My love/hate relationship with the XC10 and grading the C-Log files that I shot

[jgharding]

I had an XC10 for a bit for pro use. But after the torture of trying to get the colours matching to other Canons I sold it. Specs etc looked great but the image always annoyed me.

[kye]

57 minutes ago, jgharding said:

I had an XC10 for a bit for pro use. But after the torture of trying to get the colours matching to other Canons I sold it. Specs etc looked great but the image always annoyed me.

So you couldn't just put the same processing on it and have it broadly match the other footage?

That's a real issue - it was sold as that so wasn't that kind of the point?

[jgharding]

On 6/26/2020 at 3:21 PM, kye said:

So you couldn't just put the same processing on it and have it broadly match the other footage?

That's a real issue - it was sold as that so wasn't that kind of the point?

for some reason i couldn't. The footage was always kinda mushy looking too... It had a lot of promise but ultimately didn't deliver.

[kye]

"Tag Team, back again
Check it to wreck it, let's begin"

Just as predicted by Tag Team in their 1993 epic hit "Whoomp! There it is!" about recording in 8-bit with LOG profiles, I'm back with the XC10 footage, getting wrecked once more.

Take this delightful image of a cluster of lovely buildings on the Cinque de Terra in Italy:

As you can see, the combination of an overcast day and the C-Log profile makes for a pretty flat image:

So, we adjust WB, levels and some saturation, and get this lovely starting point:

Problem is, look at the noise!

Perhaps our 8-bit file doesn't do a good job with a log profile - let's look at the vectorscope:

Yes.  This is real.  

We talk about colour density and thickness of image....   well, this isn't it.

Luckily, Resolve is the love child of a Swiss Army Knife, a tank, and Monet, so with a little Temporal NR and a touch of sharpening, we can pull this phoenix out of the ashes.

Now look:

Obviously I have more work to do on this shot - a lot in fact - but I'm learning.

Grading with this camera is a learning experience, I just wish it wasn't like being pushed into the deep end at gun-point.

[Geoff CB]

10 hours ago, kye said:

"Tag Team, back again
Check it to wreck it, let's begin"

Just as predicted by Tag Team in their 1993 epic hit "Whoomp! There it is!" about recording in 8-bit with LOG profiles, I'm back with the XC10 footage, getting wrecked once more.

Take this delightful image of a cluster of lovely buildings on the Cinque de Terra in Italy:

As you can see, the combination of an overcast day and the C-Log profile makes for a pretty flat image:

So, we adjust WB, levels and some saturation, and get this lovely starting point:

Problem is, look at the noise!

Perhaps our 8-bit file doesn't do a good job with a log profile - let's look at the vectorscope:

Yes.  This is real.  

We talk about colour density and thickness of image....   well, this isn't it.

Luckily, Resolve is the love child of a Swiss Army Knife, a tank, and Monet, so with a little Temporal NR and a touch of sharpening, we can pull this phoenix out of the ashes.

Now look:

Obviously I have more work to do on this shot - a lot in fact - but I'm learning.

Grading with this camera is a learning experience, I just wish it wasn't like being pushed into the deep end at gun-point.

That codec is really hurting it. Especially in a scene like this. Had fun and pushing it around though.

 

[kye]

2 hours ago, Geoff CB said:

That codec is really hurting it. Especially in a scene like this. Had fun and pushing it around though.

 

Nice colours!

It needs more saturation though - see below reference image!

 

[fuzzynormal]

As you implied, some of your issues are that you're hoping shots not well exposed can be successfully manipulated into a gratifying image. 

What the photons are doing in your frame to begin with seems to be the bigger problem than the grading.  Your reference image of the town from above is a good example of that.  Early evening light creates more drama than a midday overcast shot. Sometimes with certain footage, you're never going to get it where you want it to be.  In that case you need new footage or just accept it wasn't shot well enough to begin with.

As someone that does the latter all the time, I've learned to know when I get a good shot and when I'm trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

[fuzzynormal]

My attempt at a quick image grade of your violinist is sloppy as hell, stylized, and heavy-handed, but it's how I would mess around with an "iffy" shot in Premiere on my own work.  A few traveling mattes to control the brightness behind the subject that demands the eyes attention; take the attention off that as much as possible.  Lift the exposure on the guy's face a bit, trying not to halo too bad -- which I couldn't avoid, actually. 

De-saturation of the blacks and highlights, WB to taste, film grain, an application of a FUJI ET film stock, blah blah blah.  It's all personal preference.

FWIW, I just did something similar on a project last week.  Got an bit of footage where the subject is pretty much silhouette and needed to pull his exposure out.  I pretty much knew going in to work on that image that it wasn't gonna look good.  I just accepted that the best I could do to it was make it mediocre rather than crappy.

Honestly, I wouldn't use that wide shot of the violinist if possible.  Hopefully, you have also shot him with a compressed FOV and created a sequence of tighter shots to frame out and soften the background distractions.  The first thing to do when on location would have been to recognize you're shooting a subject in silhouette and change angles so that bad lighting isn't happening.

Good luck overall.  It's always a lot of work...if you find you're doing too much in post, then reassess why that's happening.  The best looking projects need the littlest touches in post-production.

 

[fuzzynormal]

BTW, yes, those of us that shoot 8-bit are limited in what we can do in post on a bad shot...so I've just accepted that as a challenge to try not to get unforgiving shots to begin with. 

It's baked in shooting discipline because you know you're not working with as much of a "fix-it-in-post" safety net. 

I got my start with imaging in my dad's old darkroom.  I shot terribly thin B&W negatives for way too long, but as the literal costs started adding up for my bad shooting habits, (a 15 year old blue-collar kid old trying to buy chemicals and film was a huge financial burden) I learned to really consider light and exposure and figured out how to "thicken" my negative.  Mostly just from the technical side of things, but developing that skill/craft led me into the artistic side.

[deezid]

Always remember:
C-Log 1 is basically a flat Rec709 profile.
C-Log 3 is a Log gamma with Rec709 gamut.

C-Log 2 is the only true Log gamma and wide gamut Canon ever made.

So what you need to do is apply a curve and saturation as well as some wb/tint before that.
Interpreting Rec709 as Canon Cinema Gamut (Bt.2020 primaries) will end up in oversaturation, lots of magenta and overall wrong color.

[kye]

5 hours ago, deezid said:

Always remember:
C-Log 1 is basically a flat Rec709 profile.
C-Log 3 is a Log gamma with Rec709 gamut.

C-Log 2 is the only true Log gamma and wide gamut Canon ever made.

So what you need to do is apply a curve and saturation as well as some wb/tint before that.
Interpreting Rec709 as Canon Cinema Gamut (Bt.2020 primaries) will end up in oversaturation, lots of magenta and overall wrong color.

This is interesting / surprising.

Do you mean that the Colour Space Transform is wrong?

I have found with the "cheaper" cameras (XC10, GH5) that its unclear what colour profiles they align with and no clear answers online.  I just assumed that the C-Log in the XC10 would be the first version and that the CS would be Canon Cinema Gamut but I guess not.

It was billed as being able to be processed along with footage from the other cine line cameras and was completely compatible, although @jgharding mentioned above that this wasn't the case in reality.

I'm not against grading it manually, so that's not an issue.

I've been wondering what the best approach is to grading flat footage.  I've got about half-a-dozen projects in post at the moment with XC10 "C-Log", GH5 "HLG", GoPro Protune, and Sony X3000 "natural" which are all flat profiles with no direct support in CST / RCM / ACES.

I was thinking one of my next tests would be to grab some shots and grade them using:

• LGG
• Contrast/Pivot
• Curves
• CST to rec709 then LGG
• CST to rec709 then Contrast/Pivot
• CST to rec709 then Curves
• CST to Log-C then LGG
• CST to Log-C then Contrast/Pivot
• CST to Log-C then Curves
• etc?

to try and get a sense of how each one handles contrast and the various curves.  I was hoping to get a feel for each of them to understand which I liked and when I might use each one.  I suspect that curves will be the one as I will be able to compress/expand various regions of the luma range depending on the individual shot.  
For example I might have two shots, one where there is information in the scene across the luma range and I would only want to have gentle manipulations, but a second shot might have the foreground all below 60IRE and then the sky might be between 90-100IRE, in which case I might want to eliminate the 60-90IRE range and make the most of the limited gamma of rec709, bringing up the foreground without crushing the sky.

What's that saying... "I was put on earth to accomplish a number of things - I'm so far behind I will never die".

I have sooooo much work to do.

[kye]

Getting better!

It might be a little bit too pushed in terms of sat and contrast, but I'm gradually working out the kinks.

[BenEricson]

On 8/15/2020 at 8:31 AM, kye said:

Nice colours!

It needs more saturation though - see below reference image!

 

That’s a different time of day! Blue hour! Much more natural saturation.

In this case, I think ETTR would really help you out. Push those clouds up a bit on the wave form. 

Have you tried running some tests setting your exposure with a baked in profile and then switching back over to c-log? This method might give you a better idea of how to expose for the exact look that you’re trying to achieve.

[kye]

11 minutes ago, BenEricson said:

That’s a different time of day! Blue hour! Much more natural saturation.

In this case, I think ETTR would really help you out. Push those clouds up a bit on the wave form. 

Have you tried running some tests setting your exposure with a baked in profile and then switching back over to c-log? This method might give you a better idea of how to expose for the exact look that you’re trying to achieve.

I've moved away from the XC10 and have completely changed the way I shoot, so this is about grading footage I already have.  

It's ok, it's making me a better colourist as I'm getting pushed to work out how to solve all kinds of issues.  My poor choices meant I pushed myself in the deep end and I think I might have just gotten to the stage of having my first few gasps of air as I learn to swim 🙂