Comparing Film to Red , Tests and Example images

[Brian Boyer]

From a latitude/dynamic range perspective it it seems they've captured (and rolled off) very similarly, but looking at her eyes in the two different shots shows some pretty big differences in colour tonality -- on film her eyes look way more green, whereas on RED they look icy blue. Is that because the frame is just different enough? Or maybe because the lenses are just different enough?

Another thing I'm noticing is that, despite the increased latitude and highlight handling of film in the first shot, the RED still manages to look essentially the same from a colour/latitude point of view...

In the shot of the woman, the film version has way more variation in green tones in general, which may account for why her eyes appear more green.

Looking at the leaves in particular, the greens in the film version are a more primary or purer green whereas the digital version is more of a pea or khaki green.

The shadow areas of the leaves on film are a richer, more saturated and different green from the parts of the leaves with more light hitting them while shadow areas on the digital leaves are mostly a muted, darker version of the same or very similar green.

The digital version doesn't look bad per se, but in comparison to film, the leaves look plastic and too homogenous. The film leaves show a broader range of colors and, as a result, a much better representation of translucency, which makes them seem more alive and real.

The ability to show translucence is also important in the rendering of skin, which may be why film still has an edge in that area.

I know the most important part of the image is the woman and the pics were probably graded to match skin tone. To the Scarlet's credit, they're very close. And, perhaps the Scarlet leaves could be graded to look similar to the film leaves easily enough.

But, the film version got the skin AND the leaves "righter" without barely trying. Isn't that what we all eventually want from our digital cameras?