Monstro Anamorphic Users

[PatrickFaith]

I think there's enough monstro anamorphic users to have a little thread on the specifics on using anamorphics with the new VV monstro.

The monstro anamorphic is a shooters dream in that it's about perfect for current anamorphic glass with the 4320 pixel height at 21.60, also with the improved color science it's probably at a penultimate at supporting standard anamorphic lenses.

Also the camera's like alexa65 and sony venice might give RED a run for the money with spherical glass, but they don't even support 4k anamorphic in hd format, so the monstro is perfect for high end anamorphic shooting with standard lenses (especially for TV & digital distribution that is going 4k).

If people are anamorphic users, and/or anamorphic Monstro users, I'd like to see what people are doing. My general approach is to copy what the top guys are doing, trying to be 80% is good at 5% the cost, and doing a lot of pre-production testing also to keep my costs down.

I've found the DXL Panavision site a huge help at http://dxl.panavision.com/ and the new learning center is just awesome at http://panalab.panavision.com/ .

If someone has also great links to anamorphics please post. I'd also like to list threads from red users that are heavy anamorphic users, like skyline http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?161020-Trailer-for-Beyond-Skyline , as a references.

Phil has a bunch of spherical lens tests, but they aren't very applicable to anamorphic users and the charts he has for anamorphic are for more experimental things ... I don't have the skills to do anamorphic lens testing though so maybe in the future we can link to some anamorphic lens tests?

Right now I'm focused on film specs, doing a bunch of google spreadsheats to define my shooting and DI sizing. I'm leaning to shooting everything in 8k 6/5 then resizing and cropping to 5184x2160 for my workflow. So far I'm able to easily do timelines in realtime in adobe premiere at 8k r3ds at 4:1 and 6/5 mode when premiere is set to 1/4. I'm finding this really nice to reframe and edit directly in premiere on the r3d, so it's pretty amazing working at 8k realtime (this is a mac trashcan 12 core d700 64 gig ram).

The other thing I'm working through is deciding on the low pass filter approach for production. The low pass filter of the standard is just on the edge for things which I shoot, which often have very dark paint in complex patterns against white background, so I really need to pick what I'm going to do since I hate digital color artifacts. The arri master prime anamorphics is what I use for all my shooting now, and they resolve at a higher frequency then the standard olpf. With my DI approach of 5184x2160 unsqueezed, I'm leaning to the Schneider hollywood blackmagic filter at 1/4 for about everything, but I'm mentally debating a lot if I also need to get the 1/8th. I've never used anything aside from the camera olpf before, so any comments in this area will save me some money right off the bat. [added a screen shot from my OLPF test]

If someone has some exact shot/lighting combo they need for a monstro/arri MPA, drop a note here and I'll attempt to do it between shoots as a best effort. I btw always shoot with a combo of natural light / practicals using non-led bulbs / hive lighting / area 48.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

Patrick, by 4380 you mean 4320.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Patrick, by 4380 you mean 4320.

Absolutely right, hehe thanks! (made the change in the starting post, also this is why I like to post into reduser ... it really helps me out). My first attempts at a monstro DI was doing things as a 4096x1716 DI but I was constantly messing up in the sizing/croping and typing in numbers in edit/compositing/vfx. By going with the 5184x2160 DI I am finding I am doing way less silly mistakes. Also the 5184x2160 lines up perfectly to the actual pixel size and even by dividing by 100 i get the mm backing size needed for VFX.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I've btw stopped using IPP2 on the monstro, there's just too many weird issues with the debayer/color science when there's a hard edge of between white and dark. Its just too hard to predict when it happens, and it's hard for me to see it on production monitors (basically wierd color fringing on white/black edges that are at angles).

The legacy mode using REDWIDEGAMUTRGB and LOG3G10 is working awesome though. It would be nice if a expert would pipe up on the IPP2 issues, I'm not competent enough to debug what is going on and it would be nice for me to know it's not me shooting myself in the foot or their is a camera problem that's just unique to my camera.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

[...]It would be nice if a expert would pipe up on the IPP2 issues[...]

Ya gotta pay the piper! Send an R3D to Graeme. I sent him a few back in the day where my colors went way out of gamut for DragonColor. RedWideGamutRGB solved those problems nicely.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Patrick, can you send me some R3D frames along with some words or annotation to show me what you're seeing?

Thanks,

Graeme

 

[PatrickFaith]

Patrick, can you send me some R3D frames along with some words or annotation to show me what you're seeing?

Thanks,

Graeme

Thanks for all your help today Graeme, you guys are great!

There's a bunch of general things I learned, relearned and new things I've discovered that relate to moving from 6k weapon to 8k monstro for anamorphics.

I think a general thing is that the 6k weapon 15.8 mm height is in the optimal zone for most anamorphics since they were often designed for around 18mm.
Chromatic aberration is one of those things that a lot of weird stuff can happen with anamorphics, and pushing the height to 21.6 mm is for sure on the edge for most anamorphics.
Also the light box area is fairly big in the VV, I've had problems with that in the past with nikon on the 6k ... not sure where that fits into my analysis but it's a concern.

I've also learned a lot about IPP2 in that it's just a lot more accurate and pliable, so any common lensing issues I have had with anamorphics need to be pondered especially when pushing the anamorphic to 21.6 so the increased accuracy isn't uncovering a lens issue which I haven't recognized in the past.

I think with panavision DXL it looks to me like they have a custom light box and olpf with custum "IPP2" like settings they use with an exact knowledge of thier anamorphic lenses - all of which is designed perfectly into a color pipe line. There's no way I'm going to be designing that kind of tech, so I need to figure out the best way to do something similair and for my less grand needs, with off the shelf components.

Another thing I know but have a tendancy to get lazy on, is I'm going to get a lot more fanatical on locking down my mattebox in all 4 directions (I have a nice DNA matte box with 4 flags) to avoid glare.

From a "creative" side of using anamorphics with monstro, I've thought of a bunch of cool new ways of getting colored blurs using chromatic aberration, even with a "clean" anamorphic like the MPA. Another thing, which I didn't think was possible but now that I understand the optics a bit more, is in color compositing I see a lot of things I can do with anamorphics which could give me a bunch of other creative options. A third "creative" thing which is especially interesting with anamorphics is front and back of the lens low con filters - depending on the story I think I am getting just a bit better on figuring out the lensing pipeline to best fit the story. If anything, all these creative possibilities is the reason for shooting monstro with anamorphics, and I'm enjoying this visual exploration.

Thanks again to Graeme, and I always appreciate the sugestions from Michael as they are on the money.

 

[PatrickFaith]

As a update I'm getting real good results with anamorphics now with ipp2 and monstro. Though Roger Deakins doesn't use anamorphics, he's actually done a lot of shots using concepts that have chromatic aberration, which I was able to learn & apply to ipp2 and monstro.

Also on CA, it took me a long time to understand transverse vs axial aberrations, then using different options shift the colors as to what I need in the shot. [i.e. if I want a greenish CA tinge, exactly what I need to do vs having a setup for a purple CA). If anything ipp2/monstro with a nice anamorphic gives me way more creative options then I was expecting, before monstro/ipp2 CA was something I avoided and couldn't use creatively. To me it's another wow moment with ipp2/monstro, it is just a major step in giving me more controls in creating the shot I want.

 

[Andrew R Lewis]

Most of what you are saying here is above my head, and I own an Epic-W, not Monstro. However, this is GREAT and I thank you for putting your experience in the forum. I am learning a lot in this thread.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Most of what you are saying here is above my head, and I own an Epic-W, not Monstro. However, this is GREAT and I thank you for putting your experience in the forum. I am learning a lot in this thread.

Hey, glad someone is finding this useful. My entire pipeline is a perfect storm of mobile/vr/ar/ax which I've been predicting for some time will hit in 2020, more icky way of saying it is there will be a lot to be made in 2020 on this but from now till then it will be a loss.

Given that, my monstro anamorphics is being used for this "2020" timeline and a couple of other nice things have been happening. One thing is I wasn't really maximizing the monstro "look", unity3d is ok but the render and grading tech just wasn't there. I've now cut over to a monstro -> r3d/fusion -> unity & nextlimit -> octane -> fusion&adobe. This is the first time I've seen some light at the end of the tech tunnel where I'll have the quality I need for 2020 deployments that can go mass market. I also think that this pipeline will work real well with whatever red comes up with on Hydrogen. The octane pipeline was a bit of a surprise for me, I wasn't expecting to get such high quality render pipelines (i.e. pipelines that can beat current A level films) using unity. This was a big problem because I have this great footage coming from monstro/arri master primes which was getting basically trashed by the post process. Trying to get a pipeline that is equal to the greatness of monstro, and monstro is great, I was giving up on. I hope otoy doesn't fall apart in the next 24 months, here's btw a website link to some of the crazy new post processes I'm using that will support things like Hydrogen and other ar/vr/xr platforms: https://unity3d.com/partners/otoy/octanerender

 

[Björn Benckert]

Why do you prefer anamorphics when working with CG?

 

[PatrickFaith]

Why do you prefer anamorphics when working with CG?

A few years ago my vfx composite always "popped" with real footage. Getting seamless composites took me over 3 years learning a whole bunch of stuff. One of the learning techniques that forced proper compositing technique was bluring/aligning vfx to a less then perfect lens shot at a shallow depth of field, especially in the lens moving through a set. With the arri master prime anamorphics it's the same thinking but a bit cheaty since the lense is so perfect, so it's now fairly easy for me to match the blur/bokah between the vfx and the MPA where the two images are blended/composited and softened.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I'm starting to turn into a single lens shooter, basically 50mm. With the monstro, a 50mm at T2.8 is basically the same (given a crop) as a 35mm at T2.0. But a 50mm at T2.0 would then be something like a 35mm at T1.4, which doesn't exist in the MPA lineup. Also with anamorphics with the Monstro 21.6 mm height, the lower mm glass normally has a smaller image circle so you have to drop down to 7k or 7.5k to avoid lens problems. So this all comes down to I am really using my 50mm lenses for just about everything. Also with the 8k at 50mm, I can simulate lenses all the way to 100mm and still be inside a 2k pixel height crop (which intercut with 8k looks perfectly fine, especially since I just rarely go to a 85mm ). If someone is renting on a budget, it's just an idea, but rather then getting a full lens kit with a monstro you might just get a 50. And if someone is buying anamorphics, especially arri, the 50mm MPA maybe all you really need especially if your shooting 2.4 aspect ratio (since the 35 MPA image circle cuts a bit at 6/5 but is fine at 8/9 image capture).

There's a bunch of films shot just with one lens size, the 50mm anamorphic at T2 has a unique feel compared to other films shot purely at either 50 or 40mm. Most of those single lens size films weren't shot anomorphic, but atleast from a research viewpoint those films have a unique perspective from the audience viewpoint, since the audience has consistent depth queues based on geometry through the entire film. Also keeping everything at 50mm and T2, the depth queues based from depth of field are also consistent, which I think also helps the audience with depth queues. I think consistent depth queues are more important when watching at 4k on phones, phones are smaller so having obvious and consistent audience depth queues I think is important for distribution.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I've been getting way more resolution improvement with monstro then I was expecting, it's even obvious on a 1080 screen. I have been shooting a lot of red/magenta fabrics recently, and I was surprised at the difference between monstro and dragon/dsmc2. My brain was thinking, I shouldn't really be seeing any difference on resolution on a 1080p or 720p monitor. (I btw have my A camera as monstro and my B camera as a dragon weapon). For fabrics with intermixed white with red/magenta I decided to just do some simple math on how many red sensors I was hitting (top to bottom):
dragon weapon = 15.8*200*.25 = 790 red sensors (up/down interpolated to my 1920 [1080 height] screen = 15.8 sensor size, 200 sensors per mm, .25 percent of red sensors)
monstro = 21.6*200*.25 = 1080 red sensors

I was like ohhh ... that's why I'm seeing a resolution difference on a "normal" screen, for a quadhd 2160 image it's not super sampling the red sensor but it's actually doing a pretty huge interpolation to create the pixels. There's been a bunch of bayer pattern discussions in the past, which I really didn't look at in detail. One thing I've been thinking is the sensor size really needs to get quite a bit bigger till there is a one to one pixel to sensor ratio per color, but at the Monstro sensor setup it's given a perfect lineup for 1080p distribution(and I think the interpolation math is pretty good for a 2x upscale given there is "extra" information coming from the green).

I use to be thinking that I was fine with the 6k sensor of the dragon, and the 8k was an overkill. I'm now in the "ohhh I get it" camp where I understand why RED moved to 8k. I also btw think the IPP2 is designed perfectly for Monstro, so there is probably some magic going on there too.

[ nice link on problems with debayer patterns : https://www.dpreview.com/articles/3...ght-loss-why-we-love-bryce-bayers-baby-anyway ]

 

[Phil Holland]

improvement

If you look closely you'll not online ha e more detail but more color at 100% resolution with Monstro compared to Dragon. Subtle difference to some, but alarming important in various at resolution or slightly scaled down finishes.

 

[PatrickFaith]

If you look closely you'll not only have more detail but more color at 100% resolution with Monstro compared to Dragon. Subtle difference to some, but alarming important in various at resolution or slightly scaled down finishes.

100% right. On that line of though I think what I next need to explore is monstro's better saturation and contrast characteristics. I've noticed this incidentally as my "brain" follows the story better - in that the monstro's shallow depth of field with the added saturation/contrast of what is in focus, pulls the eye away more strongly from what is out of focus which has slightly lower saturation/contrast.

 

[PatrickFaith]

I started testing with a 1/4 hollywood black magic filter with master prime anamorphics ( I'm attempting to kind of copy what I see David Mullen does for some of his shots with panavision lenses - not really sure of his complete theory of panavision glass with digital sensors). At this point I'm not sure how to properly test the use of filters with monstro(I have never done any solid filter testing), but the filter 1/4 size so far with the large backing is barely noticeable. The "virtual" backing for the master prime anamorphic is fairly massive at 51.84 mm (21.6*6/5*2), but with the monstro sensor being different then dragon and also using ipp2 I just have too many things changing to do a filter comparison test of monstro vs dragon. I am pretty much viewing the monstro with anamorphic as a brain reset learning experience anyway. By looking at the scope I can see a slight "mellowing out" of the highlights and a slight increase in the darks - it actually ads "intuitively" a bit of depth to things that are even flat (like paintings). I've also noticed a slight decrease in chromatic aberration (probably because of the mellowing of the highlights) which is reducing out of focus "noise" from the depth CA(out of focus CA tends to be purple for the master prime anamorphics).

I was wondering what other monstro people are doing on filtering? My gut feel is I will just probably leave the 1/4 HW BM filter on for everything when using ipp2 redwidegamet?