Flat picture profiles and Field Monitors

EDV

EDV

Well-known member
Forgive my ignorance, but... if Flat picture profiles are the norm now.... why do you need Field / Studio monitors?
The final image won't look anything like what you got on location / set. Almost everything is "improved" on the Color correction suite. So how can you "paint with light" these days, when you can not be sure what colors, textures, shadows or mood the final image will have once the editor is done with it?
 
Most of the higher end monitors take LUT's, which will convert the Flat profiles into rec709 so it will look more like the final product. DP's often tweak their LUT's with colorists beforehand, so they can dial in a look on set and have a good starting point in the correction suite.
 
I own the Panasonic BT-LH910 and was thinking about getting the BT-LH1760. I don't think either one of these can take LUTs and they were both industry standard until recently.
 
The only reference to LUT in the BT-LH910 manual is this:

• Precise 10 bit image processing uses a three-dimensional LUT (Look Up Table) for each RGB
color to achieve faithful color reproduction from low to high brightness levels.
 
What about the Monitors? Do they need to be "LUT capable" or something ? I'm still not sure if either of these Pannys ( BT-LH910 and the BT-LH1760 ) would be up to the task if used alongside something like the FS7 or the C300.
 
EDV said:
What about the Monitors? Do they need to be "LUT capable" or something ? I'm still not sure if either of these Pannys ( BT-LH910 and the BT-LH1760 ) would be up to the task if used alongside something like the FS7 or the C300.
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Some have LUT's built in that might match your camera. Others allow you to input 3D LUT's. Cheapest monitor with 3D LUT support I think is the Small HD-- http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1153980-REG/smallhd_mon_501_501_hdmi_full_hd.html
 
No mention of 3D LUTs on the BT-LH1760 manual. My local rental house stills swears by them, and they're still being sold for $2000 or $3000 on ebay. Not even sure if it's 10 bit.
 
Do realize that some of the professional monitors available are of older design, and were developed before many of the newer cameras which now use a log format and LUT.
 
So are these older professional monitors ( the Pannys I mentioned ) still useful in a LUT workflow? As far as I know the BT-LH910 is 10 bit and uses 3D LUT.
 
Still useful for pulling focus. Also still useful if you or the director is fine with looking at a log image. Also still usable if you have a LUT box like an AJA or any other brand to convert log signal to your monitor input. Lastly, still useful if using with a camera that outputs a MLUT.
 
It's easy enough to add a LUT box inline to these monitors to apply a LUT to the signal. For the cost of many LUT boxes out there, you could buy an Odyssey7Q+, which has a complete LUT routing system built in. The Odyssey is loaded with preset factory LUTs for many of today's cameras plus it can accept 140 custom LUTs so that you can create and replicate any look you want. The LUTs can be applied to the Odyssey OLED screen itself as well as to the two SDI and one HDMI outputs to feed other monitors.
 
The Odyssey 7Q hire locally is $220 a day vs $100 for the Panasonic BT-LH1760. Since the Odyssey 7Q is also a fully featured monitor I'm not sure if it would make sense to use the BT-LH1760 along side it. Certainly not hire both? How about owning both? Damn these expensive gizmos....
 
An Odyssey7Q+ is $220/day to rent and $2295 to own. 10 day rental payoff? Why wouldn't you buy one and rent back to production?
 
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