Interview with Canon's Larry Thorpe on C300 - Explains a lot

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Well I constantly hear from clients "can you make it brighter and more colorful?"

So it may be not the colorists first version, what we see.
Some customers don´t give a flying rats a... about broadcast specs, and blown highlights, they just want everything super bright and shiny.

.... just saying.
 
Postmaster said:
Well I constantly hear from clients "can you make it brighter and more colorful?"
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Ugh.

I myself sort of lean toward the bleach bypass look of Minority Report. If not that, then at least something natural. Faces are not candy-colored --- unless you're a clown or something.
 
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combatentropy said:
Ugh.

I myself sort of lean toward the bleach bypass look of Minority Report. If not that, then at least something natural. Faces are not candy-colored --- unless you're a clown or something.
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Speaking of colored faces. I was watching some blog on the making of the Hobbit, and the makeup people were saying how much red they had to put on the actors faces for Epic to read the face color as more natural. Is that a characteristic of the Red sensor? I'm not sure I understood why they had to paint up the actor's face so much to get the cam to read it as natural. I've got to be misunderstanding here, because that made no sense to me.
 
f64manray said:
Speaking of colored faces. I was watching some blog on the making of the Hobbit, and the makeup people were saying how much red they had to put on the actors faces for Epic to read the face color as more natural. Is that a characteristic of the Red sensor? I'm not sure I understood why they had to paint up the actor's face so much to get the cam to read it as natural. I've got to be misunderstanding here, because that made no sense to me.
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In the fxguide RC podcast #100 (link), the guys there theorize that what they meant to say in that Hobbit blog is the 3D rig (with the mirrors and all) was causing the desaturation, not the Epic camera. Although I have read some people complaining about Epic skin tones, but that could just be an issue with the RAW processing and how someone did it.
 
Piolet said:
In the fxguide RC podcast #100 (link), the guys there theorize that what they meant to say in that Hobbit blog is the 3D rig (with the mirrors and all) was causing the desaturation, not the Epic camera. Although I have read some people complaining about Epic skin tones, but that could just be an issue with the RAW processing and how someone did it.
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Well if skin tones are a problem with Red, that makes the C300 the clear winner. Canon knows skin tones, period. I've heard DP's express similar sentiments. How a sensor and associated processing handle this variable is paramount.
 
f64manray said:
Well if skin tones are a problem with Red, that makes the C300 the clear winner. Canon knows skin tones, period. I've heard DP's express similar sentiments. How a sensor and associated processing handle this variable is paramount.
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Skin tones are difficult to deal with on Red. (This is a widely-known issue.)

It's not that good skin *can't* be done with the Epic, it's just that the margin for error is pretty low. (So much for RAW...)

Canon, on the other hand, has crazy good color science when it comes to skin. The Alexa is also really, really good.

You have to work pretty hard on the Canon to get bad skin. (This also goes for the DSLRs.)
 
Erich Ocean said:
Canon, on the other hand, has crazy good color science when it comes to skin. The Alexa is also really, really good.

You have to work pretty hard on the Canon to get bad skin. (This also goes for the DSLRs.)
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Fujifilm is also regarding by some as having really good color in their higher end still cameras. It's probably no coincidence that all three companies have a long history in traditional film cameras or film stock. Too bad Kodak dropped the ball. They held a lot of patents related to digital imaging. Bryce E. Bayer of Eastman Kodak invented the Bayer filter mosaic.
 
Erich, to say it's a "widely-known issue" is not accurate. It's an issue that has been mentioned. And a variety of explanations have been given from it IS an issue to operator error to "I see no problem at all."

There aren't a lot of people posting here who actually have first hand experience with both cameras. I've spoken to a few people who actually have, and the consensus is that there is no skin tone "issue" per se w/ the Epic. There are a lot settings to get things to look how you you want them to in post. Combined w/ RAW recording and you can really get any look you want.

This isn't to say that there isn't a certain "mojo" the Alexa's footage, there very well might be. But given its newness, price, size and weight you are going to find the Alexa used mostly on high budget shoots w/ experienced operators and crews. In contrast, Red's cameras (R1, R1MX and Epic) have attracted a hodge podge of users from group-buy guys using old Nikon still lenses all the way up to Peter Jackson and Steven Soderberg. This makes for a lot of variability in the footage.

As for desaturating the image, here's a link to a skin tone discussion. What's most interesting is that toward the end, there are examples posted by an Alexa fan of Red vs Alexa skin tones. It's actually quite surprising what is what.

http://173.199.159.58/forum/showthread.php?64767-Epic-skintones./page2
 
Rick Burnett said:
The problem is that it isn't a glitch in the camera, it's a glitch in the brain of the colorist, if they didn't mean for that look. You assumed that the clipping problem was the sensor, but it isn't. The footage out of the Red camera is "raw" in the sense that they are not doing post processing on the bayer data in camera that you are recording to use, other than loss-less compression to save some space. And even then you can dial that back.
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Well Rick you obviously never graded any Red highlight clipping. And yes, it is a glich, either in the sensor or in the processor, whatever, the camera! Its there! Do you know what happens on a clipped highlight in grading? You bring that highlight down, either by mids or highs or even the overall luminance and what you'll get is a grey patch! Even uglier! And why would I want to do any of that anyway? I just want a clean white highlight! But no, Red prefers clipping!

Now explain to me how is it possible for a grader to put back information that the damn camera was unable to read in the first place? Hand painting?

Where's your head at? Stop putting blame on the colorists, the DPs or Madre Teresa... Its the camera, never, ever I saw that complain from an Alexa, I myself shot even more extreme highlights with the Alexa and it gave all the highlights in a a pure white form, not electric noise!

The only decent Red shot film I appreciated was The Social Network, but do you have any idea how dark that film is? Take any bright daylight frame from that film and place it side by side to any other non Red film, believe me, it's dark! If this is the only way you can avoid clipping...thanks but no thanks, I decide the brightness of my work, not Red!

My conclusion? Red is for techs, Canon, and Alexa are for artists, people with a decent visual taste.

Live with it.
 
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Here's a test done with the alexa and MX sensor in a red one... draw your own conclusions, but the definitive one you are stating here is unusual as I have seen no distinctive overexposure problem with red footage I have not seen in all other digital camera footage if not handled properly, either in camera or in post. I have seen some tests that even show epic to have a more pleasant roll off in the highlights but that is just my opinion. Both great cameras in a price bracket out of most of our ranges as a practical camera to own so...

http://www.gunleik.com/tests/alexmx/RED1_MX_and_Arri_Alexa/Highligh_latitude.html

and here is another interesting page from the test..

http://www.gunleik.com/tests/alexmx/RED1_MX_and_Arri_Alexa/Full_latitude_2.html

but as with all things best to test yourself and not rely on what others are telling you.

have a good one!
 
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Nuno Dias said:
Well Rick you obviously never graded any Red highlight clipping. And yes, it is a glich, either in the sensor or in the processor, whatever, the camera! Its there! Do you know what happens on a clipped highlight in grading? You bring that highlight down, either by mids or highs or even the overall luminance and what you'll get is a grey patch! Even uglier! And why would I want to do any of that anyway? I just want a clean white highlight! But no, Red prefers clipping!

Now explain to me how is it possible for a grader (or even Jesus Christ) to put back information that the damn camera was unable to read in the first place? Hand painting?

Where's your head at? Stop putting blame on the colorists, the DPs or Madre Teresa... Its the camera, never, ever I saw that complain from an Alexa, I myself shot even more extreme highlights with the Alexa and it gave all the highlights in a a pure white form, not electric noise!

The only decent Red shot film I appreciated was The Social Network, but do you have any idea how dark that film is? Take any bright daylight frame from that film and place it side by side to any other non Red film, believe me, it's dark! If this is the only way you can avoid clipping...thanks but no thanks, I decide the brightness of my work, not Red!

My conclusion? Red is for techs, Canon, and Alexa are for artists, people with a decent visual taste.

Live with it.
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Again, like I said, you don't understand what is going on with the sensor. Did you not read the entire post I made about how clipping occurs in digital and how highlight handling can be applied in post if you know what you were doing? You thanked me for explaining it, so why are you arguing with that now?

You don't understand what is going on with the sensor. Whether you want to or not, I could care less, but before you try and blame a camera for a problem, you should definitely know what you are talking about or people are just going to disregard your statements.

It's clear, you don't know how to grade RED footage to something you like. There is DEFINITELY more than one way to fix the highlights. Since you don't understand what is happening, you don't understand what you can do to fix the highlight handling in post.

Now, saying that you'd rather the camera do it, that's DEFINITELY legitimate. I agree. No argument there. But claiming that the Red cameras are faulty because they are missing information from the scene is absolutely untrue. They have more information actually, which you don't want. And again, no complaint. You don't want to spend the time to grade the footage to exactly what you want, that's fine too. You don't want that freedom. But saying it can't be done because YOU can't do it proves nothing, because the overall quality of results I have seen from the Epic (and the Alexa) have been fantastic. Stop blaming a camera for something you don't understand.

And again, the Epic has 13.5 stops of DR. If someone chooses not to use that, that is up to them, but thinking that the Epic cannot see a ton of detail in the DR, you are just fooling yourself. Just because you cannot understand how 13.5 stops translates into what you can use in real usage as an ARTIST doesn't mean it doesn't translate into knowing the capability of the camera. Two cameras with 13.5 stops, provided the curves that get used to store the content, will be able to show the same thing. (Taking into account sensitive and bringing the ambient light level up for either cameras to bring the bottom detail to the same level over the noise, ie, lighting for the shadows, not the highlights).

You seem to think I only understand the technical merits of these cameras, but that is far from the truth. If I did, I wouldn't shoot with my 7D, which I still do from time to time. It's technically inferior to my FS100 in almost every way, yet, I enjoy shooting on it due to it's size.

Let me ask you this, again, since you missed it the first time, do you think this screen grab from the C300 is appealing?

http://www.cinemaeos.usa.canon.com/...pc&utm_term=canon c300&utm_campaign=Project+A

(The lady looking to the left, scroll down)

Because I think it looks HORRIBLE. Like I said before, I don't know how that image came to be, and it's definitely from one of the films, but the softness, blockiness, banding, etc, looks terrible. Yet, I am not willing to believe that pictures represents everything that is the C300 just as much as a lot of other things I see.

I've seen tons of stuff from the Alexa and Epic that looked great, and tons of stuff that looked HORRIBLE.
 
Nuno Dias said:
Well Rick you obviously never graded any Red highlight clipping. And yes, it is a glich, either in the sensor or in the processor, whatever, the camera! Its there! Do you know what happens on a clipped highlight in grading? You bring that highlight down, either by mids or highs or even the overall luminance and what you'll get is a grey patch! Even uglier! And why would I want to do any of that anyway? I just want a clean white highlight! But no, Red prefers clipping!

Now explain to me how is it possible for a grader (or even Jesus Christ) to put back information that the damn camera was unable to read in the first place? Hand painting?

Where's your head at? Stop putting blame on the colorists, the DPs or Madre Teresa... Its the camera, never, ever I saw that complain from an Alexa, I myself shot even more extreme highlights with the Alexa and it gave all the highlights in a a pure white form, not electric noise!

The only decent Red shot film I appreciated was The Social Network, but do you have any idea how dark that film is? Take any bright daylight frame from that film and place it side by side to any other non Red film, believe me, it's dark! If this is the only way you can avoid clipping...thanks but no thanks, I decide the brightness of my work, not Red!

My conclusion? Red is for techs, Canon, and Alexa are for artists, people with a decent visual taste.

Live with it.
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What did you use to grade the image? And do you have copies of the .R3D's? I'll gladly take a lot at them, as I've never seen highlights in Red footage clipping as anything other than white.
 
In both those tests its clear how the Alexa is dealing with the extreme highlights, the first test is somewhat inconclusive, where as on the second test with the light bulb, I could see the size of the Alexa highlight rolloff compared to the Red's, but you could easily make a window around the glow and make it disappear and keep only the bright lamp, but to my eye, the rolloff on the Red was so short and clipped to close to the dark areas. Also the dark area behind the girl is clipped to black on the Red but the Alexa has still got information in the shadows.
 
BobbyMurcerFan said:
the consensus is that there is no skin tone "issue" per se w/ the Epic
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Note: I own an Epic-X.

You are correct re: the consensus on skin tones, which is not inconsistent with what I said: getting good skin tones on Epic (and now Scarlet) takes care, and the window is relatively narrow relative to other cameras. It's also true that RedCode RAW isn't particularly helpful with skin tones if you're outside the narrow range where they look good by default, without doing a lot of power windows.)

Learning to get good skin tones with Red is mandatory if you want to shoot with the camera. It's not an "out of the box", automatic kind of thing where it happens just because you're shooting RAW.
 
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Rick Burnett said:
Let me ask you this, again, since you missed it the first time, do you think this screen grab from the C300 is appealing?

http://www.cinemaeos.usa.canon.com/...pc&utm_term=canon c300&utm_campaign=Project+A

(The lady looking to the left, scroll down)

Because I think it looks HORRIBLE. Like I said before, I don't know how that image came to be, and it's definitely from one of the films, but the softness, blockiness, banding, etc, looks terrible. Yet, I am not willing to believe that pictures represents everything that is the C300 just as much as a lot of other things I see.

I've seen tons of stuff from the Alexa and Epic that looked great, and tons of stuff that looked HORRIBLE.
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I can't even believe this... so, let me get this straight; you choose a still image that was clearly blown up in size, distorting pixels and creating banding and whatnot, over going in to look at the film itself? You are not seriously judging the quaility of a camera by a blown out still frame used on the web! Please don't...

A little better:

Screen shot 2011-11-15 at 10.21.36 PM.jpg

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See the highlight behind her hair? Minimal clipping, gentle rolloff. And its not that I don't want the freedom to grade the footage, being Raw doesn't necessarily help you anything with blown highlights, like I said, if the values were to high to reach within the sensor's DR then its gone, its pure white. And sometime we want pure white somewhere in the shot, be it a sky, a lamp, whatnot, but what we don't want is a clip, and the Red clip has a tiny rolloff that will make that highlight look fake, electronic even if you are able to get the clipping down to a minimum, it will look burned out, not smoothly rolling into white!

So, in that case, its not about knowing what we are doing, because sometimes we do want the exposure to go all the way. And clipping comes as an added extra that will ruin the shot, even if you grade it out, the electronic burn created by the clipping will always look fake and patchy.​


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