FS7: The futility of not grading?

M

morgan_moore

Major Contributor
We will be aware of Dougs efforts to build great in camera look for the FS7.

I don't want to be personal about this, just present my point of view.

Ill be clear that I come from a background of shooting stills professionally (I started in a dark room processing black and white film and prints) and moved in stills to a digital raw workflow in 2002. I then was re-hit with the challenge of getting a look 'in camera' when I got the EX1 and 5dmk2 in 2008 - Id not needed to nail it in camera since shooting Kodachrom in the mid 1990s.

Fundamentally I felt most of my video work basically looked awful. Only the combination of the FS7 and Davinci have actually made me feel that my motion images do not look awful.

Not only did I feel my work looked awful, I feel that much broadcast and corporate work looks terrible.. when seen with the hat of someone used to working for glossy magazines.

The Fs7 and Resolve have really put me in a place where I feel I can start to contruct motion images that are not an embarrasement to my name.. and that is exciting :)

--

Anyway let us consider the 'thesis' of getting it right in camera. Simply I dont really think it is possible or necessary.

Why do competent camera ops get it wrong?

Poor monitoring tools

Most location monitors are pretty awful, many of us dont have access to RGB WFM, location lighting is so varied to influence our vision of the monitor.
Simply I think without a Flanders monitor in a black tent at your location.. you wont actually really know what you are shooting.

Stuff changes.
In longer shots the light may change, or moving shots the subject may move to a different lit location.
Most of us dont have an A/C pulling iris on a Preston. So we will get it wrong!

Because of these variables on location a competent op will probably get 80-90-95% to where they want to be.. but none of us are perfect.

Scene DR.
Every scene has a different DR, a foggy day might have three stops, a harsh sunlit day many many more.

We are unlikely to have enough profiles loaded on our cameras to have an appropriate scene file.

Therefore I suggest that even the best cam op is only going to get maybe 90% of where he/she wants to be on location.

Now 90% right might be good enough.. but I just don't like to present work that is 90% right. I didnt buy a 10bit to detune it to match my NEX5n - I bought the FS7 as part of my journey to make my work shine!

--

The simplicity of Post.

Nearly every NLE can support looks or LUTs - I cannot see why even the most bone idle editor cannot be persuaded to add a look/lut.. hey it is only a couple of clicks.

--

The colourist.

Now shooting raw stills professionally we dont have all day to f..k with the image. We absolutely look to get it right in camera.. we want to post a single look onto all of our images from one shoot.

A motion cam op should be presenting consistent work.. work that just needs a single lut/look applied. Not work that needs every shot 'fixing' by a colourist.

An editor should just be able to apply the look and move on - a colourist should not be needed.

But 10% of our images may be a little off and by not baking a look we have saved ourselves a margin to correct if we really have to.

Simply that can usually be done with an exposure slider or RGB twaek in an NLE.. is that beyond a modern editor involved in a shiney project shot on a top end camera (To be disucssed!)

Of course most projects may then move to a proper colouring stage for the application of an 'artistic' look but Im just saying that even a daily corporate job should not, IMO be shot 'baked'.

--
To be continued!

S
 
Proper Contrast Ratios.

As I mentioned I started in a dark room - the place I learned my visual aesthetic.

Simply the world is often 12 stops and our delivery media (paper print, iphone screen, or monitor) can only represent about 7 stops.

This presents a fundamental wall to representing 'the world'

Typically this situation has been handled in various ways..
-Cinematographer.. controls DR with huge silks and HMI package
-Videographer.. has awful material (eg blown highlights), or shoots in the shade etc to run away from contrast.
-Trendy Bearded Hipster Log shooter.. creates wooden low contrast footage that he says is cool (he is wrong)
-B+W darkroom boy 'dodges and burns' (eg selectively darkening the sky) his prints to fit the scene into the media.

With Resolve et al - we can now treat log footage correctly.. opening the contrast and then recovering skies and blacks with secondaries.. this is the only way to make footage shine without a full cinematography lighting package.
 
The industry.

I think as a community we should try and encourage our post chain to understand that shooting 'in camera' is unlikely to lead to results that will really shine.

In the photography industry we went (painfully) through the raw shooting (or rather post reliant) shooting debates a decade ago. I would now say it is virtually unheard of for a professional stills photographer to shoot 'in camera jpg'.

The journey has happened and it is survivable. IMO the same is true for the 'motion' industry.
 
I feel that I rarely get it right in camera, I feel that getting it right in camera is basically not possible unless you have a FS monitor in a black tent and a huge HMI package. Only really Deakins and a few others get it right in camera.. and they have access to and use those resources.
 
morgan_moore said:
We will be aware of Dougs efforts to build great in camera look for the FS7.

I don't want to be personal about this, just present my point of view.

Ill be clear that I come from a background of shooting stills professionally (I started in a dark room processing black and white film and prints) and moved in stills to a digital raw workflow in 2002. I then was re-hit with the challenge of getting a look 'in camera' when I got the EX1 and 5dmk2 in 2008 - Id not needed to nail it in camera since shooting Kodachrom in the mid 1990s.

Fundamentally I felt most of my video work basically looked awful. Only the combination of the FS7 and Davinci have actually made me feel that my motion images do not look awful.

Not only did I feel my work looked awful, I feel that much broadcast and corporate work looks terrible.. when seen with the hat of someone used to working for glossy magazines.

The Fs7 and Resolve have really put me in a place where I feel I can start to contruct motion images that are not an embarrasement to my name.. and that is exciting :)

--

Anyway let us consider the 'thesis' of getting it right in camera. Simply I dont really think it is possible or necessary.

Why do competent camera ops get it wrong?

Poor monitoring tools

Most location monitors are pretty awful, many of us dont have access to RGB WFM, location lighting is so varied to influence our vision of the monitor.
Simply I think without a Flanders monitor in a black tent at your location.. you wont actually really know what you are shooting.

Stuff changes.
In longer shots the light may change, or moving shots the subject may move to a different lit location.
Most of us dont have an A/C pulling iris on a Preston. So we will get it wrong!

Because of these variables on location a competent op will probably get 80-90-95% to where they want to be.. but none of us are perfect.

Scene DR.
Every scene has a different DR, a foggy day might have three stops, a harsh sunlit day many many more.

We are unlikely to have enough profiles loaded on our cameras to have an appropriate scene file.

Therefore I suggest that even the best cam op is only going to get maybe 90% of where he/she wants to be on location.

Now 90% right might be good enough.. but I just don't like to present work that is 90% right. I didnt buy a 10bit to detune it to match my NEX5n - I bought the FS7 as part of my journey to make my work shine!

--

The simplicity of Post.

Nearly every NLE can support looks or LUTs - I cannot see why even the most bone idle editor cannot be persuaded to add a look/lut.. hey it is only a couple of clicks.

--

The colourist.

Now shooting raw stills professionally we dont have all day to f..k with the image. We absolutely look to get it right in camera.. we want to post a single look onto all of our images from one shoot.

A motion cam op should be presenting consistent work.. work that just needs a single lut/look applied. Not work that needs every shot 'fixing' by a colourist.

An editor should just be able to apply the look and move on - a colourist should not be needed.

But 10% of our images may be a little off and by not baking a look we have saved ourselves a margin to correct if we really have to.

Simply that can usually be done with an exposure slider or RGB twaek in an NLE.. is that beyond a modern editor involved in a shiney project shot on a top end camera (To be disucssed!)

Of course most projects may then move to a proper colouring stage for the application of an 'artistic' look but Im just saying that even a daily corporate job should not, IMO be shot 'baked'.

--
To be continued!

S
Click to expand...

Morgan, have you ever regretted NOT baking in your desired look? Has it ever happened to you that you never even met the colorist? Has it ever happened to you that the colorist, producers, editors did not even know that they should invite you into color correction session? Has it ever happened to you that an S-Log footage has been delivered as a final deliverable because producers decided that this is very "hip" and "looks almost like Instagram"? Has your project ever gone from being B&W to being color all in a sudden?

And as a person who shot film, do you REALLY think the modern on set monitoring tools are not good enough? How does that compare to having to imagine everything, measure, control contrast by lighting, by exposure or chemically in the lab? And preview for directors on a shitty SD monitor from a video tap? No, I love film, this is where I'm coming from, trust me. Yes, film has wide dynamic range that exceeds everything digital BUT the print has only 8 stops.

This is ironic because if I had to choose the side of the fence of Scene File vs LUT debate I would consider myself a LUT guy, but not to the point of writing what you wrote.
 
Yep Ive had Slog turned to pulp.. but that was Slog1 on the F3.

Simply there was no 'good route' to present to the post chain - I couldnt even get Slog1 to look OK myself 70% of the time.

Now with Slog3 and the Sony LUTs I believe a threshold has been crossed where with some communication with the post chain the work should not be pulped.

I think with communication any client worth working for should be able to manage a right click in their NLE. Especially if a lot of ops encourage it.

S
 
morgan_moore said:
I think with communication any client worth working for should be able to manage a right click in their NLE. Especially if a lot of ops encourage it.
Click to expand...

I can appreciate much of your position, but I would point out that there is a wide spectrum of work in the video industry, and equipment, workflows, schedules, and budgets vary widely. To me, the "client worth working for" is one who is honest, realistic, equitable, communicates openly, and pays his or her bills on time. If that client is unable or unwilling to take advantage of features like raw or log, I'm happy to respect it.

That said, it certainly is frustrating when you know the product could be better if the client took relatively simple steps on their end!
 
Of course there is a wide spectrum of work, but my experience is that the FS7 seems to often be used in a certain sector.

I think every 'hand off' I have done with the camera has be worked in Premier which does support LUTs.

Of course a LUT is not the full route to a really polished image.. to get that a proper colour treatment will be needed, but getting the ballpark, or equaling 'in camera' should be possible.

I am happy to hear why this might not work (for example adding a LUT in Prem might clog up a long project or weak computer?)

--

Also with the right pressures applied by the community to Sony and NLE makers, to unify metadata, the application of the operator chosen LUT should be 'clickless' in post (that is how it works in stills with Nikon and LRoom etc.)

I think applying that pressure would be time better spent than trying to work out how to de-tune our cameras to work with 2007 workflows.

S
 
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morgan_moore said:
Of course there is a wide spectrum of work, but my experience is that the FS7 seems to often be used in a certain sector.

I think every 'hand off' I have done with the camera has be worked in Premier which does support LUTs.

Of course a LUT is not the full route to a really polished image.. to get that a proper colour treatment will be needed, but getting the ballpark, or equaling 'in camera' should be possible.

I am happy to hear why this might not work (for example adding a LUT in Prem might clog up a long project or weak computer?)

S
Click to expand...

Well, for starters, at least one of my regular clients still edits in FCP7. I use the XDCAM422 mode for him, and I only recently got him to move up to 1080p from 720p.

And, in the corporate world, you can be dealing with a myriad of vendors, and you may never have the opportunity to to talk with the final editor. And right or wrong, plenty of people can be stuck to their method, and if the organization likes their work, they may not see the utility of changing practices. The old "don't fix it if it isn't broken" adage. And frequently, trying to educate corporate clients about this is a losing proposition. They'll just work with someone who gives them what they want. And even if they like your ideas, they may complain about the difficulty requisitioning newer hardware, etc.

I will certainly say that for myself I recently moved to a 2014 SSD Macbook and Adobe CC and my renders and realtime effects *fly* compared to FCP7. So yes, older hardware absolutely can be a drain.
 
I edited my post above to cover a couple of your points.

--

Im not that against shooting and delivering a thin ready to go codec - because that is efficient - I think what riles me is taking 12 stop lat, 10bit card and HD filling 100mbs and 'de tuning' it

I note that stills cams shoot raw and jpg side by side (often we deliver hard deadlines with the jpg and revisit for magazines/brochures/display adverts), and the Varicam seems to deliver multiple reses/codecs.. it would be really nice if that second slot could record lutted 50mbs (or even 5mbs web ready 720!) too.. that would really nail it IMO.

S
 
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Sam,

You're not alone.

Broadcast and film worlds collide in the last few years of s35 cameras. Not everybody sees things as I do. That's why you gotta choose your clients. And sometimes turn down work if you sense they are not working on the same level as yourself. (i.e., turn down jobs where color is not part of the plan).
 
I use a LUT to turn S-Log to Cineon (courtesy of Dennis) and then a second LUT from Cineon to REC709 (or other options). This seems to get nice colors in the F3.

Jon
 
Another thread mention 'going live'

Absolutely we need to be able to deliver 'live' be that actually live or super quick turnaround.

Which means we need luts/looks that actually look good and ideally cams that can record both or at least pump out a clean lutted SDI signal while recording the 'raw'

I think I find it more frustrating when I know something is going into an NLE that supports luts with 'one click'

(Ive also had/considered the HD-4k thing and on one job nearly used my Hyperdeck to record 1080 while recording 4k onboard)

Another thought? Should we be downressing on the fly?

I do however feel that 'live' or suchlike will often be a compromise in wide DR situations unless one can haul a decent lights package, which often happens for the bigger live shows.

S
 
I was just teasing you Sam. Man you really get hot and bothered about how other people choose to shoot. :)

I'm shooting Standard gamma from now on just to get your goat!

Lenny
 
Bravo Morgan. There is another major benefit to not needing to nail finished looks in camera. Life gets much simpler when shooting.

I 've switched to shooting raw video exclusively for personal creative work. It is so joyfully liberating. I am back to the clarity, simplicity, and focus on fundamentals that existed when shooting film: Managing light, exposure, composition, movement, focus. I don't even worry about white balance in camera. It is just a metadata tag that has no effect on how the sensor actually captures the image. I often monitor in black and white because it is easier to focus by eye and get a feel for scene values.

With version 11, Resolve is finally maturing into a much better tool for processing CinemaDNG raw footage. I recently discovered by accident that the raw adjustments menu is completely node independent. Any adjustments made there apply universally across all existing nodes regardless of which node you happen to be working in when you make changes.

I empathize with you poor schlubs who have to put up with all the crap commercial production demands. Been there, done that. I'm just doing it for fun these days. :happy:
 
I am a grading fanatic as I've been doing it at a professional, network TV level for a long time.

With that said, I am extremely happy that the FS7 has a nice, out-of-the-box look with LC709a; and that CineEI you can just add some saturation and levels and quickly get a pretty good result. With Sony's prior offerings like the FS700 or the F3, there never was a really nice, ready to go look IMO. It always required grading or else you were stuck with kind of strange skin tones. Sure it was really easy to S-Log2 to look nice if you know what you are doing, but most people don't. I felt like with SLog2 on the FS700, you always had to go into the color channels and tweak colors. With the FS7, you can get away with way less tweaking color channels if you are in a rush.

I have to say, I've worked on several projects lately shot on the FS7 and the client wanted to grade it. The final result was less than stellar because truly understand the subtleties of grading is really hard and takes years of practice, and many people just cannot grade S-Log properly.

On these projects, the client would have got a better look just by using LC709a in post and also saved themselves a ton of time.
 
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gene_can_sing said:
I have to say, I've worked on several projects lately shot on the FS7 and the client wanted to grade it. The final result was less than stellar because truly understand the subtleties of grading is really hard and takes years of practice, and many people just cannot grade S-Log properly.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of the story of when David Lee Roth sat in on the grading of the California Girls video. He kept insisting on more and brighter colours. He was wearing his shades :)
(and no one dared to oppose him)
 
Lenilenapi said:
you really get hot and bothered about how other people choose to shoot.
Lenny
Click to expand...

I do as it happens. Because..

-it is good if clients 'hear the same song' from lots of operators - this makes me seem less oddball
-I am keen to see our camera used in beautiful and successful projects as this will broaden it's industry acceptance and make us owners easier to book
-those of us who have 'swing' with Sony can badger them for' the 'right' upgrades like better lut meta data management across all NLE platforms.


Razz16mm said:
There is another major benefit to not needing to nail finished looks in camera. ..It is so joyfully liberating.
Click to expand...

Shooting a bendy codec should not become a crutch (unless a crutch is needed like wildly varying light conditions) .. It is still IMO the goal of the disciplined shooter to be consistent so that material basically pops with one LUT unless the situation (scene DR) is too broad for that, in the latter case some discussion of 'post intensive' shoot styles should be discussed before the shoot starts.

When shooting hotel stills I know that we are going to be post intensive (vertical correction, HDR on windows etc) and the client is fully informed up front of the implications of shooting 'post intensive' in terms of post cost and time.

S
 
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