Are special filters obsolete?

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Shawn Philip Nelson

Shawn Philip Nelson

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I've been wondering how many 4x4 filters are going to be that useful for Red.

I can see the advantage of NDs, ND grads and polarizers (all to control exposure, etc), but beyond those, are there going to be that many uses? Tiffen has a nifty "Film Look" filter kit from B&H that I've always wanted but now it seems that with Red the best thing to do is to just get the cleanest image and then do all the softening, contrast adjustment, etc, in post.

Thoughts?
 
You pretty much hit it on the head. No need for CC filters (maybe the glorious tabacco grad :) the Digicons might come in handy, and the occasional
Zeiss softar, although that might also be better in post.
 
Any filter that relies on "real" light sources - a smoque, for example - will still be useful.
 
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I agree. I hope you like to render a lot... since I have been adding glows, grads, color grads in post to footage shot with polarizers and nd grads. However, in DV on a G4, I was looking at 20 minute renders for 2 minute shots.
 
I disagree, with a few exceptions a glass filter (or net) is still the way to go in most cases.
 
depends on your collection

depends on your collection

i think it depends upon your current filter collection. with the exception of polarizers and nd's, post will do unless your pc is too slow. sure there's subtle differences between filtering optically vs. digitally but there's also subtle differences between film and red digital cinema. it's silly to go out and buy grad and contrast filters if you don't own any. if you're that picky, just shoot 35mm.
 
wigby said:
if you're that picky, just shoot 35mm.
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Hi,

With all due respect the reason 35mm film looks good is DoP's take great care & pride in their work. The same care needs to be taken with digital shooting. Don't believe that digital is easier & everything can be fixed in post. If that was true film would have died years ago.

Stephen
 
I'll shoot my RED One footage as clean as possible - very few filters. To me, the centerpiece of RED One is REDCINE and REDCODE RAW - shooting clean footage in REDCODE RAW, then "developing" it in post. I've been using various filters on the front of my cameras since the late '60's for still photography, late '70's for film, and early '80's for video. The last few years since I changed from film to digital for my still photography, and shooting in RAW, I tend to only use ND filters because of the range of options I have in processing the RAW shots. The RED Team has repeatedly stated that shooting REDCODE RAW or uncompressed RAW with RED One most closely parallels the workflow and aesthetic options of shooting RAW with a DSLR. I shoot all my DSLR shots in RAW with a minimum of filters for the same reason - flexibility in potential end results.

The most valuable asset any production company has, whether the company is large or small, is the footage library that they own the copyright to. Stock footage is a huge potential revenue stream from a footage library. The great feature of shooting RAW is that it gives you the ability to custom process the cleanly-shot footage into the specific aesthetic qualities that a footage licensee desires - and then re-process the same footage for the aesthetic needs of the next licensee of the same footage.

As an original and traditional film shooter, I appreciate the workflow where we get all the aesthetics achieved at the acquisition stage. That said, my approach to shooting digital and RAW is very different, as described above. If I'm shooting for a client that specifically wants the footage to have front-end filtering, then I'll still shoot it that way.

To each their own...
 
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glenn chan said:
You might want to use color correction filters to white balance the camera (instead of white balancing in post, where you usually are forced to discard dynamic range)- although there are people who take the opposite argument.

http://www.cinematography.net/Pages%20DW/Viper_Magenta_Filter.htm

2- There may be a way to fix white balance in post, while keeping/faking the dynamic range you'd normally have to discard.
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Hi,

With the Viper Dynamic Range is improved by more than a stop by filtering with a magenta filter. The green channel clips first. Geoff Boyles tests on CML show the Viper out of the box, not optimized.

Once a channel is clipped there is no faking it IMHO.

Stephen
 
Hey guys, thanks for the replies, I appreciate it. I'm now planning on getting a 4x4 circ pol and two 4x4 NDs. Though I guess this now brings up another question...

Is 4x4 big enough to cover the front of the Red Zoom? I've got reserve for one and I'd hate to start building up a set of glass filters i can't use!
 
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