Frank Glencairn fancies himself a senior colorist, so it's baffling why he would recommend a YouTube tutorial filled with blunders that any experienced colorist ought to be able to spot at a glance. EXPOSURE (1) The YouTuber recommends zebras and waveforms for exposure, but bewilderingly overlooks false color, one of the most useful exposure tools... Continue Reading →
Many Unaware They’re Watching HDR
Much streamed HDR content is virtually indistinguishable from SDR. Nate McFarlin, Staff Content Engineer, Dolby Laboratories, says that film schools are partly to blame for failing to teach HDR acquisition and post-production. Joey D’Anna: Are people adopting HDR more now than they have before? Or is it still kind of that niche, nerdy thing for... Continue Reading →
For The Best Theatrical Result, Do The Dolby Vision First
The following excerpt is from S6 E5 of The T Stop Inn with guest Michael Cioni and host Ben Allan, ACS on 21 March 2025. We highly recommend listening to the entire show. Michael Cioni: I used to own a post house called Light Iron, and we did everything from The Social Network, we worked... Continue Reading →
Cinema Has The Least Quality
A lot of people are seeing technically higher quality - they're seeing HDR, they're seeing 4K - higher quality on a purely technical level on the device that's in their pocket than what they're seeing at their local cinema. - Ben Allan, ACS The following excerpt is from S6 E5 of The T Stop Inn... Continue Reading →
RED KOMODO FW 1.8.3 Bug
https://youtube.com/shorts/VhSA1i4t-B4?feature=share All four of our Sigma DC DN ‘Contemporary’ APS-C lenses for RF Mount - the 16mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 30mm f/1.4 and 56mm f/1.4 - worked fine on our RED KOMODO until we updated to their latest firmware version 1.8.3. The aperture indicator on the camera changes continuously, the camera’s physical buttons and on... Continue Reading →
Toxic Member Ousted From Colorist Forum
“Ever since liftgammagain got hijacked by that lunatic, psychopath guy who sells calibration software, most smart people that know anything about color science or color have been out of it, nobody really wants to even write anything, because there's always somebody trying to outsmart you and put links to their product, using it as a... Continue Reading →
Power Budget: When The Reference Monitor & Client Display Don’t Match
A calibrator sharing his experience matching a DIT’s LG client monitor with his Flanders XMP310 writes, “One of the trickiest parts? The ABL (automatic brightness limiting) on these two monitors kicks in at very different points, forcing us to rethink how to treat the LG TV.” He observed that the FSI XMP310 began to limit... Continue Reading →
Yossy Mendelovich Is A Genocidal Ass Clown
In an article entitled "YMCinema Stands With Israel and Honoring the Fallen of October 7th", YMCinema founder Yossy Mendelovich advocates genocide and calls Israel “the superhero of the free world.” Meanwhile, CineD's spineless co-founder Nino Leitner, unable to comprehend why anyone would feel compelled to criticize or boycott a website that promotes terrorism and genocide,... Continue Reading →
Returning Greatness To Film Grain
Returning Greatness to Film Grain: Introducing AV1-Compatible Film Grain Modeling for ExistingHEVC-Based Video Codecs. By Dan Grois, Alex Giladi, Thomas Guionnet, Thomas Burnichon,Nikolay Tverdokhleb, and Mickael Raulet Do the conclusions of this study, which presents an implementation of the existing AV1 film grain synthesis applied to HEVC-based video codecs, justify such a bombastic title? For... Continue Reading →
Highlights in SDR & HDR
"And now if we think further about negative emulation, all kinds of other interesting questions come into play that kind of go along the lines of what we were just talking about, like what are the great things and also the limitations of a film negative. Here’s one that is not popular and people don't... Continue Reading →
Adobe Cancellation Hell
Adobe makes users jump through a crazy number of hoops just to cancel a stupid subscription. We had to hit ‘cancel’, ‘no thanks’ or ‘continue’ no fewer than six times in order to cancel ours. The FTC’s proposed ‘click to cancel’ rule takes aim at the unscrupulous practices of Adobe and others. The proposed rule... Continue Reading →
Calman’s New Additivity Feature
In this video, David Abrams, Sr. Product Manager, Portrait Displays, demonstrates how to use Calman’s new additivity feature using Sony’s A95L QD-OLED, an additive display technology, as an example. https://www.youtube.com/embed/xFDMJmS2F2g?wmode=opaque “Some displays exhibit specific characteristics that don’t follow traditional display color physics. This could be due to the manufacturing of the panel itself or processing... Continue Reading →
CineD Continues To Publish Nonsense
CineD begins its write up of the Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K like so: “While some camera manufacturers keep postponing 8K camera models due to the industry’s slower adoption of the very high resolution and the massive data rates that come with it, other companies are moving in the other direction.” Is that so? Let’s see…... Continue Reading →
Professional Colorist Botches Explanation of Scene-Referred vs Display-Referred
https://youtu.be/AAeZKZ5feGA?si=awlpC8y0CmhCK-RP Shortly after colorist Darren Mostyn published his latest color management video, we pointed out that his explanation of scene-referred and display-referred grading was inaccurate. Not only did he double down on his blunder in his reply, but he’s since deleted our comment and pinned a long, muddled statement in the comments section which will... Continue Reading →
Julien Leclercq To Direct New Series For Netflix
French director Julien Leclercq (Ganglands) will be making a new series for Netflix: GIGN. The GIGN is the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France. Among its missions are counterterrorism, hostage rescue, surveillance of national threats, protection of government officials, critical site protection (such as French embassies in war-torn countries), and targeting... Continue Reading →
Sharpness, the Heynacher Integral & Evolution
Most of us are familiar with the Nyquist theorem, but have you ever heard of the Heynacher Integral? The following excerpts are from a paper by Dr. Hans Kiening that explains why a scientific approach is necessary to understand the perception of sharpness and not just counting megapixels. Resolution alone is not a predictor of... Continue Reading →
Cullen Kelly: Exposure & Contrast Not Allowed In Look Development
“Look setting can be an integral part of preproduction building monitoring LUTs or in camera look files. Or it can happen after production has wrapped but prior to the main grade starting or combination of those approaches.” Robbie Carman, Colorist, CEO, DC Color We’ve mentioned in the past how much we dislike LUTs and plug-ins... Continue Reading →
Factors To Consider When Choosing A Camera
Imatest is all well and good, but we appreciate that in his reviews, Matthew Allard has been doing rough comparisons of the dynamic range of cameras by exposing a scene for middle gray and looking for highlight clipping using false color. RED cameras have a built-in False Color Exposure mode that we use all the... Continue Reading →
Calman adds gamut rings to color volume analysis workflow
https://youtu.be/9WCrrLzVs9U?si=OAmeUHt82rX4P81i Using Gamut Rings to analyze color volumeAugust 20, 2024 Starting with Calman 2024 R6 (v5.15.6), it is now possible to visualize the three-dimensional color volume of a given display in a two-dimensional view called Gamut Rings. Traditionally CIE 1931 or CIE 1976 chromaticity diagrams that offer a two-dimensional perspective have been used. Calman’s Gamut... Continue Reading →
Why We Ditched The Sony Bravia XR A95L QD-OLED
When streaming Dolby Vision content, either with an Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) or using the television's own Apple TV and Netflix apps, the A95L picture had horrific banding and posterization in some scenes. In low light shots, the picture becomes seriously desaturated and takes on a green tint. Sony's processing also adds undesirable sharpening... Continue Reading →
The Daejeon Chronicles 