[Krzysztof Wlodarczyk]

Once I found good explenation for that term on Peter’s Gray page. Digital Image Technician/On-set colorist. That explains what that job exactly is. You do not need to only now the menus and setups in the camera, but control the image with a paintbox adjusting it to the desired look. This includes not only gamma setting brightness, contrast white balance, but also more detailed setups like detail, noise reduction, secondary color correction in the camera etc in every scene. It’s a very common job in Poland as it is very cost effective matching whole material on set instead of “fixing everything in post”. Other thing DIT has to be familiar with is what is happening to the material after his job is done – so know how to record the image for the specific post proces. I’m not sure if this way of work is popular worldwide as I had some problems getting paintboxes in some countries (even in LA).
As for RED I wouldn’t agree that you don’t need a DIT for that kind of jobs. DIT’s job on RED is to record the proper RAW signal – so you could use as much information in post as you can. No matter what many people say about RED, it is a video camera – records from 0 to 109 IRE, has fixed speed (without noise and over exposure), doesn’t let you underexpose or over expose much. You need to have some experience in video to know how to handle that camera. And having a DIT on set you can also setup desired look using camera settings, at the same time keeping the RAW image clear.
Working with digital I would recomend hiring experienced DIT (not only because I am one of them;), it gives you much more confidence of what’s happening to the image you are recording, because in video what you record is what you get – knot much space for mistakes;).

Krzysztof Wlodarczyk
Digital Image Technician/Camera Assistant
diggin.info@gmail.com