F3: Why does Red Hook Summer look so bad?

[Joncarr]

Hi,
I asked a similar question a while ago as well. But, my question was why the red's seem over-saturated or appeared to have too much gamma. I found the answer to my question. It's because all the exterior footage was shoot at ISO 800 or above. The camera is rated at ISO 800, so the DP probably thought daylight exteriors should be shot at ISO 800 all the time... this is wrong. Exterior daylight scenes should be shot at ISO 280 or ISO 400 at most. Even with proper ND, the red's will show weird gamma highlights. Try this, shoot a woman in a red dress outside in broad daylight at ISO 800. You will see that the dress will show highlights that look overexposed and seem to have illegal gamma or something. Red Hook Summer has this. It's really apparent because the Thugs in the movie are "Bloods" and wear red t-shirts.

I noticed this too with Red Hook summer, so with the f3, day EXT you need to shoot at low ISO as possible? Won't it clip easier since your underrating the sensor by 1 & 2/3rd a stop? Could a IR filter help with this issue?

 

[Alpha Beta Omega]

You actually gain highlight DR by increased ISO on the F3.
View attachment 78412

 

[bill totolo]

You actually gain highlight DR by increased ISO on the F3.
View attachment 78412

While this may be true, S-Log at ISO 800 is at the noise threshold for me.

 

[Duke M.]

All those 1000's of noodles being thrown at walls will likely produce one that sticks every rare once and while. I question why people still bother to compete with all of this anymore. Features have become something no one cares about anyway, generally speaking. This isn't the 90's when indie film was cool. This is the age of content busting out of the seams and pouring on the floor. Making an indie work now is about as naive an attempt as trying to be the next mega-movie-star.

You certainly have the bitter troll part down pat.

Fortunately, as shown on that F3 production list ABC, NBC, Disney, HGTV, BBC, Warner Brothers, National Geographic, ITV, and others have all broadcast shows from that list. It's a big market place and there are lots of different tastes. Not all feature films are destined for theaters. And, in reality your one opinion doesn't really matter.

The truth is everyone starts out as a beginner. The goal is to make each production better than the last one and as you keep developing skills people trust you with more and more money/responsibility. You can't expect to suddenly make one movie out of nowhere that makes you rich and famous. That would be naive.

It's pretty easy to rant behind an anonomous ID with no links and no IMDB credits shown. If you are so cynical why do you do it at all? Care to show us your earliest work? Dismissing all feature films is obtuse. Or is that the problem, you haven't sold anything and must blame everyone and everything else because no one else knows what they are doing?

 

[starcentral]

You actually gain highlight DR by increased ISO on the F3.
View attachment 78412

Standard slog on the F3, as well as in EI mode at 800 ISO is 6.5 stops above and 6.5 stops below middle grey @ 38% according to the scopes. To get -7.5 and + 5.5 you would actually have to over expose your middle grey by one stop, effectively rating the camera at 400 ISO.



Also just a point of clarity about EI mode, you don't need EI mode on the F3 to shift your middle grey down from 38% depending on how much highlight protection you want to add. You can just rate the camera ISO higher to push your middle grey down.

The problem when the camera is set to 800 ISO and you are rating the camera higher and higher is the image will get darker and darker, so the EI mode was designed to increase the brightness of the display for monitoring purposes via the monitor out port, but the image coming over the A and B outputs stay as 800 ISO.