WHY oh WHY does footage look really great in the monitor and "crappy" in the PC?

[Stephen Pruitt]

Too funny. Our footage looks terrible on our cheapie monitor, but looks great once color-corrected. All we use our monitor for is seeing what's in the shot!

Stephen

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Tiny monitors are going to be super duper crazy oversampled. If you look at RED footage in 4k it's going to look a bit soft cropped to 1080p. If though you scale down your red footage to 1080p it looks much better and significantly sharper.

Apply Sharpening, increase contrast and saturation and things will look a lot better.

[Stephen Pruitt]

Personally, we find dropping "shadow" (to the left on PP) to be the single most important control in post. . . but you can't do it on a One in camera.

Stephen

[Tom.Wong]

the monitors that even have a chance of looking "right" are

hp dreamcolor
one of the new eizo's that have 709 built in

or one of the new dell ultrasharps. the top model. i don't think they have 709 built in, but they just look REALLY good...

[Mark Toia]

My MAC LED's sit next to a SONY PRO OLED... Even though the SONY is expensive and perceived to be the best grading monitor out there at the moment... The MAC LED's are seriously as good.

the monitors that even have a chance of looking "right" are

hp dreamcolor
one of the new eizo's that have 709 built in

or one of the new dell ultrasharps. the top model. i don't think they have 709 built in, but they just look REALLY good...

[Tom.Wong]

My MAC LED's sit next to a SONY PRO OLED... Even though the SONY is expensive and perceived to be the best grading monitor out there at the moment... The MAC LED's are seriously as good.

though the mac displays are very nice, there is still the fact that inside of an OS, it doesn't operate natively in any industry standard color spaces other than for photo. no rec 709, no p3 etc. and they have limited calibration abilities. so out of the box it can be very aesthetically pleasing, but a properly calibrated sony PVM or BVM series really more accurately shows you your true values in the matter. for critical color decisions, knowing for a fact that your monitor and your scopes are true to the standards is the only thing you have to rely on to make sure you are starting at the best. since there are so many inconsistencies with viewing mediums now, that's kind of the only thing that can give production, DP, Director, etc any peace of mind.

but I pretty much have to abide by that as a technician. In the end, the only rule there is, is if you can make it look good on your end, and it can stay looking good for the most part or completely as it goes down the pipeline, than you're gold.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The more I look at the Sony OLEDs, the more apparent it's become just how overrated and overpriced they truly are. Save your money, buy a DreamColor. The Apple LED display and several of the other good LED backlit LCDs on the market from HP, Dell, Samsung, LG, etc.. are also great once calibrated / tweaked properly. For color work, I still recommend a good Panasonic plasma, a DreamColor or a good projector. All calibrated, of course. The DreamColor is the easiest way to go for calibrated color on a tight budget. Only real down-side is the small screen size and lack of a higher resolution 27~30" panel in that line.

[George D.]

This will not turn out to be a great example, but you get the point and i can tell you that if you understand and work post well, you won't be disappointed. I'm posting a low rez example of a RAW and then colored frame grab from Epic. But, this said, if you don't want to learn the post pipeline and can't afford to bring someone along that can do this, then red just may not be the camera for you. if shooting TV and you are delivering Prores and want out of the camera great looking images....there are a lot of great options out there.

I for one took about 2.5 years to figure out how to manipulate in post and why/how it was advantageous for me....but this is another step from shooting to umm....can't say coloring since i'm a crap colorist, but something in between.

As pointed out by another poster....get ready to spend a pile more $$ on proper post gear.

Holy jumping rat turds Johnny, is THAT your rig? Is it 3D? Wow, what a pile of equipment to juggle around. Wheeeeeeeew!!

YOU have to be at the forefront of underwater cinematography.

Thanks for your input, and everyone elses. I'll just have to learn post production better, especially since it looks like I have no choice.

.

[Olivier Madar]

Hi,


Don't trust your RGB moniteur. Use a matrox or BM card and connect a TV plasma or real monitor like this Panasonic BT-LH910. You are in "reel life" configurtation with REC709 and curves on the monitor. You see on this picture the huge difference between the image on the monitor and the Pana. If you are working near the black or white level, it is even more important. Here, we are dealing directly with R3D through Adobe CS6. No transcoding required, and when you change the Raw parameters, you see directly on the Pana what you get.
The litle Intensity USB3 BM works perfectly with my Clevo Notebook. Everything is powered with batterie if you need to go on the field.

[ericyoung]

the monitors that even have a chance of looking "right" are

hp dreamcolor
one of the new eizo's that have 709 built in

or one of the new dell ultrasharps. the top model. i don't think they have 709 built in, but they just look REALLY good...

Which Eizo and Dell models are you talking about here?