Black And White on Color Dragon with RED filter

[Matthew Riggieri]

Hey Guys

I am doing a test for a Music Video coming up and we are shooting for B/W. We did some tests with shooting the Color Dragon and desaturating it. Looks great, But I do have some questions for for someone who understands the color science better than I.

We wanted to test using a Red Contrast Filter on the camera, andI'm trying to understand the debayer i guess.

If you shoot with the RED filter, you get the same effect. Glowing Skin tones, deep black skies, very filled shadows. Exactly what we are looking for. But what I am trying to understand is how the debate effects it.

If you use a Debayer Saturation of 0, no matter what colorspace you use, you get the same exact image. DG is the Same as Camera RGB.

If you use the Alchemy Saturation slider, things get weird. First, you end up with an underexposed image if you just desat on DG. If you set it to CameraRGB, you get a much more tonal image, that is very close to the first option with debayer saturation.

Can anyone explain this to me, I think I understand whys going on.

And yes, I know I am starving the camera for blue and green light, but using channel mixers and RGB gain can not get the same effect as using the in front of camera red filter. he skin Tones never look the same.

And please don't suggest shooting on the monochrome, unless you want to rent on or buy one for me. I would if I could.

 

[Clark Dunbar]

shoot in full color and do your 'RED' Filtering in post using the "POST TOOLS" - desaturate and then add RED, mix and match as needed. That keeps the full color spectrum in capture. Leave the regular SAT setting in it's normal position.

 

[Matthew Riggieri]

shoot in full color and do your 'RED' Filtering in post using the "POST TOOLS" - desaturate and then add RED, mix and match as needed. That keeps the full color spectrum in capture. Leave the regular SAT setting in it's normal position.

Clark

In our testing, we can not duplicate the glowing skin tones that we get with a Red contrast filter. We tried using post RGB sliders and the RGB mixer in resolve. Would require extensive grading to duplicate that same glow.

 

[Marc Wielage]

In our testing, we can not duplicate the glowing skin tones that we get with a Red contrast filter. We tried using post RGB sliders and the RGB mixer in resolve. Would require extensive grading to duplicate that same glow.

Not if you have a good colorist. Consider adding some qualified mist/blur to the highlights, and I think you'll get what you're looking for.

 

[jake blackstone]

For your own sake do NOT use red filter. I had recently graded a spot, that used Red filter on Epic as well and I had to use every trick in the book to salvage the mess. If you look at the histogram, by using the red filter you manage to starve the Blue channel (excessive noise) and starve the Green channel (loss of sharpness). Bad idea any way you look at it...

 

[Nick Morrison]

For your own sake do NOT use red filter. I had recently graded a spot, that used Red filter on Epic as well and I had to use every trick in the book to salvage the mess. If you look at the histogram, by using the red filter you manage to starve the Blue channel (excessive noise) and starve the Green channel (loss of sharpness). Bad idea any way you look at it...

Listen to Jake. He knows his stuff, and I remember hearing how tough the above mentioned was for him to grade.

As Jake suggests, Dragon still "sees in color" and thrives when all color channels are properly exposed.

That said, curious how Dragon Monochrome would handle traditional b/w filtration...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

B&W color contrast filters would work on a monochrome digital camera the same as on b&w film. With monochrome sensors, all they care about is the amount of light they receive, and a color filter would just rebalance the amount of light passing through, cutting the levels of certain wavelengths compared to others. So with a red filter, blue light would be reduced compared to red light and thus blue objects would render darker, red objects lighter.