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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 :)

Helium on set color issue - dull colors.

Timur Civan

Timur Civan

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My Helium was stolen few weeks ago, and i just got a replacement.

The new camera works great except for one thing.

The SDI tap seems to have trouble outputting accurate colors.

I was shooting fruit on a tabletop set, and the bright beautiful colors of the set just wouldn't come through. I went through everything, change to STHL olpf mid shoot, IPP2, Legacy RWG/3G10 w/ Luts, RedGamma4/Redocolor etc....

Nothing seemed to work to make the images on the monitor look good. Bright lemon yellow, salmon / peach, Mandarin orange coloraide papers all looked grey and washed out. The yellows looked tan, the Salmon/Peach looked grey and the Orange just looked dull.

The RAW files with the luts on the DIT station looked great.

The contrast is there, it doesnt look like LOG. The colors are just skewed. anyone having any problems like this? The Monitors are set to the appropriate looks, and the internal saturation is normal. Pumping it up, to 1.5 SAT, helps a little, but it makes the tan color more tan, not lemon yellow.

This is how its supposed to look:

zRRAnbR.png


Instead it looks more like this on the monitor ( Flanders 17", Small HD 13" and RED 7" all the same)

PUTfajH.jpg


Am i forgetting something.... The 3D lut is on, and outputting to all monitors. The first image, the colorful one is the RAW with the shooting lut applied in FCP/Premiere the dull one is how the camera is outputting the image over SDI and RED Monitor.
 
Timur Civan said:
My Helium was stolen few weeks ago, and i just got a replacement.

The new camera works great except for one thing.

The SDI tap seems to have trouble outputting accurate colors.

I was shooting fruit on a tabletop set, and the bright beautiful colors of the set just wouldn't come through. I went through everything, change to STHL olpf mid shoot, IPP2, Legacy RWG/3G10 w/ Luts, RedGamma4/Redocolor etc....

Nothing seemed to work to make the images on the monitor look good. Bright lemon yellow, salmon / peach, Mandarin orange coloraide papers all looked grey and washed out. The yellows looked tan, the Salmon/Peach looked grey and the Orange just looked dull.

The RAW files with the luts on the DIT station looked great.

The contrast is there, it doesnt look like LOG. The colors are just skewed. anyone having any problems like this? The Monitors are set to the appropriate looks, and the internal saturation is normal. Pumping it up, to 1.5 SAT, helps a little, but it makes the tan color more tan, not lemon yellow.

This is how its supposed to look:

zRRAnbR.png


Instead it looks more like this on the monitor ( Flanders 17", Small HD 13" and RED 7" all the same)

PUTfajH.jpg


Am i forgetting something.... The 3D lut is on, and outputting to all monitors. The first image, the colorful one is the RAW with the shooting lut applied in FCP/Premiere the dull one is how the camera is outputting the image over SDI and RED Monitor.
Click to expand...


Looks like a LOG image is sent to SDI. Check the SDI output settings first, then the Monitor settings
 
Looks like rec2020 goes out in the sdi instead of rec709.
As a test skip ipp2 and put it to old colorpipeline like redgamma3 or such, just to see if its the issue.
I used a helium not long ago that had the same behavior and I tripple checked all color settings next to my monstro and they where all the same. It was like the camera did not want to play ball with ipp2 / not showing proper rec709 on any screen even if that was the setting. So I shot with old legacy settings and flipped over to rwgrgb in post as we did not have time to deal with it on set and as the camera was not mine I did not investigate any further.
 
I was going to suggest:

a) how's the calibration on the monitor?

and

b) shoot a color chart with known values (like the DSC Chroma DuMonde) and see how it looks on the Vectorscope and Waveform monitor. If the Rec709 levels come back as expected, then you're seeing something real.

Without that, it's all guesswork.
 
Björn Benckert said:
Think we had the same bug. Also at the same time I had flat pink / no picture on playback when in ipp2 but all worked fine in legacy mode.
Click to expand...

Strangely, now that ive fixed that problem another has popped up. Now the image is insanely noisy.

Currently re flashing firmware, and black shading. UPloading the issue to Prores HQ 4K from IPP2, will put up a link when its done. bottom half of the image is just incredibly noisy. 800ISO STHL, wich yes will have more noise, but not like this. It has been glued to my camera for 3 years. 800 looks like 3200iso.

When the blackshades are done i will repost with updates. Monitor color is better. IQ is not.
 
Footage is noisy on the R3D or Monitor Output? Make sure Sharpness is at 0 if we're talking Monitor Output.

That sharpening setting does effect the encoded ProRes file.
 
Phil Holland said:
Footage is noisy on the R3D or Monitor Output? Make sure Sharpness is at 0 if we're talking Monitor Output.

That sharpening setting does effect the encoded ProRes file.
Click to expand...

It was in the R3D.
 
Sounds like it was fixed via the newer Sensor Calibration or whatever.

Times to run a Sensor Cal:
- Firmware udpate/re-flashing in this case
- Major temp changes
- Every so often
* the camera will now even prompt you when it really needs a sensor cal

I usually whack one out once a week unless it's crazy temps. Mostly use Manual Calibration.

Not fully convinced the monitoring thing was an bug, sounds more like something was weird in the monitoring path, but I'm not in front of the camera.

Whatever the case, happy to hear you're back up and running. I'm a STH fan myself, but it is the noisiest of the OLPFs. But shouldn't be out of this world noisy.
 
Phil Holland said:
Sounds like it was fixed via the newer Sensor Calibration or whatever.

Times to run a Sensor Cal:
- Firmware udpate/re-flashing in this case
- Major temp changes
- Every so often
* the camera will now even prompt you when it really needs a sensor cal

I usually whack one out once a week unless it's crazy temps. Mostly use Manual Calibration.

Not fully convinced the monitoring thing was an bug, sounds more like something was weird in the monitoring path, but I'm not in front of the camera.

Whatever the case, happy to hear you're back up and running. I'm a STH fan myself, but it is the noisiest of the OLPFs. But shouldn't be out of this world noisy.
Click to expand...

I've seen this, I doubt its monitoring. As when I had it also playback was broken. I even think I took the mag from the helium and tested to playback in monstro. Then also on monstro playback was a flat pink image / no playback but in resolve / rcxp all was ok. Shifting over to legacy pipeline and all was ok but IPP2 with rec709 was simply not rec709 even though all settings was identical to what I had on monstro right next to it.
 
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