Best skin tones

[Timur Civan]

Tend to use 1/4 classic soft, 1/8 black promist, UltraCon 1. Not at the same time obviously.

Tend to put promist on cookes, classic soft on MP/UP, and UltraCon in the internal slot on my Cooke 18-100

 

[Bob Gundu]

I like what I'm getting from my Leica R lenses.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Bob, my 2c would be that everything looks desaturated and tinted brownish-green in the example you posted.

However, since RED doesn't seem to be able to do saturated skin tones right, maybe just making it a bit green, brown and muddy is the best we can do?

I'm beginning to think Alexa does something similar - it is slightly desaturated and green, which hides skin tone rendering problems.

Until, of course, you see a beautiful face shot on film with a full range of color. Then you go "WTF!!! How do I get that look on digital?"

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Bob Gundu]

Thanks Bruce. It was pretty much lit this way with yellow gell on the hair light. It was a party atmosphere for a whisky ad.
I have attached another frame with more blue to balance the green.

Bob, my 2c would be that everything looks desaturated and tinted brownish-green in the example you posted.

However, since RED doesn't seem to be able to do saturated skin tones right, maybe just making it a bit green, brown and muddy is the best we can do?

I'm beginning to think Alexa does something similar - it is slightly desaturated and green, which hides skin tone rendering problems.

Until, of course, you see a beautiful face shot on film with a full range of color. Then you go "WTF!!! How do I get that look on digital?"

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Bruce Allen]

Thanks Bruce. It was pretty much lit this way with yellow gell on the hair light. It was a party atmosphere for a whisky ad.
I have attached another frame with more blue to balance the green.

I still think it is way-desaturated compared to reality.

And the skin tones have that that digital look - like they were originally shot black-and-white then someone went and hand painted them to be flesh colored

I just spent a full day at Cinegear, watching F65, F3, Alexa, Red, Canon C300, Canon 1D C, Canon C500 and film, projected on various projectors (filmouts, 4K digital, etc).

I really didn't want film to win. I want to shoot 3D, and film sucks for that.

But at the end of the day... none of the new digital cameras made me say "wow, I would be happy with that look for my film."

F65 was very good in exterior daylight - even with skin tones. The nighttime stuff shot with available light just had grey skin tones... and the interior Vegas stuff (with what looked like a controlled lighting setup) looked plastic and not right. I love Curtis Clark's work (all the way back to his stuff with Peter Greenaway for The Draughtsman's Contract) but this didn't sell me. I actually got to speak to the designer of the F65 - he was SUPER NICE! - and said as much. He told me that skin tones would be more filmic when they get their ACES pipeline up and running. I dunno. Hope so but am not betting on it.

The Canon C300 film - XXIT - looked really digital. Skin tones were abysmal. Even the stuff shot on a stage looked like it was shot in sodium vapor light that robbed the skin of all subtle color. If this was a creative decision, it was not a good one.

Canon 1D C seemed slightly better though it was pretty hard to tell really because it was shot 90% in terrible available light.

Cronenweth's Canon C500 short Man and Beast was better but to be honest was no breakthrough. His digital stuff (this plus Dragon Tattoo and Social Network) looks good... until you watch his stuff like Fight Club. Then you go WTF... what happened?!

Nancy Schreiber presented some short film stuff shot on F3 without S-Log and it was decent-looking... but skin tones still lacking.

Finally: there was one comparison where a really good Japanese DP shot a short film simultaneously on Red, Alexa and Fuji stock... although it was done by Fuji, it seemed pretty fair to me.

Film utterly, completely crushed the other formats in terms of richness of skin.

Skin on Alexa looked a little desaturated and yellowish-green. Still a plausible look... but a poor vision when compared to film. Red just looked... dead. In that standard Red way. Totally lacking in saturated color detail and what was amazing was that even though the overall scene colors were quite closely matched, the skin just stood out as awful. Either that or my eyes just notice skin tones more. I don't know.

The funny thing was that the next day I was at a cinematography master class with Vilmos Zsigmondi, Ueli Steiger and Jacek Laskus. They had a live feed from an Alexa and it looked good... until you looked at the actual person's face in reality! Then suddenly you look back at the Alexa and see it for what it really is - greenish-yellow and desaturated! And you long for film...

Sorry, maybe I should move this to another thread.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Mike P.]

I like what I'm getting from my Leica R lenses.

Fuuughhh... That looks *great* to me... I love brownish hues (actually, I love earth tones in general); they have a certain texture lacking from more vibrant colours. Plus they react really well with skin tones in my opinion. I wonder what this would have looked like without the yellow gel on the rim (not just removing via colour correction.)

I guess I'd better get some Leica lenses... and some whiskey.

Ironically, the thing about film skin tones is they often times look too red/saturated in my opinion.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Fuuughhh... That looks *great* to me... I love brownish hues (actually, I love earth tones in general); they have a certain texture lacking from more vibrant colours. Plus they react really well with skin tones in my opinion. I wonder what this would have looked like without the yellow gel on the rim (not just removing via colour correction.)

I guess I'd better get some Leica lenses... and some whiskey.

Ironically, the thing about film skin tones is they often times look too red/saturated in my opinion.

OK, I'm going to try to convert you

It's tough because... well, Bob set up such a damn nice shot that he's selling everyone on digital skin tones

But try this:

1. Get someone to stand next to your computer monitor
2. Set up a yellow kicker light behind them and a more neutral-toned soft light to match Bob's (very nice) lighting setup
3. Notice that the skin tones on the real person look (sadly) way more saturated, colorful and interesting than the tones you get out of a RED camera

Again, I'm not saying Bob's shot looks bad. It looks good. I do think it would look better though on a future RED camera which has better skin tones. Or a film camera.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Craig Parkes]

Bruce - I am glad you keep pushing for better skintones on R3D footage, and all digital cameras - I can't imagine the man hours Kodak and Fuji have put into test emulsions to get film stocks where they are now, getting sensors and colour science to the same place is obviously going to take a while.

 

[Dan Kanes]

I dunno - I happen to think the skin tones you can get with an Epic or Alexa both look really good when processed "correctly" and outputted "correctly"

It's all about Lighting, and "Development" or "Processing" for me. Lens choice and filter choice are also super important.

something about the way digital represents color can be compared to an old-school technicolor three strip process, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The Foveon sensor design sort of "sees" the way film does - it has awesome color but not super awesome resolution. Might be an interesting motion picture sensor if they got the read-reset times fast enough.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Ok guys, here are a couple more stills of where getting the right skin tone is tough. Here are two very different skin colours in the same scene.

 

[Shervin Mandgaryan]

I've been watching quite a bit of 'Game of Thrones' recently, and although not a film, I'll have to say that it's been a pleasure looking at faces and skin in that series.

Although alot has to do with the interior bits which are shot with lights casting a beautiful colour temperature, that akin to candlelight on the cast -- the series really shows off what Cooke S4's and the magic 'Cooke Look' can do to skin tones.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Can I get some feedback on skin tones? Curious what everyone thinks of my skintones for the given shots. I have a theory but curious what you all think ?:
Right click, open in new tab to view full size. All shot on RED. No color correction, as shot...

(This one below shot under uncorrected fluorescent lighting)

 

[Timur Civan]

I dont think this is a camera manufacturer issue. I think its just the simple fact that Silicon has a ways to go yet. it gets close.... but photo chemicals will win this battle cause they react to light like our eyes do.

As film reaches its limit if over exposure the un activated Silver crystals get fewer and far between, there by naturally compressing the highlight. The color layers are effected in a similar manner. Since pixels are static and the surface area is collecting the charge for the entire pixel, as it nears light saturation, it exposes faster and faster. The opposite of film. Hence why film emulsion when not properly exposed is muck on the shadow side, but glorious in the highlights. This is part of the benefit of flashing film, it semi activates the entire piece of film, and ensures your shadows are getting something, not a blob of crystals that arent activated by light.

The old days when you would over expose by a stop and print down was for that exact reason. A bright Highlight was ok cause it looked so good, but murky grainy shadows were a mess.

 

[Matt Ryan]

anyone on skin tones posted above?

 

[Richard Goodwin]

I've been watching quite a bit of 'Game of Thrones' recently, and although not a film, I'll have to say that it's been a pleasure looking at faces and skin in that series.

Very much agree with 'Game of Thrones' looking good in terms of skin tones (and overall). The old (non-electric, natural and candlelight) does help a lot. As does the very good Art Direction and the well conceived grading where each location has a unique and well designed grade.

 

[Daniel Dávila]

It's important to get good skin tones to replace film capture BEFORE we get used to that unsaturated with magenta lips dead look. On Matt's examples, I liked the second one.

 

[Peter Dmitriyev]

Bruce Allen: I think I am the biggest supporter and am in most agreement with all your statements on every account. I have always thought Red's skintones were to put it mildly not pleasing and no where near filmic however the more Alexa movies I watch the more I realize Alexa's skintones which I used to think were far superior are actually in some ways just as bad, just in different ways although as a whole I think Alexa's skintones are usually much better than Red.
Remember the other important thing about skintones is that they are to a large part affected by dynamic range because skin is very luminous and unfortunately the rims/highlight areas of each contour (the brow, the nose, the edge of the visible facial contour etc etc etc) are very often very 'hot' in terms of being over exposed and as such you have to remember the closer information gets to being overexposed the more color and saturation it is losing. Either it turns pink/magenta from complete over exposure or it simply starts washing out the actual micro-tonal color of that part of the skin and as such in general dampens the overall feel of the skintones.
And since Red's dynamic range is not really best in class so to speak, one can only conclude that this has an effect on the skintone rendition in my opinion since a lot of the facial contours are often getting so hot that they're starting to lose micro-tonal separation/saturation, etc, etc and end up looking bland, monotoned, washed out, etc, etc.
At the end of the day I think as Timur said, there simply seems to be silicon limitations because despite the fact Alexa looks MORE pleasing than Red it still doesn't compare to film in regards to color of any sort be it skintones, or in general so it's not just a Red problem although I do think Red still does not fare that well most of the time relatively speaking against Alexa so I think there is still a ways more that Red can push their own technology to at least compete with Alexa in this department if not film.

 

[Peter Dmitriyev]

and as for my opinion on the stills posted above.

I agree with someone that said the 2nd pic is the only somewhat pleasing skin tone to me although still doesn't compare to film, still too dull with not enough micro-tonal color separation.

4th pic looks dull/gray

5th washed out/overly diffused digital

6th dull/gray

7th dull/gray

8th sickly greenish/gray

etc
etc

not a single frame has skin that to me looks lifelike and human. The only pic that isn't strangely green/yellow/gray and actually looks somewhat like pink human skin is the 2nd one

 

[Anthony Vu]

When I'm watching movies and shows, I can't help but look at the skin tones. They feel much differently when I'm actually watching them on my projector fully involved with the story. But I think with this digital age, you can push and pull your way to any type of skin tone style you want regardless of the camera you use.

I have to agree with Mr. Most. Many movies shot with RED cameras tend to pull a certain direction in color and style, while Alexa pulls in another. That's not to say that Alexa footage can't look like REd and visa versa.

One thing I like to do is download a movie trailer and pull up all my color scopes. I've learned a lot about style and color seeing how others approach it.

But man, if you guys haven't seen James Bond Skyfall Trailer yet, you need to do yourself a favor and watch Roger Deakins pull some mastery with light.

 

[Will Keir]

Matt. Only the first two shots have a "natural" look IMO. Even these aren't lit for "game of thrones" type skin tones. That show does a fantastic lighting job most of the time. Most of Tyrian's stuff is well lit, but John Snow skin tones look good but much different. A lot depends on the environment of the scene.

I like the look of the actor with the cigar, sure it's a pale face but I think it works. I don't like the 4th and 5th shot at all.

Maybe you can post the whole clip of that scene and we could tell ya more?