After weeks of grumbling about the lack of interest in HDR PQ, a forum member over at DPReview took pity on me and shared a brief clip shot with his EOS R5 - and it really looks great! Too bad Sony doesn't have such a feature on the a7s III! https://youtu.be/WOXAFFLmcGs
Vincent Teoh: Colorists Should Consider an OLED TV
https://youtu.be/VDG_lmEPc_g?t=1013 Vincent Teoh, in his unboxing video of the Panasonic HZ1000 OLED TV, corroborates what I've been saying for months now, which is that an OLED display should outperform Apple's Pro Display XDR for HDR grading, and just might be the best budget option short of a reference monitor. When I reviewed the Apple Pro... Continue Reading →
Should You Be Using a Production Monitor for Grading HDR in 2020?
Just a few years ago, when HDR was still in its infancy and VESA had not yet even published standards for HDR monitors, Atomos, along with Mystery Box and several other influential content creators, were advocating the use of production monitors for grading HDR video on a budget - with some even going so far... Continue Reading →
Selling My Asus ProArt PA32UCX-K!
Whether grading Rec. 709 or HDR footage, the colors of the Asus are too warm; and in order to calibrate the monitor, I'd need to shell out another $1,600.00 for the Teranex Mini SDI to HDMI 8K HDR, with no guarantee that the colors would be any better. For only $1,300.00, you can pick up... Continue Reading →
Plug and Play
Exhausted from weeks of struggling to get the colors of the Dolby Vision certified Asus PA32UCX to match those of my LG OLED C7, last night, in a fit of desperation, I connected the Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K Mini directly to the television, opened up a long dormant project in Final Cut Pro, began grading, and... Continue Reading →
Asus PA32UCX-K As A Grading Monitor for YouTube
Asus ProArt PA32UCX (l), iMac (c), LG OLED C7 (r) I thought I'd jot down my first impressions of the PA32UCX solely in its capacity as a grading monitor for delivery to YouTube - the primary purpose for which I purchased the display. For this, I'm evaluating the image quality of an HLG HDR video... Continue Reading →
7 Tips to Better Sony HLG HDR Footage
https://youtu.be/fiNxXXDKoCk Custom white balance using the X-Rite color checker. This will give you consistent results. Unfortunately, Sony makes doing custom white balance much more tedious than it needs to be.ND Filters. In broad daylight, exposures can be in the thousandths of a second at f/9 or f/10. This might be fine for architectural or landscape... Continue Reading →
Revised Opinion of Sony’s Fake 8-Bit HLG
https://youtu.be/aFYkotwoEj4 Since shooting HLG 3 and properly exposing, I've had to re-evaluate my attitude towards Sony's implementation of HLG, also known as instant HDR. HLG requires no color correction, though it can still hold up to a very tiny bit of manipulation in post. The LCD on Sony's a7 III is too dark even in... Continue Reading →
Asus PA32UCX: HDR Modes Locked Out
Update 23.01: I have since confirmed that HDR PQ modes do indeed work with the Asus PA32UCX, UltraStudio 4K Mini and Final Cut Pro. Also, I did not realize at the time I posted this that Daniel was not using an I/O box. The BMD UltraStudio works with both DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro.... Continue Reading →
Brightness Dependency Syndrome
While some YouTubers gripe that even 500 nits is too dim to edit photos or video, I've been learning to work with as little ambient light as possible and setting the monitor as close to 120 nits as I can. Addiction to bright displays is a seriously hard habit to kick, so I'm doing it... Continue Reading →
Max & Linus Review the Pro Display XDR
https://youtu.be/m_6HaMRg91o Both Max Yuryev and Linus Sebastian give more in-depth reviews of Apple's 6K monitor than we've grown accustomed to seeing on YouTube. Max points out that when connected to the new Mac Pro, because of its older graphics card, the USB 3.1 ports on the XDR behave like twenty-year-old USB 2.0 ports, while Linus... Continue Reading →
Dell UP3221Q Boasts 2K Mini-LED Dimming Zones
At their booth at CES 2020, Dell showed off a 31.5” 4K monitor with 2,000 mini-LED local dimming zones, nearly twice that of the Asus PA32UCX and over three times the number in Apple’s 6K Pro Display XDR. The UP3221Q, rated DisplayHDR 1000, will be equipped with Thunderbolt 3, supports wide color gamut and comes with... Continue Reading →
Apple Pro Display XDR: Colorist ‘Bummed’
This is a 32-inch 6K display that is brighter (1,600 nits) than almost any display that any of us have seen before and offers groundbreaking color accuracy that could make $30,000 to $40,000 "reference displays" from Sony and Flanders Scientific obsolete. - Cnet For months, we've been inundated with bloated claims by tech writers and... Continue Reading →
Sales Pitch
LG 5K Ultrafine (l), Pro Display XDR (r) Max Yuryev joins the chorus of fellow YouTube influencers iJustine, Jonathan Morrison, Marques Brownlee and a host of others in extolling the picture quality of Apple's XDR to the skies, going seriously overboard in his most recent video comparing the 6K display to LG's 5K Ultrafine display.... Continue Reading →
Pro Display XDR Blooming, A Colorist’s First Impressions & Cost Reappraisal
A comparison between Apple's 6K monitor, the FSI XM310K (zoned dimming) and XM311K (dual panel). At long last, we're presented with a refreshingly realistic evaluation of the Pro Display XDR that doesn't read like the many puff pieces by tech writers and editors claiming that Apple's display renders OLED reference monitors obsolete. Ryan McNeal writes... Continue Reading →
A Very Affordable HDR Monitor
This and many other stunning HDR videos were shot by Eugene Belsky with the amazing Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and graded on the modestly priced Asus ProArt PA32UC. While many on the Internet go to great lengths to disparage sub-forty thousand dollar monitors, others quietly go about perfecting their craft, creating mind-blowing imagery with... Continue Reading →
Asus PA32UCX: Fan Noise Test
Some have expressed concern about Asus PA32UCX fan noise, so I took a little time out of the day to make an audio recording. An HDR clip in the timeline of Final Cut Pro was looped for an hour to let the monitor warm up before recording the fan noise with a Sony PCM-M10 audio... Continue Reading →
Asus PA32UCX Blooming
Blooming on the Asus ProArt PA32UCX in HLG HDR. It is unmistakable when viewed off-axis; less noticeable when sitting directly in front of the monitor; and a non-issue for the vast majority of my own work. Keep in mind that in a well-lighted room, blooming is practically imperceptible, whether viewing the display head-on or from... Continue Reading →
HDR Calibration: What They Don’t Tell You
The reason production houses spend as much as $40,000 on reference monitors is quite simple: they need to have unwavering confidence that their work is going to be displayed exactly as intended. However, all displays change with time, and the only way to ensure consistent results is to calibrate them on a regular basis.* Yet,... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 