Color Spec Literacy Is Essential

Wondering why so many of Steve Yedlin’s ardent fans conflate transfer functions with color spaces, we were able to trace it back to this interview on the Go Creative Show:

“Let’s compare two different color spaces. You know, like a Mac computer uses Display P3 color space and most HD TVs or HD monitors are gonna use A COLOR SPACE CALLED REC.1886 – which is colloquially, and incorrectly, called 709, but whatever – these two color spaces for every single color, except for just a few of the most garish colors, like in a neon sign or something like that – they’re capable of reproducing the exact same colors. Capable of. So, when you convert between the two, it should look exactly the same.” – Steve Yedlin, ASC

This mixing up of color spaces and transfer functions spreads like a contagion. Which is how we end up with a DaVinci Resolve Certified Trainer and postproduction supervisor with over a decade of experience writing nonsense like this:

Or this foolishness from a frequent contributor to the Lift Gamma Gain colorist forum:

Similarly, there’s no such animal as BT.1886 primaries:

And this one, over at the Blackmagic Forums (but the author does provide valid criticism of Yedlin’s offensive terminology):

On the Team Deakins podcast, DP Steve Yedlin once more calls BT.1886 a color space.

“It would just be the math and just, boop, just do it and they’re all the same. But the problem is that’s not how it is. With Dolby Vision, what’s happening is…

It’s almost ironic the way it works is we do it in so-called SDR. Doesn’t matter what we’re doing it in because it’s just meters or feet. We’re just making the colors we want, and then we’re writing them down in the color space called Rec.1886.

You could say you’re doing it in a color space, but really that’s just you’re writing down, so that what you chose as color is written down and recorded in Rec.1886, which could be DCI-P3, but whatever, it doesn’t matter [1]. It gets written down. Then we’re converting that correctly to Rec.2100, which is the HDR color space.

And actually, in the mastering, they actually use a hybrid color space for that, but it’s going to eventually then get converted to Rec.2100, which is the standard HDR thing that all the consumers get. So that actually converts correctly to the HDR.” – Steve Yedlin, ASC. Team Deakins Podcast, 11 June 2025

Confusing EOTFs with color spaces is akin to a cinematographer not knowing the difference between a lens and a camera sensor. These are foundational concepts in color science.

1. Technical Note: BT.1886 defines an EOTF for SDR deliverables. It contains no primaries and cannot be ‘converted to Rec.2100’–a full HDR system with primaries (BT.2020) and HDR transfer functions (PQ/HLG).