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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 :)

FLUT Ignorance

Ooo! So the entire pipeline, not just the highlight protecting ISO bits are unclamped now. So I can set exposure to an extra stop but then bring it back down somewhere else in another settings. That's really nice. I noticed before that REDCine and the SDK has a certain order of operations otherwise you would be adjusting clipped footage.

This means you should be able to export superbrights now too right? Can we export EXRs with > 1.0 and < 0.0?
 
Brook Willard said:
Why not combine FLUT™ and ISO into one adjustment?
Click to expand...

Because ISO gives you a number that makes sense on the light meter, and FLUT does not. Ideally there'd just be the FLUT Control, with it's measurement in stops, which makes easy and natural sense in a way that ISO numbers do not. But people still want / need a number for their meters, so ISO stays.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Because ISO gives you a number that makes sense on the light meter, and FLUT™ does not. Ideally there'd just be the FLUT™ Control, with it's measurement in stops, which makes easy and natural sense in a way that ISO numbers do not. But people still want / need a number for their meters, so ISO stays.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Then why not just allow the user to change the display to either ISO or stops above/below base? Multiple controls that do the same thing but just have different scales are confusing and lead to long threads on RedUser to explain why there are two controls that do the same thing (from the department of redundancy redundancy). To me, you're better off with one control and a user selectable method of indicating its value, even if things like "ISO 375" aren't "normal" terminology.
 
Because then someone would complain that in post is says FLUT 1.32 from the metadata rather than ISO800. Similarly you can't plug ISO375 into a light meter, which is the one good remaining use of ISO.

Graeme
 
Here's a bit of a stream of thought. It'd be nice if when we change our ISO and FLUT™, it'd display something like this:

For an ISO of 800 and FLUT™ of .2, it might display "ISO 800 +.2" or "ISO 800 + 2/10".

The question becomes what to do when the value is greater than a standard interval. So if it's ISO 800 + FLUT™ .4, should it show "ISO 800 + 4/10" or should it show "ISO 1000 + 1/10"? In more extreme cases, what is more valuable? A display of "ISO 100 + 3.3" or "ISO 1000"?

I suppose I'm just thinking of a way to clearly illustrate an in-camera ISO/FLUT™ decision. It almost seems like as soon as FLUT™ reaches a value of .3 [~1/3 stop] the ISO might as well just kick up a third and reset FLUT™ to 0. In that sense, perhaps it's a menu where you select your ISO, then your FLUT™ and click "go", letting the camera make sense of it in the most logical [ISO as the base, FLUT™ as minor tweak] manner.

I'm sure there's a more graceful solution than what I'm mumbling about here. I think that there is a value to making clear the relationship between FLUT™ and ISO in the camera.

And since FLUT™ can refer to one of two things [the FLUT™ science that is built into the ISO and FLUT™ settings... or the FLUT™ setting itself], perhaps the FLUT™ setting in camera would be clearer if it was renamed? Say that you choose your ISO and "tweak" that setting up or down in tenths. It could be labeled "Fine ISO Adjustment" or something similar? That'd certainly make the relationship clear.

It's like when "frame rate" was changed to "time base" in the single-digit build days to avoid confusion when trying to activate Varispeed. I feel like there is an opportunity for some in-camera clarification as to the relationship between ISO and the setting currently labeled "FLUT™". :)
 
Brook Willard said:
For an ISO of 800 and FLUT™™ of .2, it might display "ISO 800 +.2" or "ISO 800 + 2/10".
Click to expand...


That's basically what it is... the set iso + the fine control push/pull.

If you shot it at 800 and in post you just want to nudge it a bit by .2 stop, it's 800 plus .2 of a push.
 
FLUT seems like a bad name though for that control since FLUT also technically encompasses the CS, curves and everything else.

Then we have to be specific we're referring to FLUT Gain and not one of the other tools which also leverage FLUT. Maybe even giving it a seperate name like "Safe Gain" or "Protected Gain".
 
Another FLUT question. Is FLUT Control being applied before or after exposure? It looks like there is an order of operations for which is applied first. If I were to set ISO and then FLUT Gain it up by 3 and then apply a little exposure I would expect ti to roll over into white. But it looks like the Exposure is done first and then FLUT is applied on top?

Does it work from top to bottom of the image menu?
 
Brook, this is exactly how I'm treating it. ISO is for major adjustments, FLUT is for tweaking. My personal feeling is that people are over thinking this and expecting FLUT to be really complicated. The beautiful thing with the way M-X and soon M builds of the camera are working is that with properly exposed footage (no clipping or crushing of important data), the camera can then be set with a certain ISO and the images match on set and in post without any special software.

I think for the people that are confused, start out by just using the ISO knob on set and getting in the ballpark of the image you want, then use FLUT in post for fine tune control.

For people like Brook (advanced ++), use ISO for the major adjustments and then Flut for fine tuned control.

Brook Willard said:
Here's a bit of a stream of thought. It'd be nice if when we change our ISO and FLUT™™, it'd display something like this:

For an ISO of 800 and FLUT™™ of .2, it might display "ISO 800 +.2" or "ISO 800 + 2/10".

The question becomes what to do when the value is greater than a standard interval. So if it's ISO 800 + FLUT™™ .4, should it show "ISO 800 + 4/10" or should it show "ISO 1000 + 1/10"? In more extreme cases, what is more valuable? A display of "ISO 100 + 3.3" or "ISO 1000"?

I suppose I'm just thinking of a way to clearly illustrate an in-camera ISO/FLUT™™ decision. It almost seems like as soon as FLUT™™ reaches a value of .3 [~1/3 stop] the ISO might as well just kick up a third and reset FLUT™™ to 0. In that sense, perhaps it's a menu where you select your ISO, then your FLUT™™ and click "go", letting the camera make sense of it in the most logical [ISO as the base, FLUT™™ as minor tweak] manner.

I'm sure there's a more graceful solution than what I'm mumbling about here. I think that there is a value to making clear the relationship between FLUT™™ and ISO in the camera.

And since FLUT™™ can refer to one of two things [the FLUT™™ science that is built into the ISO and FLUT™™ settings... or the FLUT™™ setting itself], perhaps the FLUT™™ setting in camera would be clearer if it was renamed? Say that you choose your ISO and "tweak" that setting up or down in tenths. It could be labeled "Fine ISO Adjustment" or something similar? That'd certainly make the relationship clear.

It's like when "frame rate" was changed to "time base" in the single-digit build days to avoid confusion when trying to activate Varispeed. I feel like there is an opportunity for some in-camera clarification as to the relationship between ISO and the setting currently labeled "FLUT™™". :)
Click to expand...
 
Is there a reason FLUT is protecting blacks at like -0.2 'Shadow' instead of 0.0? Even in Exposure and brightness (Which aren't FLUT and should just crush everything into oblivion)?

Is that to protect for rec709 black/superblack levels?
 
We preserve the entire noise floor until you decide to clip it or crush it.

Graeme
 
Brook Willard said:
Here's a bit of a stream of thought. It'd be nice if when we change our ISO and FLUT, it'd display something like this:

For an ISO of 800 and FLUT of .2, it might display "ISO 800 +.2" or "ISO 800 + 2/10".
Click to expand...
I agree that it would be important to dispaly not only the ISO, but also the FLUT value on the camera's LCD/EVF screen. You could easily forget that you changed the FLUT value somewhere in the menus.
So if you had previously changed the FLUT to +0,3 in camera, with an ISO of 320, you'd effectively be shooting at approx. 400+ ISO without knowing it. This can be dangerous...

But maybe it's already dispayed somewhere, I haven't seen the new firmware yet.
 
Graeme,

Does the new science/SDK still clip to 1.0 in PDlog685/Cineon? PDlog685 can represent values up to 13.5, so even with the "old school" exposure compensation, it need not clip.
 
Peter Dimov said:
Graeme,

Does the new science/SDK still clip to 1.0 in PDlog685/Cineon? PDlog685 can represent values up to 13.5, so even with the "old school" exposure compensation, it need not clip.
Click to expand...

REDfilm will replace PDlog very soon.
 
I think what some people may be missing in the process of wrapping their heads around FLUT™ is the relationship between FLUT™ and what f-stop you are choosing on the lens.

For example, we've all shot wide open, and most of us know that we pay a heavy penalty with most lenses when we do this, in the form of losing sharpness. (For anyone who hasn't seen this, point your camera at a focus chart that is lit at middle gray for wide open. Set your focus and adjust the iris. You'll see that the edges between black and white become soft at wide open aperture, compared to when you've closed the iris a few stops.)

So, let's say we're shooting a darkly lit environment where most of the image is low contrast... but there's one spot in the image where it's really important to not clip. Maybe a back lit edge highlight on an actor's face, or something like that. In this environment, I would see how much detail I could get out of the darker parts of the image by adjusting my FLUT control into the "+" range... maybe a half stop or even a full stop. Once the FLUT setting is chosen, I would check my false color in my chosen curve (Redspace or REC 709), and ALSO in RAW mode. This is where I will check the relationship between clipping and proper skin tone exposure. I may be clipping a little from adjusting the FLUT to a stop over. If I'm wide open this may be okay, because I want my lens to be in it's sweet spot of its sharpness. So I close the iris a stop and look at the image again. At this point I can see if I'm happy with the relationship between detail in the dark areas, noise, lens sharpness, and clipping. My chosen f-stop might be really close to clipping in RAW, but the FLUT will let me know.

I may be happy and shoot the scene. Or I may realize I need to bounce a little more fill into the actor's face. The FLUT will not let me clip *as long as* I'm using the monitoring tools that FLUT is affecting to choose the correct f-stop.

If I'm shooting run and gun (like wildlife), I may choose a "general" FLUT setting to give me a sense of the trade off of noise vs. brightness of the image. This could be really helpful at dawn or dusk, or very overcast days. A quick look at false color with the FLUT setting applied will tell me if I'm clipping in areas such as water reflections, etc. I can quickly choose an f-stop and begin shooting.

It's all about hitting exposure within a "zone", and adjusting all the parameters accordingly. FLUT affects all the monitoring features (like false color), to help you choose the right f-stop.

-Thor Wixom
 
Thor, we've put a "RAW Check" false colour mode in that shows the image black and white, with two warning bands - dark (check your shadows) in purple and red for a RAW clipping alert. It doesn't matter what you set your ISO or FLUT to. If you're clipping in the RAW this "RAW Check" will show you. I was never that much of a false colour kinda guy before, but this one I use a lot now - and it works great for me. I did a little M-X test shoot here as I can never have too much nice footage on my system, and it was of shiny reflective objects, so the RAW check helped me really judge the ETTR exposure to be just where I wanted it.

Graeme
 
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