What is your favorite workflow for keeping all DR available on MX?

[Gunleik Groven]

Blair,

I am not looking for a "formula".

I just want to rise conciouness... -

I regullarily use whatever gamma and ISO + curve I find the best for offlines and onlines. That's one of the things I really love about RED.

But I want people to understand that at 800 - when exposed to the full, you need to step back to have some fun with the highlights, and that as you cannot "by default" see all available DR on any of the avilable gammacurves, you'll have to dig a bit in to get the best available result at the moment.

Actually I have made some "default" 800 to 320/250/160 presets to start from for most of my needs. But I would gladly bin any of those and make a new adjustment when that is the proper thing to do... These presets are just startingpoints....

I even understand why RED has chosen a monitorpath that easily throws off 3-5 stops of available latitude.

I just want to let people know that there are ways to get that latitude back if they need to. I regularly do...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

... and I want to make people stop mixing "DR" and "precission" which often seems to be mixed, especially when discussing ETTR...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

A fun note on ettr.

When you say you want to ETTR and at the same time protect your highlights by upping the ISO, those two philosphies are effectively canceling eachother out... -

On the M ETTR made much more sense, as the lowlights could become muddy.

On the MX, that is not so much a concern, as all the extra available latitude is in the lowlights.

Different cameras, same box, different concerns... -

 

[jake blackstone]

Jake, when you say "higher dynamic range scenes", don't you mean "brighter scenes" (higher values)? Granted, brighter scenes are often of a greater dynamic range than avarage/low value (darker) scenes, but far from always being so. Higher DR scenes can exist at the extremes of both high and low light scenarios.

If you do mean "higher DR scenes", what would simply increasing the ISO achieve if the optimum (DR) ISO is bypassed?

No, I mean what I say The difference between brightest and darkest areas of the scene defines the effective scene DR. The higher the difference, the higher DR. Said that, the actual scene not necessarily has to be very bright, like in a scene, that is lit up by a single match.
By increasing ASA in high DR situation, you effectively preserve the highlights, thus increasing the recorded DR, but up to a point of coarse. But that is where artistic eye comes into play.

 

[Pablo Villegas S.]

A fun note on ettr.

When you say you want to ETTR and at the same time protect your highlights by upping the ISO, those two philosphies are effectively canceling eachother out... -

On the M ETTR made much more sense, as the lowlights could become muddy.

On the MX, that is not so much a concern, as all the extra available latitude is in the lowlights.

Different cameras, same box, different concerns... -

That's not entirely true, If you're exposing using ISO 800, and you ETTR, If you're keeping an eye on the higlights not blowing out on red color, there is no way they will be blownout in RAW, because that is underexposed. So you are indeed protecting the highlights.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

You're sort of making my point...These two philosophies cancel eachother out in a wide DR situation. Blair is BTW totally right IMHO...

 

[Pablo Villegas S.]

You're sort of making my point...These two philosophies cancel eachother out in a wide DR situation. Blair is BTW totally right IMHO...

I don't see how... When You ETTR, and watch out for blownout highlights, specially in Redcolor(@800), you're getting all the DR you need, and you're protecting the highlights.

ETTR, is only the get more detail in the low part of the curve, but watching out to not lose it in the highlights, and If nothing is blowing out, then you don't lose DR.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

OK. We're into semantics. I'll leave it at that. -

Jake.
My point about the RAW graders I have seen so far - where many now have chosen to implement the curve after some concideration, is:

Try to choke an image in the "metaroom", by pulling it all the way down or up.

If you can recover that further down the grade: Fine.

If not: We need the curve in the meta-room to get all DR down the signalpath.

AFAIK the rocket outputs an RGB image, which is treated in float in Resolve. But if the image which is being output by the Rocket is already limited, the float won't do you much good.

I'l be testing Resolve next week. And if it works differently from all the other graders I have tested, I am absolutely fine with that.

If it doesn't... It needs the curve in the meta-room to be a good tool for RAW online....