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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 :)

Second Day Goodies

SHHHHH! don't tell him i said anything!
 
The day's over for us. Evin's driving back to LA, Blair, Tony and Opus [#19] are driving down to San Diego and I'm about ready to pass out in Anaheim.

*whew*

Time to read through this thread and answer some questions.
 
Seeing the last RedAlert! setup, IMO it is better to adjust the brightness just with curves. With them it is much more diffcult to crush blacks.

So I would leave the "brightness" slider alone and just adjust it with exposure (to recover all the possible information) and curves.
 
I would agree concrete; IMO brightness sliders are never a good idea.
Aloha
-A
 
Alright, so having read through the thread [and the "drama" within], here's how it went:

The computer we were using had a non-calibrated monitor with 1.8 gamma. It was using a generic RGB profile. We never got around to calibrating it.

The screenshots that were posted initially [the "botched" ones] were quite literally screenshots. The R3D files were opened in the app and the screenshot command was hit. No adjustment, no nothing.

We only chose linear because it looked better on the non-calibrated monitor. Since it looked better to our eyes, it seemed like a good idea to play with it.

I wish I had an Intel machine here to play with the footage. I don't have anything in my possession to check out and goof around with.

Any crushed blacks were a result of the non-calibrated monitor.

Any sharpening was either an accident [whoa, there's sharpening?] or a creative decision [let's see how Photoshop's sharpening looks...]. It's obviously off out of the camera.

As far as using different sliders and modes to achieve different looks is concerned... I can't tell you much. When I was playing with Red Alert!, I dove in face-first and just slid sliders until it looked decent [on that monitor, remember]. No proper method or theory or attention to extreme detail was paid... not by me anyways. I sat down, pushed some buttons and dumped a tiff or two on the desktop. Pulled it into Photoshop, blew it up to 100%, said "holy crap!" and ran back to shooting.

That is a basic "up to speed" update. I'm sure there are infinitely better ways of adjusting the footage in Red Alert! than what we did. We really weren't trying much... and anything we did try was in an uncontrolled [again, no calibration] environment.

It sounds like I'm making excuses... far from it! It's just hard to convey what's going on from second to second when we're all so freakin' excited to be playing with the best toy ever. My personal goal was to learn about the camera, shoot some stuff and get some footage online. We weren't going for the cinematography oscar and the images we created shouldn't be interpreted as indicative of the beauty this camera's capable of. If it looks "wrong", it's because we probably weren't trying that hard to get it "right" :)

I can't wait to write all about what the last two days have been like. I'm a little too tired to get into any coherent detail now, but man... this was just about the best weekend ever.
 
thanks Brook, it was great fun folloing along and sharing in the fun. I think it is safe to say we all wanted to be there.
Aloha
-A
ps. what's up with an uncalibrated monitor ? so yesterday.
 
You guys are the bestisis.......keep up the good work......and keep us updated :)
 
Poi Boy said:
ps. what's up with an uncalibrated monitor ? so yesterday.
Click to expand...

Heheh... not my computer. :innocent:

[I make it seem like the lack of calibration caused all the "problems"... far from it! It just made our rapid "good enough" judgment look a little less "good enough." It was a 30 second fix that I should've caught earlier]
 
I'll loan you the quote I always used in college.

"It's not an excuse it's an explanation."

A little perspective can go a long way if you want to understand why something is the way it is. ;)
 
im.thatoneguy said:
I'll loan you the quote I always used in college.

"It's not an excuse it's an explanation."

A little perspective can go a long way if you want to understand why something is the way it is. ;)
Click to expand...

haha....nice quote. Awsome
 
If you're doing a basic contrast curve in the curve window, use the contrast control instead - quicker and easier. I'd use the curve if I'm attempting something "more adventureous".

Brightness is safe to use it doesn't cause clipping but brightens shadows while pinning the white point so that they get compressed, but not totally out of existance until the setting is very high.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
If you're doing a basic contrast curve in the curve window, use the contrast control instead - quicker and easier. I'd use the curve if I'm attempting something "more adventureous".

Brightness is safe to use it doesn't cause clipping but brightens shadows while pinning the white point so that they get compressed, but not totally out of existance until the setting is very high.

Graeme
Click to expand...

You guys should grab your favorite colorist and do about an hour of video screen capture tutorials color correcting a variety of images with your software and post it online. Take it out of the marketing budget... don't wait until 1000 mediocre shots are posted and passed all over the Internet..

just a thought.
 
joelnet said:
You guys should grab your favorite colorist and do about an hour of video screen capture tutorials color correcting a variety of images with your software and post it online. Take it out of the marketing budget... don't wait until 1000 mediocre shots are posted and passed all over the Internet..

just a thought.
Click to expand...

That is a great idea. Good looking Red footage flying around the web, good for Red, great for us.

We all know that the Che films and Wanted will look great but if Red taught us some basic color correcting methods for Red footage I'm sure the images from those of us without massive budgets will improve greatly. Especially when we are getting to know our cameras and our workflow...
 
Graeme Nattress said:
If you're doing a basic contrast curve in the curve window, use the contrast control instead - quicker and easier. I'd use the curve if I'm attempting something "more adventureous".

Brightness is safe to use it doesn't cause clipping but brightens shadows while pinning the white point so that they get compressed, but not totally out of existance until the setting is very high.

Graeme
Click to expand...

Graeme, I'm having trouble getting the output QTs to be the same brightness as the preview in Red Alert. If it looks god in Red Alert it's too dar in the 1k and too bright in the 2K. Is this a Gamma thing? How do I change the output Gamma?

Thanks.
 
It's a nasty Quicktime Gamma issue that we're looking into. Basically, when we give Quicktime the "right" data, it decides that it knows best and starts changing things......

Graeme
 
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