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[Jan Crittenden Livingston] “From what I understand they are expensive and to set up the camera so that it can upgrade software in the field is expensive, this is not a trivial thing. The SPX800 does it and look at its price.”

Ok, if your knowledge of used chip types and their prices relys on a logic: “camera is so expensive, that the chips must be too”, maybe you should ask somebody more technical in Panny’s department.

Usually nowadays the real expense is to write that code into those chips, not the chips itself.

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I don’t mind at all, thinking of these makes me to refresh my memory and logics also.

Amount of color bits restricts the number of tones you can have, but not how big contrast ratio you can have between the ends.
Only if you use linear gamma and want to reproduce a shot excactly how it was in real life, then (4,4,4) has to be twice as bright as (2,2,2,) etc.

You can adjust your display to show 10 f-stops with 8bits, there just is less tones per f-stop.
And usually in moving images, you want pictures look good rather than naturally realistic.

More you boost your contrast ratio, easier tone banding appears.
Gamma helps in this, because you can put more of tones in critical area and less elsewhere.
To show 2.2-gamma 8bit tones you need 12bits in linear gamma.

As to analogy with audio, with 8bit audio you can’t reproduce a sound that is weaker than -48dB but you can adjust the 0dB point.
With 8bit color you can’t reproduce a tone that has half the brightness of (1,1,1), but you can adjust the brightness of (1,1,1).

And to get back to real life, lcds have had an annoyingly high black level, but very high white level. So talking about contrast ratios doesn’t really tell if the picture will look good. Contrast can be high, but that doesn’t help if black level is also high. At least if you are planning to watch the display in traditionally dim lit room.

I’m not sure if there is any kind of standardization to contrast ratio in any color spaces, I’ve understood that they only specify the relation of tones to each other, not the overall output.

Maybe Apple has some ideas about everybody looking the same picture, because their displays don’t have adjustable contrast. Most of the rest of the world does have…

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Jan, can you tell me how much these “firmware chips” cost? And how much more they would cost if they were reprogrammable?
I’ve been updating motherboards and cd/dvd-burners etc. bioses and firmwares for a decade. And those do cost less than $100.
What you are saying is that reprogrammable eeproms are too expensive in $6k camera!

On the other hand, if the reason for not-updateble firmware is that you have to make firmware perfect at the start, that is a pretty good reason.
Otherwise it might turn out to be a situation where we are now with computers/cell phones/dtv-receivers, where every second feature will work “in the next update”.

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I see no problem using monitor with 1000:1 contrast ratio with 8bit colors.
Let’s assume that black level (0,0,0) is 0.1 cd/m^2 and white level (255,255,255)then 100 cd/m^2.
With linear gamma rgb values would give intensity:
(1,1,1) 4.0 cd/m^2
(2,2,2) 7.9 cd/m^2
(3,3,3) 11.8 cd/m^2
etc.

With gamma of 0.4:
(1,1,1) 1,8 cd/m^2
(2,2,2) 2,4 cd/m^2
(3,3,3) 2,8 cd/m^2
etc.

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[Graeme Nattress] “Surely though, in 8bit video, the brightest bit is only 256 times brighter than the darkest?”

That’s why we use non-linear gamma, right?

THG measurements (black level, contrast):
Dell 2001FP 0.62 258:1
LaCie 321 / NEC 2180UX 0.3 500:1
Dell 2405FPW 0.3 833:1
Apple Cinema 0.66 439:1
Eizo L997 0.4 575:1
ViewSonic VP231WB 0.42 338:1
NEC 2180WG-LED 0.29 448:1

So the black levels are getting lower, but we are still far away from hq, witch would be <.1. That last NEC lumiled had a perfect color representation. And what will be the price for lumiled-hd? Near ecinemasys?

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[BillM] “She said no due to the cost of flash memory.”

Yep, cost of couple megabytes of flash might rise the expenses of manufacturing something like one dollar per unit…

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[Bob Zelin] “It was the same crap,”

I wouldn’t call all these “same crap”.
Apple has contrast ratio of about 300:1, hp 500:1 and dell 1000:1.
That is a big difference.

Btw, new players are 42″ and 47″ from barco, price tags will be around 6k and 9k.

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[Graeme Nattress] “…they don’t cost that much”

They do add one zero to price, but still use the same display panels as everyone else.
“Real fps” is a nice feature, but does it really count?
Any hands-on experience?

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Btw, don’t you think there’s something paradoxal that movies that go to 100′ screens are graded with 32″ or smaller monitors?

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Expensive high end post houses can use those expensive crt’s.
On the other hand most of press/printing/still photography color grading is already done with lcd’s.
One reason for this is that you can’t get high quality crt’s to computers any more.
My guess is that hd crt’s start disappearing next year. Lsd’s are better enough then and there are new techs coming like SED and OLED.
Led-LCD’s might becaome also very nice. Like the BrightSide is already.
https://www.brightsidetech.com/