MKII extreme grading test

squig

squig

Veteran
Ok It's been a week now since the precious arrived so what's the verdict? I love it! I wish it was 24p but it's coming so I'll do it in post in the meantime but everything else about this thing is amazing. I've just done my first extreme grading test in apple color and I'm very happy........might be due to the red wine I just started guzzling.

The thing I was most concerned about was whether the super clean/sharp MKII could replicate the lo-fi look of the D90. I loved that look but just didn't want lo-fi for everything. Well I think I've managed to crack the lo-fi look with the MKII, I still need to do some work to perfect it but so far so good. I wanted to give the MKII a bit of a grading workout so I made a custom profile/curve whatever the fook it's called on the MKII (I don't read manuals)

Thanks to some advice from DVX and cinema 5D users I made a curve with the following settings-

0 sharpness
-4 contrast
-2 saturation
0 color tone

All based on the neutral setting, don't know if that makes any difference I might read the manual (one page won't kill me) to determine exactly how the custom curves work and see if I can do any more tweaking. This is just my first crack at it so further tweaking is a given.

So I shot some footage at home with diffused daylight coming in the window, shutter set at 1/50 ISO 1000 and WB 5500 with a nikon 35mm f/2 ai lens wide open. Man how great it is to be able to tell you what the settings are!

I imported it into FCP as prores 442 via mpeg streamclip and exported to apple color for some major tweaking. I wanted to see how far I could push the MKII's H.264 compression and what better way to do that than an attempted cross processed look. Once I was done in color I brought it back in to FCP and added some vignetting and letterboxed it before rendering.

I've put the graded and the ungraded files up on vimeo so you can see the difference-

http://vimeo.com/5231064 graded file
http://vimeo.com/5231645 re-compressed source file

I tried exporting for the web as mjpeg and H.264. The H.264 messes with the colors too much and adds some nasty aliasing, the mjpeg is truer to the original but it's a bigger file. Can anybody tell me how the hell I get H.264 to compress over 14Mbps in compressor? I've done it before but now I just can't make it happen grrrr.

Anyone who doesn't have a clue about cross processing film need not comment. It's been so long since I used a film camera I can't say if it looks like cross processing or not but I do like the look of it.

I didn't think to shoot it anamorphic.....to be continued.

I'm waiting on some more ram and and an internal raid setup for my macbook pro before I do any serious editing on the stuff I've shot with the MKII so stay tuned.
 
oops sorry all fixed. yeah she's soft, it's not a focus test it's focused on the cabinet. The edge softness is from the vignetting and the rest due to shooting at F/2. The mjpeg compression softens it a little too like the D90. The point of the exercise was to give the MKII a more lo-fi D90 filmic look. If you like a super clean video look don't bother watching it, there's plenty of MKII stuff like that. Apart from that ralph lauren spot and a few others there isn't much twisted stuff out there unlike the D90.
 
Last edited:
squig (BTW, what's your real name? -- I'm used to read you so you sound familiar but with a foreigner name ;-)

May I be wholly honest with you (and at the same time with all of us) ?

Before these HD days, I was prepping myself to jump to the SD 24p train and tried to research all film-outs I could @ 35mm big screen in order to figure out what it worked and did not.

What I could get was that in order to deal with the lack of definition (SD), we should take a shallow DOF. But how? Especially if the bet would be essentially to use a 1/3" sensor size? Well, perhaps on the 2/3" route anyway or via 35mm adapters when they came up. First, the unfortunately pricey P+S Technik, succeeding the Miguel De Olaso's (macgregor) finds on the Jonathan Houser's Guerilla 35 -- a hope for a whole community (later Cinemek) and so on.

But the point was to avoid the widest end (long shots) in order to deal with the lack of definition, trying to find a trick and select a focus point as (psychological) mask. Well, for intimate cinema it could maybe work. Perhaps, using 35mm film for those (mixing up, who knows?) ala LVT's Breaking the Waves shots between acts. Leaving room for the endless tape as far as the work with actors concerns -- the indie's sweet point. Later, also used by LVT. All possibilities were on the table.

What I want to say with this introduction is that a select(ive) focus is always welcome as mask for softness.

Nevertheless, with your grading you're giving emphasis to another no less important cinematic aspect: the cenography/art direction/production design. After all, what are the colors made for?

That blue (from cenography) on grading shines and bye bye softness predominance on the watcher's eye. Isn't the softness a filter? Isn't the grading a sort of filter too? Isn't the painting a reality filter as well? Isn't your grading approach a close approximation to painting? And then, what for do we strictly need to talk about softness, codec artifacts, RAW, etc? :thumbsup:

Cheers,
E. :-)
 
SO are you essentially saying that even if we had RAW output in this cam we would just end up degrading the footage right back to where we have it now? Or am I missing something?
 
What I am trying to think about is the (no) need for a geek approach* in order to a cinematic experience. What does it really count in this realm?

It speaks a retired geek (or moviemaker in recovery) who had no (a fair) notice of it.


* Including the usual (excessive) worry as far as technological (different from technical) aspects concern, as for instance, RAW.
 
Emanuel said:
squig (BTW, what's your real name? -- I'm used to read you so you sound familiar but with a foreigner name ;-)
Click to expand...

It's Anthony but my friends have been calling me squig for the last 20 years.

I just wanted to see how far I could push the colors before the picture started to break up. I don't think I'd be able to push any of the other DSLRs as far due to their inferior codecs. I didn't even get out of my seat to shoot it.

There's a winter festival on down the road today so I'm heading down to shoot something a bit more interesting than my living room....although it does look pretty interesting cross processed.

I like that there are no real limitations on creativity with the firmware updated MKII unlike the other DSLRs. Now it just needs 24p.
 
The next look I'm gonna work on is a sorta lo-fi lomo effect like you see in some hip hop vids. Pretty much the standard color bleed look of the D90. If I can't do it in color I know how to do it in photoshop. I bet magic bullet looks can do all these looks at the press of a button but that wouldn't be any fun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top