The Results: Budget Camera Skin Tone
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Leonard Levy
Granted I’m an FS7 owner so maybe this is just sour grapes, but isn’t what you are really comparing the post process each of these cameras has gone through not the cameras themselves. That’s immediately clear from the contrast differences, but presumably that affects the color just as much.
I didn’t like the FS7 sample here that much, but I don’t use Aces and I’ve been very happy with the skin tones and general contrast I get from the FS7 using a LUT directly. Generally I use a homemade LUT based on the Varicam gamma that was made in LUTCALC (based on a suggestion Art Adams made in PVC.) To get a truly accurate idea of what these cameras are capturing wouldn’t you need a colorist to do his best with each one (very cumbersome to do as a test.) Otherwise how do you decide what LUT to use with each camera? The manufacturers suggested LUT is no guarantee of anything. Leonard Levy, DP San Rafael, CA |
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Jan Klier
This seems like a sound way to do an objective comparison. ACES provides a good common denominator and IDTs are supplied by the camera manufacturer. So what you saw should be how each camera manufacturer thinks its best foot forward should look like.
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I’ve worked with the FS7 extensively (and own one). I think this test exactly shows it’s biggest weakness. It can produce great images with the proper hand-holding, but it needs a lot more hand-holding than other cameras who deliver a more pleasing starting point. There have been many complaints about the FS7, and they generally do come back exactly to this point. It’s a lot harder to work with for no good reason. Of course having a colorist make each camera look its best is also an interesting test in its own right, but bears a lot more taste and judgement with it. It would need to consider/measure the challenge and effort spent for each camera as part of the evaluation. Jan Klier DP NYC On May 16, 2019, at 7:59 PM, Leonard Levy <leonardlevydp@...> wrote: |
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Leonard Levy
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 5:59 PM Jan Klier <jan@...> wrote: "This seems like a sound way to do an objective comparison. ACES provides a good common denominator and IDTs are supplied by the camera manufacturer. So what you saw should be how each camera manufacturer thinks its best foot forward should look like. I’ve worked with the FS7 extensively (and own one). I think this test exactly shows it’s biggest weakness. It can produce great images with the proper hand-holding, but it needs a lot more hand-holding than other cameras who deliver a more pleasing starting point. " I will agree that the FS7's biggest weakness is that the default color setup that Sony provides both in its Custom mode and in its internal LUT (709A) .I'm happy with its color but I use my own matrix and my own LUTs. I'm unfamiliar with ACES. How much are these comparisons affected by the character of the manufacturers IDT? Is it possible to alter the IDT or use another one in the same way that one uses a LUT? Leonard Levy, DP San Rafael, CA |
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I always use ACES for testing as it is manufacturer independent and cross platform compatible.
Some cameras have multiple IDT’s available, but these are generally to optimise the system for Tungsten or Daylight or to work within a specific colour space. In Resolve some cameras also have the option to use either the manufacturers debayer or the resolve one. Some manufacturers have supplied the Academy with bad default settings in their SDK, not a lot that the Academy can do about that. Red is particularly bad in this respect, if you use their defaults the camera looks much worse than if you use camera metadata.
cheers
From: cml-raw-log-hdr@... <cml-raw-log-hdr@...> On Behalf Of Leonard Levy
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 5:59 PM Jan Klier <jan@...> wrote: "This seems like a sound way to do an objective comparison. ACES provides a good common denominator and IDTs are supplied by the camera manufacturer. So what you saw should be how each camera manufacturer thinks its best foot forward should look like.
I will agree that the FS7's biggest weakness is that the default color setup that Sony provides both in its Custom mode and in its internal LUT (709A) .I'm happy with its color but I use my own matrix and my own LUTs. I'm unfamiliar with ACES. How much are these comparisons affected by the character of the manufacturers IDT? Is it possible to alter the IDT or use another one in the same way that one uses a LUT?
Leonard Levy, DP San Rafael, CA |
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Noel Sterrett
On 5/17/19 1:45 AM, Geoff Boyle wrote:
In Resolve some cameras also have the option to use either the manufacturers debayer or the resolve one. Sony is one of those cameras, and I have found the Resolve debayer has been optimized (by BMD) in ACES and the Sony has not. Developing from RAW is a large part of the art. Most of the
cameras can be matched if you have balls... LLG. Noel Sterrett Admit One Pictures |
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Jan Klier
The Sony IDT has two transforms - one to convert SGamut to ACES color space and one to convert slog3 to linear gamma. In theory they should yield the same result as the default custom mode or Sony supplied LUTs, not anything different. They’re not meant as aesthetic corrections, but as purely technical corrections to invert what the camera did during encoding. You can read and see the math behind it here: https://github.com/ampas/aces-dev/blob/master/transforms/ctl/idt/vendorSupplied/sony/IDT.Sony.SLog3_SGamut3.ctl and https://pro.sony/s3/cms-static-content/uploadfile/06/1237494271406.pdf.
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So if you dislike the Sony default custom mode and internal LUT, I wouldn’t expect anything better from the IDT. In practice, I’ve found Sony footage easier to wrangle to a pleasing place in ACES than in traditional color models. I think this has more to do with how Resolve’s controls feel in those modes, and how much work it takes to bridge the gap, rather than better color modeling by Sony. You could certainly alter your IDT. I’ve created a Resolve DCTL script that uses the same math as the factory IDT, and you could modify it further: http://nerd.janklier.com/custom-aces-idt. But in more practical terms you would leave the default IDT to its technical transforms and then create a LUT to taste that takes the default output and makes the additional corrections to land you in a happy place as a starting point to grade your footage. Then add this LUT on the first node of your grade. Keep in mind that this would have to be a LUT designed to work in ACES color space/gamma, so your typical Rec709 LUTS or slog3 LUTs won’t work without adaption or wrapping them in transforms which is not ideal. Jan Klier DP NYC
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Paul Curtis
On 17 May 2019, at 13:16, Jan Klier <jan@...> wrote:No skin in the game but i used to have an FS700 and the F7 isn't that different. IMHO the onboard colourscience is terrible or at least skewed towards a different aesthetic. SGamut is as well. Anything that starts life as Slog/SGamut.whatever is on a back foot. However both cameras, especially the FS700 produce *wonderful* RAW imagery. Processed properly the images hold up to anything today. Anyone starting off i would always recommend a FS700 + Recorder. Yes, the file sizes are quite heavy but the images are worth it. cheers Paul Paul Curtis, VFX & Post | Canterbury, UK |
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Noel Sterrett
On 5/17/19 8:16 AM, Jan Klier wrote:
In practice, I’ve found Sony footage easier to wrangle to a pleasing place in ACES than in traditional color models. I agree 100%. Best reds I've ever seen from Sony. Noel Sterrett Admit One Pictures |
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Noel Sterrett
On 5/17/19 8:42 AM, Paul Curtis wrote:
However both cameras, especially the FS700 produce *wonderful* RAW imagery. Processed properly the images hold up to anything today. Yes, as does F5/55 RAW. The beauty of shooting RAW is that as
color science improves, so do your old shots. Noel Sterrett Admit One Pictures |
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Paul Curtis
As per your previous comment, it's the Reds that Sony produces that IMHO causes more workflow issues than anything else. Natively they're outside 709 space. If you use RAW then you can manage that much easier. If you use SGamut or any baked in file you are relying on Sony transforming the reds into the baked colourspaces and i just don't think they do a good job. Hence all the skin issues. Go the RAW route and you have it all... cheers Paul Paul Curtis, VFX & Post | Canterbury, UK |
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Jan Klier
Add the FS7 to that. It can record RAW (via extension unit) and has the same sensor as the F5. Though it’s hobbled by providing only 12bit linear RAW signal, which may disqualify it for some people, and rightfully so.
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But we have to go back to the original statement: It’s not what the camera is capable of in some shape or form, but what the camera produces in the configuration it is used in on most productions. Realistically the Sony cameras wouldn’t be shot in RAW on many projects of significant runtime due to the lack of compression of its raw footage. It’s often not a practical or reasonable workaround for Sony’s poor default camera configuration. Jan Klier DP NYC
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Noel Sterrett
On 5/17/19 9:37 AM, Jan Klier wrote:
Realistically the Sony cameras wouldn’t be shot in RAW on many projects of significant runtime due to the lack of compression of its raw footage. That's not unreasonable, and no doubt most would agree. Polaroid championed the one step approach -- shoot/bake(develop),
and while I enjoyed playing with black and whites back in the day,
I can't remember any great shots. Those came from negatives and a
big, smelly darkroom in the basement. Now I have a big tower dual Xeon RAID machine which handles RAW nicely in the basement. But I can play Sony RAW faster (52 vs. 38 fps) on my new Mac Mini with an eGPU and a single SSD (which holds 4 hours) all for under $2k. So why waist all that time and energy deciding on LUTs, gammas, gamuts, compressions, codecs on set, when you can just shoot RAW, edit RAW, and grade RAW? Cheers. Noel Sterrett Admit One Pictures |
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Mark Weingartner, ASC
Don’t conflate RAW with uncompressed. I just shot a Sony Venice job and recorded X-OCN LT which is the most compressed of the three “flavors” of RAW (ie not de-bayered) recording formats available. Significantly less storage space needed vs X-OCN ST or XT but still benefits of being able to interpret the data later. …and no, this is not an invitation to another “if it is compressed is it still RAW” discussion - “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” I am using the term RAW in the sense of un-de-mosaiced. Mark Weingartner, ASC On the road again but Los Angeles-based. |
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