What's the difference between scene-referred and display-referred grading? Stefan Ringelschwandtner, on his website Mononodes, explains it very clearly with simple diagrams. He writes: "The easiest scene referred workflow is to transform the image from LOG to Rec709 color space at the very end of your node tree – e.g. Timeline level. And do the grading... Continue Reading →
Scene Referred or Display Referred?
We're in the middle of comparing REDWideGamutRGB/Log3G10 and Rec.2020 ST2084 as the timeline color space. There's definitely a difference between how the two feel, we're just trying to decide which we prefer. Which one do you like working with?
What Timeline Working Space Do Dolby Colorists Prefer?
Thomas Graham, Head of Dolby Vision Content Enablement at Dolby Laboratories: Can you all just tell me in the sense of what your timeline working space is that you find suits you best to create HDR imagery? Now I know there's a lot of controversy about working sort of in PQ or working in camera... Continue Reading →
Walter Volpatto on Film Grain
"Unfortunately, I'm changing my mind on grain and I'll explain why. First of all, I love grain. I love the idea of grain; and for me, it reminds me of film. I mean, there is really nothing more obvious than grain to tell you this has been shot on film, and Interstellar was shot on... Continue Reading →
Walter Volpatto on Why He Doesn’t Do Secondaries on Skin
Walter Volpatto on why he doesn't do secondary corrections on skin. "I do not do [a] secondary on the skin. For me, when I do balance, it means that the main actress - balance, color, skin tone - has to be right. Then I do everything else. There is no reason for me to make... Continue Reading →
We Couldn’t Come up With a Title for This Post
Something doesn't seem quite right here. In this video with Armando Ferriera where Shane Ruggieri explains how to work with Sony footage, the renowned authority on HDR does something peculiar... "The first thing that I would do is I would come in - let me turn this this monitor off - I would first come... Continue Reading →
DWG, ACES or Native Camera Color Space?
We've already made it abundantly clear that we're not overly fond of transforming the log color space of our camera to DaVinci Wide Gamut or ACES but that we could understand wanting to bring all of your footage into a common working color space if you're dealing with a multi-camera shoot. It ensures that the... Continue Reading →
Tips for Better Looking HDR Videos
https://youtu.be/L5Wo473X4-g You've balanced your clips and corrected skin tones, now what? Go from the HDR camcorder look to the film look in four easy steps. Additional strategies not mentioned in the video include (1) pinning black levels above zero with the HDR wheels to prevent footage from looking too 'crunchy'; (2) you can and should... Continue Reading →
No Love for Film Grain
"I've got no great love lost for film grain and I think I can say I think I've managed to go all of 2022 without using film grain once. It's something you know, if the client says, 'Hey, we're doing film grain, give me your best version of it', then my answer is of course... Continue Reading →
First Look: RED Komodo R3D HQ vs. R3D ELQ
https://youtu.be/_jFpYHHX1xk All clips ISO 500, enlarged 999%, chroma noise reduction enabled. Click here to see our comparison between R3D HQ and R3D LQ. To really evaluate the image quality and see what compression is doing to our footage, it's necessary to play the clips back-to-back in HDR on something like a 55" LG OLED, and... Continue Reading →