SMPTE Bars for color

[AlexJones]

Hi everyone. I own and operate the scarlet and my main source of work lies in wildlife filmmaking. I wanted to know if there is a way to get SMPTE bars or a color gradient baked into the red mag as an r3d. The reason I want this is so I can create a look for general purpose reasons. The Varicam for example is a great wildlife camera and it has a baked in curve to all video and it looks really nice right out of the camera. The Scarlet, you have to bring into davinci and obviously, it looks much better than varicam in the end but it would be nice to have a nice contrast and saturation look baked in so I can upload to clients instead of having to spend a lot of time color grading. I'm more than confident enough to say that I'm sure someone has already wanted to do this. Is there a Look someone has already made or is there a way for me to make one? I just want to use the gradient and bars to see where my blacks and whites are so I can crush and raise them for contrast. Does this make sense?

 

[Philipe Ratton]

You can create a look in Redcine-X, export it to a redmag and import it to the camera.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Shoot a chart with the camera on set, and then you can have a general understanding of where your exposure is and how far you have to tweak it in color-correction.

 

[Michael Romano]

Shoot a chart with the camera on set, and then you can have a general understanding of where your exposure is and how far you have to tweak it in color-correction.

This is much preferred to just generating bars - It lets you understand the offset of the hardware from what was visible in the real world - Particularly important when you are concerned about the specific color of animal fur or skin.