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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 - ITS THE REAL DEAL !!!! - (PART 2)

Eric Haase said:
I agree with you on this. I'm not sure why everyone is so defensive about this subject. You are clearly trying to point out a small shortcoming of the MX sensor with the hopes that RED will note it and improve it. I've been hoping for this kind of improvement since they announced a new sensor. Yes you can get there with the skin tones with some secondaries in DI but the RED sensor and color science COULD be improved for more accurate color rendition OVERALL and specifically for how the sensor sees and color science develops the skin tone. What Rob Ruffo is describing is what most DP's mean when they say they don't like the "skin tones" on the Epic. A lot of redusers including the guys at RED have stated there is no issue at all. But I think a lot of DPs see, feel, and experience a subtle but important difference in the way RED MX sees color compared to other sensors. As he stated, it's not a dealbreaker, just something that could be improved.
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I'm not to sure it's has so much to do with sensors as I sometimes had huge problems with skin tones when I used to scan 4k 16bit film 12 years ago and also I have had great difficulty to dial in the skintones on alexa, phantom and a lot of other cameras.

There is so much in the mix, and the colour change need to only be so subtle to look wrong. Then instantly blaming the sensor when looking at an image with poor skintones is not fair. There is human skin involved, makeup, light temperature, grading and further more correcting the colours using the human eye and a colourist taste is not the right approach.

To me discussing skintones for an image and not have a descent colour board in the same frame and pick match the colors back to their original values in low,mids and highlights is just like discussing taste. Which to me does not mean much. Even a person with perfect colour vision can have poor taste and or probably do not know how to dial the knobs of the grading suite to mimic real life to a 100% match. So using the human eye as calibration instrument is purely stupid I think, the tests needs to be a bit more scientific than that to be called test's I think.

However I think there is really a lot of good samples of MX skin around so I do not understand why so many try to blame the camera. We had a high en Fashion still photographer shooting with our epic... He instantly pulled out better result than most and had no complains about the skincolors, on the contrary he was amazed that the epic sensor was so much better than what he was used to in the still world. Shooting medium format and 5D mostly.

Here is a screen grab from one of his shots that he shot with the B cam scarlet. I see nothing wrong with the skin colour, it's straight out of RCXP, it's of course with makeup and graded to taste but still I do not see the issues you guys complain about.

Bcam4k48fps.jpg



link to full rez: http://www.syndicate.se/Files/~usr/hawk/Bcam4k48fps.jpg
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
The color of your skin tones is very close but its slightly off - the saturation still just a touch under, the shading looks ever so lightly off, which is a spectral response thing (as far as I know, I;m not 100% sure what causes that, but I've seen this very subtle color distortion before)
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I find it amusing that you can make statement like that. I did not realize that you have access to actual skin grafts from all the actors/models (and other people for that matter) around the world to make such a comparison...


Robert Ruffo New said:
Sorry, but ask any colorist about Epic MX skin tones. They are slightly off "out of the box".
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As I have mentioned before - I am colorist myself. The only time I have to deal with weird skin-tones is when they are shot in such a way = read "DP's artistic choice, or plain incompetence".
Being both DP and Colorist allows me to understand all the issues involved and because of that I was able to hon my skills to the point where I am more then happy with the MX sensor. Dragon for me is just a gravy (and a lot of it!) with higher sensitivity and lower noise floor. I know once I get mine it will free me up as an artist that much more. But in the meantime - I am perfectly happy with MX...


Robert Ruffo New said:
Side by side with an Alexa, out of the box, the Alexa does always look slightly more correct - under some lighting situations much more correct.
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OOTB? I am sorry but this is not a BS I am willing to subscribe to. Any experienced DP can shoot with MX using proper optics and filtration to match OOTB image to that of Alexa. Period.
I have said this number of times - the biggest "curse" of RED is the affordability of the MX systems. There are thousands of owners of RED cameras out there who overnight became "DP's" and I say this will all due respect to all the proper DP's out there...
Alexa are 99% of the time rented out - and that too most of the time by very experienced DP's used to shoot on ARRI's 35mm offerings over many years. This is IMHO the no.1 reason why most of the Alexa footage posted online looks better then RED's...


Robert Ruffo New said:
It's so subtle most of the time (and not terribly hard to fix, just a bit of a pain) that it's not worth the weight and complication of shooting ARRI raw, not to mention the resolution hit, and I always nonetheless recommend Epic instead, but if Dragon gets us that last 5% (maybe 2%) of the way, then there will be no more trade-offs. This is what I am hoping for.
Click to expand...

The irony of you search for "perfect" skin tones is that it takes that much away from you as a colorist. If the differences are so subtle as you keep saying - then I really fail to understand what your "problem" is...
What I highly recommend you to do is to go out with an experienced DP and shoot some skin tone tests yourself setting the camera, optics and filtration to your heart's desire to get your "perfect" skin tones. It might be a wake up call for you Rob...

:sifone: Peter
 
:emote_popcorn:

Sorry Toia. The shit is busted... and I didn't touch this one.
 
paul schefz said:
i just don't think this thread is the right place for this discussion...the first thread got shut down, i don't see the point in working on doing the same to this one...
i would prefer mark and other people who can actually answer questions about dragon did not have to wade through all this and loose interest....
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Yes agreed, I think ROB should start his very own new thread talking about how he thinks skin color is off...
His comments in this thread are becoming quite destructive and people are starting to get annoyed with him... It will probably then get out of hand again and then get closed. Hopefully not.
 
Personally i have my own likes and dislikes and i grade digital cinema cameras everyday. But, arguing about skintones at this point on this forum is irrelevant and I think its looking for a fight. We all know how defensive folks get around here and well, its f'ing Reduser so, what would you expect? Its like going into your grandmothers house and throwing her homemade meatloaf against the wall and calling it total shit. Complaining about it here is not going to make the camera better nor is it going to make you any new friends that will be thankful that you are doing them all a favor in the long run. Each digital cinema camera is what it is. This thread is Mark's and should not turn into a ridiculous pissing match. And for f'!!k sake, please don't post anymore pictures you took on a shoot or in your backyard or wherever that you think has perfect skin tones whether its on film, RED, Alexa, Phantom, GoPro, DVX100, Betacam or VHS. Seriously, who cares, your all right and all wrong. These discussions are why I've avoided this forum for a while. Mark's thread is pretty straight forward, and the rest of us would like to keep it that way without going into another boring skin tones debate.
 
Björn Benckert said:
I'm not to sure it's has so much to do with sensors as I sometimes had huge problems with skin tones when I used to scan 4k 16bit film 12 years ago and also I have had great difficulty to dial in the skintones on alexa, phantom and a lot of other cameras.

There is so much in the mix, and the colour change need to only be so subtle to look wrong. Then instantly blaming the sensor when looking at an image with poor skintones is not fair. There is human skin involved, makeup, light temperature, grading and further more correcting the colours using the human eye and a colourist taste is not the right approach.

To me discussing skintones for an image and not have a descent colour board in the same frame and pick match the colors back to their original values in low,mids and highlights is just like discussing taste. Which to me does not mean much. Even a person with perfect colour vision can have poor taste and or probably do not know how to dial the knobs of the grading suite to mimic real life to a 100% match. So using the human eye as calibration instrument is purely stupid I think, the tests needs to be a bit more scientific than that to be called test's I think.

However I think there is really a lot of good samples of MX skin around so I do not understand why so many try to blame the camera. We had a high en Fashion still photographer shooting with our epic... He instantly pulled out better result than most and had no complains about the skincolors, on the contrary he was amazed that the epic sensor was so much better than what he was used to in the still world. Shooting medium format and 5D mostly.

Here is a screen grab from one of his shots that he shot with the B cam scarlet. I see nothing wrong with the skin colour, it's straight out of RCXP, it's of course with makeup and graded to taste but still I do not see the issues you guys complain about.

Bcam4k48fps.jpg



link to full rez: http://www.syndicate.se/Files/~usr/hawk/Bcam4k48fps.jpg
Click to expand...

A lot has been made about getting a person's actual skin tone etc. onto the screen. Is that really all that important? For instance, this picture has skintone that is a perfectly acceptable shade for the subject's hair color, eye color, etc. and if I should meet him on the street I think I would have no problem recognizing him.

I've never understood why anyone tries to match an actor's on-screen look to his or her actual look. If the on-screen persona is a good one, why go for real? These are the movies, after all. Maybe it's important in a documentary, but movies?... these aren't about reality.

Bjorn, I hope you don't mind my using your image to make my point. Not saying this is anything other than the actor's actual look.
 
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Robert Ruffo New said:
See Roger Deakins comments above. He's no idiot and neither am I. I do not have color blindness. My color acuity is in the top fraction of a percentile - i.e. 99.5% of people have less. I am not imagining things.
Click to expand...

oh my god - really?

Someone needs to start a thread for these amazing quotes. That would be the best thread ever.
 
Skin-Tones: Color Correction "Handbook" Profesional Techniques for Video and Cinema, Author: Alex van Hurkman 2011

On Page 308 he has collaged 210 skin-tones, and the variety is quite large. All from swim suit models, which have normally (so I assume) an acceptable skin.

I'm really sorry that Mark has to go through that.
 
Scott Crawley said:
Well... there is THIS ... FWIW.
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HAH! Rob got nothin' on me! I scored a perfect zero on the test. Yes, this is where zero is the perfect score.


EDIT: Copied and pasted my results.

Based on your information, below is how your score compares to those of others with similar demographic information.

Your score: 0
Gender: Male
Age range: 60-69
Best score for your gender and age range: 0
Highest score for your gender and age range: 1970

0 ( Perfect Color Acuity )
99 ( Low Color Acuity )
 
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paul schefz said:
or, wait a minute...is it the color of the base the make up artist used?
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No, what I meant was I was not saying that Bjorn hadn't captured the actual skin tone of the way the actor was presented, but even if he hadn't, the look works just fine for a movie since I don't expect the actor to be in the audience in makeup and wardrobe to compare him with the image on the screen.
 
Look,

Pantone has identified over 100 skin tones. No one can get it right, "out of the box".

http://www.designboom.com/art/pantone-skintone-guide/
http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone.aspx?pg=21046


The best thing a camera can do is reproduce the spectrum of color accurately. If Mark is telling us he looks at his daughters face and skin every day, then he takes a shot of her on the Dragon and tells us that the shot exactly represents her skin, then that is good enough for me.

Mark has also stated that he has filmed a wide variety of people and races over his career. I trust him on this one.

It means the color reproduction is accurate. That is what is most important. Fix the rest with make up or secondaries to get what you need, but it's pointless to blame the color science or to say a camera does it bad.

David

Try this one. Next time you are at a dinner party with a bunch of friends, look at each person carefully and notice the subtly of each one's skin tone. You will find they are no where near alike.
 
does anyone remember back in the day when Jarred added a command to reduser which changed the phrase "soccer mom" to "hootchie mama" whenever a user would type it?

maybe it is time to find an equally clever replacement for "skin tones" - it is starting to feel like a gong in my head. Humperdinck, humperdinck, humperdinck!

I think there is a slightly different textural quality to skin tones between an Alexa and a RED - RED is slightly earthier, Alexa texture feels a little brighter. Skilled hands can match these pretty easily, however, with lighting and filtration. I think we have already sorted that one out repeatedly...

But really, these differences come down to a matter of aesthetic choice. I happen to love the RED approach - that earthy texture, evident in the early Milk Girls footage, is what won me over from the beginning.

Does RED have a distinct sensor footprint. Maybe, possibly, but I think lighting, lens selection, filtration, and post-processing dictate the look WAY, WAY more than the sensor footprint.

If RED has a look, then it is a look that I love. I just look at the footage from my EPIC-M and SCARLET - right now, right this minute, with my measly MX sensors - and I am always beyond happy. Always. Beyond. Happy.

And soon my lovelies are about to skyrocket to the next level of dynamic range, resolution, and yes, even the humperdinck is going to improve. Jim and Jarred already said so. I believe them. Toia's footage is already representing accurately. I believe him, too.

Seriously, with the chance to own outright some of the best imaging tools available on the planet right now, how can I be anything but ecstatic?

I lost a big job to the Alexa at the beginning of the summer. I, too, hope that Dragon turns the tide in RED's favor, for some of these situations, by improving the humperdinck. But I'm not going to sit around waiting for the grass to grow while that happens. I got movies to make and fantastic tools, on the eve of becoming even better, to make them with....splendid days!
 
Meryem Ersoz said:
I lost a big job to the Alexa at the beginning of the summer. I, too, hope that Dragon turns the tide in RED's favor,
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I find this really amazing.... I've never been asked in 20 years what camera I was using... or ever was there a time where I may have lost a job because of a particular camera I was using... I do remember a client some 15 years ago asking if we were shooting 16 or 35mm... but I think he was curious more than anything. I doubt the job hinged off my reply. (and i hated 16mm)

At the end of the day they wanted my eye... What camera I used was way over their heads.

It's really weird knowing that clients choose cameras over skills.
Really sad to here this Meryem. I hope it never happens again to you. Good luck mate.

PS... Unless your a rental house, then i understand.
 
Mick van Rossum said:
Mark,
Any difference in tungsten vs. daylight material ? Sometimes an issue in MX sensor.....
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Tungsten low light you have to stay clear of, in other words, try never to under expose. Because thats when tungsten for most cameras (including the EPIC) starts to get annoying.

However, with our tungsten DRAGON tests, the images were a lot cleaner than the MX, probably due to more pixels and more depth.
 
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