Crushing The Ped and NOISE

My regular DIT, who is probably reading this (please forgive me for second guessing you, you'll probably be right in the end, please don't hate me more than you do already), has told me that one of my mad schemes, a scheme that looks perfectly good on paper, won't work in the real world. I want to get some further opinions.

I'm going into a shoot where I'll be outside in the desert and in various other outdoor locations shooting moving interviews, probably from a dolly.

I'll be shooting with an F900. My concern is dealing with excessive contrast, and my mad scheme is to use Ultracons to milk out the shadows somewhat to bring out shadow detail and then restore contrast selectively by lowering the ped and manipulating the gamma.

My DIT tells me this probably won't work because any time you lower the ped you introduce a lot of extra noise.

Is my scheme truly mad? Do I owe my DIT dinner? Am I partially mad and do I only owe him a light lunch? Am I totally right, and owe him only a cup of scalding coffee down the front of his khakis?

Art Adams, DP [film|hidef|video]
San Francisco Bay Area - "Silicon Valley"
Local resources : http://www.artadams.net/local
Skype : "artadams"

Q: "Good, fast, cheap: which two would you like?"
A: "Can I pick fast twice?"

Art Adams wrote :

> Is my scheme truly mad?

Probably

> Do I owe my DIT dinner?

Definitely

Art,

Actually, your scheme sounds reasonable. I would add that you should definitely employ one of the Digital Praxis gamma curves. I've been using (when appropriate) the cin709 curve. Works beautifully. You can heat up the key side of skin tones a little and it exposes very nicely.

Ian Ellis DP
600 op / f-900/3 owner
Austin TX

Art Adams

On paper your idea is to lower your Ped in your F900 set up - is that your Black Gamma master?

To bring back information in shadow you may consider working only in the Y Luminance function on the Black Gamma page and adjust your master Black Gamma when needed. I have found I always lower my Blue Channel in Black Gamma by -3 to help quite noise in the shadows - being that Blue will always be the nosiest of the three channels.

If you play the contrast game with your Gamma page your drag your mid-tones down with the shadows....but this may be want you want.

If you should tests with the Ultracons I would be interested to know what you get.

I always buy dinner for a DIT (when I get one) if they truly know what they are doing.

Mike Spodnik SOC
DP - Ashland, OR 20% LA, CA 80%
IATSE Local 600

>If you play the contrast game with your Gamma page your drag your >mid-tones down with the shadows....but this may be want you want.

I guess what I want to do is lift the ped optically to gain shadow detail, and then bring the ped back down to zero to restore black in the shot. That way I can recover detail that the camera wasn't seeing in the shadows because they were a nudge darker than the camera could handle on its own.

Is that what you're addressing with your suggestion? Me confused a little.

Me need clarification.

Art Adams, DP [film|hidef|video]
San Francisco Bay Area - "Silicon Valley"

Art Adams writes that :

>I guess what I want to do is lift the ped optically to gain shadow detail, >and then bring the ped back down to zero to restore black in the shot.

Makes perfect sense to me

Combine it with one of the digital praxis gamma curves, as someone has already said, I'd go for a more extreme one than the one mentioned but it you load a chip with all of them you can play!

Are you using the external err, MB150 controller?

You can use this for overall gamma and black tweaks as well.

Cheers

Geoff Boyle FBKS
Director of Photography
EU Based
www.cinematography.net

>Are you using the external err, MB150 controller?

I don't know the model number but yes, the plan is to have a paint box with a DIT on set. I'm hoping to go with my favourite rental house, Videofax, and they've got all the proper toys.

I've been wanting to try this for a while. Looks like I'll get a chance. It seems a pretty obvious technique but I haven't heard of anyone else working this way.

Art Adams, DP [film|hidef|video]
San Francisco Bay Area - "Silicon Valley"

Quoting Geoff Boyle :

>Combine it with one of the digital praxis gamma curves, as someone >has already said,

On location in northern India, so It access is sporadic, hence the delay in piping up...

We tested this last Oct for a film, but we decided not to use it as the colorist, and director were far from impressed with our test

We used a Panavised F900/3 with the cinecurves from DigPraxis

There may more to be gained by this, but we were out of playtime, so dropped it as the first result was frankly dismal...

Loved the Dig Praxis curves tho (mit out filters, black & gamma tweaks) good luck testing, we ran out of time to see it through, but if I had more time, we may have been able to create something useful

Dermot Shane
Vfx guy (in Northern India this week)

Vancouver, Canada based

By the way, my regular DIT says I misquoted him wildly and that he never said such a thing, and that we are actually talking about a completely different hair-brained scheme of mine when he said that.

I apparently now owe him several dinners in fine French restaurants while pouring hot coffee down my own trousers.

Art Adams, DP [film|hidef|video]
San Francisco Bay Area - "Silicon Valley"