FLUT Ignorance

[Rick Darge]

Excuse my ignorance but when I play with FLUT™, what am I seeing?

I've played with settings and I still can't tell what is going on. What's the new protocol for bringing up a light hungry shot? Adjust ISO first then FLUT™? Or vice versa?

 

[Deanan]

FLUT control is a fine control adjustment of ISO.

 

[Rick Darge]

What are some situations that make FLUT more useful than the simple ISO adjustment? Also, how is something like (6400iso / -2.5 FLUT) differ from (125 iso / 3.8 FLUT) when they both look very similar in terms of noise pattern. I'm playing with an MX shot right now and have been racking back and forth between high ISO, low FLUT and low ISO, high FLUT and I don't know what I'm seeing yet. Is there a mathematical formula we sould be following when using both of these?

 

[Deanan]

What are some situations that make FLUT™ more useful than the simple ISO adjustment? Also, how is something like (6400iso / -2.5 FLUT™) differ from (125 iso / 3.8 FLUT™) when they both look very similar in terms of noise pattern. I'm playing with an MX shot right now and have been racking back and forth between high ISO, low FLUT™ and low ISO, high FLUT™ and I don't know what I'm seeing yet. Is there a mathematical formula we sould be following when using both of these?

If you set FLUT at +2 and iso 500 vs FLUT 0 at iso 2000, you'll get exactly the same image. FLUT is a precise adjustment that lets you fine tune on top of your base iso. The choice is yours as to which one you want to adjust first.

 

[Rick Darge]

Does the FLUT adjustment at low ISOs differ from the FLUT adjustment at higher ISOs? Does it compound in power as you move up or down or is it independent of where you set ISO?

 

[Brook Willard]

FLUT adjustment seems like ASA adjustment minus the clipping. It makes me wonder if, perhaps, shooting at ASA 100 with a FLUT of 3 is better than shooting at ASA 800. Same exposure, but minus the clipping... right?

Test time...

 

[Rick Darge]

So we're just affecting the midtones then?

 

[Deanan]

Does the FLUT™ adjustment at low ISOs differ from the FLUT™ adjustment at higher ISOs? Does it compound in power as you move up or down or is it independent of where you set ISO?

It does the same thing regardless of what iso you're at.
If you're at 250 and you set flut to 1.0, you're increasing by one stop
which will look the same as iso set to 500 and flut set to 0.

FLUT™ adjustment seems like ASA adjustment minus the clipping. It makes me wonder if, perhaps, shooting at ASA 100 with a FLUT™ of 3 is better than shooting at ASA 800. Same exposure, but minus the clipping... right?

Test time...

Nope. It's exactly the same either way.

 

[Rick Darge]

If it's the same then as ISO adjustment, why call it FLUT and not just ISO-2 ?

 

[Deanan]

If it's the same then as ISO adjustment, why call it FLUT™™ and not just ISO-2 ?

ISO in the new color science is based on the core of FLUT. The real magic happens in FLUT and ISO settings are like FLUT presets.

 

[Rick Darge]

Now I'm even more confused! What's the core of FLUT? What magic happens in FLUT exactly? How are ISO settings like FLUT presets?

 

[hans de vries]

If I understood it correctly the good thing about flut is that it is like iso but the highlights will never clip; whereas if you start pushing the iso up you will clip the highlights; Deanan, I wonder why you didn't state that clearly, does it mean that I am wrong?

 

[Petri Teittinen]

Richard, thank you very much for asking these questions.

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

The real magic happens in FLUT™ and ISO settings are like FLUT™ presets.

I wonder what does this mean. The ISO should be about scaling with a constant. But now you say the ISO settings are like FLUT presets. Could you elaborate on this?

Just a side note, talking of magic in context of signal processing creates a bit ... how should I put it ... as all professionals in the field know that the question is of gaining something in cost of something else.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Excuse my ignorance but when I play with FLUT™™™, what am I seeing?

I've played with settings and I still can't tell what is going on. What's the new protocol for bringing up a light hungry shot? Adjust ISO first then FLUT™™™? Or vice versa?

Rick,

get Tangent Wave console and then you'll get possibility to control all those image parameters with your fingers using knobs, balls and buttons.

Then you can feel much better what is FLUT™...

 

[hans de vries]

If I understood it correctly the good thing about FLUT™ is that it is like iso but the highlights will never clip; whereas if you start pushing the iso up you will clip the highlights; Deanan, I wonder why you didn't state that clearly, does it mean that I am wrong?

Was I wrong? This is the whole point of Flut isn't it?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

There's very little point having ISO that is pure gain and hard clips the top end. This is not new to us, but making it work otherwise in a seamless and easy manner proved to be trickier than we thought, especially as we like to have the same image processing in hardware as we do in software.

So with FLUT, we give you that feature. It's gain without hard clip, which means you don't loose stops of DR for each stop of gain you go up. Instead you crush the higlights nicely and smoothly. No add 6 stops of FLUT and you're going to really crush those highlights - but none are sent to hard clip even though they may look like it.

If you do want traditional straight-line hard clip gain, use the "exposure" control.

Graeme

 

[Chris Parker]

Awesome thread.

 

[Lauri Kettunen]

It's gain without hard clip

Graeme, thanks, this explanation makes sense. Summing up, FLUT is the somewhat the same to the image what an increasing-ratio-of-compressor-with-an-increasing-gain is on the audio side?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Not entirely as in the audio world, a compressor is time adaptive, but similar enough that the goal is the same.

Graeme