Black and White and Red

[Kip Kubin]

I'd like to know what your experience has been with the Red and shooting for Black and White.

High contrast Black and White to be specific.

I'm in preproduction on a short and was just messing around with some tests with Red (The Color) filters and what they will do for the look of my short... on film and using the Red camera.

The plan is to use

Super 16mm shooting Kodak Plus X with Red filters for Exteriors and Green for Interiors.

But depending on the results I'm open to using the Red (shooting 2k as that's the DOF I need for the story)

I do know that the red filter would deprive the censor of blue thus creating noise in the blue channel and most opinions are to not use a filter and just pulling everything in post is the way to go but I can't seem to make it work... the red filter. And removing it always deprives me of contrast in the clouds.. something I'm after

Here's a photo from the net that illustrates the look I'm after.

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6597079


Any thoughts or things to try would be greatly appreciated.

Kip

 

[Andrew Wilding]

I wouldnt be afraid to use a red filter - true, you will be depriving the sensor of blue light, but Im guessing if you want a high contrast look that you will be crushing your blacks quite a bit. Added to that, I doubt I am alone in finding noise much less bothersome in black and white than in color. It seems to resemble film grain a little more and calls less attention to itself.

oh. I just checked the disney hall shot. I wouldnt exactly call that High Contrast. Not as high as I was thinking anyway. You might get some noise that could be bothersome to you in that sea of gray. I doubt it would bother me though.

 

[Kip Kubin]

Noise is not really the issue for me... neither is grain...it's getting the separation in the clouds and the added textures in woodgrain and rock that seem to really pop with a red .

I'll do some more testing and see what I can come up with

 

[Tim Sutherland]

Lack of blue light to the sensor doesn't cause the noise, its when you try to white balance and bring the levels up to 'neutral' that give the noise because you're adding gain to the blue channel. I've shot tungsten light and left the WB at daylight, and the picture looks warm, but there's not light inherent to shooting a lack of blue light.

The other thing you could do is use a polarizer to keep the image in color and bring down the sky (depending on the location of the sun) but using a red filter won't introduce noise as long as you keep the WB at 5000k or more.

 

[Kip Kubin]

Heres' a test I whipped up today. Which one do you prefer?

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Matrix

Matrix

If you grade in my CC you can adjust the matrix to remove the blue and green or get any mix you want that can be better than shooting through a optical filter since it gives you some fall back if you want less to get more sharpness.

The RED and BLUE parts of the image can have more noise and half the sharpness, so you want some green mixed in to get a little detail in the images.

I can make some samples from REDLOG 16bit (48bpp) TIF 4K shot without filter to give you an idea.

If you shoot through a blueish (or blueish magenta) (plus IR block) filter you can get some HDR range since the sky will be UNDER-EXPOSED on the red sensors rather than blown out, in post you adjust the curves on the three images to bring up the shadow detail (from the blue part of the image) and bring down the highlight detail (from the red part of the image) then matrix the result as black and white. there are 9 values to adjust in the matrix, so you can get any mix from "super color" to monochrome or any tint etc.

Since you are not working with true RAW mode data, the auto clip features used to get the REDCODE compression may limit how far off K you can go without upsetting some of the R3D processing steps, you should do test before shooting for all filters to be used on the type of lighting and subject.

 

[scott william]

i like the bottom 2, prefer more detail in the highlights.

 

[Kip Kubin]

Dan I'd love an example of what you are talking about.

Top left is Plus X stock ... I'm about a stop over... that was an accident.

That's the look I'm going for (Not overexposed though).. I don't think I can get there with the tools I have now, so I'll check out what you are developing.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

Static Matte

Static Matte

That's the look I'm going for (Not overexposed though).. I don't think I can get there with the tools I have now, so I'll check out what you are developing.

When don't have enough light on the foreground to get a balance with the sky and the shot is static you may be able to "rotoscope" a matte and do a soft of "split screen" to adjust the ratio of contrast in both parts of the image better. That can work better than a gradient. You can blur the hand drawn matte to get a soft edge matte also...

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

Dan is right

I wouldn't recommend putting any color filter on a RED one for Black and White cinematography.

It made sense with panchromatic celluloid film as the emulsion could see more or less the whole spectrum but produces only a B&W image. Filtering on the lens was the only way of darkening the skies or 'boosting' a specific color.

With any digital film camera you better record all the available color information and do your black and white in post, much wider options to mix a bit of the 3 channels and achieve the best BW contrast scene by scene.

If you really want too simulate the old way of working you can use a fully desaturated camera look and filter on the lens. You'll spend more time on set (but less in post) but will severely limit your future grading options.

Remember the camera will always record in color anyway on the raw file, so heavy color filtering is a strange idea considering you will starve the debayer process etc... :nono:

Many plug-ins and filters exists to let you mix channels in order to produce BW color effect in post. You can start looking at Photoshop's channel mixer to get an idea...

HTH

Mikael

 

[Kip Kubin]

Thanks Mikael

I'm sold on your idea for black and white using the Red... now I have to sell my self on the Red over 16mm for the story I want to shoot.

 

[rod bradley]

I would agree with Dan and Mikael. You will be able to dial in the look you want in post and have much more flexibility.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

16mm vs. 4K RED ONE?

16mm vs. 4K RED ONE?

I'm sold on your idea for black and white using the Red... now I have to sell my self on the Red over 16mm for the story I want to shoot.

16mm is yuck relative to 4K on a RED ONE, look at these 16mm samples posted by another REDUSER,

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32303

I did a little CC on his scans, you can see the screen shot of my levels#1 control screen, the matrix screen has a chroma vector scope and waveform for helping with those adjustments...

If you download the full 1920x1080 frames you can see how soft and granny they are, nothing like what you would get at 4K on a RED ONE. And converting to monochrome reduces some of the chroma artifacts as well, but its best to keep some green in the image since the green part of the image can be sharper do to Bayer filter and the way REDCODE works.

The biggest issue I see with RED ONE footage is the way people are shooting under natural light, the way they are lighting, and the way they are grading, all push the R3D footage toward the "video look". If you want better results you need to light for the end result, and use art direction and not to over-expose since you can pull-up the shadows and de-noise, but you cannot get back highlights that fall off the 12th bit...

 

[Kip Kubin]

Shooting 16mm would not be an alternative to 4k for me. It's a look... the DOF, sharpness and the stock would be closer to what I am going for... softer and grainy is not a problem for me...I was just curious as to how close I could get to PLUS X and how I would go about it.

All the advice has been right on and I have been able to get really close.

I do agree lighting is crucial to pulling off these looks using a RED