Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Mysterium-X...

Daniel, never mind, we speak of one and the same thing in different words (assumptions not mentioned explicitly). Your examples are great.
 
I'm captivated by the discussion going on here, and you guys deserve a ton of credit and thanks for this discussion, I've learned alot just by reading the past few pages, but a couple abbreviations are throwing me. What do ADU and HTP mean?
 
Lauri Kettunen said:
Daniel, never mind, we speak of one and the same thing in different words (assumptions not mentioned explicitly).
Click to expand...

That explains it; I should have suspected that sooner. :smile: Thanks, Lauri.

Kenneth Elkington said:
What do ADU and HTP mean?
Click to expand...

ADU means Analog to Digital Unit. It's another word for "raw level", quantization step, or Digital Number (DN). It's the value that comes out of the Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). Each pixel in a 12-bit raw file may be from 0 to 4095, the number is the ADU.

HTP is Highlight Tone Priority, which is Marketing Speak for ISO metadata. Unfortunately, Canon botched their ISO implementation (like they did with many other things), throwing away at least 1 or 2 stops of dynamic range at over half the ISO settings for no reason (except to needlessly bloat the file sizes). I'll never understand why Canon pairs brilliant sensor designers with such incompetent software engineers. Hanlon's razor, I guess.
 
Daniel Browning said:
That explains it; I should have suspected that sooner. :smile: Thanks, Lauri.



ADU means Analog to Digital Unit. It's another word for "raw level", quantization step, or Digital Number (DN). It's the value that comes out of the Analog to Digital Converter (ADC). Each pixel in a 12-bit raw file may be from 0 to 4095, the number is the ADU.

HTP is Highlight Tone Priority, which is Marketing Speak for ISO metadata. Unfortunately, Canon botched their ISO implementation (like they did with many other things), throwing away at least 1 or 2 stops of dynamic range at over half the ISO settings for no reason (except to needlessly bloat the file sizes). I'll never understand why Canon pairs brilliant sensor designers with such incompetent software engineers. Hanlon's razor, I guess.
Click to expand...

:iamwithstupid:

seriously Daniel, you should double your day rate with all this knowledge.
Makes my brain hurt!

But Im guessing what your saying is. Mysterium -X is going to rock. Cool!
 
Wow, I'm confused. Say I'm shooting an outdoor scene on a bright sunny day, where an actor is under a tree and in dappled sunlight from the leaves. Normally, what I'd do is leave the sensor at 320, stop down till the skin tones aren't clipped, and reduce the contrast as much as I can in post. But is there a difference between (ignoring DoF, and sharpness):

- rating the ISO normally (say, 320), not using an ND, just stopping down

- rating the ISO normally (say, 320), opening up to 1.4 and using a lot of NDs

- rating the ISO super-low (say, 100) not using an ND, just stopping down

- rating the ISO super-low (say, 100), opening to 1.4 and using NDs

- rating the ISO super-high (say, 1600) not using an ND, just stopping down (imagine the lens can stop down that far)

- rating the ISO super-high (say, 1600), opening to 1.4 and using NDs (I know this would require a silly amount of NDs, just trying to be methodical)

I thought that those would all produce the same level of contrast, just that a high ISO would add noise. But now it looks like the high ISO reduces noise? And gives you less latitude? What's the best way to include as much information as possible in both the highlights and the shadows?
 
I think there is great confusion about what "rating" the camera means. To some it means that's what they set their meter to, light for, and set the lens stop to. For others, it means changing the camera's metadata to 320, 500, etc. And to others it seems to mean doing both of these things. Everyone seems to use the term differently around here from what I gather. Not sure if it's knowingly or unknowingly. Changing the camera to ISO 500 and exposing using false color is not, in my opinion, really "rating" the camera 500 because if you exposed the same scene using your light meter at 500 you would end up with a very different result.
 
I, too, still feel a bit, err, confused. We have a R1 camera with 9-11 stops of latitude, depending on how you measure. No usable analog gain, but then clearly a sensor with a fixed sensivity to light (photon efficiency, whatever you call it). That means, if you want these 9-11 stops of DR to be captured - you have a very limited range of lighting conditions to achieve this. One, to be exact. You achieve that DR only at a sweetspot. Which is very different from using different filmstocks, and from using cameras with (useful) analog gain.
In technical terms, shutter speed, stopping up/down, NDs, changing lights, are options, but in practical terms, they can only be used in a very limited range or not realistically at all. If that sensor had 14 stops, it would be less of a problem since you could still have a decent range even with high levels of under/overexposure.
I know this is not a real issue with most big budget productions where you simply book the necessary amount of light. For other shooting types, I still feel a bit uncomfortably with that idea of having only a single speed emulsion hardwired in the camera.

- Carsten
 
Carsten Kurz said:
I, too, still feel a bit, err, confused. We have a R1 camera with 9-11 stops of latitude, depending on how you measure. No usable analog gain, but then clearly a sensor with a fixed sensivity to light (photon efficiency, whatever you call it). That means, if you want these 9-11 stops of DR to be captured - you have a very limited range of lighting conditions to achieve this. One, to be exact. You achieve that DR only at a sweetspot. Which is very different from using different filmstocks, and from using cameras with (useful) analog gain.
In technical terms, shutter speed, stopping up/down, NDs, changing lights, are options, but in practical terms, they can only be used in a very limited range or not realistically at all. If that sensor had 14 stops, it would be less of a problem since you could still have a decent range even with high levels of under/overexposure.
I know this is not a real issue with most big budget productions where you simply book the necessary amount of light. For other shooting types, I still feel a bit uncomfortably with that idea of having only a single speed emulsion hardwired in the camera.

- Carsten
Click to expand...
Really, if you feel uncomfortable using the iris on your lens, or filters, or a "single speed emulsion camera" (I've never heard of a multi-speed emulsion) you'd better find another game, regardless whether your ideal camera has 9 or 14 stops.
 
Carsten Kurz said:
We have a R1 camera with 9-11 stops of latitude, depending on how you measure. No usable analog gain, but then clearly a sensor with a fixed sensivity to light (photon efficiency, whatever you call it).
Click to expand...

FWIW, *all* commercial sensors have fixed sensitivity to light as well.

Carsten Kurz said:
That means, if you want these 9-11 stops of DR to be captured - you have a very limited range of lighting conditions to achieve this. One, to be exact. You achieve that DR only at a sweetspot. Which is very different from using different filmstocks, and from using cameras with (useful) analog gain.
Click to expand...

Not really. Every camera with useful analog gain has one setting with maximum dynamic range too. They have less noise at higher analog gain, but less dynamic range to go with it. (The undesirable but acceptable trade-off.)
 
Mark Pugh said:
Really, if you feel uncomfortable using the iris on your lens, or filters, or a "single speed emulsion camera" (I've never heard of a multi-speed emulsion) you'd better find another game, regardless whether your ideal camera has 9 or 14 stops.
Click to expand...

You misinterpret what Carsten says. Whether deliberatley, or by accident, I'm not sure.

He is not "uncomfortable" using the iris, etc. What he says is that he doesn't want to change the iris to control the light, because obviously that affects the DOF too.

As for your comment about "single speed emulsion", he is referring to the fact that with a film camera, you can choose what emulsion speed to use.

But I think you knew this really!
 
Exactly. Iris changes DOF, NDs can bringup the dreadful IR-issue, higher shutter-speeds turn into strobo-look. You're not as free as you think...

Of course I do understand that the practical benefit of 'even useful gain' for imagers is a lot less than e.g. in audio, where you can lift a signal by enormous amounts of gain without adding noticable noise. It's more or less a bandwith problem. And I never meant to put Mysterium down against other electronic cameras with gain controls. I know they have less practical use than they suggest.

- Carsten
 
Eric Haase said:
I think there is great confusion about what "rating" the camera means. To some it means that's what they set their meter to, light for, and set the lens stop to. For others, it means changing the camera's metadata to 320, 500, etc. And to others it seems to mean doing both of these things. Everyone seems to use the term differently around here from what I gather. Not sure if it's knowingly or unknowingly. Changing the camera to ISO 500 and exposing using false color is not, in my opinion, really "rating" the camera 500 because if you exposed the same scene using your light meter at 500 you would end up with a very different result.
Click to expand...

Not following you. If I set my ISO to 100 on a normal sunny day outside, lens to 5.6 and shutter to 1/48, my light meter will probably say "good job," and the false color will probably show a nice tonal range. But if I set my ISO to 1600, my light meter will probably say "holy crap, stop down or put some NDs on or something, you crazy bastard*" and the false color will be mostly, if not all, red. In either case, I would stop down or put NDs on, which would produce the same result, right?

*My light meter was manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, BTW.
 
Will a Red One with the upgrade to Mysterium X sensor be able to achieve the same frame rates as the Epic?
 
RED ONE with Mysterium X

RED ONE with Mysterium X

Will a Red One with the upgrade to Mysterium X sensor be able to achieve the same frame rates as the Epic?
Click to expand...

No, there would be no change in RED ONE's available frame rates
 
ISO rating

ISO rating

If I set my ISO to 100 on a normal sunny day outside, lens to 5.6 and shutter to 1/48, my light meter will probably say "good job," and the false color will probably show a nice tonal range. But if I set my ISO to 1600, my light meter will probably say "holy crap, stop down or put some NDs on or something, you crazy bastard*" and the false color will be mostly, if not all, red. In either case, I would stop down or put NDs on, which would produce the same result, right?
Click to expand...

You are correct. The key issue then is WHY you would you choose to re-rate to ISO 1600?

And the most likely answer to that, in the scenario you describe, would be to provide lots of highlight protection.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top