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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Best skin tones

Bruce, do you know what LUT they were using on the Alexa when you saw it projected @ Cinegear and also when it was showed at the cinematography master class? How was the data from the camera dealt with?

Bruce Allen said:
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
Click to expand...
 
Charles, Ruby Sparks used Cooke Speed Panchros, quality texture even color are as much about the lens as the camera. Here are a few incredible stills from Albert Nobbs, shot on... Red.

albert-nobbs-300.jpg


29722


29719



albert-nobbs-janet-mcteer-2_610.jpg


I would suggest watching these three trailers for incredible, filmic looking skin tones from the Red... all courtesy Michael McDonough. Red should give him a camera considering what he's done for the medium.

Albert Nobbs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-BF1YE9BEM

Darling Companion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz63lY-Akc
(do not judge by the cold look given to the first 20 seconds)

Winter's Bone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_X2pDRXyY
 
AWESOME skin tones above. Thanks for posting...
 
No problem, I didn't do anything, Mr McDonough did.
 
I'm gona go with SKYFALL in Digital IMAX (2) 2K projectors. Skin tones and the color grade were slightly stylized with a bit of desaturation and numerous orange/teal scenes but overall this was probably the best digitally projected project I've seen yet in terms of contrast, color reproduction, natural-looking skin tones, resolution, etc.
 
I liked the look of Skyfall, Deakins is superb as usual, but I could see the limitations of a 2K image sitting 1/2 way back at Arclight.
It didn't look soft but it definately didn't have the pop that I've seen from 4K originated/projected projects.

As for skin tones it was par for an Alexa movie, I do really loath the teal/orange thing now though.
 
Ryan,

You know what's funny? The "Winter's Bone" trailer looks a lot better than I remember the DVD. When watching the DVD, I thought to myself "My G_d, this is so badly blown-out!" But the trailer looks quite good.
 
Evin Grant said:
I liked the look of Skyfall, Deakins is superb as usual, but I could see the limitations of a 2K image sitting 1/2 way back at Arclight.
It didn't look soft but it definately didn't have the pop that I've seen from 4K originated/projected projects.

As for skin tones it was par for an Alexa movie, I do really loath the teal/orange thing now though.
Click to expand...

I've noticed the same with digital projection at the Arclight Hollywood. I'm not sure what kind of projector they're using but I think it's crap. I saw "Girl w/ the Dragon Tatto" there when it was first released and it looked terrible. Soft, magenta highlights, milky blacks. Totally underwhelming. If you've got the time and an extra $18 see SKYFALL again in Digital IMAX. It was by far THE MOST fantastic digital projection I've seen lately. I thought it was on par with SONY's demo of F65 footage thru their 4K projector setup at NAB. Resolution was astounding and I never noticed any sort of softness coming from the 2K "source". Some of the medium and CU's were almost too sharp. The picture in that Digital IMAX theater from SKYFALL was superior to anything I've seen projected thru a new Sony 4K projector (film, RED, Alexa and all mastered at 2K) at my local AMC.
 
Evin Grant said:
I liked the look of Skyfall, Deakins is superb as usual, but I could see the limitations of a 2K image sitting 1/2 way back at Arclight.
Click to expand...

Saw it at the same spot and had the same thought especially on Bardem's intro shot.
 
"Honestly I'd be happy to stay at 2K forever and have everyone agree to improve color only for the next ten years.

Color... the final frontier..."

Yes. I agree.
 
Dragon is built, all that remains is jamming it into a Scarlet... the question is what has Graeme cooked up, what kind of faithful color reproduction will we see in 2013?

Forget Alexa, forget everything else, the gold standard here is film. And short of a Kodak sensor, I haven't seen anything that really does it.*

*In color. For black and white, the Monochrome is like Tri-X with four times the sensitivity.
 
I saw it on a 4K projector at the Metreon in San Francisco. Skyfall looks soft and contrasty (in a bad way) except for the scenes in Istanbul those looked natural and nice. The ending looked like a cross between Mordor and Episode III volcano scene—not Deakin's finest moment.

Funnily enough the Hobbit trailer in the preview held a lot of detail, which was very pleasant to look at. Although at this point not sure I want to invest in watching another trilogy of Middle Earth.


Phil Holland said:
Saw it at the same spot and had the same thought especially on Bardem's intro shot.
Click to expand...
 
Adrian Jebef said:
I'm gona go with SKYFALL in Digital IMAX (2) 2K projectors. Skin tones and the color grade were slightly stylized with a bit of desaturation and numerous orange/teal scenes but overall this was probably the best digitally projected project I've seen yet in terms of contrast, color reproduction, natural-looking skin tones, resolution, etc.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree. Yes it was Alexa and only 2k, but it looked so creamy and great. Closet digital movie to FILM I've seen lately.
 
Oh and before I sound like a Deakins hater—I do consider him one of the best cinematographers working. I think the movies he shot on film are a testament to how great films still are compared to digital. I don't think the Alexa or even the Epic can hold a candle to what he can do with film.

Elan Gunos said:
I saw it on a 4K projector at the Metreon in San Francisco. Skyfall looks soft and contrasty (in a bad way) except for the scenes in Istanbul those looked natural and nice. The ending looked like a cross between Mordor and Episode III volcano scene—not Deakin's finest moment.

Funnily enough the Hobbit trailer in the preview held a lot of detail, which was very pleasant to look at. Although at this point not sure I want to invest in watching another trilogy of Middle Earth.
Click to expand...
 
I think a lot of our perception comes from the delivery or projector display. I've seen 4K source footage on the SONY 4K projector and it looks fantastic. I've seen numerous features mastered to a 2K finish projected thru the same SONY 4K projector. Very, very nice looking images but definitely a tad soft resolution wise (this was true for either EPIC (Flight, Hobbit) or ALEXA (SKYFALL) shot features). The BEST digital projection I've seen to date was SKYFALL in Digital IMAX. Their overlaid (2) 2K Christie's really produce a stunning image. Way more "perceptible" resolution from SKYFALL than when I saw the Hobbit 2K trailer on a SONY 4K projector (BTW: the new Hobbit trailer in Digital IMAX was great but very, very sharp/clean looking...)

For those that are interested in the Digital IMAX process (from wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAXhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAX

Digital IMAX

Because 70mm film and projectors are costly and difficult to mass produce, IMAX debuted a digital projection system in 2008. It uses two projectors that can present either 2D or 3D content in DCI or IMAX Digital Format (IDF) (which in itself is a superset of DCI). Until 2012, IDF used 2K-resolution Christie projectors with Texas Instruments' Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology alongside parts of IMAX's proprietary formats. The double 2K images are projected over each other, producing an image that is a potentially brighter 2K type of digital cinema.
The digital installations have caused some controversy, as many theaters have branded their screens as IMAX after merely retrofitting standard auditoriums with IMAX digital projectors. The screen sizes in these auditoriums are much smaller than those in the purpose-built auditoriums of the original 15/70 IMAX format. These theaters charge the same premium pricing as the purpose-built IMAX theaters, resulting in consumer confusion.
IMAX marketing makes no distinction between the new smaller digital installations and the original format.[SUP][18][/SUP] Some high profile figures such as actor Aziz Ansari[SUP][19][/SUP] and film critic Roger Ebert[SUP][20][/SUP] have also actively voiced their concerns. Fans of the traditional IMAX format commonly call the newer digital screens, "LieMax" theaters.
Another disadvantage is the lower resolution than normal IMAX film, but also a lower resolution than the 4K and even 8K formats found in the digital replacements to normal 35Mm film, estimated to be about 12,000 × 8,700 theoretical pixels or 6,120 × 4,500 actually discernible pixels (27 megapixels).[SUP][21][/SUP] Some reviewers also note that the approach to using dual 2K projectors does not produce an image quality higher than a single 4K projector system, which are available for some non-IMAX theaters.[SUP][18][/SUP][SUP][22][/SUP] Although originally, IMAX considered using two Sony 4K projectors.[SUP][23][/SUP]
On Feb 3rd, 2012, IMAX announced that it had selected Barco as the primary supplier of projectors for the next 7 years.[SUP][24][/SUP] In late April 2012, IMAX began testing a new 4K laser-projection system, based on patents licensed from Eastman Kodak. Like the film and digital systems, it uses two projectors but it has been said to improve over the smaller digital screens by retaining the traditional IMAX aspect ratio and to allow films to be shown on screens 120 feet wide or more. The laser projector will be available to exhibitors in the fourth quarter of 2013.[SUP][25][/SUP]
IMAX recently has been moving forward with digital projection with recent success with The Hunger Games and The Avengers and the format has also aided in the company's worldwide growth, especially in Russia and China. Mainly because the system facilitates inexpensive distribution of IMAX features, the company has recently announced that they are re-renovating specially selected locations around the world to present both 70mm analog as well as digital presentations. To do so, IMAX has, with another, currently unknown, business partner - developed a rail system that allows the projectors to be moved in and out if there's either a full-frame film print available or a digital-only release. These theaters were prepared in time for the release of The Dark Knight Rises in July 2012.[SUP][26][/SUP]


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