ALEXA | F65 | DRAGON | HELIUM | Holiday shootout!

[Björn Benckert]

its on the top
F65
Alexa
Dragon

See I spotted that alexa look miles away.

So where is helium?

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Im just guessing from looking at you 3 graded jpgs. And I can not say I see any huge differences so it´s very much a guess:

top dragon.
middle alexa.
bottom helium.

But then where is the F65, is it in there?

You wouldn't see any differences if I had more than 3 hrs of sleep on NYE and had done this in the studio.
Which would be unnecessary and just masturbation. The point is made.

We live in times when creative tools are excellent, thanks to huge effort of brilliant people across the globe, but the grass is always greener, rampant analytical part of mind strives on polarization, everything needs to be served on the platter with least effort invested otherwise it sucks, and it's easier to blame a box of electronics.

Lips sealed.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Can we all take a minute and acknowledge the near motion-control perfection of this anonymous model. This lady certainly knows how to hit her marks and an nail a repeatable expression. Pixel-peepers and skin-tone analyzers rejoice. BRAVO!

Hahahaha this is hilarious.

 

[Nick Morrison]

You wouldn't see any differences if I had more than 3 hrs of sleep on NYE and had done this in the studio.
Which would be unnecessary and just masturbation. The point is made.

We live in times when creative tools are excellent, thanks to huge effort of brilliant people across the globe, but the grass is always greener, rampant analytical part of mind strives on polarization, everything needs to be served on the platter with least effort invested otherwise it sucks, and it's easier to blame a box of electronics.

Lips sealed.

Fave post so far of 2017!

Agree 100% Hrvoje.

 

[Aaron Lochert]

Even when white balanced perfectly on the white chip, the Helium green cast is real. This is at ISO 800. It gets even worse at ISO 1600.

Fixed green lows

Without green fix

Dialing it out isn't too hard. Loving the image otherwise. I wonder if that's more to do with the Standard OLPF.

 

[Björn Benckert]

You wouldn't see any differences if I had more than 3 hrs of sleep on NYE and had done this in the studio.
Which would be unnecessary and just masturbation. The point is made.

We live in times when creative tools are excellent, thanks to huge effort of brilliant people across the globe, but the grass is always greener, rampant analytical part of mind strives on polarization, everything needs to be served on the platter with least effort invested otherwise it sucks, and it's easier to blame a box of electronics.

Lips sealed.

I was just looking at the over exposure in the christmas ball alexia has less overexpo there and less color fringing, red had the most fringing and over expo and the top one landed in between...
Colors can be more easily matched than DR and resolution so I'm sure there would be more differences in 4k, 6k or especially in a 8k comparison. And especially if you try to break the image, heavily bring up the darks or such.

 

[Sabovic Adis]

A looks best, C second and B third...so, A=Helium, B=Dragon and C=ALEV. Right? :biggrin:

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Absolutely agree with all of you that each and every camera has to be treated separately. But to show differences between these high end image acquisition devices we chose to shoot from a common midpoint which bases on standards: ISO800, 5600K and 0 Tint. Of course this test does not reveal which camera is better than the other in particular, but I'm not sure if any test is doing this.

That being said I tend to shoot the Dragon and Helium with Tint -10 applied. That gets rid of the odd green cast which is quite annoying for me to be honest. We shot this test with only one 800W HMI source, so CRI should not be an issue.

But way back when Dalsa revealed their first CMOS sensors and Medium Format camera manufacturers like creo/leaf started to use this technology in their products, we had the same problem in developing the imagery: either magenta or green cast.

HMI's also drift depending on the state of the lamp. As any artificial light source does.








When attempting to evaluate camera performance through various types of lighting it is highly beneficial to consider few essential premises:

1) Every camera has particular offsets throughout its signal range. All are not visible with simple, standard and widely used tests.

2) Every artificial light source has different coverage of color spectrum. White balance differences are just the most obvious visible manifestation. Other, less obvious are in the way it affects particular color tonalites. Depending on spectrum coverage and variations in intensitity of particular wavelegths, some tonalities can become under or over saturated or lighter or darker. For example - if certain light source has poor coverage of certain wavelengths, regardless of camera's potential, camera is being blinded to those tonalities by its light source and its full potential is not visible.

3) When light-specific variations meet camera-specific signal offsets, the outcome is further distorted.


Which is why:


a) Typical and simple tests, used for basic color balancing and per-scene camera matching do not allow objective input on camera performance alone and always show camera + light performance + scene bias (environment casts)

b) Approach used in creation of IDTs attempts to remove light variables out of the equation

c) For a camera manufacturer, the only logical thing to do to achieve most consistent, most widely usable and most appealing image acquisition results is to design the basic camera response using as a reference the most natural, most reliable light source - the Sun

d) Using any typical, common and simple tests to evaluate, characterize and optimize intricate details of camera color science, the micro-level particulars which should provide reliable levels of consistency across many scenarios, is a multi-edged sword and exercise in futility.

e) To get the best results possible from any camera, regardless of how good it is, or how good the used transforms to usable gamma and color space are, material has to be examined and per-case optimized by a skilled Human.

f) If goal is getting the best results possible, desires for "Insta-finish" generic solution, the ultimate no-need-for-post-whatsoever tool, although understandable, are based on a fantasy.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

HMI's also drift depending on the state of the lamp. As any artificial light source does.

Don't get me started about how much the Sun drifts, positionally, hardness, color temperature, and effective luminosity (when blocked/not blocked by the earth or other large objects)!

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Don't get me started about how much the Sun drifts, positionally, hardness, color temperature, and effective luminosity (when blocked/not blocked by the earth or other large objects)!

Of course it does.
But the spectrum coverage does not include drastic peaks and canyons. It has more subtle variations and gradual falloffs and human sight has evolved on it and its variations, so they are less likely to feel unappealing (by themselves, not in the context of continuity). Plus there are less issues with cameras.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

A looks best, C second and B third...so, A=Helium, B=Dragon and C=ALEV. Right? :biggrin:

Lips sealed.


One more thing to note: in the examples I posted, any valorization of the outcome, intending to rationalize just the camera performance is actually valorizing camera performance > affected by light performance > affected by image manipulation required to get a usable image. Even if we assume correct monitoring. The overall image impression which is further affected with personal bias - what would brain expect/like to see. Which varies between people depending on many elements of environment conditioning.

To conclude - when you check all tests like these, before making any definitive judgements, ask yourself - what are you really seeing.

 

[Stacey Spears]

That being said I tend to shoot the Dragon and Helium with Tint -10 applied. That gets rid of the odd green cast which is quite annoying for me to be honest.

I am a firm believer in using a gray test chart to white balance. I noticed one one clip this weekend that after using the auto white balance eye dropper, tint was set to -11, which removed the green nicely, so your -10 is probably a pretty good default. I was using LEDs, which are decent quality, so was surprised by the amount of green.

 

[Stacey Spears]

The overall image impression which is further affected with personal bias.

Bias is such a difficult thing to overcome.

 

[Sabovic Adis]

Bias is such a difficult thing to overcome.

Nah, bias too is a social construct. :biggrin:

 

[Peter Moretti]

Wow my takeaway is that Alexa still beats helium for color, shadows and highlights... But the detail on helium is pretty amazing for 4K output, though at 2K output the difference seems isn't nearly as much.

Not quite what I was expecting. I was certain that helium would beat Alexa at least in shadow noise. The difference in detail and noise detail is bigger than expected as well, perhaps some noise reduction would quickly level the playing field?

It's funny, to my eyes, FWTW, the Helium with that Arri LUT looks the best. It's the most three dimensional looking and has a Canon color science look, IMHO.

 

[Matthew Riggieri]

Not sure if it was answered previously, but what type of lighting fixtures were you using?

 

[Evin Grant]

It's funny, to my eyes, FWTW, the Helium with that Arri LUT looks the best. It's the most three dimensional looking and has a Canon color science look, IMHO.

I agree completely.

 

[Christoph Tilley]

Not sure if it was answered previously, but what type of lighting fixtures were you using?

This was shot on one 800W HMI from Broncolor with a hardly used bulb.