Color - SOOC vs. LUTs/Grading

[SRV1981]

13 hours ago, kye said:

The image is too diffused and too cream and pastel green/brown for me

I tend to agree. I associate green/brown with Sony and you’re saying that more magenta (canon?) images can be had in Sony? Simple correction in camera white balance? Or only in post? 

 

13 hours ago, kye said:

Riza uses a huge amount of diffusion so everything looks hazy.

Maybe a 1/4 black mist? 1/8 may be better? Makes it look less sharp

 

13 hours ago, kye said:

People of this age are having climate anxiety in a big way, so it's a real thing in their world.

maybe - I fear existential crisis but like c70 colors lol. 

[kye]

15 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

@ac6000cw I find your example very harsh in contrast relations of certain tones and also in regard of saturation relations between some of the tones, like they are emitting light themselves. Just saying:)

When you say "like they are emitting light themselves" you have absolutely nailed the main problem of the video look.  I don't know if you are aware of this, so maybe you're already way ahead of the discussion here, but here's a link to something that explains it way better than I ever could (linked to timestamp):

This is why implementing subtractive saturation of some kind in post is a very effective way to reduce the "video look".  I have recently been doing a lot of experimenting and a recent experiment I did showed that reducing the brightness of the saturated areas, combined with reducing the saturation of the higher brightness areas (desaturating the highlights) really shifted the image towards a more natural look.

For those of us that aren't chasing a strong look, you have to be careful with how much of these you apply because it's very easy to go too far and it starts to seem like you're applying a "look" to the footage.  I'm yet to complete my experiments, but I think this might be something I would adjust on a per-shot basis.

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

I tend to agree. I associate green/brown with Sony and you’re saying that more magenta (canon?) images can be had in Sony? Simple correction in camera white balance? Or only in post? 

You'd have to see if you can adjust the Sony to be how you wanted, I'd imagine it would just do a gain adjustment on the linear reading off the sensor and then put it through the same colour profile, so maybe you can compensate for it and maybe not.  

TBH it's pretty much impossible to evaluate colour science online.  This is because:

• If you look at a bunch of videos online and they all look the same, is this because the camera can only create this look? or is this the default look and no-one knows how to change it?  or is this the current trend?
• If you find a single video and you like it, you can't know if it was just that particular location and time and lighting conditions where the colours were like this, or if the person is a very skilled colourist, or if it involved great looking skin-tones then maybe the person had great skin or great skill in applying makeup, or even if they somehow screwed up the lighting and it actually worked out brilliantly just by accident (in an infinite group of monkeys with typewriters one will eventually type Shakespeare) and the internet is very very much like an infinite group of monkeys with typewriters!
• The camera might be being used on an incredible number of amazing looking projects, but these people aren't posting to YT.  Think about it - there could be 10,000 reality TV shows shot with whatever camera you're looking at and you'd never know that they were shot on that camera because these people aren't all over YT talking about their equipment - they're at work creating solid images and then going home to spend whatever spare time they have with family and friends.  The only time we hear about what equipment is being used is if the person is a camera YouTuber, if they're an amateur who is taking 5 years to shoot their film, if they're a professional who doesn't have enough work on to keep them busy, or if the project is so high-level that the crew get interviewed and these questions get asked.
  There are literally millions of moderately successful TV shows, movies, YouTube channels that look great and there is no information available about what equipment they use.
• Let's imagine that you find a camera that is capable of great results - this doesn't tell you what kind of results YOU will get with it.  Some cameras are just incredibly forgiving and it's easy to get great images from, and there are other cameras that are absolute PIGS to work with, and only the worlds best are able to really make the most of them.  For the people in the middle (ie. not a noob and not a god) the forgiving ones will create much nicer images than the pigs, but in the hands of the worlds best, the pig camera might even have more potential.

14 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Maybe a 1/4 black mist? 1/8 may be better? Makes it look less sharp

It's hard to tell, but it looks like it might even be 1/2.  You have to change the amount when you change the focal length, but I suspect Riza isn't doing that because of how she spoke about the gear.

It's also possible to add diffusion in post.  Also, lifting the shadows with a softer contrast curve can also have a similar effect.

 

[SRV1981]

7 hours ago, kye said:

If you find a single video and you like it

Agree! Been watching hours of footage and notice a personal bias toward canon images - and it seems to be the way they render color and skin regardless of user - it’s over hours of footage. 

 

7 hours ago, kye said:

the internet is very very much like an infinite group of monkeys with typewriters!

That’s us! 

 

7 hours ago, kye said:

YOU will get with it

Yes I get this, after feeling a little dejected from the original question and response I checked the subreddit “colorists” and there’s tons of threads and comments noting that they prefer to receive images from some cameras and brands over others. 
 

it seems to come down to difficulty - if you have the same face, scene, lighting etc and 5 different cameras or brands - these colorists had noted that to get the desirable look was much easier than others and frustrating and painstaking on others.  Which is why I felt it difficult to accept notions of makeup or learn color grading. The tools themselves can aid in that journey. 
 

I’ve learned through this that the way canon renders color, specifically skin, is my favorite look. That doesn’t mean I’ll go run out to grab an r5 or r8 - the feature set is far inferior to an a7s3 or a7iv, I think. 

I was curious what more knowledgeable folks preferred as their starting point tool. Do you use a gx85 for your travel and fs7 for work? Or is it an r5 for travel and fx6 for work, etc? That’s all I was hoping to discuss here and then follow with - “why did you choose that tool”. 
 

sometimes we bring our own gripes and biases to a question and don’t answer the quesirtin. 
 

that said, now my next question is can you achieve the same appeal of color on mid-level Sony bodies as you can on the canons that produce color I love. And if so, how easy is it to do? 
 

7 hours ago, kye said:

It's hard to tell, but it looks like it might even be 1/2

Great video - saw this years back I believe. That said. I loved the 1/8 look for general purpose filming but anything more was very stylized for my taste. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, SRV1981 said:

there’s tons of threads and comments noting that they prefer to receive images from some cameras and brands over others.

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

[SRV1981]

51 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

Yea and to clarify they’re referring to 10-bit cameras mostly. They do have preferences of canon Sony etc. 

[kye]

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Agree! Been watching hours of footage and notice a personal bias toward canon images - and it seems to be the way they render color and skin regardless of user - it’s over hours of footage. 

I understand that a person can look at a larger quantity of footage and notice similarities and themes, but there are still a great number of un-accounted-for variables that can always bite you in the ass if you were to actually get that camera.

The general look that cameras have online is likely to be the default look, partly because most people don't know the first thing about colour grading and mostly because the people who are posting videos and specifying the model number of the camera are likely in the shallow end of the skills pool, so to speak.  The exception is cinematographers doing camera tests, but these have their own issues.

The challenge comes in when you try and change the image in post.  Try to add a bit more contrast and you might find that the image doesn't keep the things you liked about the look.  In fact, the nicer the image looks SOOC or with the default LUT on it, the more fragile the image might be because the more pushed it will be.  The most flexible images are the most neutral, and our brain doesn't like neutral images, it wants ones with the right herbs and spices already added.

There really is no substitute for actually shooting with the camera the way that you shoot, in the situations you shoot in, and then grade it the way you grade it, trying to get the look you want, with your level of skill.

TBH, most of the videos I see that have the name of the camera in them, that are graded with a "look", actually look pretty awful and amateurish to me.  Either this is their lack of skill as colourist to not be able to get the look they wanted, or they did get the look they wanted and the look is just awful, but it's not a promising picture either way.

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

Yes I get this, after feeling a little dejected from the original question and response I checked the subreddit “colorists” and there’s tons of threads and comments noting that they prefer to receive images from some cameras and brands over others. 

it seems to come down to difficulty - if you have the same face, scene, lighting etc and 5 different cameras or brands - these colorists had noted that to get the desirable look was much easier than others and frustrating and painstaking on others.  Which is why I felt it difficult to accept notions of makeup or learn color grading. The tools themselves can aid in that journey. 

I wonder how many of them are using colour management.

If a camera is a 10-bit LOG with decent bitrate then the camera is one CST away from being almost indistinguishable from any other camera.  Skin tones are a challenge of course, but when well-shot on capable equipment these are pretty straight-forward.

There's a few principles I think are at play here:

1. What I hear from high-level colourists is that if a project is well shot on capable equipment (without a "we'll fix it in post" mindset) then you can get your colour management setup, put a look in place, and 80% of the shots just fall into place.  Then the time can be spent refining the overall look, adding a specific look to certain scenes (night scenes, dream sequences, etc), fixing any problem shots, and then you'd do a fine-tune pass on all shots with very minor adjustments.
   If it's not well shot to get it mostly right in-camera then you're in all sorts of trouble for post.
    
2. If the client is inexperienced and doesn't know what they want, or they want something that is very different to how they shot the project.  It's very easy to see colour grading make big changes (e.g. shooting day for night) or see the amazing VFX work done by Hollywood etc, and assume that anyone with a grading panel and calibrated reference monitor can do anything with any footage.
    
3. If the client is a diva, or is somehow mentally unbalanced.  Film-making is difficult enough to make almost anyone mentally unbalanced by the time they get to post-production and they're sitting with the colourist and every mistake done at any point on the project is becoming clearly visible on the huge TV in their studio.  Throwing a fit at this point is perhaps a predictable human reaction!

One colourist I heard interviewed said that when they were colour grading rap videos in the 80's they had to tell one client who had about 20 people in the colour grading suite that the strippers, cocaine, and machine guns had to go back into the limo otherwise they wouldn't be able to colour grade the project.

Of course, none of this is the fault of the camera.

I'd even theorise that the brand of camera might be a predictor of how much the colour grading process was setup to fail - if people shot something on a Sony rather than a Canon you might find they're more likely to be a clueless and self-entitled influencer etc.  God help the colourists that are going to face a barrage of projects over the next few years shot on the FX3 where the person thinks the colourist can duplicate The Creator in post for a few thousand dollars! 

Also, the stronger the look you apply in post, the more those small colour science differences get lost in the wash.

It's also worth asking, do you think the colourists on reddit are the ones who are fully-booked with more professional clients who have realistic expectations, or the ones out there dealing with the stressed masses and going online to learn and vent?  My experience on the colourist forums is that the most experienced folks burn out from answering the same questions over and over again, and arguing with people who don't want to learn or put in the work, so the people who are there are mostly those early in their journeys.

13 hours ago, SRV1981 said:

that said, now my next question is can you achieve the same appeal of color on mid-level Sony bodies as you can on the canons that produce color I love. And if so, how easy is it to do? 

Only you can know this, because what you love will be different to what anyone else loves.

But don't ask random strangers online, actually try it.... 

https://sonycine.com/testfootage/

https://zsyst.com/sony-4k-camera-page/sony-f55-sample-footage-downloadable-samples/

🙂 

[SRV1981]

11 hours ago, kye said:

Only you can know this, because what you love will be different to what anyone else loves.

Haha I’d imagine some folks who own Sonys also love canon skintones. I’ll do some digging on the interwebs if nobody here has don’t it. 

[Evgeniy85]

On 4/25/2024 at 10:18 AM, eatstoomuchjam said:

That makes total sense.  One would expect a professional colorist to groan a bit if handed 8-bit log footage vs 10-bit log (or 12-bit raw).  I'd imagine that most want the most flexible image to work with when possible - there's a reason that Hollywood tends to shoot most stuff on Arri and it's not ease of use or portability. 

Hollywood shoots ProRes for the most part, except for VFX plates. 

[mercer]

On 4/22/2024 at 10:51 AM, BTM_Pix said:

I like the look of it too.

I think what it is benefitting from greatly, aside from the compositions, image quality and general shooting competency, is what I would call accidental environmental production design.

The uniforms and demeanour of the subjects are consistent and tie together as does the station setting and its train and staff.

When the shots are framed, as many of them are, to only include those elements then it provides the right aesthetic to sell the "cinematic" image.

The proof of that, for me at least, is when other none designed elements stray into the frame and not just the obvious of modern vehicles etc but onlookers with modern clothes (particularly those out of the general colour palette) then the illusion is gone and quite jarring to be taken out of it.

No amount of obsessive grading is going to cure that.

Oh and the use of a tripod does absolutely no harm whatsoever in this as does the flattish light of what I am guessing is the archetypal overcast Bank Holiday day in the UK.

All in all, aside from it being a good advert for a camera from "yesteryear" in modern terms, I also think this is more broadly a very good example of why "cinematic" doesn't just happen when wafting a camera at random scenes no matter what YouTube thumbnails will scream at you.

When it comes to trying to do this in the wild, its definitely a case of granting ourselves the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the skill and vision to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

 

Sorry, I have been meaning to reply to this for the past few weeks but life has gotten in the way. You know, it's so easy to not even mention or think about the obvious production value he had by shooting at that event. In some ways, I even glossed over that in my praise of the video and it may add to the reason why I liked the camera in the first place. Now I'm a stubborn prick, so I cannot move on from it until I have made a proper film with it. You guys can be discussing 6K and I'll still be yammering on about the 1080p image from the 5D3 and ML Raw.

[mercer]

Just reread my last post and realized I meant to write that you guys can be discussing 16K and I'll still be praising... anyway you get my point.

Also in my haste, @BTM_Pix I forgot to mention that one thing I noticed from that video which really helped was his use of old Hollywood close ups with a glowing blurry background. I think it helped to add to the feel of the piece.

And with that, I think the feature film he was working on is almost completed. However I assume he shot it on the Komodo because I think that's his camera of choice now. 

[PannySVHS]

4 hours ago, mercer said:

And with that, I think the feature film he was working on is almost completed. However I assume he shot it on the Komodo because I think that's his camera of choice now. 

Who are you talking about? Always grateful for your recommendations and point of view. Phil Ohs looks very interesting btw.

[mercer]

5 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Who are you talking about? Always grateful for your recommendations and point of view. Phil Ohs looks very interesting btw.

The filmmaker that made the WW2 5Diii/ML Raw video. Yeah Pete Ohs is pretty interesting actually. His past 3 or 4 films he has made on his own after getting a "real" budget to make a movie and hating the process, so he took his 5D3, casted some actors and wrote a very loose script that they wrote/rewrote each morning before filming. He makes a movie a year. I believe he edits on a livestream and people watch and may make suggestions... or he did with Jethica.

[ac6000cw]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

The filmmaker that made the WW2 5Diii/ML Raw video.

That was Paul Cook - https://vimeo.com/paulcook and https://www.paulcookfilm.com/

[BTM_Pix]

On 5/23/2024 at 11:16 PM, mercer said:

You guys can be discussing 6K and I'll still be yammering on about the 1080p image from the 5D3 and ML Raw.

Discussing them is all I’ll be doing as, unfortunately, I’m just too washed up to be using them anymore.

Oddly enough, there is exactly the same type of WW2 re-enactment event taking place on Monday (which is a Bank Holiday so guaranteed flat lighting ) at a heritage railway 20 mins from where I’ll be.

I can’t even be arsed going to watch it let alone taking a camera and filming it.

On the topic of your endearing love for the 5D3, I think it’s quite common for people to still have the strongest affiliation to the first camera that offered the “great leap forward” for them in terms of their image making.

That’s why there is still so much love for cameras such as the BMPCC and the GH2.

Possibly also because they all represent peak enthusiasm before the gear ridden descent into being so jaded 😂

 

[PannySVHS]

I went for a walk with my og Bmpcc yesterday, mounted with a 25mm lens. Handheld shooting without rigging was quiete a challenge and a lot of fun. Color response in grading is still impressive. I imagine the 5D3 to be on par with it. In that case I would prefer it over any Sony or Pana dslm in regards of sheer beauty under natural light or 5600K fixtures. S1 and S1H impressed me in lit scenarios though under tungsten btw. I bought a 5D3 1.5 years ago and it's waiting for party time.

[kye]

14 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I went for a walk with my og Bmpcc yesterday, mounted with a 25mm lens. Handheld shooting without rigging was quiete a challenge and a lot of fun. Color response in grading is still impressive. I imagine the 5D3 to be on par with it. In that case I would prefer it over any Sony or Pana dslm in regards of sheer beauty under natural light or 5600K fixtures. S1 and S1H impressed me in lit scenarios though under tungsten btw. I bought a 5D3 1.5 years ago and it's waiting for party time.

Man - I recently watched my BMMCC footage I shot with the 14mm handheld and it was too shaky so well done on hand-holding a 25mm lens!

The images certainly grade like refined butter....  just incredible compared to any h26x footage.

[mercer]

On 5/25/2024 at 3:58 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Discussing them is all I’ll be doing as, unfortunately, I’m just too washed up to be using them anymore.

Hope you're not feeling ill?!

On 5/25/2024 at 3:58 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Oddly enough, there is exactly the same type of WW2 re-enactment event taking place on Monday (which is a Bank Holiday so guaranteed flat lighting ) at a heritage railway 20 mins from where I’ll be.

I can’t even be arsed going to watch it let alone taking a camera and filming it.

I know how that feels, they have a classic car show about two blocks away from me once a year... why couldn't it be one block?

On 5/25/2024 at 3:58 AM, BTM_Pix said:

On the topic of your endearing love for the 5D3, I think it’s quite common for people to still have the strongest affiliation to the first camera that offered the “great leap forward” for them in terms of their image making.

That’s why there is still so much love for cameras such as the BMPCC and the GH2.

Possibly also because they all represent peak enthusiasm before the gear ridden descent into being so jaded 😂

Probably the truest statement I read all week.

[PannySVHS]

On 5/27/2024 at 2:48 AM, kye said:

Man - I recently watched my BMMCC footage I shot with the 14mm handheld and it was too shaky so well done on hand-holding a 25mm lens!

Well, it definately is a raw look one can achieve doing that, filming handheld with a portrait lens on a tiny shaky camera.😊

Panning with a moving object yields great results though. Shooting with 180 shutter angle allows great stab in post. It stabilizes better than any of my other cameras in post. On my first day I shot my 25mm on 360 degree shutter and beyond diffraction limit. It was fun. Watching the footage was not.😂

[PannySVHS]

The 14mm needed post stab even more than the 25 due to the kind of framing and nature of the mise èn scene going along with the fov, framing and most of all nature and design of the shot. A slightly shaky 14 looked more stupid than a more shaky 25 due to that, from my still little experience with my og pocket.

I have shot with my og pocket about seven or eight times over the course of one year so far, each worth about 4 batteries per session and 30 to 40min of footage. So take it with a bit of grain of salt.:) @kye

[BTM_Pix]

9 hours ago, mercer said:

Hope you're not feeling ill?!

I'm only ill in the very particular "I'm back in the UK and listening to The Smiths" kind of a way.