Is 11 1/3rd stops enough...

[Ruairi Robinson]

...To avoid clipping in high contrast lighting situations? will highlights rolloff smoothly?

And to avoid any trace of that ugly video look, particularly in skintones. Or is it a matter of "careful" lighting to avoid this?

[Jaime Vallés]

If RED delivers anything less than 18 stops, I want my money back! ;)

I have a feeling that careful lighting with this camera will make some of the most amazing imagery ever captured. But that's just a hunch.

[Graeme Nattress]

The big issue with 11.3 stops is that you've got to make it look nice. Most displays don't have enough dynamic range to show a wide dynamic range, be it from RED or a DSLR or film or whatever. You've got to map that range down to a usable level and that isn't too easy. If you don't do it, the image looks bland and un-dynamic.

Graeme

[Brook Willard]

If you can light for film, you can light for RED.

As long as you watch your highlights, I suppose.

Seems valid enough...

[Ruairi Robinson]

If you can light for film, you can light for RED.

As long as you watch your highlights, I suppose.

Seems valid enough...

...but will you have to watch your highlights any more or less than with film...?

I watched Catch 22 recently, and there's a scene in a dimly lit room, where a bare lightbulb is switched on - and the exposure is COMPLETELY blasted out, overexposed like crazy - but it doesn't clip - it's still a smooth transition. Looks really really nice. Sort of... milky, for want of a better word...

It mentions in the tech specs the ability to work in 10 bit log space - I presume this would make things better for highlight detail preservation? and pose more of a challenge in getting it to display nicely - that's what you are talking about, right Graeme?

[Brook Willard]

REDCODE = 12-bit. [edit: missed the "log" part of that post]

As for whether we'll have to watch highlights any differently... I suppose time will tell.

[Graeme Nattress]

10bit log doesn't give you any "anti-clip" advantage. It's just a way of compressing 4096 values (native 12bit) to 1024 values (10 bit) biassing the losses so that most of them occur on very bright values that have more information, and less losses occur on the dark and mid range values.

Under normal conditions, you'll do as top DSLR shooters do and "ETTR" Expose To The Right: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Graeme

[Matthew Greene]

...but will you have to watch your highlights any more or less than with film...?

Yeah, just as you would with reversal film or any "positive" medium. With negatives you gotta watch your shadows. It's not really a disadvantage, just a reversed methodology.

[Brook Willard]

I've been wondering how ETTR will effect high contrast [read: very bright highlights] images. That extra ~half stop could spell disaster on certain images.

Obviously it's all up to the operator. I almost always ETTR with my SLR but I can't remember doing so in a very bright situation.

[Graeme Nattress]

If the situation is over bright by many stops, you've got to decide which highlights in the scene to ETTR to, and protect them, and let the super-brights just blow out. If you don't, you may find that the shadows are too dark and too noisy to be rescued to make a nice image. As with all rules, ETTR must be used with a dose of common sense.

Graeme

[Blair S. Paulsen]

If the situation is over bright by many stops, you've got to decide which highlights in the scene to ETTR to, and protect them, and let the super-brights just blow out. If you don't, you may find that the shadows are too dark and too noisy to be rescued to make a nice image. As with all rules, ETTR must be used with a dose of common sense.

Graeme

I usually avoid quoting since the words are already in the thread but this post bears a second read. There are two approaches that I believe in for exposure:
1) the classic "place and fall" where you choose what matters the most, often skin tone, and let the other values fall where they will
2) the other strategy, depending on what you are shooting on, is to either protect the highlights or make sure that anything you want the audience to see is not too deep in the shadows

What Graeme suggests is that even when protecting the highlights or shooting your ETTR, that common sense has to be mixed in. I say - hear, hear. What a lot of us are dying to see is what the edge transitions between the way blown highlights, the mostly blown highlights and the barely held highlights will look like with the RedOne, particulary when the RedCode RAW codec is in use.

One of the most interesting examples of how that plays out for acquisition using existing HD tools is the series Battlestar Gallactica where the DoP regularly works out the top end. I would love to know what custom knee settings are in play, if any, and if some of the footage is shot closer to standard exposure and then pushed in post. Anybody know any skinny on their methodology?

[robbo]

You know sprang to mind for me when reading that (from Graeme) ?

Snow - in some shots you would just let it blow out completely (well you can't help it :-)) while exposing for the highlights that are important, ie where the audience focus would be. On the actor or snowmobile, whatever.
You'd try to keep as much as you could, of course.

As always Graeme makes a lot sense !

[Ruairi Robinson]

>>>>What a lot of us are dying to see is what the edge transitions between the way blown highlights, the mostly blown highlights and the barely held highlights will look like with the RedOne, particulary when the RedCode RAW codec is in use.>>>>

If that wasn't clear, this is precisely what I'm concerned with too.

Will it oversaturate in a video like manner? or will it be possible to maintain a smooth transition to blown out areas, like film can. Even if you expose badly. "bad" film exposure, and in general, bad film artifacts tend IMHO to be more asethetically pleasing than bad digital artifacts...

In other other words - say we want to shoot something that looks like overexposed film, not overexposed video... is this possible? all the workflow guidlines appear to be to avoid getting into a situation where you have blown out highlights - but what if you want them blown out - you just don't want them to look like muck!

I hope this is making sense to anyone else...

Cheers,
R.

[robbo]

Like this sort of a look Ruairi ?
original can be found here http://red.com/gallery-still.htm

edit: If it isn't right to use this pic, Jim, Jarred or anybody (and I can understand why it might not be).
Just say so - and I'll take it down.

edit 2: Just checked it - If I open the thumb in my browser it's adding a weirdo red cast to the pic. So dl it and open from there, looks better.

[Anders Holck]

Speaking of gentle clipping - will there be some kind of softclip feature in Redcine to gently clip specular highlight if you brighten a clip, instead of a cutoff.

[Ruairi Robinson]

Like this sort of a look Ruairi ?
original can be found here http://red.com/gallery-still.htm

edit: If it isn't right to use this pic, Jim, Jarred or anybody (and I can understand why it might not be).
Just say so - and I'll take it down.

well, there's a big difference between contrasting up a low contrast image, as you've done, and exposing for a high contrast lighting setup.

Tell me if I'm way off base here, but is not not possible to create a sensor that works in log space rather than linear - to match the non-linear exposure properties of film...?

Or to have some kind of softclip highlight protection setting on the camera itself - so even if it does overexpose, it doesn't burn out in an ugly way... (Bah. Guess I'll just have to way to see some more tests!) Apologies if this is a stupid question or if it's already been covered. I'm not a techie.

Softclip would be important in redcine too.

Cheers,
R.

[robbo]

"I'm not a techie." Me neither - lol.

Guess none of us will know until there's more footage.
Hopefully one of the Red team will be able to help you out.
Yeah - it was a feeble attempt to try and portray what I imagine you were describing. Probably something WAY more blown but still soft in the highlights , I guess ?

[Alex Fostvedt]

Hey Ruairi,
Was Catch 22 shot on film? If it was you could be inquiring about the "curve" of film. The ability of film to blend into exposure. Every film stock has its own curve or nature, and how fast the exposre will fall off into white. I think that 11 and 1/3rds is well into the curve of film.
High contrast film will fall off fast, low contrast will fall off slowly.
If you are thinking of shooting a scene like this, my advice would be to put the light on a dimmer, and adjust the light to your needs, with 11 1/3rd stops you should have no problem finding the sweet spot.
As far as a "softclip" function in RedCine, are you asking that the sensitivity of highlight clipping be increased?

[Graeme Nattress]

Curves do all you need for this.

Graeme

[Robert Niessner]

With a range of 11.33 stops and the lownoise capabilities of the mysterium sensor you can easily expose for the important highlights and later push the shadows and midtones where you want them to be.
And as Graeme said, it is no problem to use curves for softclipping.
If you want to add contrast to picture, you better use the curves than the contrast slider. You make an 'S' shaped curve, which automatically does it right for you.
You could also add a bit of white diffusion in post. This will help with harsh clipped highlights. It doesn't add any detail to blown out whites, but it will soften the appearance.

[Graeme Nattress]

REDCODE RAW doesn't effect higlight handling - it's as good as it is uncompressed.

Graeme

[garageman]

Well considering that Red has twice the dynamic range of a digital slr and add to that the ability to manipulate the curves. I think that clipping is not a huge problem that is insurmountable for most scenes in overcast Ireland Ruairi!

Just err on the side of caution when lighting.

[garageman]

Hey Ruairi,
Was Catch 22 shot on film? If it was you could be inquiring about the "curve" of film. The ability of film to blend into exposure. Every film stock has its own curve or nature, and how fast the exposre will fall off into white. I think that 11 and 1/3rds is well into the curve of film.


Catch 22 was shot in 1969/70 so I hope it was shot on film!

[Ruairi Robinson]

Hey Ruairi,
Was Catch 22 shot on film? If it was you could be inquiring about the "curve" of film. The ability of film to blend into exposure. Every film stock has its own curve or nature, and how fast the exposre will fall off into white. I think that 11 and 1/3rds is well into the curve of film.
High contrast film will fall off fast, low contrast will fall off slowly.
If you are thinking of shooting a scene like this, my advice would be to put the light on a dimmer, and adjust the light to your needs, with 11 1/3rd stops you should have no problem finding the sweet spot.
As far as a "softclip" function in RedCine, are you asking that the sensitivity of highlight clipping be increased?

Here's a couple of grabs from the film

http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/1.jpg
http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/2.jpg
http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/3.jpg
http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/4.jpg

[Ruairi Robinson]

and a couple more

http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/5.jpg
http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/6.jpg
http://ruairirobinson.com/temp/7.jpg

You can clearly see it doesn't oversaturate in the overexposed areas when the light is turned on.

This is a good thing.

[garageman]

I may be wrong but I still think that type of lighting scheme should be quite possible with RED. We need an official confirmation on this though, maybe on the next few tests?