Scarlet and the Sun and the Noise

[David Battistella]

Looked at the sun shot again. It is properly exposed.

I'm just going to add this on grain.

The shot with the sun is a great example of exposure vs grain.

If you look and the deep shadows you see grain. This is correct. If you look at, near or around the sun, there is much less grain. Correct? The grain IS NOT spread evenly in this shot because the EXPOSURE is very different in different parts of the image and so the (perceived) grain will be as well. Where you move toward the underexposed areas you will begin to see grain because it is in this part of the frame the pixels are more starved of light.

Just take a look at the image from the sun, outward and you will see how the grain increases from the highest to lowest exposure, this is to be expected. Also, just noticed it was 8:1 compression. If you want cleaner blacks 6:1 would be a bit better.

Also, White Balance and DEB help a lot with the initial grain, then when you color correct you are starting with a cleaner image. You can then add back the golden sunset look AFTER doing a proper WB on the shot first.

Clean WB+DEB

Silohette look

Wider DR Look

 

[Adam Montville]

Those graded shots look great. But us lonely Scarlet Dragon users don't get 6:1 compression, only 8:1 for 5K, and 7:1 5K WS (24fps)

 

[Brian Maurer]

This is all great information everyone. Again, I really appreciate it.

 

[David Battistella]

Those graded shots look great. But us lonely Scarlet Dragon users don't get 6:1 compression, only 8:1 for 5K, and 7:1 5K WS (24fps)

Did not realise that. Still, no problem getting great images under the circumstances.

 

[Brian Maurer]

Thank you again everyone for your thoughts. I've put together the concept short. It's missing the talent's voice-over work, but I figured, since this thread was about looks, that wasn't needed. I went with RedGamma, and DragonColor2 on most of this:

https://vimeo.com/136693877

 

[Ryan Emanuel]

I think one thing that does not get talked about enough for RED and noise is gammas, If your gamma correction maps a black object to 20 IRE it will be noisy with more textural detail, if it maps blacks to 5 IRE, it will be cleaner with less detail. Whether it be log, red gamma3, red gamma 4, or a custom curve you build yourself, each gamma will map blacks differently and produced desired or undesired results depending on what your going for. Sometimes none of the red gammas are good references for how to expose and light the scene. The style of the shoot determines the appropriate contrast, that determines the appropriate viewing gamma, that determines the luminance mapping of the log footage, which determines where to properly expose your blacks. Exposure is a moving target, no one methodology will work every time.