NAB 2008

Lots of grading solutions but no buyer’s remorse about our new Film Master system.

But man, is that Lustre shape tracking sweet.

For those grading on the cheap, you now have a control surface.

The Orphanage is cancelling RED One reso in favor of a Scarlet. Funny given that Scarlet is currently a lump of metal—just like RED One was two years ago.

3D is the RED One of NAB2008. Except, whatever.

With the exception of The Foundry. Nuke’s new stereo tools are useful, innovative. If you must.

Even more whatever: FED display at 240fps! Aparently no one told them humans max out at ~60fps.

Redrock Micro has a packed booth in the middle of nowhere.

As usual, after one day I’m ready to come home.

RED One Latitude Test Coming Soon

After NAB, when everyone will be too busy buzzing about Scarlet and the other two announcements to care, I'll post a follow-up to my Digital Cinema Dynamic Range article. DP Paul Nordin shot a wedge per my suggestions, and the results are interesting indeed. Here's a sneak peek:

RED Log

It's Friday, the traditional time where we at ProLost sit back with a glass of tawny port and reverse-engineer camera transfer functions. Join us, won't you? Today's subject, RED Log.

RED Log is one of the options available in RED Alert (or the at-your-own-risk RED Cine). It's a logarithmic transfer function that appears to be designed to map the camera's linear-light image to a DI-friendly tonal range.

Like Panalog, the RED Log transfer function can be matched using the Cineon log/lin tools available in common compositing applications.

Here are the correct settings in After Effects (set to display pixel values in decimal):

In Shake:

And in Nuke:

Digital Cinema Dynamic Range, Short Version

Here's another way to put it:

Shooting with RED One rated at its native sensitivity and monitoring Rec709, if you put 18% gray at 45% IRE, you'll capture 2 stops over 18% gray, plus some headroom.

If you underexpose from there by 1 stop, you'll capture 3 stops over 18% gray, plus a little headroom.

Underexpose by 2 stops, you get 4 stops over 18% gray, plus headroom.

Want to match Panalog? Underexpose by 3 stops for 5 stops over 18% gray, plus headroom.

Want to match a hypothetical "perfect" film stock? Underexpose by 4 stops to match the Cineon spec's 6 stops over 18% gray... you guessed it, plus some headroom.

And then put the results into your grading system and see if the noise levels on your gray card are acceptable.

This is what I'd do if I had a RED One, a pretty girl, and a window!

EDIT 080223: I added the italic text at the top in response to David Mullen's post on the reduser.net thread that's been running parallel with these posts.