What devices are you using to make judgements about tests/comparisons

[sam]

Please list brand of display and model, screen size, as well as the devices and/or apps used to send the media to the display.  (Such as Gtx 1080 to 24"  1920 x 1080 Dell using Premiere....or Youtube on Samsung galaxy 6s....or bmd minimonitor to Eizo cg277 27" through Resolve studio 2.5.....or Fcp on 27" 5k iMac...etc..   be as specific as possible.  

[sam]

So.... Everyone is  embarrassed to admit they have no business judging images on their #!$@& viewing setups or ?     What do you use Mr. Andrew Reid?

[jonpais]

Why so antagonistic? You only posted the topic a couple hours ago... why don't you share your setup with us first?

[noone]

I use two vintage 1959 mk 1 eyeballs and a (faulty) brain.     Why what do you use?

[jonpais]

mine are hazel

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I generally use my brain to make judgments, just like everyone else.

[sam]

 They dont make em like they used to....'78 for me.....anyways I'd be happy to jonpais!  I use a fairly well regarded Nec pa27 series and a 55" panny vt plasma for rec709 viewing.  A  65" lg 4k10bit  oled for rec.2020.  I send a 10bit signal from a bmd deckink in Resolve studio.  (calibrated using lightspace recommended probe).   

[Davey]

To be fair, images that I have shot look worlds apart on my mid 2011 iMac, Note 4, late 2015 5k iMac, 37" LG television, the wife's Galaxy and the kids' iPads. 

I much prefer the originals that existed before I hit the record button - never over saturated, over sharpened, perfectly exposed, no chromatic aberration. I just wish we could reteieve the data directly from our memories. Without compression artifacts, of course.

The closest we get to that is when we replay those images in dreams.

[sam]

No one making visual comparisons for themselves? Just using their old eyes and minds to read spec sheets and the opinions of others?  

[webrunner5]

Well I use a  HP ZR30w. 30" IPS screen. It is a 2K monitor. I am too old to use a 4k one.   It was over 1200 bucks back in the day. First great monitor I ever had that was big money, so nothing similar to compare too.

But it was a unbelievable upgrade to what I had I can tell you that. It was a pretty good 1080p Nec monitor at the time. And I had cataract surgery a few years ago, so I might see stuff better than some people in their late 40's 50's. It is a Incredible difference after they do it. Especially colors.

[Phil A]

So I know that this thread was mainly a provocation based on the "how much better is the F35" discussion in another thread but I'd like to derail it to actually take up the original post's point.

 

Everything looks amazing and/or shit at the same time. It is borderline impossible to judge color, resolution, etc and if you don't do broadcast/cinema, I start to wonder if there's any point to obsessing over image quality.

Exhibit A to prove my point:

I set up all my entertainment options together with my desktop system that I use for editing/grading/destroying footage and loaded up a video on Vimeo in 1080p at exactly the same point. It is the video "Portrait of Rome" by Of Two Lands which I think is a beautiful video, showing the quality of the BMPCC.

Systems to play back were the following (to satisfy @sam):

iPhone 6s

iPad Pro 9.7"

Lenovo Y700 with 15.6" IPS panel at 3840x2160 px via Nvidia GTX 960M

Connected to my desktop computer via AMD Radeon R9 390:
Dell U2711 with 27" IPS panel at 2560x1440 px, calibrated with Spyder
Dell P2210 with 22" TFT panel at 1680x150 px, calibrated with Spyder (but useless as the panel is crap)
Panasonic Viera TH-42PZ85E 42" plasma TV at 1920x1080px (that's normaly my preview monitor via BMD Intensity Pro 4k IO card)

 

You can already see on the first view that color is different between all systems, so no matter how much effort you put into your color correction, it's completely random what your viewers will see. But what was also blatantly obvious in this quick and unscientific comparison, but not visible on the foto above, is that even the resolution and scaling of the 1080p video was all over the place.

iPhone 6s -> probably streamed in 720p from the Vimeo app, but the screen is tiny so everything nice and sharp
iPad -> looked good
Lenovo laptop -> scaled great, which is no hard accomplishment from 1080p to 2160p, combined with the 15.6" screen size it was really sharp and nice
Dell u2711 -> totally horrific. The video scaled in an ugly way, there was quite some pixelation. Total no go.
Dell u2210 -> Doesn't scale really well but it's ok, as it downscales anyway. Can live with.
Plasma TV -> I hear angels singing! Image is perfect, no scaling, everything smooth and soft.

I'm not sure what I learn from this, as it kinda makes all my efforts to make my material look its best futile. My main screen is the U2711 and that one makes everything look bad, I feel like 1080p just doesn't scale well to QHD, considering that the material looked way sharper on the even bigger Plasma TV. It's somewhat better with really sharp & detailed 1080p material downscaled from UHD but still a big dip in quality.

So how do you handle this? What are your thoughts about producing for the web with zero control what people will see?

[scotchtape]

Dell Ultra IPS series with i1Display Pro correction.

[hyalinejim]

 

Great pic!

I recently got a Dell UP2716D, which I calibrated to Rec709. However, it comes with a bunch of presets like SRGB, Adobe RGB and P3, amongst others. I was a bit horrified to see how all these factory presets varied in terms of colour. Nevertheless, I do believe that your eye gets accustomed to whatever you're working on. So if one particular display is too green, for example, it doesn't necessarily mean that everything you grade on it will come out too pink. Your eye is already compensating every time it sees something grey (like your GUI) or white.  So although your different devices have significant differences, you probably don't notice it when using them singly. As long as you can get your reference display close to Rec709 or SRGB, I wouldn't worry too much about how it looks elsewhere. Think of all the consumers that have never changed the excessive default contrast, saturation and sharpness of their HDTVs (not to mention the dreaded frame interpolation) - that is their frame of reference and they're happy with it.       

[fuzzynormal]

32 minutes ago, Phil A said:

if you don't do broadcast/cinema, I start to wonder if there's any point to obsessing over image quality.

I do indy stuff for broadcast and I can tell you I don't obsess over IQ.  The shows I've shot and broadcast this year look better than anything that came down the pipe from the guys doing productions in-house with their high end production gear.  That result has nothing to do with cameras or properly calibrated displays.  

Obsession over other elements of the production, like story, visual compositions, cinematography, and editing, is much more justified. 

32 minutes ago, Phil A said:

producing for the web with zero control what people will see?

Calibrate your own stuff, do your best, and don't worry about it.  

[tweak]

Best thing to make judgements on is the devices that your media is most likely to be viewed with  . There's a reason music artists release "radio only" mixes and edits.

[sam]

Ha! Funny! This thread was started before any posts where the  F35 was mentioned. I do own one, but it needs no defense.  I will be be the first to say that for typical commercial work there are far better cameras, including dslr's etc...than the F35.

 But, for digital 35mm film emulation I certainly think its image characteristics come closest, and I have no problem purchasing a new Alexa or Red.   What motivated me to start this thread was all the talk about cameras being "good enough" now and how no one can even tell the difference between film, cheap cams and high end digital.  

Anyways..... Thanks for reviving this thread.   I am truly curious what others are using to make comparisons.  

 

[jcs]

I used to use an i1 Display calibrator on Windows and OSX, unfortunately for whatever reason the calibrations seemed to change (don't think it was normal hardware changing over time, seemed to be software related). I now use two factory calibrated 4K Dell monitors, a UP3216Q (main), and a P2715Q (secondary). When the image/video looks good on these displays it looks good on MBP Retinas, iPhones, iPads, Sony TV, Samsung TV, Apple Cinema display, etc. Still have the i1 Display calibrator- haven't needed it since upgrading monitors (probably wouldn't hurt to use it however given the fiddly stability results (could be the OSes), probably not worth the time. Maybe when people start looking like this

I'll put it back into service  ).

[sam]

2 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

I do indy stuff for broadcast and I can tell you I don't obsess over IQ.  The shows I've shot and broadcast this year look better than anything that came down the pipe from the guys doing productions in-house with their high end production gear.  That result has nothing to do with cameras or properly calibrated displays.  

Obsession over other elements of the production, like story, visual compositions, cinematography, and editing, is much more justified. 

Calibrate your own stuff, do your best, and don't worry about it.  

100 percent agree with your advice.   Broadcast standards are a little different from theatrical release, no?   Care to share your setup since you are here?

[sam]

I should add, color accuracy was not really why I posted, its the things like banding, noise/grain, compression artifacts, luminance levels, gamma, motion artifacts, motion cadence, scaling, aliasing, etc...In relation to making an image comparison between cameras.......

HDR with its many competing gamma curves and extremely large color space is only going to compound the matter.

[hyalinejim]

A half decent calibrated monitor should be fine for that, viewing at a 1:1 pixel ratio to check for pixel level artifacting... AKA pixel peeping