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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 :)

Dragon color: Art Adams looks at tungsten vs. daylight

Pretty much what I noticed in my tests as well.

If you put this up gainst and MX sensor you'd see more variations on how improved the dragon colour science is with the Dragon sensor.

For anyone claiming to do colour critical work and for those whom skin tones are imperative, then Dragon is really the way forward.

Nice write up, but by the end we see that even matching charts perfectly domes not necessarily mean you will be guaranteeing an excellent skin tone. I still have a 1/8 blue for my tabletop stuff when I am using tungsten sources, but it's less needed now.

Battistella
 
Dragon is clearly a huge improvement and, at least with the “highlight and skin tone” OLPF package tested here, renders color in a generally accurate manner, if not with finely detailed subtlety.
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More or less identical to my findings several months ago. I truly feel Dragon performs extremely well under a variety of lighting conditions. Even the tricky stuff that we don't normally utilize.

For me the color variation between daylight and tungsten was nominal at best.

With Mysterium-X I used the CTB when shooting tungsten. With Dragon I don't use a bloody thing.

There's a few reasons I can see as to why we are getting better performance from Dragon. MX is an approximate 5500K sensor, while in my experience Dragon falls in the 4500K arena. Additionally the newer color science and much fuller dynamic range seems to lend a hand here.

For instance this shot:




This is a lighting condition some cameras have a hard time resolving texture in. Particularly DSLRs as sometimes we would just see a flattened out yellow. There's clearly a lot of texture on my skin here. And this is even with the Low Light Optimized OLPF in this case.
 
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A good article. What it says is that Dragon has a quite good colour accuracy in terms of separation. However, it does not say anything about the perceived colour accuracy which is often a personal thing.

I know that engineers must strive for something objective, something scientific. But we, the filmmakers, users, audience see things differently. We love pictures that look good, we don't care for accuracy for its own sake. In this article a table top shot of a pizza is mentioned. For this particular shot, of course, it is vital that the cameras has a good colour accuracy in the red, orange and yellow realm. But this does not necessarily mean that flesh tones will look nice and pleasing. In my opinion the Dragon sensor allows for very nice and subtle skin tones. But as usual the lighting, the quality of the light is the key to good colour and picture.

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In my film-days I shot many shots with tungsten balanced stock in a daylight environment. White balanced in the lab or telecine the pictures got a muted skin-tone, nice subtle and surely in no way accurate. Now I'm using a collection of LUTs in my projects. But what I'm going to do next is to experiment with interesting fiter that stress the sensor in one or another way, hopefully resulting in a interesting basis for further grading.

But you can only do things on purpose wrong if you know how to do things right. In this context I'm happy that my Dragon sensor delivers "right" colours.

Hans
 
Hans von Sonntag said:
But you can only do things on purpose wrong if you know how to do things right. In this context I'm happy that my Dragon sensor delivers "right" colours.

Hans
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This needs to be read and re-read. The baseline needs to be set accurately. Then Monet picks up the brush.

Battistella
 
This has also been my experience since getting my dragon Dragon in January. I've also noticed that mixed light, including florescence's with a green spike, is handled much better by this sensor. I don't know how they did it, but it tends to see light more how my eye actually sees light...and far deeper into darkness with the LL OLPF!
 
Shooting Tungsten is no longer a problem for me. I've always had issues with low light and tungsten. CTB was an option and I even thought about getting ride of all my fresnels and open faces to pick up HMI's and such as daylight sources unless I had to mix the light. Now I feel like I can just light how I want to and not have to worry about the tungsten sources.
 
What do you guys think of the Dragon at night shots? I have some night shots to do for a commercial and I was going to switch to a more sensitive camera. I realise Red bang on about the low light capabilities being improved, but what is your real world honest thoughts?
 
If you get the LL OLPF you can expect about 1.5 stops more in the shadow.
 
Tungsten is indeed not an issue on Dragon...

However, I have stopped using Tungsten lighting all together for years now, and ONLY use Daylight balanced lighting, and no matter how you sliced Digital sensors and especially CMOS sensors do prefer daylight to Tungsten, yet, Dragon shows that it can handle both NO PROBLEM... But I still just prefer 5600k... Day or night... Exterior or interior.... :)
 
David Mullen ASC said:
But then how do you deal with adding light to a room lit with tungsten practicals? First replace every bulb in table lamps and chandeliers with daylight compact flos and LED's?
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While that would be the way to do it if and when both budget and time allows it, in my case, after 30 years of photography and now Motion, I have experimented enough to have come to the final conclusion that I actually like it better to NOT change nor "Gel" top match any of the existing lights found on any given location, interior or exterior, I simply like the textures differences, the color spectrum created by different lights present, and while I will always have the 5600k Daylight prevail, I won't bother with any other lights around.

While respecting greatly the work done, and Hollywood's way of lighting, and understand perfectly the why, I choose to not follow such practice, no matter how wrong it might seem to others, this is how my eyes see, and how my hearth and mind read the images acquired in the way I do it, and will continue to do so.

When my first Film, will be released next year, I will be very open and truly looking forward to any opinions based on having seen the end results of my work, my lighting techniques and choices made... :)
 
Color temperature, IMHO, should be part of the artistry of creating a frame, rather than being locked to one temperature only. Sometimes the prettiest shots come out with mixed lights, rated for a different color than they emit, and sometimes not. Specially when it comes to night shooting, with so many temperatures and variation in color spectrum coming from a possible many different sources (Sodium vapor, tungsten, moon).
The Dragon, being so much better at tungsten, really frees you up to compose the shot with the color you like, and using tungsten when needed/wanted is a huge part in that artistic/technical sensitivity. I think that limiting yourself to one color temp. just imposes you limits that you don't need to have. Also in all this, it matters how and where your sources are coming from, but that's a whole additional discussion...
 
Daniel Stilling said:
Color temperature, IMHO, should be part of the artistry of creating a frame, rather than being locked to one temperature only. Sometimes the prettiest shots come out with mixed lights, rated for a different color than they emit, and sometimes not. Specially when it comes to night shooting, with so many temperatures and variation in color spectrum coming from a possible many different sources (Sodium vapor, tungsten, moon).
The Dragon, being so much better at tungsten, really frees you up to compose the shot with the color you like, and using tungsten when needed/wanted is a huge part in that artistic/technical sensitivity. I think that limiting yourself to one color temp. just imposes you limits that you don't need to have. Also in all this, it matters how and where your sources are coming from, but that's a whole additional discussion...
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Exactly Daniel,

But you see, I don't limit myself to one color temperature, exactly the opposite in fact, as I think exactly as you just expressed yourself, were the beauty of colors in real life give life, with their variety and I never see with my naked eye, a ONE spectrum, I see many, and for this I changed my shooting techniques and lighting been at the very heart of Image capture, is who I control it, or NOT control it, but while using only one Temperature of lights, I do let the others leave and mix and play with it... :)
 
The thing Ketch is that if you are aiming for a naturalistic look where your added lighting doesn't look added but merely a continuation or extension of what an existing practical lamp is doing, then it should match in color. You can't put a blue lamp next to an orange practical and fool people into thinking that the scene is just lit by the orange practical.

Sure real life can have competing color temperatures but not in every situation -- do you always add tungsten lamps to daylight scenes in order to create a mixed color temperature that doesn't naturally exist in the room? So why add daylight lamps to a tungsten interior if they aren't motivated by any daylight sources?
 
You of course make complete sense in your analogy David,

And in theory it should be exactly done that way... However, I don't, as it is not just because of the naturalistic sense I like to give the imagery that I do this, because we know it is far form natural what we do in storytelling, but it is also because when creating my stories to tell, creating an illusive 3dimentional world in a 2dimentional medium, that I simply like better and much prefer the light coming from Daylight balanced fixtures then that of Tungstens, and IMO even so Dragon can handle Tungsten greatly, I still see playing nicer on Daylight.

But this goes behind that too, I guess it is not as easy to explain in words as I would wish it was, I have tried this thousands times, and always get a filling inside, ascertain way the images look when lit up with Tungsten vs Daylight...

I would light in Daylight and then go to 3200k in Post, but still light in 5600k, I like it better this way, I don't know really why, I just do, there is something about the Skin tones, about the textures of things, Clothes, Plants, Wood, and even Metal and of course water, which reveals to me better this way.

But to come back to your just question, no, I would not add Tungstens just to mix the lights, I don't like Tungsten, but won't bother to remove it if there,e just carefully position my Daylight sources to overpower it were needed, on the main talent, and in closer to camera shots, or further to camera depending on importance of the framed Talent or Object, but if I was to find myself in a situation were Tungsten would prevail the scene, I would still not allow it to prevail the totality of it, were it would additionally lit by Daylight in representation of the filling and final look at capture I wish to give that particular shot.

Like the use of Polarizers, I have been suing them in Fashion Photography form the start, even so every one was adjacent me, telling me that you don't use Polarizer on skin, unless you are shooting a model on water or reflective surfaces or other situations, which none of them would of course be present on a Studio Set Up set, but I like it that way.

If I was to describe in detail how I see, I would go on for pages, it would not be as simple as saying I like Sugar because it is sweet... :)
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Sure real life can have competing color temperatures but not in every situation -- do you always add tungsten lamps to daylight scenes in order to create a mixed color temperature that doesn't naturally exist in the room? So why add daylight lamps to a tungsten interior if they aren't motivated by any daylight sources?
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+1000!

I love mixing HMI with tungsten, but not always. Whatever helps painting the picture and tells the story. But using all colors in your pallete is very important, and if a scene has primarily tungsten lights in it (for whatever reason that might be), you should be able to "think tungsten" and get the best out of that situation. Don't limit yourself out of a camera technical issue, specially when that issue doesn't exist anymore. Open your mind, embrace the spectrum, also when it comes to adding lights, not just whatever is in a particular location.
 
Daniel Stilling said:
+1000!

I love mixing HMI with tungsten, but not always. Whatever helps painting the picture and tells the story. But using all colors in your pallete is very important, and if a scene has primarily tungsten lights in it (for whatever reason that might be), you should be able to "think tungsten" and get the best out of that situation. Don't limit yourself out of a camera technical issue, specially when that issue doesn't exist anymore. Open your mind, embrace the spectrum, also when it comes to adding lights, not just whatever is in a particular location.
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Daniel,

I am not limiting myself out of a camera technical issue, because therein't one, not with Dragon...

I do it how I do it, because it is how I like it, therein't a formula of how much of this sort that to use, there is just a filling I get when I am on that particular location, set place, when I look at it with the naked eye, then thru the camera, I compose, I set desired Iris, and light accordingly, adding Daylight were needed, as it is my only source of light I have, and use, additionally to nay other light I might find on location.

To my eyes, Daylight must prevail, but not in amount of lighting, there can be 100k of output coming form Tungsten source, yet I would most certainly light my most important subject closer to camera or that which is in focus even if further from camera with Daylight balanced 5600k sources.

It is not how needs to be done, it is how I like it, and how I like to express my artistic vision with Imagery, just that simple, no diagrams, no mathematical calculations, no Light meter... Just my eyes and the Iris which once set decides what amount of light is needed in order for me to properly expose my scene, but any and all added lights will be always daylight.
 
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