FSI to Release 5,000 Nit Mastering Monitor This Fall

FSI will be releasing the XM312U this fall – a 5,000 nit mastering monitor with 2,300 individually controlled LED backlight zones and priced at $22,000. It appears that we’ll be reaching the dizzying 10,000 nit peak brightness of PQ HDR sooner than most people think. Keep in mind though, that with PQ HDR, anything above 100-200… Read More

HDR vs. SDR Contrast Ratios

Rory Gordon, Senior Colorist at ArsenalFX Color, during a presentation at a 2019 SMPTE conference entitled “Beyond Better Pixels: How HDR Perceptually and Emotionally Effects [sic] Storytelling”, used data gathered from her work as a colorist on over 35 episodes of HDR content to explore the psychological and emotional impact high dynamic range has on… Read More

Ditching the Video Look

Stuff we’re doing differently now from the past: during shooting, avoiding yellow in false color entirely except for specular highlights (aside from the infrequent occasions when we want to purposely blow out highlights); in post, being meticulous about adjusting white balance prior to color correction, even if it’s just a few degrees; adjusting yellow, blue,… Read More

Moving Beyond Traditional Film Print Emulation

Part I: The State of HDR Film Emulation LUTs Part II: Moving Beyond Traditional Film Print Emulation The following excerpts are taken from Cullen Kelly’s Grade School Episode 5 in response to the question, ‘How do we move digital image mastering beyond the inherent limitations of physical film?’ The heritage of celluloid […] I really… Read More

Comprehensive Workflow: Sony a7s III S-Log3 HDR 10 in DaVinci Resolve Studio 17 (Part V)

Part I: Project settings Part II: Color correction Part III: HDR Palette, project render settings Part IV: RAW Part V: The Grade Part VI: Addendum Stuff we’re doing differently now from the past: during shooting, avoiding yellow in false color entirely except for specular highlights (aside from the infrequent occasions when we want to purposely blow out highlights); in… Read More

Colloid 2.0 Resolve Plug-In for Colorists

Cullen Kelly is a Los Angeles-based senior colorist with credits spanning film, television, and commercials, for clients and outlets including Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Microsoft, American Airlines, and Apple. He is also the creator of Colloid 2.0, a custom suite of Resolve plug-ins for working colorists. Colloid 2.0 has been overhauled with a streamlined UI for… Read More

The Future of HDR

“Technical details aside, the most important thing to understand about HDR is that it doesn’t represent an enhancement as much as the removal of an artificial limitation. In the realm of human vision and physical light, high dynamic range is a default condition, not an added gimmick”. – Cullen Kelly In his article entitled ‘Three Predictions… Read More

Grading Tools: Final Cut Pro vs. DaVinci Resolve

In his video Color Grading vs. Color Correction, Cullen Kelly’s articulation of the difference between Log and gamma sounds uncannily similar to our experience grading HDR footage in Final Cut Pro vs. DaVinci Resolve. “Images can be encoded in a Log or a gamma state. Gamma encoding was devised for preparing an image for viewing… Read More