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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 :)

Skin tone OLPF vs Low light

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David Wakeley

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Hi all,
I've just done a test using the Low Light OLPF for the first time, for an exterior dingy lane night shoot with talent. So, I've found that there is a strong red bias compared to the Skin Tone OLPF. My first impression is that as there is a strong close up acting content to the night filming, that I stay with the Skin Tone OLPF. Certainly there is more light getting to the sensor with the Low light, but at some colour science cost. Maybe I'm also seeing additional noise because of the red bias? I rate my Dragon @ 620. Any comments?
David Wakeley. Sydney.
 
David,

Have you changed the OPLF menu setting in the camera when swapping the OPLFs? I have swapped back and forth a few times and I struggle to see a difference? I have been cursed with quite a few night shoots recently and have used the LLO OPLF with success. I find I can rate up to 1000 and be clean. 1280asa is also good with just a hint of texture. I will qualify as a general obsevation that talking about noise in relation to ASA is fraught. Every camera person tends to expose differently and the nature and tones of the subject being photographed are both major influences.

That said I tend to favour the STH OPLF ( which I rate at 400asa or less) but if there is any advantage in the extra speed I am more than happy to go LLO OPLF as 400asa for exterior limited budget night shoots sucks.

At another tangent if you do push the ASA a little noise in the blacks is a non issue. Firstly the DEB setting in Redcine X should kill the red sparkle and noise reduction software can eat up any of the noise. Another added issue is watching pictures full bandwidth on computer screens really exagerates the noise. Once material is down rezzed to 1080 and then compressed and everything everybody watches is compressed the noise tends to dissapear.
 
We shoot Lowlight at 800 btw 2.8 and F4, and it does really well. Much better than MX at similar exposure. At 2.8, it's pretty great overall.

At 640 2.8, even better.

The more you feed this sensor, the happier it seems...but LLO does give you some nice room when you need it.
 
Red really needs to make "One OLPF to rule them all" I want to use the color science of the skin tone OLPF while shooting a very clean 2000 ISO. This was the whole premise of the Dragon sensor from the very beginning.
 
Bobby Farokhzad said:
Red really needs to make "One OLPF to rule them all" I want to use the color science of the skin tone OLPF while shooting a very clean 2000 ISO. This was the whole premise of the Dragon sensor from the very beginning.
Click to expand...


This is such a sore subject.....I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.......
 
Bobby Farokhzad said:
Red really needs to make "One OLPF to rule them all" I want to use the color science of the skin tone OLPF while shooting a very clean 2000 ISO. This was the whole premise of the Dragon sensor from the very beginning.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure the premise was ever clean ISO 2000 with the skin tone OLPF.
From memory, when I received my dragon upgrade (early - dec 2013/jan 2014) there was only one OLPF- the one that became known as low light. The Skintone OLPF was a revision that started shipping later, with color science to boost the image to overcome the light-loss, but intoducing noise issues.
 
I don't really think you can have one OLPF to rule them all. As we are seeing now, specialized full spectrum OLPFs, infrared, UV, underwater, there are a lot of specialized situations that require these things.

I feel eel that the best general purpose OLPF is the sth, but much of that depends on shooting style. For this reason the 2nd LLO lives in many people's camera and swapping them out ain't rocket science.

How ow any of this is a bad thing is beyond me, but I understand wanting a single solution. Either STH or LLO are very competent solutions.
 
FWIW I asked my bomb squad rep in March re the "standard OPLF" that Jarred had mentioned in the past "May I assume then that development on this has not been abandoned, even though it may be slow". The response I got was that my assumption was accurate, so at least in March the standard OPLF was still being developed (and I hope will show up in due course in the Red Store)
 
I agree that multiple OLPF's are great. Also WEAPON seems to maximize performance on both OLPFS, from what Jarred has hinted.
 
Thanks Guys,
Silly me didn't know I had to change the menu settings........... Auto on the Weapon, like auto Black Shade?! (joking!)
 
you are right !"This was the whole promise of the Dragon sensor from the very beginning " ISO 2000 !
 
Julio Quintana said:
I will second Tom G.'s suggestion to make sure you are changing the menu settings in camera when you swap the OLPF. Otherwise you will see a strong green or red shift.
Click to expand...

To me it's odd that this ha to be done in camera. As we are shooting RAW, are we not? So it feels like OLPF setting would only be meta data and possible then to set in RCXP or such. But as I understand thats not the case.
 
Björn Benckert said:
To me it's odd that this ha to be done in camera. As we are shooting RAW, are we not? So it feels like OLPF setting would only be meta data and possible then to set in RCXP or such. But as I understand thats not the case.
Click to expand...

We are shooting raw, however, the OLPF is an optical filter and effects the incoming image.
 
Sure, but the red noise, that came with STH OLPF won´t be created by the glass, so it is probably correct to assume there is some kind of signal processing before the RAW recording. BTW, did anyone try shooting the STH OLPF with the low light setting in camera? Would be interesting to find out wether we could benefit from the improved glass and still get no red noise (obviously you will have to do a color correction to reduce a green shift), just thinking out loud...

Cheers, Ulf
 
Ulf Krentz said:
Sure, but the red noise, that came with STH OLPF won´t be created by the glass, so it is probably correct to assume there is some kind of signal processing before the RAW recording.
Click to expand...

The STH OLPF filters out more red, which results in the red photosites receiving less light than with the LLO OLPF. This, I believe, is why the red channel has more noise.
 
Ulf Krentz said:
Sure, but the red noise, that came with STH OLPF won´t be created by the glass, so it is probably correct to assume there is some kind of signal processing before the RAW recording. BTW, did anyone try shooting the STH OLPF with the low light setting in camera? Would be interesting to find out wether we could benefit from the improved glass and still get no red noise (obviously you will have to do a color correction to reduce a green shift), just thinking out loud...
Click to expand...

You end up getting "not correct color". You are loading a profile for each OLPF that is essentially specifically calibrated to a color target to produce natural images. No free lunch here.
 
True. I tested this and while some might find it an interesting "effect", it would be difficult to recover the full color spectrum when you capture with the incorrect OLPF setting. It is important to change the OLPF settings in the camera firmware when you have physically changed the OLPF. I believe Weapon detects this automatically somehow, but the current system requires you manually select the OLPF installed in the camera through the in camera FW settings.
 
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