OLED Lacking Contrast and Color

[Sidney L. Plaut]

Graeme really good thing for all of us having you involved.

DP's here are ditching the Epic on long form, one factor is that they feel they cant rely on the EVF for exposure because of the Gamma and color temp issues mentioned...

 

[Thomas Koba]

Just to pitch in. My OLED EVF is also brighter in the gamma, than my RED LCD. Probably by one stop. I thought everyone's was? I was surprised, first time when seeing how I had underexposed a lot of sshots. But now I've just learned to adapt, and watch the histograms.

If we just would have individual controls (pedestal, brightness and gamma), then everyone could set it as they like.

 

[steve green]

I have an OLED EVF here, so anything you can do to see if I can reproduce the issues here (pm / email me) and then I can talk to our engineers and see what they can do.

Graeme

Graeme, the up and down brightness works as it should but does nothing to change the lack of contrast in some situations. I'll try and see if it's possible to photograph what I'm seeing today and post later. I'm glad I'm not alone on this OLED issue!

 

[Mark Pugh]

You're not alone, Steve. And I'm afraidMark Toia's black levels weren't "anomalous", as Greame suggested. They were typical.
I don't think "lack of contrast" describes what is going on, though.
Compared to. 5.6 touchscreen LCD, deep shadow detail suddenly drops off a cliff to black, and highlight close to peaking, get lost in white (highlights appear desaturated also).This is clearly seen in raw mode. the display has contrast. It's just that almost every shade of gray in between black and white that seems elevated.
With "focus check" off and "raw view" on, deep shadow details show strong banding. What appears in the viewfinder to be around mid gray (but is only about 20 percent across from the left of the histogram) drops off via just a few banded steps to pitch black. Ie the image appears to be of a low bit rate, thiugh i think that's just because of the grossly elevated gamma. It's really obvious if you're throwing everything out of focus with the lens.

Turning on focus check gives a greater, ironically more accurate and detailed rendition of the levels of the deepest shadows, as long as there is detail for the focus check to play with. You can suddenly see into the pitch blacks. Of course areas of shadow that have no detail appear darker now.

Switching from raw view to metadata view, those bands of solid inky black, are revealed to have detail. Makes raw view useful only for checking highlights, although the LCD reveals more here than the EVf, so...

And the warmth is crazy... I assume that the work has just not been put in to make that display in there work with the signal being sent to it. The electronics overhaul for the OLED just didn't take care of business.

Simple yes/no questions for anyone at RED:

Is it possible that in a future build, gamma levels could be tweaked for the OLED monitor?
Will it be able to have a gamma level (and white balance) slider, so your customers can get happy with his EVF?
Can there be a three channel adjustment of color also?

No More BS metadata adjustment cures, thanks.

 

[steve green]

You're not alone, Steve. And I'm afraidMark Toia's black levels weren't "anomalous", as Greame suggested. They were typical.
I don't think "lack of contrast" describes what is going on, though.
Compared to. 5.6 touchscreen LCD, deep shadow detail suddenly drops off a cliff to black, and highlight close to peaking, get lost in white (highlights appear desaturated also).This is clearly seen in raw mode. the display has contrast. It's just that almost every shade of gray in between black and white that seems elevated.
With "focus check" off and "raw view" on, deep shadow details show strong banding. What appears in the viewfinder to be around mid gray (but is only about 20 percent across from the left of the histogram) drops off via just a few banded steps to pitch black. Ie the image appears to be of a low bit rate, thiugh i think that's just because of the grossly elevated gamma. It's really obvious if you're throwing everything out of focus with the lens.

Turning on focus check gives a greater, ironically more accurate and detailed rendition of the levels of the deepest shadows, as long as there is detail for the focus check to play with. You can suddenly see into the pitch blacks. Of course areas of shadow that have no detail appear darker now.

Switching from raw view to metadata view, those bands of solid inky black, are revealed to have detail. Makes raw view useful only for checking highlights, although the LCD reveals more here than the EVf, so...

And the warmth is crazy... I assume that the work has just not been put in to make that display in there work with the signal being sent to it. The electronics overhaul for the OLED just didn't take care of business.

Simple yes/no questions for anyone at RED:

Is it possible that in a future build, gamma levels could be tweaked for the OLED monitor?
Will it be able to have a gamma level (and white balance) slider, so your customers can get happy with his EVF?
Can there be a three channel adjustment of color also?

No More BS metadata adjustment cures, thanks.

Mark, Great detailed assessment of what's going on with the OLED. I agree, menu control of the OLED color, contrast, brightness would go a long way to making the EVF useful. I'm going to set up the Epic right now and see if I can reproduce this and capture it in photos.

 

[Thomas Koba]

You're not alone, Steve. And I'm afraidMark Toia's black levels weren't "anomalous", as Greame suggested. They were typical.
I don't think "lack of contrast" describes what is going on, though.
Compared to. 5.6 touchscreen LCD, deep shadow detail suddenly drops off a cliff to black, and highlight close to peaking, get lost in white (highlights appear desaturated also).This is clearly seen in raw mode. the display has contrast. It's just that almost every shade of gray in between black and white that seems elevated.
With "focus check" off and "raw view" on, deep shadow details show strong banding. What appears in the viewfinder to be around mid gray (but is only about 20 percent across from the left of the histogram) drops off via just a few banded steps to pitch black. Ie the image appears to be of a low bit rate, thiugh i think that's just because of the grossly elevated gamma. It's really obvious if you're throwing everything out of focus with the lens.

Turning on focus check gives a greater, ironically more accurate and detailed rendition of the levels of the deepest shadows, as long as there is detail for the focus check to play with. You can suddenly see into the pitch blacks. Of course areas of shadow that have no detail appear darker now.

Switching from raw view to metadata view, those bands of solid inky black, are revealed to have detail. Makes raw view useful only for checking highlights, although the LCD reveals more here than the EVf, so...

And the warmth is crazy... I assume that the work has just not been put in to make that display in there work with the signal being sent to it. The electronics overhaul for the OLED just didn't take care of business.

Simple yes/no questions for anyone at RED:

Is it possible that in a future build, gamma levels could be tweaked for the OLED monitor?
Will it be able to have a gamma level (and white balance) slider, so your customers can get happy with his EVF?
Can there be a three channel adjustment of color also?

No More BS metadata adjustment cures, thanks.

Exactly what I´m experienceing, with the deep blacks. I had a hard time explaining what happens in the dark shadows, but you tell it very precisly here.

 

[Ryan De Franco]

Graeme, we cannot thank you enough for your help!!! I have spoken to a dozen level two techs on various occasions and no one has been able to explain these issues. The OLED viewfinder is a great advancement but it is not where it needs to be; with a little bit of metadata adjustment, it could be, and you would have ten thousand happy customers:

COLOR: the OLED is 2000 - 3000K warmer than the recorded image.
GAMMA: mid-tones and middle-shadows appear brighter than in the recorded image. shadows exhibit strong purple banding.
CONTRAST: in bright, bright light, it can get a bit washy, but it's still plenty good for me.

An in-camera "EVF LUT" would be incredible!

It doesn't have to be user adjustable, that might just yield more confusion. Please test the hell out of these, in daylight and sub-3200K tungsten situations, and you will see what we are talking about. Then create a look that dials in the EVF as close to the recorded image as possible.

A million thanks,
Ryan

 

[steve green]

OLED Lack of Contrast

OLED Lack of Contrast

Graeme,
As promised here's what I was able to photograph in regards to the OLED issues we're having. I must tell you that my efforts to photograph the EVF image were futile, however, the LCD depicts the same problem I'm seeing in the EVF. One frame being from a DSLR the other of the LCD. Let me know if this helps or if I can do anything else with the EVF to show you better what's going on. Anything you can do to get some menu adjustments for the EVF built into future firmware would be wonderful. I'm certain you've been reading that I'm not alone in feeling that the EVF is not up to Red standards. I truly thank you for taking the interest you have in this problem.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Steve - from what I'm seeing is that your EVF is showing up a lot bluer than the actual image. Is that the colour temp change you mentioned above. When I was checking the colorimetry of the OLED EVF I didn't see such a shift and white was very close to D65 which is where it should be. My concern is why your EVF isn't looking like the one I had for testing.

Graeme

 

[steve green]

Steve - from what I'm seeing is that your EVF is showing up a lot bluer than the actual image. Is that the colour temp change you mentioned above. When I was checking the colorimetry of the OLED EVF I didn't see such a shift and white was very close to D65 which is where it should be. My concern is why your EVF isn't looking like the one I had for testing.

Graeme

Can the fact that the frame of the LCD looks blue just be a product of the LCD itself, I shot the image at 5600 on the DSLR.....Cooler is not the issue with the OLED, warmer is, in addition to the milky colors.

 

[Tom Gleeson]

The image in my OLED EVF is often quite handsome due to the warming effect and the mids gamma push. It is only when I compare it to my Sony OLED 17" Monitor and to the final RCX output I go Holy S%$t.

 

[Christopher Probst]

I too experience these issues with my OLED EVF but I don't use it for determining exposures. Still, I feel my original Bomb EVF was superior... Curious if any headway in fixing these issues has been made?

 

[Tom Gleeson]

I really stuggle looking at an EVF all day that does not look correctly exposed. As my OLED always makes the image look overexposed at correct exposure I have reverted to using my old Red One EVF that if set correctly gives me a good ballpark exposure. My OLED EVF has now developed an odd large dot on the screen so its in at Red for evaluation. There has been no official response that I am aware of.

 

[Mark Pugh]

Take a look at the luma ramp in the new firmware build, and what it reveals. The gradation of the ramp, more than the luma ramp in the red one, pushes most shades of gray off to the left.
But you can see bands of gray that shouldn't be there, and aren't evident at all on my 9" LCD.
You can also see a shift in color- though a red magenta in darker areas to a more cyan tint in lighter shades. None of this is evident in the 9" LCD. It's a smooth transition up the ramp to white, with no coloring.
I wonder the luma ramp has been adjusted to squish more shades into the left margin, to help hide evidence.

As far back as 2009 I pointed out to osmeone at RED really bad banding in the original EVF, evident in the luma ramp..
I mean the whole luma ramp from black to white was broken into about 10 chunks of gray, versus the 7"LCD which had maybe 50 chunks.
I never got an answer (the EVF expert engineer was on vacation, I was told).

 

[Bob Gundu]

The OLED Evf is fine indoors. Outside I essentially switch to RAW view to make it pretty close to what I would expect.

 

[steve green]

I really stuggle looking at an EVF all day that does not look correctly exposed. As my OLED always makes the image look overexposed at correct exposure I have reverted to using my old Red One EVF that if set correctly gives me a good ballpark exposure. My OLED EVF has now developed an odd large dot on the screen so its in at Red for evaluation. There has been no official response that I am aware of.

Tom,
I've been to Red in Irvine with my camera and OLED (two months ago) to show them the issues we're posting about. I'd be very curious to see if you get any info as to wether or not a fix is in the works. It's really what I call a weak link in the system. Occasionally I find myself shooting with Alexa and it pisses me off that their EVF looks great.

 

[steve green]

Take a look at the luma ramp in the new firmware build, and what it reveals. The gradation of the ramp, more than the luma ramp in the red one, pushes most shades of gray off to the left.
But you can see bands of gray that shouldn't be there, and aren't evident at all on my 9" LCD.
You can also see a shift in color- though a red magenta in darker areas to a more cyan tint in lighter shades. None of this is evident in the 9" LCD. It's a smooth transition up the ramp to white, with no coloring.
I wonder the luma ramp has been adjusted to squish more shades into the left margin, to help hide evidence.
As far back as 2009 I pointed out to smeone at RED really bad banding in the original EVF, evident in the luma ramp..
I mean the whole luma ramp from black to white was broken into about 10 chunks of gray, versus the 7"LCD which had maybe 50 chunks.
I never got an answer ( the EVF expert was on vacation, I was told).

I keep hoping that in the next firmware Red will add a "user option" to allow color, contrast and brightness adjustment to the OLED/EVF. With this we can adjust the EVF to match the main SDI monitor on set which everyone is working off of. At least you'd be able to converse regarding lighting and set choices, with the director, clients, gaffer, etc. while in the eyepiece and everyone is looking at the same picture. Red Team: Is this a possibility?

 

[Harry Clark]

+1 please.
Cheers,
Harry

 

[Alvise Tedesco]

I'm thinking about a used oled bomb.
But, since I can't look at the actual evf before buying, threads like this keep me warned.
Do more recent builds solved those issues?

Graeme, we cannot thank you enough for your help!!! I have spoken to a dozen level two techs on various occasions and no one has been able to explain these issues. The OLED viewfinder is a great advancement but it is not where it needs to be; with a little bit of metadata adjustment, it could be, and you would have ten thousand happy customers:

COLOR: the OLED is 2000 - 3000K warmer than the recorded image.
GAMMA: mid-tones and middle-shadows appear brighter than in the recorded image. shadows exhibit strong purple banding.
CONTRAST: in bright, bright light, it can get a bit washy, but it's still plenty good for me.

An in-camera "EVF LUT" would be incredible!

It doesn't have to be user adjustable, that might just yield more confusion. Please test the hell out of these, in daylight and sub-3200K tungsten situations, and you will see what we are talking about. Then create a look that dials in the EVF as close to the recorded image as possible.

A million thanks,
Ryan

i

When I was checking the colorimetry of the OLED EVF I didn't see such a shift and white was very close to D65 which is where it should be. My concern is why your EVF isn't looking like the one I had for testing.

Graeme

Do Red is going to work on that (separate monitoring path, as to eventually lower shadows on evf without lowering it on sdi)

Just to pitch in. My OLED EVF is also brighter in the gamma, than my RED LCD. Probably by one stop. I thought everyone's was? I was surprised, first time when seeing how I had underexposed a lot of sshots. But now I've just learned to adapt, and watch the histograms.

If we just would have individual controls (pedestal, brightness and gamma), then everyone could set it as they like.