Low light limit

[Marc Wielage]

I think your entire approach to correcting Red Camera files is not right. Have you done this before?

Typically what I do is something along the following:

1) set project Raw settings to Color Science IPP2, Color Space RedWideGamutRGB, Gamma Curve Log3G10

2) set project Camera Metadata to use ISO, Exposure, and Color Temp.

3) from then on, I just treat it as if it were film. In the first node, I use an Offset adjustment (essentially printer lights) to rebalance the picture and correct for any black level issues. After that, I use a Custom Curve to push the picture in what I call a “Faux Rec709” area with an S-curve. It helps to have a camera color chart for accuracy.

4) In subsequent nodes, I adjust overall levels and color balance, and I loosely match them to the client’s dailies, brought in as a reference movie. If we decide the story is told better with a bigger change, I can always compare their original editorial “look” to the new look. Multiple Versions allow you to keep their original look or go with a radically new look.

5) I generally correct in DaVinci YRGB and Gamma 2.4, on a Rec709 2.4 display. I use external scopes, but I match them to the internal scopes so there’s no discrepancy. Being an old-school guy, I tend to work in IRE values, 0 for black and 100 for white, but it’s just a system for numbering; you can go with 0 and 1023 if you prefer for 10-bit. This will automatically scale if you render out to an 8-bit medium for YouTube or something like it.

I think going beyond this methodology introduces a level of complexity that’s going to confuse you. There are pros and cons to ACES, and that would be another potential way to go.

[Marc Wielage]

I think your entire approach to correcting Red Camera files is not right. Have you done this before?

Typically what I do is something along the following:

1) set project Raw settings to Color Science IPP2, Color Space RedWideGamutRGB, Gamma Curve Log3G10

2) set project Camera Metadata to use ISO, Exposure, and Color Temp.

3) from then on, I just treat it as if it were film. In the first node, I use an Offset adjustment (essentially printer lights) to rebalance the picture and correct for any black level issues. After that, I use a Custom Curve to push the picture in what I call a “Faux Rec709” area with an S-curve. It helps to have a camera color chart for accuracy.

4) In subsequent nodes, I adjust overall levels and color balance, and I loosely match them to the client’s dailies, brought in as a reference movie. If we decide the story is told better with a bigger change, I can always compare their original editorial “look” to the new look. Multiple Versions allow you to keep their original look or go with a radically new look.

5) I generally correct in DaVinci YRGB and Gamma 2.4, on a Rec709 2.4 display. I use a calibrated Rec709 display and external scopes, but I match the latter to the internal scopes so there’s no discrepancy. Being an old-school guy, I tend to work in IRE values, 0 for black and 100 for white, but it’s just a system for numbering; you can go with 0 and 1023 if you prefer for 10-bit. This will automatically scale if you render out to an 8-bit medium for YouTube or something like it.

I think going beyond this methodology introduces a level of complexity that’s going to confuse you. There are pros and cons to ACES, and that would be another potential way to go.

[Andi Winter]

hi peter,
hi marc.

i don’t see why peter should not treat red footage the way he does as redgamma2. and, as long as you are in an davinci YRGB project, the redlog-film-dpx footage with the lut should look nearly identically. color temperature, iso and the like aside, if it was shot differently, those parameters are “burnt in”.

[Andi Winter]

ps: more details please. how do you apply the lut? what are your project settings. do you try to match before or after the lut?

[Peter Brelan]

thank you

effectively it didn’t work when i tried to lower the blacks before the lut, but it works when i lower the blacks after the lut node. That small details killed me ☺

Thank you for all your advice, you are very good.

and happy new year

[Peter Brelan]

Thank you Andi,

the difference with the lut redgamma2 and the original redgamma2 is the low lights in the lut were limited, i couldn’t push them to 0.
But I discovered I can push the low lights if I do it on a node after the lut. Strange but it works.

thank you very much