor obsolete, people whose sense of self-worth is tied to fulfilling an economic need will find their life has no meaning. (getting off on a tangent, but the point is you should pursue things that you enjoy, regardless of their relevance to other people).

I went a different direction. Three nodes, one for CST and a bunch of curves, and then a second one with a power window on his face for a slight gamma boost. Last node is for noise reduction.

I still use legos to plan out scenes and storyboard. As for showing it, that was a long time ago, maybe if i find some of them and decide i want to put 10 year old me's work online....

My first movies were Lego stopmotion, I say go for it. I'll voice act if you need more characters.

I guess i am coming from the perspective of an FPS, but you can have the game react realistically while allowing the player freedom to partially shape the narrative, a la the original Deus Ex. There was actual free will and player agency within the world and NPC characters. I guess we are probably saying the same thing in slightly different words.

Bioshock? But seriously, I think that the developer of a video game should NOT steer the player. Games are the only medium where the consumer actively shapes the artwork itself. Illusion of free will is ignoring the unique ability of games to provide actual free will.

How is FLog better in low light? Can you show an example? I haven't seen that in my tests so far. I suspect that the only difference is HLG favors highlight range by claiming a higher ISO (1000 vs 640 in FLog). Using my tried and true method of exposing based on what I want in the image, instead of from a light meter, I haven't seen a difference in low light performance.

USB is always 5V. A step up converter takes care of the voltage change, but 7V 2A is 14 watts, so you'd need a single USB port that supplies at least 2.8A, and probably a good bit more than that to be safe, unfortunately.

I used the offical Fuji FLog luts, and created some using LutCalc. For HLG I used the Color Space Transform node in Resolve, and tried out the HLG LUTs that came packaged with Resolve. Overall i found it much easier to get the result i wanted when using HLG.

I have only done a few tests so far, but i am liking HLG better. It is easier to grade.

I thought I addressed that with my theory that the RGB slider operates on a linear image before the gamma curve is applied, which explains why it clips almost immediately in Gamma DR but not in Gamma Normal or C. But I expect that the RGB slider multiplies shadows as well, so not sure how much usable DR you would gain as it basically just lowers exposure overall. Certainly something to test if you want to follow the rabbit hole! I think the only way we could meaningfully get a DR increase is if we could apply the RGB multiplier to the top half of values, but not the bottom. Most of what I've seen so far, both with my tests and yours, is really minimal, if at all present. As far as I can tell, MP doesn't really add DR with a positive value, it just raises the blacks up a bit. At most you gain back a little bit of noise. With negative values yeah, it seems to lose shadow detail. So I usually leave it at 0. Haha yeah, I just spent a good part of my day on this, and the funny part is I doubt I'll ever even use my NX1 for a project again! For my next project we're using the director's XT3. I did shoot a big project on my NX1 using RGB boost last year, which I might detail here once it's released. For me it was all about finding a general setting that worked for everything, since I wasn't going to fiddle with settings on set even if I knew wanted. So I used RGB values near 1.99 in Gamma DR, built some LUTs that worked with those settings, and left it that way. Worked pretty well in hindsight.

Nice, so ISO is consistent so any improvements in DR are from the boost itself. I guessed aperture because I can see some difference in sharpness, especially in the light in the background. However, one thing I notice now is that there is a bright column in the background on the right that is only visible in one shot, and in the same way there is more pure white in the lamp. Since a Histogram totals a constant value, then adding white will necessarily change all the other bars as well. So I'm focusing more on the waveform. It certainly appears that the lamp's patch raises a little bit farther past 100, which is interesting. Also it's got those noisy tendrils shooting way up to 110 almost. I wonder if it's possible that since the lamp is in sharper focus, the NX1's sharpening kicks in and adds some more local contrast to the lamp, sending a few pixels higher into superwhite? I mean it's not like the camera is actually resolving detail brighter than the center of the lamp. Though of course that doesn't explain the patch overall being taller, just the noise up to 110. Out of curiosity, are you using 0-255 of 16-235 here?

Very interesting! It looks a lot like the results I got with 1.00 vs 1.99. How did you match exposure? Did you open the aperture a stop on the 1.00 version?

Cinematic color is a color scheme that thematically complements the story, and implementing that color scheme in the lighting, set design, and color correction, and then remaining consistent about those choices throughout the movie. It doesn't matter what you pick. Dark and gritty (original Blade Runner). Bright and bubbly (Grand Budapest Hotel). Harshly dry and brown (Once Upon a Time in the West). Rich but artificial (In the Mood for Love). Soft and painterly (Barry Lyndon). Different color scheme for each location (Fellowship of the Ring). Just pick something that resonates with the story, explore it thoroughly, make it consistent and cohesive, and carry through from script to edit.

Ah, I see what you mean now. But could that be from changing light? I think that spike at the top end of the histogram is the color patch, and everything above that is the reflective bits of the the color chart borders. Looking at the waveform, on the top image there is nothing above the rightmost color patch, whereas on the second image there is some vague noise much higher on the waveform than the rightmost patch.

Does one image have some motion blur? The word x-rite is much sharper in the bottom image. It looks to me as though the lighting changes a little bit, too. The balance of brightness on the bottom right frame of the color checker vs. the center hinge changes considerably between the images. But it seems clear from the waveform that patches of every brightness are reduced in value by what appears to be a common factor. The apparent bump in shadows on the histogram I think is due to the lower bound changing from -.081 to -.131 (at least, that's what I assume those numbers are)

How are you judging highlight and shadow info from the histogram?

So I did some tests and the results did not line up exactly with my prediction, however, I think there is a reasonable explanation. All were shot in normal DR using Custom 1 profile. All clips are 1/50 shutter, f6.3, and ISO 800, except the last one. I chose 0.5 for the RGB boost because halving is really easy to evaluate. RGB1.0toLinearMult0.5: Shot with sliders set to 1.0. It was transformed from Rec.709 to Linear space, and then multiplied by 0.5. RGB0.5toLinear: Shot at RGB 0.5 and then converted to linear. I expected this to be exactly 1/2 the value at each point. Obviously, this is not the case, most noticeably in the highlights. One possible explanation is that, like most cameras, the NX1 doesn't shoot a strictly Rec.709 image, but implements a soft highlight rolloff to make the image more pleasing. Unfortunately, I don't know any way to eliminate this source of error. RGB0.5DoubleISOtoLinearMult0.5: This is the interesting result. I shot at ISO 1600 to compensate for the RGB drop to 0.5. I converted from Rec.709 to Linear, and then multiplied by 0.5 the same way as the first shot. Notice how it is almost identical to the first shot, except that it clips sooner. This is what I'd expect from an ISO invariant camera: higher ISO simply reduces highlight headroom without providing any exposure benefit (except that digital gain is done pre-compression which is a HUGE benefit for an 8 bit compressed image). As a side note, the reason we don't have the massive fluctuation in highlight shown in test 2 is that the recorded image is essentially the same exposure (half RGB, double ISO). I think this is more evidence that the RGB boost occurs before the gamma curve, which is where the rolloff would be implemented. This correlates with my findings many months ago, which is that providing an RGB boost closer to 2.0 makes a DR benefit, simply because the camera is tricked into using a lower ISO and thus keeps that headroom, at the expense of shadow detail. What I have not tested is how much the shadow quality differs, since that's pretty subjective and I don't know how to test it objectively. By eye, I don't see any shadow detail loss, but again, that's really subjective and anecdotal. It's worth mentioning that my tests from way back when were in Gamma DR. It may be possible to extend DR in other modes using an RGB <1.0 since they clip at a different point. But if I was right earlier about Gamma C clipping before 0.7, then you may as well just shoot in Gamma DR if you want to maximize DR.

Are you doing photos or video? It seems to me that the RGB sliders essentially do the same thing as an ISO adjustment, but after the actual ISO adjustment clips something. I've seen a lot of claims that the NX1 doesn't use analog gain ("ISO invariant"). So ISO adjustments only adjust digital gain--essentially a multiplier, probably in linear space. If that is the case, then, assuming we avoid clipping, the RGB sliders have no effect other than tricking the camera into thinking it's at a different ISO, which could change the automatic noise reduction and sharpness. That was sort of what my conclusion was, way back last time I posted here. Basically, I can shoot at ISO 400 with the boost, and get an ISO 800 exposure without such aggressive noise reduction. IF my analysis is correct, then lowering your RGB to 0.75 will both lower your highlights and shadows, pre-gamma curve. So you gain some highlight DR, and lose some shadow detail--basically, the same thing as lowering your ISO. We can test this by measuring like you did in Premiere on their 0-255 scale, but instead we transform the image into linear space first. My prediction is that every pixel will drop in value by a factor of 0.75 at that point. Thus, the >255 values drop down into range, and values near 0 will have a lot of noise.

Well, I went to grab some pics to show what I mean, and I may have caused more problems for us. Turns out the clipping happens in Gamma DR but not Gamma C. These were done with RGB set to 0.7 ish. In Gamma C white still peaks, while in DR it has a hard clip. But maybe we can use this info to estimate the processing order for the picture. My initial guess is that this shows that the RGB sliders multiply the R,G,B channels on a linearly encoded image before the gamma curve is applied. (That would make sense, because linear multiplication on a gamma-encoded image is a recipe for disaster!) Then, after the RGB multiplier, the gamma curve is applied. Gamma DR retains all/most dynamic range from the linear image, and thus you see the clipping, whereas Gamma C clips the highlights somewhere before the 0.7 value, so we don't see that hard clip on the scope. More testing required, I guess! As per my post above, which Gamma setting are you on? In Gamma DR, I see sub-white clipping almost immediately. Zebras disappear entirely by 0.87. You can still see some noise above the hard clip on the waveform, but I think that's due to HEVC compression estimations and does not represent any meaningful highlight information.

In my experience, reducing RGB below 1.00 makes it so that you can't have anything actually be pure white. None of your test shots have pure white to begin with, so you won't see those negative side effects. Stick a lamp in the background behind the color checker and you should see the 0.75 getting clipped on the scopes. One thing I do notice is the white balance shifting, which is an unfortunate feature of the NX1: color is not uniform across its dynamic range.

No problem, always glad to see some nice DIY stuff. I use various TalentCell batteries which have 9v and 12v outputs. Though they are unregulated, so I don't know how safe they would be to use with a dummy battery in a camera.

Voltage is probably the issue. I believe the official power supply is here https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/820410-REG/Nikon_27055_EH_5B_AC_Adapter_for.html and it outputs 9v at 4.5A. You could get a 5V to 9V step up voltage converter. Your power bank outputs 5.8A, so with 100% efficiency in a step up converter you're looking at 9v at 3.2A, so it's less current than the Nikon power supply gives. It might be enough, I don't know how much power the BMPCC draws (a 5v 2.4A USB port was sufficient for my GH3 back in the day, so it'll probably work... but I don't know for sure). The other problem is that I doubt any single outlet on that power bank can actually supply 5.8A by itself, that's probably the total amount if you plug three different things in simultaneously. It would be necessary to know how much the max current for any single USB port on that power bank outputs, and how much power the BMPCC actually draws.

@thebrothersthre3 What voltage are you supplying? Are the screws tightly clamped onto the actual wire itself (It almost looks like they are screwed onto the insulation instead of the metal, but it's hard to see in the pic)? Do you have any tools to test conductivity?

I always liked the LS300, but the price vs. recording options is very hard to justify for my needs, much more so now that the XT3 exists. If they made a new version with 10 bit and HEVC, I'd be very interested. Imagine the VSM capabilities if they used a 26MP sensor.