FS7: This grading thing (or why choose Cine IE or Custom mode)

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Publimix

Veteran
Some treads are filling up quite fast, No Luts No Glory, Cine IE or Custom. I am relatively new with this grading thing, in photoshop I 'correct' things sometimes. But grading is new for me, it adds soft and hardware, an extra person, an extra step in the production process, and for what? To make the image that came from the camera good for viewing?

  • I like high dynamic range
  • natural images (I don't like ND grads)
  • and I don't like people messing with my images and sound, 'we added some red/green/blue/ whatever now it looks more ... '
  • Some great films are ruined by grading, Matrix, Lord of rings etc. I want a degrading button on my television.
  • Dealing with sound engineers and colorists is always some kind of struggle, the good ones can add something to the image, the rest doesn't.

So can anyone tell me why I should work in Cine IE and why I must hire a grader (or learn) or why I must work in Custom (which I do)?

1. Why did you choose for CINE IE or why you choose for CUSTOM, better Dynamic range? easier? For no reason whatsoever?
2. How much work/time is needed for grading? How must a grader work on one hour (well exposed) slog3 material?

Please don't give me 'it is your choice' I like opinions to hbase my opinion/choice or to change it.

(it is the same as making brie, each cheesemaker has his own recipe and after a few months all these cheeses taste the same).
 
LUTs are mostly for monitoring on-set, hence the "M" in MLUT as per Sony's menu system. I won't talk about LUTs for monitoring because that conversation is already happening in the other thread. http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-can-we-see-a-Look-on-a-monitor-out-of-camera

What I can tell you very fast in few words about grading, is that in custom mode you can only use the sgamut color space. Generally, this is "harder" to grade than the newer color science Sony provided when the FS7's first shipped which is called sgamut3.cine. But in custom mode if you turn off matrix and detail settings you can get something that has less of that "Sony look" built into it.

So you have two modes in the camera, each which has some features that the other doesn't which again you can read about in the other threads on DVX, but strictly from a GRADING point of view if you are new to grading all together I would advocate you stick with CineEI mode just because the color science there is easier to fiddle with and get pretty good results. On the other hand, maybe your luck at grading sgamut will be better than mine or other people's here on DVX who seem to struggle with it. I sure do.

There is no difference in dynamic range between camera modes so long as you are choosing the slog gamma curve in each mode. slog on the FS7 is a 1300% dynamic range curve. There are two HG's on the FS7 which can provide 800% dynamic range. For those who remember, slog1 was also a 800% dynamic range curve (like on the F3 for example) so you can actually shoot a HG on the FS7 in custom mode and still end up with around 12 stops dynamic range, whereas slog2 or slog3 would give you 14 stops dynamic range.

Hope this helps, let the flame wars by others begin. :violent5:


**Also check out these articles for some good background info and details on color science & modes of operation. One of them I wrote.

http://www.dvinfo.net/article/acquisition/sonyxdcam/sony_sgamut_vs_sgamut3.html

http://www.dvinfo.net/article/acqui...ng-cineei-mode-in-custom-mode-on-the-f55.html
 
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Thank you for your answer.
The way I work is slog3 in custom mode, the image is nice and I wrote all the settings in an 'All File' so I can reset the camera fast after playing with other settings.

But my main concern is this, what amount of time is needed for a grader to get nice images out of well exposed Cine IE material. Good to know for budgetting :-)

So as far as I understand is the CINE IE way of grading easier because the software is more up-to-date?
 
grading is just another word for color correction....in photoshop or still terms applying look in camera (which can also be a LUT which is really only a prepared look) is the same as shooting jpeg in a still camera and applying a look (bw, sepia, kodachrome,....)...shooting log is a little bit like shooting raw (raw still files actually look very much like log, all conversion software puts a curve on the files before you even start turning the knobs...)....it is not raw because (for example) the WB is set....but it is like raw in that it really needs a curve to get a "pleasing" image....how much of a curve, what colors, saturation,...is all up to personal taste....
i don't really agree that grading requires a specialist, although there are obviously specialists (just like there are master printers) but i strongly believe that if you are using a camera to get your point across, the way the final product will look is very much part of that process so i would want to be part in the decision making of what that final product looks like....i don't much difference in turning the dials or agreeing with a team on which dials need to be turned which way to get the final result....i find it absolutely necessary for anyone shooting to be familiar with basic "grading" even if they don't do it themselves....
 
Publimix said:
what amount of time is needed for a grader to get nice images out of well exposed Cine IE material. Good to know for budgetting :-)

So as far as I understand is the CINE IE way of grading easier because the software is more up-to-date?
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Grading estimates are going to depend on the project, mainly how many different cameras was it shot with, how much work is needed to match shots before you even worry about stylizing it by developing a "look" for it, etc..

So it's a hard one to answer without looking at it from a project by project basis.

I typically tell clients to budget 1 hour of labour for EACH finished minute on their project. So a short commercial might need an hour of work, a short film might need a day of work, a feature film will need 2 weeks of work.

Rates vary but mine range from $100 to $350 per finished minute of video.


CineEI isn't "easier" to grade because the software is more up to date, it's easier because the color space it uses is smaller. Check out the first article I posted by Art Adams for a good explanation.
 
I read the article, conclusion makes things clear:
"To me, SGamut3.cine is equivalent to a person telling me a fascinating story in a low voice in a quiet place, while SGamut is someone shouting their shoe size in a very small room. Loudness does not always make the content more interesting."
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Grading is an art and a production role all on its own, as a beginner you would get a far better understanding of the concepts and workflows by reading something like the Colour Correction Handbook and checking out Color grading central and the Tao of Color websites.

If you are at that stage of knowledge/experience/skill then you'd be better off shooting in a custom mode to begin with and tweaking it as opposed to shooting EI/Log.
 
I've heard the terms color correction and color grading used interchangeably, but they are definitely not the same thing.


Color correction is fixing white balance, tonal levels, saturation, contrast, etc. It would also encompass matching multiple cameras to each other. This is the most basic level of color work, and is done on nearly every project. Sometimes a LUT or Look can be suitable at doing this job, although no LUT can replace the judgement of a human.


Color Grading is giving the footage a particular style. Do you want this to be during a sunset? If so, maybe we should push the colors a little warmer. Is the shot supposed to be at night? If so, maybe the blues in the image should get a little more saturation. Is the shot suppose to be a dystopian future? If so, you're definitely going to want to heavily desaturate. Not every project requires this, but it's also something that no LUT can do.


starcentral said:
There is no difference in dynamic range between camera modes so long as you are choosing the slog gamma curve in each mode. slog on the FS7 is a 1300% dynamic range curve. There are two HG's on the FS7 which can provide 800% dynamic range. For those who remember, slog1 was also a 800% dynamic range curve (like on the F3 for example) so you can actually shoot a HG on the FS7 in custom mode and still end up with around 12 stops dynamic range, whereas slog2 or slog3 would give you 14 stops dynamic range.
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This is not exactly right. The dynamic range of the FS7 is 14 stops when at ISO 2000. When you are in CineEI, you can adjust the Monitoring LUT, but it does not adjust the underlying footage; it always records at ISO 2000. Because of this CineEI has 14 stops of dynamic range.

When in custom mode with slog3 gamma, if you have the camera set to ISO 2000 you should also get 14 stops of dynamic range. However, if while in Custom mode, you adjust the ISO (or gain) you will reduce your captured dynamic range.
 
1. Why did you choose for CINE IE or why you choose for CUSTOM, better Dynamic range? easier? For no reason whatsoever?

I chose Cine IE after watching Doug's video series and deciding it was the best approach for me. When shooting a feature, even under semi controlled lighting situations, high dynamic range can be a lifesaver at it was. Had I been shooting with my old HVX (which I still love), several scenes would have been unusable. The Fs7 really saved my bacon a few times. Sometimes the sky or a window oin a shot looked completely gone, yet in post I was able to retain the detail. It also kept things simple by giving me a solid workflow. I just kept it in Cine EI mode and dealt with the lack of LUTS in HFR recording and playback (usually by focusing and framing in normal mode and then switching).

2. How much work/time is needed for grading? How must a grader work on one hour (well exposed) slog3 material?

Grading can be as simple as popping a LUT on if you happen to like the look- and I did happen to like the Rec 709-A look on about a third of the footage in the feature, which takes place in several decades. 709-A happened to look great on the modern day footage, after a quick white balance and exposure correction. However, my grader spent nearly two weeks working on the remainder of the footage, which needed a 70's and 80's look. I purchased the Vision Color Impulz Luts and used them as a base "look" to emulate film stocks from those eras. Then the grader did some subtle adjustments depending on the mood of the scene.
 
Publimix said:
So can anyone tell me why I should work in Cine IE and why I must hire a grader (or learn) or why I must work in Custom (which I do)?
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Because you are not God.

Sometimes two shots independently lit and photographed look fine on their own but do not appear so when juxtaposed beside one another. Having the ability to adjust them to better transition and match improves the overall look. The greater the range allowed to make such adjustments the more likely a superior result.

Sometimes one does not have the ability to to control all aspects of a shot, such as the brightness of a window in a shot or an actor not landing correctly on his mark. With a source image of greater range, adjustments can be made dynamically within a shot, allowing transitions and subtle changes in brightness, contrast, color, etc. during the course of the shot and even to select parts of the frame.

Sometimes two heads are better than one, and someone else with knowledge and craft can see what you are striving for in your cinematography and use her own skills and craft to distill and enhance what you are trying to achieve.

To think that you can do it all yourself, always know what is best and always be able to achieve the desired results in camera is hubris. A good Colorist makes your work better. So does a good Sound Engineer, a good Gaffer, a good AC, and even the lowliest PA. Likewise quality tools and controls also expand your control of the image and what is possible. Limiting yourself may seem like you are seizing control, when in fact what you are doing is relinquishing control. Just because all the decisions do not happen at the moment you hit record on the camera does not mean that they are not still your decisions and that you cannot use them to your advantage.
 
Publimix said:
Some treads are filling up quite fast, No Luts No Glory, Cine IE or Custom. I am relatively new with this grading thing, in photoshop I 'correct' things sometimes. But grading is new for me, it adds soft and hardware, an extra person, an extra step in the production process, and for what? To make the image that came from the camera good for viewing?
  • I like high dynamic range
  • natural images (I don't like ND grads)
  • and I don't like people messing with my images and sound, 'we added some red/green/blue/ whatever now it looks more ... '
  • Some great films are ruined by grading, Matrix, Lord of rings etc. I want a degrading button on my television.
  • Dealing with sound engineers and colorists is always some kind of struggle, the good ones can add something to the image, the rest doesn't.
So can anyone tell me why I should work in Cine IE and why I must hire a grader (or learn) or why I must work in Custom (which I do)?
Click to expand...


Here is my take.

Your 709 screen with a proper contrast image delivers about 7 stops of range from black to white.

If you can shoot perfectly.. light to 7 stops and get your colours perfect exactly as you want then there is no need to grade or use a log or hgamma setting (hgammas are half way to log maybe 10 stops).

But can you shoot perfectly?

Maybe you dont have enough light to lift the shadows in your scene, maybe the sun comes out half way through a take, maybe you just get the colour or exposure a bit wrong when looking at a tiny monitor on a sunny day.

Simply I would suggest you cannot shoot perfectly unless..
-you have a grip truck of HMI and large scrims and 5 guys to operate it
-you have a great monitor in a black tent at your location

Without this stuff you do not have the tools to shoot perfectly.

So you are not perfect? Welcome to the club.

Maybe you own a raw stills camera and shoot pretty very well? 90% of your still photos go into the raw software and come out of it without making any adjustments. Cool 90% - a good hit rate.

But that leaves 10% of your stills where you grab the exposure slider or wb tool and make a little correction to your image before exporting a tiff or jpg to send to your client/upload to facebook.

In your raw stills software you have some 'extra stuff' image data hidden 'under the hood' - 90% of the time you dont use this spare data but 10% of the time you do. Nice to have that hidden data for those 10% of shots that you did not get perfect on location.

Your stills software is cool, it has been in development since 2003, your stills software takes a 13 stop camera, picks the middle 7 stops adds a nice curve and saturation and makes 90% of your images look great out of the box.. and makes the other data your didnt need easily available with WB and exposure controls should you need the data. Nice.

Ok, video software is a bit more 2001 right now, not much going on under the hood, it is developed around all the data being jammed into the visible pipe, the only way to jam 10-12 stops of data into a proper contrast 7 stop pipe is to reduce the contrast on the 12 stops of data.

So you have a choice - shoot 'baked' and get a picture in camera.. but very little 'wiggle room' in post or shoot log and collect all the data and unwind it in post - leaving a load of wiggle room to mess with your exposure contrast and colour - nice.

Do you need a colourist? Not really. You need to nail a workflow where you shoot a LUT on location and make stuff look as much like you can get it looking on location and then add that LUT in post to bring the image out to what you saw on set.

Adding the lut in post should be one click on your timeline.. no need to employ someone for that.

You are just doing a couple of steps manually that is done automatically in stills photography. Annoying but do-able.

OK you have your timeline, you have added you LUT and 10% of the shots are not quite what you want. Open the colour correction box in your NLE and make some corrections.. you can use photoshop so you can do this.
With log footage the corrections will work, there is 'spare data' to work with - trying to correct baked footage is nearly impossible as you don't have any spare data to work with.

Correcting baked709 footage is nearly impossible - like working a jpg3 in photoshop - no space to correct.

Now maybe you are worried about someone else down the pipe messing with your image. Well you could now export your lutted and corrected work to proRes before passing it to your editor. It looks good so he probably wont mess with it.

So the time will come when NLEs do stuff under the hood - read your camera/gamma/lut choice and add it automatically - probably 2016 - then you wont have to think about it.

Maybe call the process above 'normalisation' - getting proper contrast, making a couple of exposure corrections.

So what about a colourist?

A colourist should not be needed to perform 'normalisation' - but of course if you are putting out high end product you may want another artist, the colourist, to take your images further. Maybe you are doing a perfume advert in morocco and the client wants a warm hue and also wants the image to look like it was shot on a certain kodak stock.. now you might need a colourist to take your work beyond the 'normal' - having shot log you give him a load of data to play with.

If you worked in stills with a retoucher he wants your raw files.. not a jpg3. A colourist wants you to shoot log.

--

A further consideration is you are shooting Sony. Sony does not have a good reputation for in camera 'looks' - due to their broadcast heritiage sony gammas tend to look terrible..like TV. A camera like a C300 (or 5dmk2!) looks nicer out of the box than a sony running a Sony look.

Sony have a billion options for modifying the look in camera but no one apart from a few NatGeo people seem to have actually managed to make those looks look good in the last 20 years.

Sony did something clever with Slog - turned off their horrid look.. and something even better - rip off an alexa and make a LUT called LC709a and give it away.

So on paper you can make a sony look good in camera.. but in reality Slog3+LC709aLUT just sings without the torture of investigating the billion options available in the dreaded sony Matrix.. where you can get lost for ever.
 
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Mitch Gross said:
Because you are not God.

Sometimes two shots independently lit and photographed look fine on their own but do not appear so when juxtaposed beside one another. Having the ability to adjust them to better transition and match improves the overall look. The greater the range allowed to make such adjustments the more likely a superior result.

Sometimes one does not have the ability to to control all aspects of a shot, such as the brightness of a window in a shot or an actor not landing correctly on his mark. With a source image of greater range, adjustments can be made dynamically within a shot, allowing transitions and subtle changes in brightness, contrast, color, etc. during the course of the shot and even to select parts of the frame.

Sometimes two heads are better than one, and someone else with knowledge and craft can see what you are striving for in your cinematography and use her own skills and craft to distill and enhance what you are trying to achieve.

To think that you can do it all yourself, always know what is best and always be able to achieve the desired results in camera is hubris. A good Colorist makes your work better. So does a good Sound Engineer, a good Gaffer, a good AC, and even the lowliest PA. Likewise quality tools and controls also expand your control of the image and what is possible. Limiting yourself may seem like you are seizing control, when in fact what you are doing is relinquishing control. Just because all the decisions do not happen at the moment you hit record on the camera does not mean that they are not still your decisions and that you cannot use them to your advantage.
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Absolutely.

As someone who started in post and moved into production and has pretty much done every role on production at some time or other it's only once you start to trust that specialists can do that one job a lot better than you'll ever be able to dedicate yourself to - even if you can sort of make a go of it - that you'll start to see the best results.

I used to want to do everything because I couldn't entrust the 'vision' to anyone else to get right. Turns out that meant I'd always be limited by being a Jack of all trades but master of none. Get some masters on board. As a DP or Director you'll get all the credit anyway :)
 
I think it is really important in the disussion of dealing with log to split the workflow.

Normalisation... and Grading.

Normalisation is bringing it back to what you saw on set with a lut applied. This is a non skilled activity.

Grading is using artistic flair to add to that or perform specialised recoveries such as burning and tracking moving windows in shot

S
 
All onlines/colour grades I have ever been a part of treat colour balancing/matching as step 1 of a grading session. If you're simply talking about transforming a colour space to Rec709 or similar by use of a technical LUT, I don't really think counts as a standalone step.
 
Well if you are doing corporate or whatever you (someone) are going to need to do this and it doesn't require the artistry (paygrade) of a colourist.

I think it is a standalone step as you probably can do it yourself and command the appropriate fee (or a DIT) whereas 'proper art colouring' is a specialist higher pay grade activity than a DIT pay grade so to me there is budgetary logic to making the split.

Also this may happen before picture lock, most likely withing 24 hours of the shoot, unlike the grade which might be months later.. so there is a huge diary split too.


S
 
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Applying a technical LUT to change the colour space takes about 5 seconds. If you're talking about adjusting contrast/saturation/WB etc on top of that even then I wouldn't really count that. Plenty of offline editors would do stuff like that to send to the online, at which point it would be recreated with more precision/finesse. Likewise an on-set DIT could set a look for whilst shooting but it would almost certainly be recreated from scratch in post by the colourist.

The idea of going to a colourist and saying 'hey I've already done the matching and balancing, can you just do the arty bit' wouldn't really work. It's the first part of their job and they will want the footage as untouched as possible.

That said, 9 times out of 10 I'll do my own post and colour work. Doesn't mean I don't think a dedicated person couldn't do it a lot better though.
 
Ben Scott said:
That said, 9 times out of 10 I'll do my own post and colour work. Doesn't mean I don't think a dedicated person couldn't do it a lot better though.
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Completely.

Our OP seems worried about having to employ a colourist - daily they should not be pushed to just because they shot Slog. But for high end projects of course another level can be added.
 
To be completely honest, the OP has made about 10 threads asking beginner questions over the last week or so, which is great and what forums are for. That said, I think he has a lot to digest about how to operate/compose/light long before he gets to the point of needing a colourist. Hence why I mentioned earlier that he should steer clear of EI/Log modes until he has his basics down. Far easier to practice and shoot and nudge a REC709 image into place than to do the same with a log image if you are just starting out with video.

He'd be much better served by understanding all the underlying concepts than trying to jump into the middle and fiddle until he accidentally gets it right. Hence you cannot go wrong with the Colour Correction Handbook. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0321929667
 
Ben Scott said:
To be completely honest, the OP has made about 10 threads asking beginner questions over the last week or so, which is great and what forums are for. That said, I think he has a lot to digest about how to operate/compose/light long before he gets to the point of needing a colourist. Hence why I mentioned earlier that he should steer clear of EI/Log modes until he has his basics down. Far easier to practice and shoot and nudge a REC709 image into place than to do the same with a log image if you are just starting out with video.
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Well the guy has photoshop and I guess shoots some stills, all £500 stills cameras (in still mode) now put out a better file than an alexa, personally I think hard709 is so restricive that it is complex to use... other may see it different.

I came into video with my D90 and EX1 for motion while shooting (16bit 5k) stills on a hasselblad - my struggle was certainly not 'too many options in post' it was the complete lack of options. I hope more recent entrants never have to suffer cameras like the FS100 or the 'colour options' in FCP6 :)

S
 
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