C500: C500 709 vs C. GAMUT

[kabuto1138]

Hey guys, new C500 + 7q owner here. Except for how careful you have to expose the highlights in this I'm loving it.

Haven't read to much about this, but who has used the C. Gamut setting on the c500, can you share your thoughts? do you prefer it over the 709? or vice versa?

From some unscientific tests I've done, the only difference I see is the poppy colors the 709 gives. There might be a slight increase in the shadows using C. Gamut, but not sure.

Sorry if this has been discussed somewhere else.

thx!

 

[Macaholic]

Cinema Gamut is just a Color Space. You're presumably viewing your footage on a 709 screen (as most consumer screens are) so capturing in the 709 color space looks proper on most of your screens.

Cinema Gamut is a much wider space, encoding a much wider range of colors that you can not see on your 709 screen. The benefit of shooting in cinema gamut is that by having such a wide range of colors, you can not only do a P3 grade for cinema projection and a 2020 grade for 4K/UHD delivery and a 709 for HD TV - but you actually have captured more colors than any current standard can show so you have effectively future proofed your work in terms of taking advantage of the latest and greatest technology has to offer in terms of reproduction.

The only draw back is making all of these different compliant passes takes time. If your work is just going to land on TV and has a relatively short life span, then shooting just in 709 can save you some time.

Personally I shoot everything in Cinema Gamut and apply a timeline node in DaVinci that is a transform from Cinema Gamut down to 709.

The last thing you want to do though is shoot cinema gamut and just crank up the saturation to an ungodly number just to start seeing colors on your 709 display.

 

[jm.gardiner]

I shot two shorts back to back with the C500. One using the 709 space, one with CineGamut.

The 709 was certainly punchier and a little trickier to coax the nuance out of. Graded quickly, but I felt we had to be quite delicate not to push things one way or another. I still see some minor color issues in some scenes.
https://vimeo.com/210151270



The reverse with the CineGamut, I felt like I had to put a lot of saturation back into the image and it still felt a little washed out when we did a screening.
Here are some screen grabs:

 

[kabuto1138]

Thanks Macaholic, that clears it up.

 

[kabuto1138]

Wao, that looks great GM. For some reason those C. Gamut stills look more filmic to me. Of course, that's after some color grading but still, those results look beautiful.