Color Science Means Nothing With Raw... Really?

[HockeyFan12]

2 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

Engineering is just applied science. To use my tomatoes example, you can genetically engineer bigger tomatoes by applying the scientific theory behind it.

Fair enough. I shouldn't speak for the experts on the forum, just taking a guess at what they mean. And now we're getting into semantics anyway.

[KnightsFan]

True, that is a bit semantic. I tried to address the more meaty argument in my initial post. I dont see how the ability to match in post implies that color science is bs.

[HockeyFan12]

58 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

True, that is a bit semantic. I tried to address the more meaty argument in my initial post. I dont see how the ability to match in post implies that color science is bs.

Yeah, that's a fair point. I think saying something is "bs" without saying why it's bs isn't always helpful. 

I'm mostly just curious about whether the thickness of the CFA matters and in what ways. Arri points out that most sensors can see the whole visible spectrum, but that doesn't mean they can differentiate them all cleanly. I found this thread, which I'm going to read when I get the chance lol:

http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19894

[webrunner5]

1 hour ago, HockeyFan12 said:

I think it's mostly the age-old canard (meme?) about using the word science when it's really about engineering. 

Anyhow, this stuff is above my head, too, and I think we should leave it to the experts. That is to say, the engineers. (Not scientists. Or marketing departments.) There's a lot of contradictory information online: Sony claims the F65 and F55 have the widest color gamut of any sensor; Canon's cinema gamut is far wider than that, though; and Arri claims that sensors don't have inherent gamuts because they can all "see" any visible color, which makes sense to me. But this is all marketing so it's difficult to get to the truth.

So I'd just defer to @Mako Sports and @Mokara here. But it makes sense that they're right (and so is Arri)–any bayer color sensor in use today can see the entire visible spectrum, which is a vastly larger gamut than anything is mastered as. I'm still hoping someone can clarify whether metamerism error at the sensor level matters or not or to what extent it matters and where it comes from and how it can be addressed. It seems in theory you could make an extremely thin CFA that's barely red or green or blue at all and improve noise performance dramatically. In theory the Phase One Trichromatic back is totally bunk, and I'm wondering if I'm a total sucker for wanting one. Engineers I've spoken with claim even the thinnest CFAs we see today are still really excellent, but why are the dyes as thick or thin as they are? If they could be virtually infinitely thin so long as they still have some color, why aren't they? Thinner CFAs would, if anything, see a wider gamut, but I'm guessing would differentiate hues worse? I'm really curious about that still and it would be nice if someone with an engineering background could explain it to us.

The Venice footage I've seen so far looks a lot better to me than C700 footage. And I really liked the F35, even the F3. Something about SLOG2 and the way color channels clipped just looked very "video" to me. But I might just be crazy or biased against those cameras-I didn't particularly like the F55 raw footage I worked with, and yet it's supposed to have the same CFA as the F65, which produces really nice images. Who knows... it was still pretty good! I'm not wild about the new Canons, I preferred the original C300's colors. Blues, greens, and skin tones were darker, the look was closer to color negative film, whereas the new ones seem very accurate to me, but they have more of a "video" feel but with a weird magenta tint. I think it's an engineering/market choice to try to emulate the Alexa better, but the old one had charm and wasn't just a "poor man's Alexa that has a strange magenta cast."

I think we forget how primitive most colorists are (myself included). I loved the C100 because the look was great out of the box. Same with the Alexa. Loved the 5D Mark II. I'm not claiming one can't get a much better look from plenty of other technically superior cameras (than the C100, at least), and the F55 raw trounces most of those cameras. I'm just saying 99% of colorists can't get that super flat image to look as good as settings that look good out of the box. I include in that some of the top post houses, even. I think people here forget how incredibly skilled they are compared with the general public and even journeyman professional colorists. For most people, out of camera look matters; I'm no engineer and I'm not a great colorist. Neither are most consumers.

My big issue is that the hue vs luminance curve introduces a lot of noise into the image and so trying to use that to turn a video look into more of a color negative look is difficult. But I know there are those who can do it. Still, I think this piece was graded expertly by Company 3:

And you can see some parts that are clearly video trying to look like film. At 1:51 the grass and picnic blanket have the color and saturation of film, but the luma values still look more like an additive model than a subtractive model and the grass still looks more green than blue, partly as a result. Art Adams wrote about how the DXL darkened saturated green values and stretched the colors between yellow/green and blue/green out to get rid of the "Red look" and to me there are some scenes here that still have the "Red look." The American flag during the Zapruder video portion looks more like a subtractive model to me, though, the red there really pops. I've been told parts of this are shot on film and parts on video, but I lack the eye to differentiate all of it. It's probably all video lol. I bet it's 99% Red MX.

I would almost bet all of it was shot on a video camera. Yeah, Red One MX would be in the running. That video was released in 2012. It was edited with Sony Vegas Pro 13.

[HockeyFan12]

39 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I would almost bet all of it was shot on a video camera. Yeah, Red One MX would be in the running. That video was released in 2012. It was edited with Sony Vegas Pro 13.

I bet you're right it's at least 95% MX. Where did you get the editorial information from? Was it really cut with Vegas? I guess it doesn't matter but that's an unusual NLE.

The grade was done by Dave Hussey at C03, one of the best colorists working at imo the best color grading company, and I discussed it for a while with a senior colorist at another post house (who'd graded an Oscar winning feature but is generally more freelance/indie) as one of the grades he was most impressed by, and it won some awards the year it came out I think. It should be good: I think an hour there is something like $5000.

What's interesting to me is it's a really good "film look," with the reds really rich and saturated and darker than they would be on video, but it does seem pretty digital nonetheless. The Zapruder film part (which is kind of tasteless, but whatever) looks a lot like film to me, though. I legit can't tell if it's video or film there. But the video as a whole represents an artist's attempt to make digital look like film, and maybe I'm just a snob, but I swear it still has hints of Red MX there. Looks awesome nonetheless, really bold work.

Maybe now with more advanced profiling and software it's easier to make one camera look like another. That piece Yedlin shot looks pretty much just like film to me:

http://www.yedlin.net/OnColorScience/

Of course the Alexa always looked pretty good to me...

[webrunner5]

Down at the bottom it mentions Vegas. That sort of hints at a Sony video camera to be honest. But it just doesn't look like Sony footage to me. They were pretty clean looking then. It is sort of confusing. The info in the link below hints at snippets of Film, but there is no real older film shots in it. They are all involving her, so I think it is a fake Film look using the MX. Not really hard to do with a MX One. They have a gritty film look to them ooc. Now the Mysterium X had a cleaner look and more DR. And the 5000 dollars is no surprise. An Avid editing program license back then was like $80,000.00 a seat. Got to pay for that somehow, not counting the editing suite equipment, and real estate space.

 

http://lanadelrey.wikia.com/wiki/National_Anthem_(song)

[IronFilm]

15 hours ago, stephen said:

    - Zacuto did a test years ago and on big screen highly skilled cinema and video professionals in a blind test were not able to tell the difference between Panasonic GH2 with 1080p and x264 8 bit 4:2:0 codec and Arri Alexa 2.5K RAW

But there was a difference in time (read: $$) in shooting with a GH2 vs Alexa. 

6 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

I think we forget how primitive most colorists are (myself included).

Am beginning to decide that from now on I should simply believe that any low budget shoot I'm on will simply not have a colorist. (at least none that deserve the title of "colorist") 
Log shooting??? Nah, Rec709 on day long!

 

6 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

I'm just saying 99% of colorists can't get that super flat image to look as good as settings that look good out of the box. I include in that some of the top post houses, even. I think people here forget how incredibly skilled they are compared with the general public and even journeyman professional colorists. For most people, out of camera look matters; I'm no engineer and I'm not a great colorist. Neither are most consumers.

Yup, even on mid budget and up to even better funded shoots, then maybe we (as directors / DoPs / cam ops / etc) shouldn't be trusting too much on the quality of the downstream post production process we're handing over to. 

Am thinking in 2019 I should put a little bit of time into experimenting with what is the best looking footage I can get straight out of the Sony PMW-F3, rather than always shooting s-log ProRes HQ

[IronFilm]

5 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

I dont see how the ability to match in post implies that color science is bs.

Agreed.

 

[leslie]

there's no way i can watch any lana del ray video and be objectionable, she's just too damn talented and not to mention pretty ?