EPIC MX Highlight Rolloff thread....

[António Fagundes]

Personally I think the roll off is determined more by how you grade it.

This is perfect Jason. Care to elaborate a little about how you made this shot?

 

[David Battistella]

Great thread emerging here.

Let me throw this one into the mix, with a different filter combo. NO HDR X here.

d

 

[Martin Stevens]

So Antonio, why not just expose your shots so that whatever it is in the frame that you want to be
what you call "Pure White" is just a little bit below clipping so that you end up with a shot that
does not have any clipping?

You can use the Zebra Bars and other Exposure indicators within your camera to aid you do this.

In the end....all of this comes down to proper exposure. Expose so you like the results. It's as
simple as that.

 

[David Battistella]

One more before I retire for the evening....

 

[Martin Stevens]

One more before I retire for the evening....

VERY NICE!

 

[Brett Harrison]

As Jason and others have said, it's how you assign the values approaching clipped that make the appearance of graceful roll-off. Take any Of the beautiful r3d files here and look at them with linear gamma.

David Mullens nailed the explanation about the shoulder and really answered Antonio's question.

Check out Rust and Bone for nice transitions to clipped on the Epic
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7skcyYolU&desktop_uri=/watch?v=Jg7skcyYolU

 

[Brett Harrison]

I might very well be wrong about this, but this is where I think you are wrong. Pure white is not clipping. Pure white is as simple as you shooting a white piece of paper, and if you expose it accordingly it will be pure white. You can bring it to the grade and take to all the different greyscale levels until pure black.


Clipping is something else entirely. Clipping is dead pixels! Bring a frame onto your post app that has clipping and see what it does. I tell you, on the Red you will have a pink/magenta area when you bring it all the way down to black. It will not go through any of the grayscale levels, it will go from white (burned pixels, not pure recorded white) to pink!


This is where I think people get confused.


Pure white IS NOT clipping.

Clipping isn't a color just like zero isn't a real number.


... It's just what's beyond the sensor's ablility to read light. Make your clipped regions whatever color you wish: pink, purple, polkadot - or white.


It's sensible to make it white since that's how humans percieve clipping in the human visual system. For example the 'color' of an arc or the 'color' of highlights on chrome in broad daylight.

Clipping isn't a bad thing inherently. Obviously if we had a camera that didn't clip (and we're getting there pretty quickly by the sounds of it) that'd be ideal, but then you'd have to go and clip the file (drop your level) in post so that your specular highlights and your sun look clipped - because that's how we see the world (already the dragon sees farther into the speculars than our eyes according to Toia).


In terms of the zone system which you've referenced above (or on the Dragon thread) clipping is zone X, which is light sources. That first frame you showed on the Dragon forum from Skyfall has a lamp in it where the centre of the lamp's iridecence is lacking the texture of the lamp shade, i.e. detail-less. The detail is there on the set, but that's where the DoP and colorist have assigned zone-X.


Here's the key: whether or not it was clipping the Alexa sensor on the set on the day, or wether the colorist dropped it back to make it look that way is irrelevant.


Don't clip if you don't have to. If you have to you can assign the clipped 'zone' to values that 'should' be clipped, like speculars.


You said before that clipping is an out-and-out bad thing, but who needs detail in the speculars?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Antonio. I get that clipping is unlike white, but as a matter of fact, clipping is in practical terms "unresolveable white".

Now... I used to like over- (and under-) exposure even on film.
What I dig with the Epic, is that I can clip without destroying the image I want, even though technically some of the image is not "repairable". But When I shoot for that, I know it, and I don't want anyone to "repair" it in post.

But we cannot really talk about "highlight rolloff" without talking about clipping, 'cause until it clipps, there isn't any...

And I find the Epic highlight rolloff very nice...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Like in this shot, the burnout is part of the thing.

Getting te sky in the background would just disturb the focus. So I let it burn out.

(and gee. it is soft and grainy, too... )

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Point of this image is:
Even thoughi is soft, I could not get this gentleness without the resolution (and the 40'ies angie), and if the Epic did not clip this gently (and that is "clip" as in overexposure), I'd have to have underexposed the subject so much that it was unuseable.

 

[David Battistella]

I just wanted to say a word about the zone system. I understand it well and used it for many years as a sold mehod for exposure, printing and developing Black and white film. That is exactly what Ansel Adams developed it for, black and white film and the papers we printed those images on. It makes perfect sense to use that system for that kind of film work.

All of the principles apply to modern image making, but the digital medium does respond differently than film.

The zone system is always part of one's arsenal once you have learned it and understand where to place the middle grey on a scene, but you have to take into account all of the new exposure tools, histogram, stoplights, goalposts and the color exposure zone system on the EPIC to make your exposure choices. ONe thing I have noticed for sure is that you can hover around highlights to protect them, or as Gunleik so gracefully shows with his use of the camera and lighting, you can freely knowingly blow stuff out and end up with really gorgeous stuff.

In this regard it is a very, very flexible tool, because when you combine the "camera" exposure with the "post" REdcine Exposure, you can really get creative. It's just knowing how it reacts and riding that line.

David

David

 

[Gunleik Groven]

A funny point is that film and senors "see" light in very different ways.
So one either have the option to understand how sensors see light, OR shoot on film (if that is what you understand).

 

[Mark Toia]

One more before I retire for the evening....

Very nice indeed

 

[Brice Ansel]

One more before I retire for the evening....

A picture is worth 1000 words, the proof is in the pudding.
B.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

One more before I retire for the evening....

This shot is an excellent example (not at least because I sometimes do dubious stuff and deliberately crap up my own images in many ways... )

Lovely!



What lense is this?

 

[Jason L]

This is perfect Jason. Care to elaborate a little about how you made this shot?

It's actually interesting how it turned out. Was exposing for HDR and that first image is the A track which turned out well, as I was exposing for both images. But all I really did was change curves in RedCine to create a nice roll off and make the highlights and clipping white.

It's a very simple pic I took as I think David's are better.


Here's the HDR grade with HDR at 4.

The Non HDR.

 

[Brice Ansel]

Now, for a clipped highlight shot. You will see that you can go brighter, but you can't bring it down bellow pure white. It goes really funky!

Here's the normal exposed and beautiful image from David and Brice. Also ungraded.

What should be middle gray.

Now it should be complete black...

But going up the scale is fine:

I find it a bit harsh to share a frame and experience, and see it fucked up in RCX to make a point or an argument.
But hey! I'm cool with that, I'm for the freedom of speach.
So it can stay as it is.

Edit
As you can noticed, something seems really wrong on the pictures quoted.
I think it is a good example of how bad a frame can go if the metada haven't been check properly.
This specific R3D frame provided shoudn't turn like that when lowering the iso to obtain a pure black.
Bellow what it should look like, if you look more closely, you can note their is still some informations in the last frame.
I could actually continu pulling down to obtain a pure black.
(Ctrl+Click for bigger frame)

Regards
B.

 

[Phil Holland]

Nice examples everybody. Fun thread to go through.

From the examples I posted above, I really fail to see how having the option to clip is a good option or even an option at all....

I just had a quick read of the last couple pages. What Martin said is pretty much the right way to look at things.

In the two shots/examples you have a shot where white was exposed within range (on the shirt) and not clipped from the get go, whereas in the second shot you have something that falls outside of captured dynamic range and also outside of "detail salvageable latitude". This pretty much showcases why HDRx is a great tool to have if you need it. It also demonstrates why having a bit more dynamic range can assist in a scene such as the forest. However, it's pretty much standard fair to expose for what you want to see. Latitude gives you the wiggle room, but we're talking about the sun here and that thing is pretty bright.

Roll-off itself is an interesting thing and since the days of lesser cameras with "thin frames" and even back when I did color work on actual film viat 16bit scans there are a lot of ways to exhibit control over "what's not there". Some more pleasing than not. Some of the examples in this thread are spot on. I'll add that one technique I commonly use and that is to add a bit of color into the clipped highlight and snag it down just a bit in value. Basically so it's not so punchy.

Example:

Graded w/ clip left where it does within the grade with a slight DRX adjustment:



And here's one where I've added a bit of the sky color back into the sun with a slightly lower value:



It's a fun technique and I see more and more folks doing it. I remember years ago in dailies doing a few tests (scanned S35) and seeing the subtle effect and response of producing a bright white versus a muted highlight. I'd say from a colorist's perspective you can use it as a tool to land a punch or massage folks into a scene depending on what you're after.


White, Gray, or Black. It's all about where and how you expose for it. I can underexpose a shot a bit and make a white t-shirt gray. It doesn't mean the shirt isn't white, it means I didn't make it a highlight and placed it probably closer to a midtone. And certainly you can overexpose a white shirt to clip. It's all about what you want to see and focus on.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

actually, phil, you touch on my main mantra:

shoot for what you want to see

and:
if an image looks like crap, it probably is.
do not take crap images, whatever post resources you have!

over- and underexposure are part of photography. deal with them! and if your highlights or skintones look bad, you probably did not shoot or set up to make them look good.

it is not the camera, but you who light, filter and expose...

 

[David Battistella]

Gunleik,

that was shot on the Nikon 17-35 2.8 zoom. Pretty sure it was ..6 ND and a .6 nd grad. Again. No HDRX was used.

David