OLPF

[Aleksandr Frayman]

Which OLPF Do You Use? and why? Does the choice affect noise?

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Weapon MG:

LLO : I love the image texture at 1600iso and "extended DR" in the highlights.
Another side effect : 1 stop more light on set -> less Amp used and smaller lights.

 

[Akin A]

Epic Dragon - LLO.

More light comes through (0.66 stops on my old tests, other people have diff opinions).
Color can be corrected in post (take out the orange).
The halo effect never bothered me.
I've never closed down the aperture while pointing at a light source at night, to see the dot grid pattern.
It's annoying to change them, especially on DSMC1.

Edit:
To clarify, 0.66 stops was the amount of stops cleaner than STH at the same ISO, according to my old tests.
STH needs to be corrected in post to remove the green tint, which is the same amount of post work to remove the orange on LLO, so they cancel each other out.
I haven't used Standard OLPF yet.

 

[Phil Holland]

I personally would say aim at the Standard OLPF, the light transmission between it and the LLO are negligible (> 5%) and the color is slightly better.

Personally the LLO hasn't been on my camera in a very long time. I still do use the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF every now and again however.

 

[Mestizo Devon]

I personally would say aim at the Standard OLPF, the light transmission between it and the LLO are negligible (> 5%) and the color is slightly better.

Personally the LLO hasn't been on my camera in a very long time. I still do use the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF every now and again however.

Phil, what don't you like about the LLO? I thought the point of is was to gain that stop of light in the shadows and hold color better in the darkness, which the standard does not do?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

in my opinion on DSMC2 go with the standard or for a better look use the skin tone highlight or even better Kipper Tie Carbon 1 or 2. Carbon 2 lives in my camera even in lowlight situations

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil, what don't you like about the LLO? I thought the point of is was to gain that stop of light in the shadows and hold color better in the darkness, which the standard does not do?

Not so much what I don't like about the LLO, but more of what I like about the Standard. If you do a side by side high ISO comparison between the two, yes you'll get ever so slightly cleaner images from the LLO, but I 100% prefer the color from the Standard over the LLO.

Color is king when it comes to what I shoot.

 

[John Marchant]

The differences between the OLPFs are complex - each has a different transmission curve, so you can't generalise easily. Each also has quirks.

The primary exposure differences are in warm tones / red channel - blues and greens are predominantly identical in terms of grain across all three.

LLO has a strong tendency for red dot grids, internal reflections, and a hard edge to its colour gamut between deep red and near IR.

STD has most of the above issues, albeit in very reduced quantities, has marginally more red grain and a better handling of deep reds.

STH has the least tendency to internal reflection and red dot grids, near perfect IR rejection, and a very smooth shapely colour gamut. Noticeably more red grain, negated to a good extent on Helium.

STD and STH, particularly in Dragon/DSMC1 guise are prone to colour vignetting on non-telecentric lenses, potential bokeh distortion for the very picky, and 3D misalignments. This issue is much improved in DSMC2, and pretty much absent in LLO

FWIW, KipperTie filters are all close to the STH concept, with a different layer process to help the last point - we have some artistically chosen lumps and bumps in the transmission curve, and a slightly greater shift towards red grain still.

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

John what else are you cooking up?

 

[Mestizo Devon]

Not so much what I don't like about the LLO, but more of what I like about the Standard. If you do a side by side high ISO comparison between the two, yes you'll get ever so slightly cleaner images from the LLO, but I 100% prefer the color from the Standard over the LLO.

Color is king when it comes to what I shoot.

Dig it, I'm thinking of the application of craptastic lighting situations... Run and gun where you have no control??? But if you are saying the actual light gain so to speak is that slight? Well????

 

[John Marchant]

John what else are you cooking up?

A few things as always

Working on a new regular colour calibration... addressing some violet range CA colours and working on the response through various wavelengths. It costs light to do this, but there's some reward in extending comparative DR for certain colours now that Helium gets us greater sensitivity. STH extreme...

 

[John Marchant]

Dig it, I'm thinking of the application of craptastic lighting situations... Run and gun where you have no control??? But if you are saying the actual light gain so to speak is that slight? Well????

IMHO, if crappy light means very warm light - which it often does... LLO could be valuable. Very low light inside buildings is often incandescent, or maybe round a campfire, inside a vehicle etc... LLO can win.
If your low light / poor light situation is either natural evening light, poor spectrum lighting like you'll find with street lighting, industrial locations etc, then STD will do you just fine.

 

[Mestizo Devon]

IMHO, if crappy light means very warm light - which it often does... LLO could be valuable. Very low light inside buildings is often incandescent, or maybe round a campfire, inside a vehicle etc... LLO can win.
If your low light / poor light situation is either natural evening light, poor spectrum lighting like you'll find with street lighting, industrial locations etc, then STD will do you just fine.

BAM, Thanks, you laid it out for me.

 

[Aleksandr Frayman]

Thank you all for your answers, they are invaluable to me. I also have a question. Whoever uses a feature like Sharpness in the look tab? I set it to 100 and my heart found peace)) I saw a clean but sharp image directly in Davinci Resolve without applying a sharpening filter. Who can comment on this?

 

[Daniel Stilling]

My KiperTie OLPF's never ever leave my cameras. It's part of my secret sauce, and I do like the color on the Skin Tone Highlight anyway. But the most important part for me is the diffusion part. I can't state enough how amazing those are...

 

[Aris_Gavriilidis]

A few things as always

Working on a new regular colour calibration... addressing some violet range CA colours and working on the response through various wavelengths. It costs light to do this, but there's some reward in extending comparative DR for certain colours now that Helium gets us greater sensitivity. STH extreme...

John that sounds really nice, what kind of improvement are we talking when speaking about extended DR for certain colours? And also, in your experience, what is the actual range Helium offers and will this improvement be measurable?

 

[Scot Yount]

My KiperTie OLPF's never ever leave my cameras. It's part of my secret sauce, and I do like the color on the Skin Tone Highlight anyway. But the most important part for me is the diffusion part. I can't state enough how amazing those are...

Daniel, which KiperTies never ever leave your camera? Carbons?

 

[Russ Fill]

STH seems to live on the camera as I tend to shoot a lot in full sun with white beaches and reflective water. That said when I do shoot fire light and low light settings I like also the roll off of the STH because it seems you always have a very bright source in frame when your shooting low light setup and thats where I feel the STH helps me out. Im willing to give up the extra stop to control the bright spots better.
Heck, maybe I am a control freak.:confused5::confused5:

 

[David Battistella]

I personally would say aim at the Standard OLPF, the light transmission between it and the LLO are negligible (> 5%) and the color is slightly better.

Personally the LLO hasn't been on my camera in a very long time. I still do use the Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF every now and again however.

Totally agree with this, the Standard is pretty perfectly named. The Skintone is there for occassions when I really feel it would be perfect in combination with some vintage glass I have. Tend to yield a nice soft round image with smooth curves.

David

 

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

Epic Dragon - LLO.

More light comes through (0.66 stops on my old tests, other people have diff opinions).
Color can be corrected in post (take out the orange).
The halo effect never bothered me.
I've never closed down the aperture while pointing at a light source at night, to see the dot grid pattern.
It's annoying to change them, especially on DSMC1.

This!!!