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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 :)

Monochrome EPIC...

brett ogden said:
Do you have a place to post all this great stuff? Heh Heh...;)
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He he, besides of course getting a specific Top Menu Item on my site, there is also a new Page being readied on FB for it, just need to put a nice Cover pic, once I get Mr. Monochrome... ;)
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Björn Benckert said:
hmm I got some FD lenses with BW filters built in like the canon FD 15mm I wunder how those red and yellow filters would treat the monocrome. As I was thought they where used to improve the dynamic range of Black and white photos, or no?
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Bjorn, the filters are used to alter the black and white tonal values that represent a color scene. Filters can increase or decrease contrast in a scene, and provide greater or less separation between the subject's (color) values. To the eye, some colors might appear to be well separated in value, while to the panchromatic film/sensor, they are represented as the same grey value. A bright green tree against a n evening sky might appear to have great tonal separation to the eye, while the black and white panchromatic representation is drab and lifeless, "flat". A green filter might give a ruddy complexion to the bad guy, exaggerating veins and blemishes, (because they are reddish and not so readily passed by a green filter, to the sensor), while a yellow, orange and red filter will smooth out skin values in varying degrees, yellow being subtle, while red most pronounced, and deep red imparting an odd, light pallor, reminiscent of a darkroom safe light effect.
A red filter can take dark pronounced lips to light, bleached like values. A green filter the opposite. The beauty lies in the ability to alter the values to meet our "vision". assuming the sensor responds in much the same manner as panchromatic film.

Most filters require an exposure adjustment ( a "filter factor") a red filter might require three stops or more in order to compensate for the amount of light it holds back, while a yellow filter might require only a half to one stop increase in exposure. Then again, one might not apply the filter factor at all in certain circumstances. A filter will allow its own color to pass freely while holding back other colors ( in varying degrees depending on how close or far the other colors are from the filter's color). Obviously, a green filter is going to pass greens and blues and yellows, while filtering out a greater percentage of orange and reds and violet..)
The colors that pass freely are lightened in value, while those that are held back (filtered) are darkened in value.
Filters are usually not sharp cutting and they will allow a certain amount of all colors to pass. The more sharp cutting a filter is the more pronounced its effect.
 
A list of filters I commonly used for black and white film stocks: UV Haze. Yellow. Dark Yellow. Orange. Red. Dark Red. Green. Blue. They are a must for altering and fine tuning tonal values, and provide the best point of departure for post adjustments.
 
Bill Anderson said:
A list of filters I commonly used for black and white film stocks: UV Haze. Yellow. Dark Yellow. Orange. Red. Dark Red. Green. Blue. They are a must for altering and fine tuning tonal values, and provide the best point of departure for post adjustments.
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I just earlier today ordered a set of (9) Black and White 4x5.6 filters from Tiffen to compliment our new Monochrome Epic-x coming soon. Special order, not stocked normally.
 
While filters do provide a nice way to quickly adjust the image at capture, I NEVER use anything else then a Polarizer and ND's, I simply only care to capture the RAW image as pure as possible, at the highest resolution and as sharp and Neutral as possible, leaving all variations to Post.
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
While filters do provide a nice way to quickly adjust the image at capture, I NEVER use anything else then a Polarizer and ND's, I simply only care to capture the RAW image as pure as possible, at the highest resolution and as sharp and Neutral as possible, leaving all variations to Post.
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Ketch, while I get what your saying, these BW filters act almost exactly like a Pola in darkening a sky vs clouds, or when two shades of gray are in-distiguishable on the monitor its nice to be able to use a filter to separate shades to see how you want it to look even if you can do anything you want in post. The heavy colored filters can also act as ND's to knock down exposure to get to a better place on the iris. It can be magical what colored filters do in the world of black and white.
 
Erich Roland said:
Ketch, while I get what your saying, these BW filters act almost exactly like a Pola in darkening a sky vs clouds, or when two shades of gray are in-distiguishable on the monitor its nice to be able to use a filter to separate shades to see how you want it to look even if you can do anything you want in post. The heavy colored filters can also act as ND's to knock down exposure to get to a better place on the iris. It can be magical what colored filters do in the world of black and white.
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While I agree with you Erich, I still prefer never to add any color on my RAW capture, and add any and all color during grading.
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
While I agree with you Erich, I still prefer never to add any color on my RAW capture, and add any and all color during grading.
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Maybe Jarred can help clear this up.


KETCH, a filter will not, can not, add color to the RAW data, because it is black and white. Perhaps the camera has a way to "tone" the image but that would imply something quite different.
If this mono camera works in the same fashion as black and white film stock, then the use of black and white filters for fine tuning an image is indispensable. Try scanning a black and white neg and working on the RAW file. Hell, scan it in RGB for all the good it will do you. There are no color channels and data from which to fine tune and alter the sensors response to the scene. And from what I understand, there will be no color channels from which you can fine tune your Epic image. Now this does not mean that you can't fine tune the image in post, but it does mean, as in classic black and white acquisition, that a complex image made up of tonal values that are less than ideal, for a particular scenario, are not such an easy thing to alter. And in most cases, post is far inferior to providing for subtleties in the tonal range, compared to filtering at the camera stage. If the seperation is not there, no amount of sliders will help you.
Filters are certainly not mandatory for every shot, far from it, but the more one learns to use them, the more one becomes aware of their great value.
This is why photographers have been fine tuning tonal values at the camera stage for a very long time. It provides a superior point of departure for post work. Not, as you suggest, the other way around.

If the Epic mono provides color channel data, or another tricky means in which to access individual color info, then that is another story. And RAW post will be an even more powerful means to back up the effects of filters.
 
Bill Anderson said:
...If the Epic mono provides color channel data, or another tricky means in which to access individual color info, then that is another story. And RAW post will be an even more powerful means to back up the effects of filters.
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I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the Epic Monochrome does not have a Bayer pattern colour filter layer, and so would not have colour channel data. It's a purely luminance reading sensor. If that's the case, then changing relative tonal values of different scene colours can only be done with camera filters at acquisition, and not in post (unless one wants to spend ages selecting areas/rotoscoping)
 
Just a thought for the REDCINE-X black and white workflow. How about a way to fine tune individual tonalities with a group of sliders that represent the ZONES, from black to white, in, say, ten or more base values? Imagine, 15 ZONE sliders that uniquely adjust their values, ranging from black to white. There will always be a certain amount of overlap or cross talk, but this kind of a ZONE SYSTEM based approach might be worth considering.
 
John Marchant said:
I guess its just serial with all the other M's. Low number would have cool value, but the camera scarcely needs it ;)
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Cheers! I on the other hand will probably be calling on you...update some results when you can.
 
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