The correct way to expose for SLOG3 when using 8bit cameras

[Rodolfo Fernandes]

Really nice looking footage @Gregormannschaft what lens did you use?

[kidzrevil]

26 minutes ago, EthanAlexander said:

But you're losing 95-109 IRE with SL3. You can actually make a LUT (or find, or hell I'll send you one) that transforms SL2 into 3 after shooting, and it's the exact same for grading but you have more starting info because it originally clipped at 109. Compression artifacts IMO don't matter more than getting the most code values from the beginning. You're re-sampling down to low compression 1080 anyway.

Hmmm that makes a lot of sense. Maybe I should put off my SLOG3 tests for a while and really dig into SLOG2. I regraded that SLOG2 footage with a visioncolor osiris LUT and it worked pretty well.

 

[Gregormannschaft]

5 minutes ago, Rodolfo Fernandes said:

Really nice looking footage @Gregormannschaft what lens did you use?

These were all shot with a dirt cheap Carl Zeiss Tessar 50mm 2.8 - incredibly common and cheap, at least here in Berlin. It's not particularly wide, but it's sharp at f2.8 and I love the way it renders the background. It somehow feels more filmic than a lot of the other, more expensive, lenses I have. A few other lenses were used on the whole video, a Canon 24mm FD, a Carl Zeiss Jena 35mm 2.4 and a Canon FD 85mm 1.8. Crazy to think all of them can be picked up for around 250 USD.

[kidzrevil]

@Gregormannschaftwow this looks amazing. I am a huge advocate of shooting with diffusion filters and vintage lenses so this is right up my alley. In 4K the combination adds a lot of character to the image

[cpc]

Nice shots @Gregormannschaft

But this also illustrates the technical problem with s-log + low bitdepth + compression. Skin is really thin on the last image, for example,  and the wall is on the wrong side of the banding limit.

[EthanAlexander]

42 minutes ago, Gregormannschaft said:

Figure I'd upload a few screengrabs from a recent project using the SLOG2 + SLOG3.cine combo we're talking about here. I used a DeLUT as a starting point to grade - most aren't great but I love Downton Alt. Tends to give very natural colours without doing too many weird things with grain or colour blocking. These were all shot using a Tiffen BlackPro Mist 1/4, which at times was possibly a bit much. But when it works I really love the effect it gives.

Great stuff @Gregormannschaft! I really do feel like this simple switch makes the "sony look" disappear. Great skin tones in these examples.

I don't have "downtown alt" - which DELUT pack is it in? I want to try it. I'm a fan of "Ripon" as an end LUT for a lot of my work.

[Gregormannschaft]

Just now, kidzrevil said:

@Gregormannschaftwow this looks amazing. I am a huge advocate of shooting with diffusion filters and vintage lenses so this is right up my alley. In 4K the combination adds a lot of character to the image

I only bought the filter after reading all your posts on here. Has made a HUGE difference. For me it basically simulates the look of higher end productions, improves roll off, tonal graduation. Really top stuff. 

 

11 minutes ago, cpc said:

Nice shots @Gregormannschaft

But this also illustrates the technical problem with s-log + low bitdepth + compression. Skin is really thin on the last image, for example,  and the wall is on the wrong side of the banding limit.

You're totally right. There's some macro blocking on the wall behind that's very noticeable if you zoom all the way in. But for a smaller sized project where you want good images on a low budget I think it works well. This was a very small setup.

[EthanAlexander]

24 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

Hmmm that makes a lot of sense. Maybe I should put off my SLOG3 tests for a while and really dig into SLOG2. I regraded that SLOG2 footage with a visioncolor osiris LUT and it worked pretty well.

Cool. Yeah I'm beginning to think that SL2 got a lot of bad rep when really it was SGamut the whole time! Here's a guy that really helped change my shooting and post process: https://vimeo.com/user23501770

I like the poster frame with the new grade, but in general think your manual grade was WAY better

BTW, @Gregormannschaft, do you think a 1/8 would have been better? You've convinced me to get one.

[Gregormannschaft]

5 minutes ago, EthanAlexander said:

Cool. Yeah I'm beginning to think that SL2 got a lot of bad rep when really it was SGamut the whole time! Here's a guy that really helped change my shooting and post process: https://vimeo.com/user23501770

I like the poster frame with the new grade, but in general think your manual grade was WAY better

BTW, @Gregormannschaft, do you think a 1/8 would have been better? You've convinced me to get one.

I got a 1/4 filter. Which doesn't have a huge effect on people's skin, a slight, very pleasing smoothing effect. Outside, it's also pretty pleasing, really softens the extreme highlights. The only time it's super exaggerated is when you're inside and there's a bright window nearby - then the highlights tend to bloom quite a lot. I like the effect, and it's probably exaggerated on my shots because I'm also using vintage glass. I think kidzrevil is using a slightly different filter with a subtler effect that you might also want to look into.

Either way, whatever you settle on, I think it's a great idea to buy one. I have loved the footage I've gotten since I got one.

[kidzrevil]

@Gregormannschaft is right. The tiffen diffusion filters will take your footage to another level and it gives you many of the qualities of film : halation,highlight rolloff and the highlights blowout better. I use the black pro mist for a more cinematic quality in my music videos but I generally use a tiffen satin or tiffen black satin filter. The tiffen black satin works like the tiffen diffusion fx filter which filters out the excess high frequency detail that leads to moire,and macroblocking from overloading the 100mbps of the codec. This leads to better compression even when using in camera sharpening. The other advantage of the black satin is at has some of the characteristics of the tiffen glimmerglass leading to a black pro mist like flare but it is more controlled and doesn’t get overbearing even in bright light. The tiffen black pro mist however works better with contrasty lenses so the filter doesn’t flare the shadows up too much into the midtones. I reccommend grades 1/8 -1/2. The heavier grades (1/2 - 1/4) work better on wide angle lenses and shots that have a high dynamic range because it allows most of the dark areas to fit into the dynamic range of the sensor. @EthanAlexander

[Mark Romero 2]

On 11/2/2017 at 11:32 AM, kidzrevil said:

@Gregormannschaft is right. The tiffen diffusion filters will take your footage to another level and it gives you many of the qualities of film : halation,highlight rolloff and the highlights blowout better. I use the black pro mist for a more cinematic quality in my music videos but I generally use a tiffen satin or tiffen black satin filter. The tiffen black satin works like the tiffen diffusion fx filter which filters out the excess high frequency detail that leads to moire,and macroblocking from overloading the 100mbps of the codec. This leads to better compression even when using in camera sharpening. The other advantage of the black satin is at has some of the characteristics of the tiffen glimmerglass leading to a black pro mist like flare but it is more controlled and doesn’t get overbearing even in bright light. The tiffen black pro mist however works better with contrasty lenses so the filter doesn’t flare the shadows up too much into the midtones. I reccommend grades 1/8 -1/2. The heavier grades (1/2 - 1/4) work better on wide angle lenses and shots that have a high dynamic range because it allows most of the dark areas to fit into the dynamic range of the sensor. @EthanAlexander

Ok, I am kind of baffled by this discussion. 

So, you are saying that we should buy a 4K camera for the resolution, but we should use a filter on it to reduce the resolution some?

Or am I totally misunderstanding this??? 

Thanks in advance.

[kidzrevil]

@Mark Romero 2 no need to be baffled its quite easy to understand if you are familiar with the order of operations with how a camera processes the image.The light hits the diffusion filter -> enters the lens -> hits the sensor -> the image processing works its magic -> the compression discards information it deems useless and assigns the rest of the stops of light to a code value and saves it to h.264,prores etc.

The camera sensor in question here is 6k downsampled to 4k resolution. 4k is 8 megapixels so you are already starting off with quite the advantage in perceived resolution as the noise gets shrunken down as well which takes up less data and helps free the bitrate to be used in other areas.

Shoot a JPEG with a a6300 or a6500 and take that and downsample it to a 8 megapixel image in photoshop. You see how the noise and other artifacts shrink to the point where they almost seem to vanish ? Well the same thing happens when you shrink a 6K image to 4K plus the added perceived sharpness.

If you are using a sharp lens that is more than plenty. I shoot with old nikkor auto lenses from the 1970’s (mainly because of the way they render images. A very classic aesthetic) with a diffuser on it and the image is still sharp especially stopped down. Now imagine a lens like the zeiss otus outresolving the sensor at 6K which will then be downsampled to a 4K image. That extra information will either overload that 100 mbps codec or the image processing will discard it somehow leading to artifacts like macroblocking etc. which will deteriorate your image and this is why diffusion filters are still beneficial for video.

Moral of the story the difference in perceived resolution between using a diffusion filter and shooting without one is negligible at bests. What we walk away with is more efficient compression of detail after the sensors image processing and an aesthetic that handles highlights and transitions in tonality more like film without a reduced perceived resolution. 

**

This test is so self explanatory you can completely skip the long winded essay I wrote and just watch this and you will be endowed with the wisdom of a buddhist monk when it comes to the effects of diffusion on digital video. 

 

[Mark Romero 2]

@kidzrevil

Thanks for posting the video. I think I understand a bit better.

Is this something that people do when they are either shooting people or trying for a more atmospheric look?

I shoot real estate videos, so I don't know if I would do this most of the time. I could imagine it would look good for twilights but maybe not so much during the daytime???

[kidzrevil]

@Mark Romero 2 I use the tiffen satin and black satin for general work because they have tremendous technical benefits and do not look overbearing (too glowy). The halation/glow from the highlights look more like film than digital. Get one in a light grade and they look damn near invisible for general use but they help remove some of that color and sharpening artifacting you get in fine detail especially with these cameras that are high resolution and no AA filter 

[Shirozina]

2 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@Mark Romero 2 they help remove some of that color and sharpening artifacting you get in fine detail especially with these cameras that are high resolution and no AA filter 

Could be useful on the GH5 then......

[kidzrevil]

Absolutely ! I have a g85 and with a tiffen black satin filter the details look more refined without looking blurry & out of focus. The a7riii just cane out with a way to render fine detail better in stills mode using some new pixel shift tech but that hasn’t surfaced for video yet. This is why diffusion filters are vital to me on any camera I use.

[Mark Romero 2]

9 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@Mark Romero 2 I use the tiffen satin and black satin for general work because they have tremendous technical benefits and do not look overbearing (too glowy). The halation/glow from the highlights look more like film than digital. Get one in a light grade and they look damn near invisible for general use but they help remove some of that color and sharpening artifacting you get in fine detail especially with these cameras that are high resolution and no AA filter 

Thanks again. I will definitely look into them.

Sometimes I need to shoot in 1080p for the faster fps. As you know, the 1080p on the a6300 / a6500 is not... beautiful...

Would these help out with the aliasing in the 1080p on these cameras? or would it just be more mushy?

Thanks in advance.

[kidzrevil]

@Mark Romero 2 hmmm I can’t confirm that yet as I haven’t tested the 1080p yet. I would assume it would help because the mushiness and aliasing is from the sensor skipping lines of resolution. The less fine detail you allow to hit the sensor the less work it has to do compressing all that info down to 1080.

Phillip Bloom (?) once reccommended that you use a Zeiss Softar filter to get rid of the nasty aliasing that was present in the venerable Canon 5D mark ii. Here’s the link http://philipbloom.net/blog/moire-2/

[Mark Romero 2]

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

@Mark Romero 2 hmmm I can’t confirm that yet as I haven’t tested the 1080p yet. I would assume it would help because the mushiness and aliasing is from the sensor skipping lines of resolution. The less fine detail you allow to hit the sensor the less work it has to do compressing all that info down to 1080.

Phillip Bloom (?) once reccommended that you use a Zeiss Softar filter to get rid of the nasty aliasing that was present in the venerable Canon 5D mark ii. Here’s the link http://philipbloom.net/blog/moire-2/

Thanks again. I will look into that link. I appreciate all the help.

[kidzrevil]

shooting LOG has its caveats but man does SLOG3 SGAMUT3.CINE look good. The way it handles saturation and shadows gives the image a unique character imo. I prefer the approach to giving more data to the shadows than the highlights which is slog3’s approach vs slog2. I can go as high as 3 stops over which is a real testament to how well sony’s xavs-c files grade in post. Next I’ll be testing the cinegammas for a faster workflow and hopefully a better quality image