Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

  • 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 :)

Low-light OLPF. . . what are your experiences?

Stephen Pruitt

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 14, 2007
Messages
3,309
Reaction score
40
Points
48
Website
www.thetreemotionpicture.com
Just picked up a Scarlet Dragon and it currently has the Skintone OLPF.

Due to my dislike of noise, I'm sure I'm going to buying a standard OLPF, as well.

I would, however, also like to know people's experiences with the low-light OLPF.

I will always be shooting 23.976 with a 180 degree shutter (the way films were meant to be).

Thanks.

Stephen
 
It's awesome, I pretty much leave mine in, haven't tried standard yet
 
Highlight fall of of the Dragon is sooo good that I don't need more and therefore I use the LLO 100% time. I never had to complain about the colors. Color accuracy with the LLO is really good.

Pat
 
So you guys are saying you'd rather have the LLO instead of the Standard OLPF? I can't tell you how surprising that is to me!

Stephen
 
Love the LLO.

For this shot, the only supplemental lighting was an ARRI 800 HMI on the bug.
Frame grab from a time lapse. Move started from inside the building...
 

Attachments

  • D024_C023_0725KY.0000618.jpg
    D024_C023_0725KY.0000618.jpg
    99.9 KB · Views: 0
Okay, gentlemen. . . let's change the discussion slightly. What value is the Skintone OLPF? Valuable? And when?

Thanks!

Stephen
 
But for the weapon I'll go with the Standard. Best of both worlds and clean blacks at 1200 iso.

Pat

So with Weapon you'd go with Standard for blacks at 1200 ISO... what then, are the "new usable ISO limits" of the low light on the Weapon?
 
A test I've seen pushed to 4000iso was still easily usuable (not quite clean but il looked like 2000iso on the LLO Epic Dragon)

Pat

PS: I'can't find the test anymore... looking the threads
 
Quick question - what sort of issues might someone have if you have the low light filter installed, but need to shoot some scenes with brighter light... does it affect the quality of the image negatively if you use it in "normal, brighter" shoot conditions.
 
Quick question - what sort of issues might someone have if you have the low light filter installed, but need to shoot some scenes with brighter light... does it affect the quality of the image negatively if you use it in "normal, brighter" shoot conditions.

No. Just don't clip highlights. Watch your histogram.
 
Okay, gentlemen. . . let's change the discussion slightly. What value is the Skintone OLPF? Valuable? And when?

Thanks!

Stephen

Hi Stephen

I'm yet to try the standard OLPF but I own the LLO and STH both are great but different.

If you've got plenty of light or you are shooting into the sun directly then the STH is the way to go. Less light use the LLO. We keep the LLO in our cameras most of the time. If we are shooting outside on a sunny day then it's the STH, which handles direct sun beautifully with a super smooth highlight roll off. The LLO on the other hand can give you a pattern of Red dots when shooting into a point source (The sun)
 
What I'm seeing !!

1: Weapon is more clean, now I push 1 stop in more than the Epic Dragon. So with a standard you can get to 4000 ISO and it will produce good results!
2: Scarlet-w behaves like mine Epic Dragon, this tiny little creature is amazing for the price. BUT I can not push like Weapon. Well I think it is normal for the price difference!

We can say that this new line DMSc2 did some good steps in terms of color quality, dynamic range and everything else.

What do I prefer:

I love the Skin Tone, I do not have many problems with noise. for my part I prefer to have more noise than a "burned" image in the highlights. But I must admit that the standard is something surprising and caught me. So for now I always install this in any lighting condition.

For the Low light I've never used it, or maybe sometimes on some slow motion, but my colleague always uses of documentaries where it is always in the dark.

If I have time tomorrow to load some R3D Scarlet-w OLPF standards, in low light. Maybe you can help.
 
Last edited:
This is all very helpful gentlemen!

Thanks much.

Stephen
 
For what it's worth, we just did some low light tests comparing Low Light OLPF to Standard OLPF, and we couldn't see any reason to use the Low Light OLPF. The noise was comparable, but the haloing around bare bulbs and candles was noticeably better on the Standard OLPF.

The DP is an avid Alexa user, but after testing the Standard OLPF, he is a Red fan again.
 
I have the three of them for my DRAGON, standard lives in my camara allways. For me the skinetone is too greenish in skin when shooting in daylight but beautiful in tungsten. Low light looks good in daylight but really ugly in tungsten, specially in skin.
The standard looks GREAT either shooting with daylight or tungsten. Standard from 500-1280 looks great. I am the kind of DP that always use a photometer and with dragon I usually have mine calibrated for it to read half and even 1 stop above normal reading. Doing this I just never have problems with noise at all.
 
Back
Top