Is the Monitor Useless? It NEVER Matches the Output Look

[Terry VerHaar]

Brings to mind another technique that might work here...

Recently, Graeme Nattress posted a suggestion of frame averaging to reduce noise. I haven't yet tried it but am intrigued. As I understand it, in this case, you'd shoot at 96 fps and select a frame averaging of 4 frames. (Or, since I am personally shooting Scarlet D, I'd probably have to settle for 48 and 2). Might be worth experimenting.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Monitor is useful if it is calibrated. Also, LCD monitor used for judging noise floor on set on gamma corrected footage is not the best idea because it cannot display shadow detail. This shot is underexposed.

DSLRs and cell phones apply noise reduction. Raw shooting cinema cameras don't.
That cell phone pic shows not just compression but NR mud as well. If you saw it unprocessed it would look much worse.

Question how do you calibrate a camera monitor? the one big parameter that has to be right when calibrating a monitor is the surrounding light... now when filming that tend to differ from setup to setup. So I think it´s far better to look at monitors on sets just like the old video taps. they show picture but it means nothing if that picture looks dark, bright got to little / to much saturation etc. Shooting digital raw is just like shooting film you sample light and the importance is to get a fat/good sample. Then there is a completely different process what you do with that sample in post.

 

[David Battistella]

Love love seeing this result.

Thanks everyone... everyone's tips made such a huge difference of just flooding the light, letting the sensor soak it up. I guess I was in that mentality of hating the "video look" which usually results in way too much light and maybe I was being too subtle with it... and you guys were right -- chop it in post. The key thing for me was going from 1/48 to 1/24 and bumping up the lights a notch. I was already shooting a wide open 1.4 prime. The scopes, before, were pushed to about 1/4ish on the left (flat lined after that), now they were about to the half... even though the ones before looked okay in the monitor (which I now know can't be trusted). And, the main thing, was using the false color.

It made all the difference, you guys rock... here's a still (there's hardly any noise in the actual shot, but the compression on here kinda looks like it);

 

[Jason Honeycutt]

Love love seeing this result.

Thanks! Definitely a teachable moment. This post really worked wonders, honestly. I hope someone else learns to not believe what you're seeing... false color is your friend In my first set-up, it looked go to the eye even though it was apparently under-exposed. I also notched down my monitor too, which helped a ton, and exposed for 320.

 

[Nick Morrison]

What a great thread. Love the idea of exposing for 320!

And love Dave Mullen showing up too, WOW! So cool!!

 

[David Battistella]

Rating lower in dark scenes is always a nice move, as is rating higher in bright sun. This goes back to the MX days when it was a great way to protect the highlights in daylight and ensure enough exposure in night scenes. Sorta like pushing or pulling a stop but in a digital way (though you'd do it with film too)

False color and gioscope are great things to map to some buttons as they are giving you sensor-direct data.

David

 

[Michael Lindsay]

Little late to this thread as you seem happy... But my pennies worth are

Red touch 5inch can if viewed on dark sets run too bright for scene exposure representation (it is also too blue) BUT if it ran darker then outside it would unusable... Treat like a great video tap and expose using other tools to start with and you will eventually be able to infer a exposure from it.. It is actually a good monitor for focus and not bad outside.

Remember that NO monitor can be correct for all viewing environments... Not even a 40k dolby.. I have multiple grade 1 monitos and they are pretty useless onset unless completely tented off.

Also as ISO is just meta data don't be scared to reduce to 250 to encourage a good exposure.. (Obvously check for unwanteded clipping)

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Question how do you calibrate a camera monitor?

Calibrating a monitor gives different gamma and color properties, more accurate to a chosen standard. Those properties can and often do change in post in various creative ways, increasing or decreasing perceivable noise levels.

If one is determining proper exposure through real time perceivable noise characteristics:

a) that shows the live image, not the recorded one
b) that is a dance near the edge of noise floor which often leads to material considerably limited for post work
c) using a small monitor is a gamble and if that monitor is an LCD that exposure choice methodology is a russian roulette, because LCD technology drastically cuts off detail visibility in shadows.

For adequately determining proper exposure there are three types of tools - light meters, scopes and false color views. DOP's used to have only one of those before so it is reasonable to assume that three existing today should be sufficient.




One more thing which should be mentioned is NR element, which seems to be a reoccurring thing and promoted methodology. Which reduces picture detail. Which means that the resolution advantage is gone out the window.

So...if one aims to shoot 5K & 6K, underexposed than treated with heavy NR that is not a very sensible thing to do because the latter defeats the purpose of the prior.

So...either use more lights and harvest the advantage of Red's 16 bit 5K/6K raw, (same with Alexa) or use cameras like C300 or F5 which work on ISO 2000 with no sweat but with other limitations.