Welcome back,

In this installment, I’m taking a look at the Leitz Cine Hektor prime lenses.

The BTS Video of the shoot.

Recently, I shot a commissioned dance film project for Leitz called “Mojave Dream” Directed by Bhavani Lee.

I spoke with the folks at Leitz Cine last spring, and they revealed an upcoming set of lenses called the HEKTOR Cine Primes. It’s a set of six lenses with full-frame coverage and a constant T2.1 aperture across the board: 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 73mm, and 100mm focal lengths. They’re priced at around $42,500 for the six-lens set. That’s about the cost of a serious modern cine lens set, but roughly half the price of a usable vintage cine prime set—think K35s, Super Speeds, or KOWA Cine Prominars. My knee-jerk reaction was that this felt expensive for a set of mirrorless-only mount lenses. They currently come in Sony E, Canon RF, Nikon Z, and L mount, with other mounts potentially on the horizon. But no PL?! WHAT?! That’s insane!!!

Then I thought about it for a while.

The majority of cine camera manufacturers—Sony, Canon, RED, Blackmagic, Fujifilm—all ship their cameras with native mirrorless mounts as the base mount. PL mounts are adapters. So why not cut to the chase and use the camera’s native mount? The mounts are already there and are user-interchangeable. This also means you can use these top-notch lenses natively on any mirrorless camera for smaller builds. You’re not locked into a PL adapter and cage just to support the lenses. You can throw them on an A7S II, S1 II, R5, etc., for motion or stills. Using the mirrorless mount as intended also allows Leitz to achieve the optical performance they want with minimal compromises. That said, this does leave you out of luck for ARRI cameras. As far as I know, the Alexa 35 is PL or LPL only, and it can’t mount legacy DSLR mounts like EF, Nikon F, or Sony A. That also takes RED DSMC2 bodies and older EF-mount Blackmagic cameras out of the equation.

However, if you’re in the Sony ecosystem, running Gen 3+ RED cameras, L-mount Blackmagic bodies, or modern Canon cameras, the Hektors should work great.

I did not have a ton of time with them for Mojave Dream, only a few days.   That said, they left quite an impression.

The Look:

The essence of the set is that the goal was to create lenses with “real” vintage characteristics. To be clear, these lenses are an entirely new design, but the optical formula, coatings, and engineered look were borrowed from classic lenses in the Leica/Leitz lineage.

Honestly, they had me fooled. If you hadn’t told me they were new, I would have believed they were an actual vintage set that had been rehoused. The combination of Petzval-style bokeh, shower flares, and a gentle roll-off of resolution toward the corners felt completely authentic. The effects are pronounced, but not overwhelming. Unlike some modern “vintage-inspired” sets—where the flaws can feel exaggerated, almost like a caricature of what real vintage glass looks like—the Hektors strike a balance where the imperfections feel genuine. That’s what makes them special. While shooting with them, you almost wish there were more flaws—but if there were, the look would become overpowering, too intentional, and ultimately fake.  The in-focus areas of the image, especially in the center, still retain plenty of resolution, yet they carry that classic Leica/Leitz “creamy” rendering of skin and skin tones. It’s reminiscent of older Leica Summicron, Summitar, and Elmarit lenses. These lenses exhibit more “creaminess” than any lens I’ve personally used—more than S4s, more than Summilux-C, and more than Angénieux zooms.

Take a look at the qualities I’m talking about in these screenshots, taken directly from footage exported from Resolve:

No skin softening effects or any “beauty” tools were needed.  I basically just applied my REALWORLD_11 look, balanced the exposure shot to shot and that was it. The colors are all there and in the footage.

The set I used consisted of only three lenses: 25mm, 50mm, and 73mm. At the time, the full set was not yet available. What was interesting was that each lens had its own character. The 73mm exhibited the most pronounced Petzval effect. The 25mm had the most contrast, but its corner resolution softened with slightly more exaggeration than the 50mm or 73mm. The 50mm and 73mm produced the most pronounced shower flares. All of the lenses also showed a 1/4 to 1/3 stop illumination falloff from the center to the edges of the frame. That was intentional—Leitz Cine designed them this way.

Ergonomics:

The entire set is designed specifically for cinema use: fully manual and built to be extremely robust. While the purchase price may seem high at first, when you compare the mechanical consistency, standard cine workflow features—such as common focus and iris ring positions—absurdly high build quality, and gorgeous optics to a 50-year-old lens set that still costs twice as much (and carries the mechanical wear of five decades of use), the Hektors start to look like a very good value. Especially if you’re looking for top-end optical performance that still has a soul. They are small, light, and butter-smooth. In fact, that’s something Leitz is known for—there are few lenses that turn as smoothly as a Leitz. Your hand barely feels resistance, yet everything remains precise. The feel is, for lack of a better word, a luxury experience. It’s like the way a Mercedes or Lexus door closes—it just feels right. That’s how the Hektors feel to the touch. The entire film you saw above was manually focused by hand. The barrels are designed specifically for handheld use, with 180-degree focus throws. That used to be considered a “dirty word,” but with modern wireless follow-focus systems, you can expand that throw to a full rotation on the handset. This gives the user (or AC) the best of both worlds: an easy, hand-manipulated experience combined with the precision of a wireless focus system.

The fronts are a standard 80mm and work perfectly with my existing setup and accessories—cage, matte box, screw-on filters, etc. The only downside is that some of the longer focal lengths are physically slightly longer, requiring a small matte box adjustment on the rails. It would have been great if they were all the same size, but achieving that would mean increasing every lens to something closer to traditional cine dimensions, with 95mm or 110mm fronts. All of the lenses would need to grow in size to accommodate every focal length within a single housing. I’d much rather take the compactness and light weight. This makes them viable on everything from small Sony A7 builds all the way up to Sony VENICE 2 cinema rigs. It’s very nice to have a set of lenses that works from run-and-gun handheld shooting all the way up to top-end feature film work, and everything in between. The investment is significant, but the usability of the lenses gives them a very broad range of applications. They have character, but not so much that they won’t work for corporate interviews or cleaner, more polished commercial work. You just have to watch for flares and keep light sources off the front of the lens.

Under clean conditions, you’ll get a warm, pleasant, relatively clean image with interesting bokeh and good contrast. If you intentionally place hard light sources in the frame, you’ll get wild lens flares and lively optical effects in the image.  Its up to you.

Conclusion:

I’m doing everything in my power to buy a set of these. I believe they’re a lens set that can serve me for nearly any purpose, and with the backing of Leitz Cine, I know I’ll be able to have them maintained and repaired for many years to come. Until you get a chance to use them, it’s hard to fully appreciate how forgiving they are to skin and fine detail while still resolving a sharp image. That delicate balancing act is something Leitz Cine has truly mastered. I’ve been a die-hard Cooke S4 fan for 20 years—and I still am. That said, the Hektors are my favorite set to shoot with for my work, both personal and professional. When using them for beauty, cosmetics, hair care, or really any situation where a human is on camera, there’s honestly no better option. They just make people look great. For more creative projects, like Mojave Dream, being able to use the flares and overall look to add texture to the image at will is a fantastic creative option. I also loved shooting with rented Leica R sets adapted to EF, fitted with Duclos mod gear rings for many projects. The classic Leica look has always been highly sought after by me. This set—the Hektors—reminds me of the Leica R lenses, but in a proper cine form factor.  They have plenty of character and charm for more experimental or stylized shoots, yet they’re well-behaved enough to take into the boardroom and shoot clean, professional talking heads as well.

Thanks for reading!

Coming up next I’m going to take a look at the GVM AIO 1200w Bicolor Light.   A new light that I recently got thats really been a game changer for power, size and ease of use.

Welcome back!

In this installment,  I’m gonna take a quick walk through the GVM FH400B BiColor 400w LED light.   It’s become the backbone of my lighting kit.  I don’t write about lights too often, unless its something of note.

I got introduced to the folks at GVM LED about a year ago, they showed me a prototype of what I thought was a really innovative design.  What became the FH400 “Flathead” LED.   So, I asked them if they needed any help testing and developing their line of new pro lights.   A few months ago around March 2025, they sent me some prototypes to test and the the light itself, the engine, the brightness, color etc…  it’s great.  On par with everything you would expect from any other professional LED light.  I’d even say they seem to be a touch brighter per watt than some of their competitors, and the lights on my shelf.

This is their first foray into professional cine lighting.  I think they are off to a VERY interesting start.

What makes it stand out is the design. They are shaped more like a 1×1 panel light than a traditional COB style LED.  At first its a bit different.  Nothing is truly wrong with the traditional Monolight, style LED design.  That is until you actually live with the FH400 for a while.  So now, about 8 months later, I feel like I know enough about them in day to day use to have an actual opinion.   The form factor, engineering and small ergonomic details all add up to something more.

Pros:

1: The designers and color science engineers worked hard to maintain adherence to color quality and accuracy.   They are consistent, color accurate and very efficiently use their 400w draw.  At 5600K on the light, it metered at TLCI 99  and a 5624K color temperature.   Only a 24 Kelvin variance from indicated on the light color temperature to the metered temprature.   You can also see the a sub 1/2 point Green bias of  0.4,  Commendable performance.  The R9 chip of the standard CRI scale shows 86.8 saturation, which means the red channel is healthy and likely what contributes to the good TLCI rating.  This means that the redchannel is pretty good, and will render good skin tones.   

In 3200K mode:
Again, 1/2 point green bias, which is very mild.  In “Tungsten” it produces a TLCI of 97 ( manufacturers claim of 97 TLCI, though in daylight it out performed the claims).  The light was set to 3200K and metered at a 3285K A touch cool, but anything thats metering within 100K between the dial on the light and a color meter is very good performance.  The increase of the R9 chip reading, the red channel reading is up to 96 in Tungsten mode. Thats a good saturation that mean the red channel output is healthy.    The FH400 is producing for the most part, the color it says it is.

2: They seem to be able to get so much relative output because the cooling of the FH400 platform allows for the entire unit to be a heat sink and house a massive fan that runs at low speed.  Low speed fans mean less fan noise.   Think about it, whats better? a 4″ heat sink stacked into a small tube with a small fan screaming to move enough air, or a 12″x12″ heatsink with a giant fan running slowly?  That cooling power is where the FH400 shines. It can perform efficiently, and optimize its light engine’s performance.

3: You can use the lights individually, or in an array.  They designed the lights and an accessory yoke to able to stack together, becoming essentially like a “9 light” style multi pod.   Though its actually 6 lights, or 4, or 2 units, depending on how you choose to build it and which yoke you get.   Each light is still powered individually and has a cable management system on the back for the AC power bricks.   The benefits are, say, using the 6 light configuration, you now get 2400w of power available in one unit.   However, because each light is its own stand alone unit, you can run it in a household environment.  No need for a tie in.  You split the plugs across two circuits with 2 stingers.  You can use the same method with a small 3000w genny, or battery inverter, across the circuits built in.     There is another benefit here to using smaller units to make up a larget unit.   Most LEDs that cine lighting manufacturers use have point where the efficiency of light output vs power draw/heat, plateaus.  It is somewhere around 400-600w.   The issue is combination of phosphor stability and heat management.  In essence, as you are now running 6x 400w units, that 2400w of power is being converted into lumens at the peak of their power efficiency.  Remember, the cooling, and the giant heat sink?  It pays off here.  You’re getting MORE overall photons than one single 2400W giant LED cob can provide, because it can cool itself more efficiently when spread out across individual units.   You can also break it down piece at a time, and siphon off units as needed.   If you only need 4x, just take out two, and use those two elsewhere on set.   It does of course take a minute to assemble and manage cables, but once you do it once or twice it can be fully assembled from cases to complete in about 15 minutes.   You can then attach any bowens mount accesory you choose like the intensifier optics, reflectors, small diffused white globes etc.  You use it like a traditional  multi unit.  Pushing through a 12×12 diffusion, or a frame with some diff.  Its great for night exteriors lighting up large swaths of background or talent from a distance.   It’s not going to replace a 12K HMI par….  But if you have enough of the FH400 lights in your kit, being able to build a beast of a unit is for the times you need it is pretty awesome.   This configuration can definitely fight the sun, for location or daylight interiors.  I’m interested to try it in the 6 light configuration, outdoors at night while using high ISO cameras.   Imagine putting it on a crest line, cherry picker or top of a building, and backlighting a large swath of street or nature.  When shooting at 12800+ ISO like you can these days, it can help make a set up look bigger than it is.

4: They have mounting points!  The light has 3/8ths mounting points on the back!   Rigging it for awkward spaces and process trailers is now so easy!  Plus the flat shape, lets you tuck them up flatter and further back than you could with a traditional monolight style LED.  The points appear to be steel inserts embedded into the aluminum frame.  This is kind of a big deal for process trailers as you can only set your lights out away from the car a certain amount, usually the edge of the trailer. DOT doesn’t like things sticking out too much.  Gaining 4-8″ if additional distance, helps you with the diffusion, light fall off, and offers more options for light placement.  And honestly, even a wider frame on the lens.   A few inches on either side means more flexible framing options.

5: G7 Mount:   In addition to a standard Bowens mount for mounting lighting modifiers, the designers created the proprietary G7 mount.   Bowens mount adapters were designed for strobe lights, that had a protruding flash coil on the face of the unit.   COB style LEDs, are “flat” and don’t stick out.   They tend to sit too far back to make the most of the Bowens style modifiers you put on.   Beauty dishes, octo banks, etc…   The G7 mount, is designed with this in mind. It provides the appropriate light collecting angles for a flush light emitter.   GVM makes a large intensifier in G7 mount, its like a silver cone shaped parabolic modifier.  It essentially focuses the beam, and collects all the lumens and focuses them in one super intense beam of light.  No optics, light weight etc.   Makes the 400w light feel like a 600 or 800.   Gobs of intensity.  I don’t know what else they have planned for the G7 mount, but I’m told there will be lots of additions. Spot light adapters and various kinds of intensifiers of different beam angles in the G7 system.

6: High speed performance:   I tested them on a Phantom Flex 4K.   They were flicker free up to about 800fps.   After that you started to see some mild artifacts. ( i’m told future versions will be completely flicker free)  Though, in all my days of tabletop cinematography, I can count on my hand how many times I’ve gone over 800fps.   So for most things, they would be more than enough.   If you need extreme high speed, in the 1000+ FPS range, I would switch to 12K/20K tungsten units anyhow.   For the vast majority of shoots, we are shooting 240FPS to 480 Fps on Vraptor, Ember or Flex.   Now with the Arri Alexa35 Extreme, and its 660 FPS capability, we are still within the flicker limit of the light. Plus once you go that high, you need a bit more power than a 400w led can provide anyhow.

The FH400’s benefits to my workflow has broken down like this:

Storage / Transport:
On Most shoots, camera, lighting, lenses, camera support, grip and electric all has to ride along with me.   I have a home studio I work out of for the most part, but on occasion I have to pack it all into my “custom” SUV.  By custom I mean, I removed all the seats and center consoles from a Toyota Sequoia, so it’s basically a small moving van.   Despite being incredibly spacious on the inside for a human, its a lot of equipment to carry.  Camera, Lighting, Grip, Camera support and often set pieces too.  The table surface, backdrops, art elements etc…   So for me, SPACE savings is the name of the game.

Thats where the FH400 comes in.  You get the compact packability of a flat 1×1 LED softlight, with the flexibility of a COB light.   I have a few cob lights, and the issue with them was always that once packed into its case, its the large chunky cube.  Extrapolate that across 4-5 lights and suddenly you’re gobbling up precious space in the studio as well as my truck.   The FH400 with its unique shape, means that I can stack 2 of them in a crate, with the yoke and power adapters.  So 2 lights takes up half the space of one of the single cases.  Put a little foam protection, in there and you can carry an entire sets worth of lights in three milk crates.   This applies to the studio as well.   The square shape has a side benefit. They can stand up on their edges.   I line them up on the shelf.   The “Lighting unit section” of my storage shelves just compressed into 1/4 the space.   As we filmmakers all know, no matter how much space you have, its never enough.  I currently have 2 of the FH400’s but I’m about to switch over my older lights to an additional 4, making 6 altogether, so I can eventually build the 6 Light configuration I discussed earlier.

Usability:

Weather Rating:
The FHseries has IP65 Rating on the head.   Taking it out side is no problem in the rain.  Take basic wet weather precautions with all electrical distribution regardless of the light.  Safety first.

Ellipsoidal adapters:
What makes the unit unique is that, the designers incorporated a quick release yoke system on the sides. Its sort of like a Vlock for a battery.  I use it pretty regularly without the yoke.    I have an Ellipsoidal adapter, ( a Leko adapter), and as we all know using ellipsoidal on a traditional tubular design LED is a nightmare, because they are so heavy they require a separate yoke and stand to support them in front of the lighting unit, as the front weight throws the assembly off balance.   The FH400, being flat, and with a removable Yoke, puts the center of gravity essentially around the bowens mount itself.  So you have almost no leverage on the mount.  Without excessive weight hanging either out back, or out front,  you are not stressing the stressing the mounts and throwing it off balance.   The yoke of the Leko adapter, becomes the mounting point and the front heaviness of  the adapter itself, balances the FH 400 perfectly.   Never has using a ellipsoidal adapter been so straight forward and easy.   Its like having a normal… Leko…. in the case of the FH400B ( bi color) with tunable intensity and color temperature and a lot more power.   If you opt for the FH400c ( RGB version) you get all the benefits of an RGB light with extra tune ability for color quality in white light.  The overall package is so much more affordable and more powerful than the dedicated ellipsoidal lights from Source Four.  You also don’t get the dreaded LED cob projection artifacts.  The FH400 has a frosted cob that diffuses the output, and makes for a clean even beam.   You can of course use it traditionally, as mounting from the adapters yoke does put some limitation on your tilt up ability.   Switching is quick.

Mounting:
The unique shape offered the engineers some real estate to work with.   They put 3/8th threaded holes on the corners.   You can use them for anything.  You can thread in a eyeloop and have a safety chain, or screw in  pins and use them to rig the light anywhere. As I touched on earlier, I would absolutely use these in a car rig, as the flat shape means you can back the unit a few precious inches further back away from the vehicle.

GVM also made an accessory that mounts into the light to let you rig it directly to a pipe grid, with no yoke. This configuration, buys you back about a foot of height as they sit within the pipes at their level.  They don’t have to be under slung or over slung like a traditional light. You however CAN use the yoke and mount them traditionally, for the ability to point them where you like. But thats the point, you get a clean tight option for a down light, or a flexible option that operates like you are used to with the yoke attached and mounted to pins.  So you don’t have to worry about the light torquing or sagging over time. Its two points of contact and very secure.   Great for long term studio work, but you get the benefits of a “hard” source or you can attach any Bowens mount light modifier, or hang diffusion under them.  The pipe adapter is also very useful if you want to make a lantern light on a menace arm with a Bowens lantern accesory.  The direct mounting to the speed rail, removes weight without the yoke, and is very secure.   Side benefit, is that it also can rig discreetly to pipe, so they can be included in the frame as set elements without the mess of a Cstand in frame.

DMX +:
The light uses a swappable DMX, Bluetooth and Wifi light control board interface. You can choose how you want to control them, and select that board and swap it in. For studio use this is great, cause you can make it work with the system of your choice. You can use traditional wired DMX, or any number of wireless control systems.

The available modules are:
– BCM-NA – Bluetooth Module ( for most app based lighting control)
-BCM-XLR5 – This is a combination of Blutooth Connectivity and XLR DMX wired control ( As my lights are BT/ app controlable, I think this is the stock module)
-DCM-XLR5 – This is their standard DMX wired module, pictured above.
-CCM-XLR5 – This a combination of CRMX and XLR DMX
-LCM-RJ45 –  This is the network port (ethernet cable) Module.

You can make it work within your existing ecosystem, or build out a system of your choice. The FH400 can grow with your setup.

CONS:

The bad…. there is some of course.

1: I’m not a fan of the power brick.   Though they did make it easy to mount on the yoke of the light, or on the back of the 2/4/6  multi pod light yoke.  The cables are plenty long, and they don’t really get in the way, but I’m hoping for a V2 soon, that has a more elegant power brick, thats maybe a bit smaller, or has a different cable for the power connection to the brick, its currently an OSHA cable connection.  The connection to the light is XLR style, and is secure.

2: The BiColor version does not have a +- Green function.   They made the light “neutral” out of the box.  Accurate color is coming out. But thats not why we use +- Green…. We use it to match to other lights, and the environment.   It’s not so much about correcting a flaw in the light, as it is, matching the flaws in other lights. If you’re shooting in a florescent lit factory or store, and you need a little green to match, its convenient to have it in the light.   I think this will be addressed in V2.  Rosco makes color correction gels for a reason.   Its not the end of the world, but it would be nice if it had it.

Some Images i shot or lit, exclusively with the GVM system:

Shot as demo for ARRI’s Alexa Extreme: Shot at 660 FPS

For the launch of Leitz Cine GmbH, HEKTOR lenses:

I did the lighting for this photo project for the New York Times for photographer Devin Oktar Yalkin, of Senator Alex Padilla:

I used the FH400 as well as a GVM AIO 1200b w/ Elipsoidal and LightBridge CRLS reflectors.  The main point being that, they had enough output to allow Devin to shoot at the Fstop & ISO he desired, and a shutter speed that gave him sharp pictures.  Without having to use strobes.

Overall thoughts:

This is the first set of lights that have come across that had a sense of modularity in form and function.  These days, we have to be flexible, and adapt to any situation that is thrown at us on set.   I like the FH400 series because its a system of lights that gets out of my way in the studio, storage rack, and in transport, but can expand into what ever I need it to be on set.   The FH400 of course, also performs very well in terms of color and output.

One of the biggest benefits is that they are priced aggressively against their competition.   For example, a major ubiquitous 400W competitor, is about $1000,  the FH400 is about $750.   Considering the good build quality, great light performance, and most important to me, the unique modularity and flexibility of the light, I think the FH400 is a pretty great option for people looking to build out a new studio, build up a rental LGE van package, or make a compact travel kit.  Being about 25% less, you can save enough money to either stetch for the “extra” light, or have some room left for more grip and support gear thats always necessary when making a lightning investment.  This is basically what I’ve done with my studio/SUV package.  Saving $500 on the units, allowed me to add in the Elipsodal adapter and an extra rag for my diffusion frames.

For what I am doing, I think the performance to value ratio is high.   I think a lot of other folks will feel the same.

Thanks for reading!

Coming up next, The Leitz HEKTOR lenses!

Welcome back to Tstops Blog.

In this installment, I want to talk about a color process that I have been experimenting with for the Fujifilm GFX100 II.  Since last year when I used it to test My Favorite Lenses, I have fallen in love with the medium format look and Fujifilm color science for cinematic story telling.

This project for Taylor John Williams‘ song Naked, directed by Bhavani Lee, was the genesis of this color workflow exploration.  After discussing the look of the project with Bhavani, I said: ” I want it to look like the audience is looking through a window at real life”.  The idea is to create a look with rich colors and softer contrast, but will still reach white point and black point , from which I can start grading the image.  REALLIFE_11 is the look I came up with. It’s not designed to create the final look, it is designed to be the starting point.  That said, it does have a distinct look, that when dialed in, can make for some interesting results.  In the body of this post is a download link for the power grade in resolve. I encourage you to give it a try. I built this for GFX100 II, but it works on every image. The core benefits are rich skin tones and subtle color contrast that seemingly gets lost with other methods.

BTS photos by : Jesse Dvorak

My first challenge when exploring any new camera is, what do I want this camera to look like?  I like to shoot my cameras with one look.  A look that I will know inside out.  Somewhat neutral and usually derived from a film emulation of some kind.  From there I can bend the look around on set with light, lenses and filters.  This gives me a consistent place to expose from and make sure the colorist has a thick negative to work with.  The LUT I use is usually passed along to the colorist to ensure they know what the intention is.

Fujifilm has built into the GFX100II ( and the rest of their line up) the very beautiful Film Sims for still images or video.  Though, in video its recorded as a baked in Rec709 look.  The Film Sims are looks that match their own classic film stocks of the past.  Eterna, Reala, Astia, Provia and more.  They look beautiful in camera.  You would think that the different film simulations were readily available as post LUTs.  They aren’t, and for a very specific reason.  Film Sims are not just a LUT the camera applies.  It’s much more than just a LUT.  It’s a constantly flexing set of mathematic rules.  It also has to bend the look to be ready for the specific light response at different ISO values, white balance  and special color options in the menus.   You can choose to enable Chrome Effects Blue, and Color Chrome.  These effects change the way certain colors render to mimic the “printed” photo look.

It is much more limiting to just apply a fixed LUT to footage after the fact and expect it to look as good as the in camera color pipeline thats dedicated to creating the look in real time.  Fujifilm has released a small handful of FUJIFILM Eterna LUTs for the GFX100 II’s specific sensor and light response.  The Eterna LUT is a little too contrasty and desaturated overall for my taste.  It’s not my favorite look to shoot with.  I never feel like it nails the color response the way I want.  One of the challenges of working with a newer camera system, especially a system that is relatively new to advanced video capabilities (GFX line specifically), is that there is little post support for the specific color pipeline and capabilities of a new sensor.  There are some LUT packs, and FilmConvert supports the FUJIFILM XH2S, but it’s sensor responds to light differently than the GFX.  While the XH2S specific LUTs sort of work, its not quite right.

I figured, why not start from scratch.  It begged the question, what do I need? I do find the idea of a look that flexes to the needs of the shot itself like the built in Film Sim, interesting.  The main goal was to make something filmic and flexible. I wanted to build a power grade basic structure that I could drop on footage, as if it were a LUT in post, but that would give me the ability to reach a nice starting point to begin grading in a more advanced way.  I mean things like power windows, masks, color curves etc.  During this process, I realized that in order for this to work properly, it was necessary to also build an on set LUT that would feed this power grade with the color “nutrients” it needs via a dense negative.

I had seen over the years, some experiments with a 3 Strip process emulation in resolve, similar in function to how Technicolor film worked.  It works by breaking the RGB image channels up into their individual components, and remixing them manually.  I started experimenting with this idea by building it myself from a blank slate.  This way I would understand the “why” of how it works a bit better.  I consulted many people on how it may function and what pitfalls to watch out for.  Tim Kang, DP and color science expert has had my back on this project for a couple of months now.  Every time I build a version (52 versions to be exact) I would find some new bug in the process.  Tim helped me immensely with designing a node structure in Resolve, and explained the how and why the color structure works.  The following example is from a different project that I had to regrade, simply because it was so much easier, faster, and better looking to apply the 3 Strip look.  The key difference in this example is that what I struggled with in the initial shot was getting the skin tone to look right.  The green of the glass in the window was always there and over powering.  Correcting out the green made the skin magenta, and even using the qualifier, bringing the skin back to neutral was more difficult.  Using the 3 Strip process, instead of desaturating the green away, I was able to embrace it a bit more. The skin tones were able to show through the glass, blended with the green, but still present.  The green and teal colors of the train became more vibrant, but also became more individually separated and looked truer to real life.   The image looks less muddy and cold.

Download the .DRX and 33×33 & 65×65 versions of the onset LUT below.   The LUT’s are made using the complete process and are designed to shoot on set with the GFX100 II in Flog2.  You can load it into your monitor with the 33×33 version, or use the 65×65 version in Resolve to make dailies.  Pay close attention to the node by node effects.  The REALWORLD_11 .DRX file is designed to give a colorful but natural image to GFX100 II Flog2 footage.  Drag and drop the .DRX file into your stills gallery in Resolve.   You have to tailor it to the scene and once its dialed in, you can save it as a separate still/power grade to then apply it to the rest of the footage in your scene.  I recommend using the stills/power grade method instead of applying the LUT, as it keeps the mechanics of the look accessible, and easy to adjust.  The saturation and contrast may not be to your liking, but thats up to you to dial it to where you like it.  It works best if you expose to the LUT provided, then apply the .DRX for full control.  Keep reading to learn what the nodes do to the image.  If you want to experiment with footage from other cameras, just reset the TINT, SAT, and Contrast nodes, then start from scratch.

DOWNLOAD HERE:  REALL IFE_11  .DRX + LUTS

PART 1: How it Works:

The basic set up is a series of nodes, in a specific order.  The initial input is the un-manipulated shot, and I label that TINT.  Then from there, there will be three parallel nodes, Red, Green, Blue which then come back together with a combiner node.  After the combiner node, is the Saturation Node, then Contrast node and finally the Skin node.  I separated all of these functions so that its easy to find where something is being effected, and you can always reset that node alone, and start over.

1: Tint:  This node is where you adjust your white balance.  It’s labeled Tint specifically, because the more balanced the image is before it splits up, the better time you’re going to have. The process is more sensitive to green/magenta biases.  Try to nail your WB in camera as best you can, especially in a camera like GFX100 II thats recording ProRes as the digital negative.  This means, if you want a warm look, white balance to a cooler Kelvin, or vice versa. or if you want neutral, nail it with a white card on set.

2: RGB: This series of three parallel nodes are where the magic happens.   Its a bit different than using the RGB Offset dials.   It seems on the surface that its the same thing, but the 3 strip works slightly differently in the way it blends the colors.  It is something you feel in the image and I cant quite explain, because I don’t really know what Resolve is doing under the hood.  It’s important to make sure the “Monochrome” box and “Preserve Luminance” boxes are checked. Otherwise it doesn’t work.  The Power grade .DRX file is already formatted, but if you need to go back to reset either color channel node for any reason, this is the way it should look per channel.   The levels of the red, green, and blue, are not fixed, they can be whatever value you want blended together to get your desired effect.

So here is whats interesting and why this is different than using the RGB offset dials.  The “tinted” monochrome images, it seems are blended together in an additive color sense.  Cranking up Red, doesn’t necessarily make the image substantially redder and neither does reducing the blue channel make it yellow.  The red channel behaves as a saturation saturation dial for skin tones and reds.  The green channel acts as a slight green/magenta bias but only in the green and yellow parts of the image and the blue channel acts something like overall saturation, with a bias towards blue.   I know it sounds confusing, but when you start using it you will get it.  This is also why its important to nail the white balance BEFORE the split.  Anything thats off, will become exaggerated.  If you feel your image keeps turning green no matter what you do, go back to the TINT node and push the tint slider a few points towards magenta.  If the image is to warm, or you can’t quite dial out some cool shadows with the blue channel, go back to TINT node and gently adjust the color temperature.   The RGB 3 Strip sliders operate slightly backwards from what seems intuitive at first, drastically increasing the output from one color channel seems to push the image in the opposite direction on the color wheel.  It’s almost more like CMYK color mixing or doing printer lights on a negative.  Manipulating these sliders together, when you get it dialed in, produces a beautiful and lush color palette.  The other added benefit to splitting up the channels in this manner is that you can add serial nodes to each color channel and add in effects.  Imagine adding diffusion, grain, glow, noise reduction or some other effect, only on one color channel.   It’s really fascinating to experiment with adding grain and halation per channel.

3: Combiner Node: This is the node that takes the output from RGB and turns it back into one lane.  I have a theory that this node is also where the color magic happens. It may be combining the channels in a different way.

4: Saturation Node:  Often the image that get recombined is extremely saturated.  This node lets you dial that back to earth.  The colors will settle in nicely, and then you get a chance to go back and adjust the mix.  Try experimenting not only with Saturation, but “color boost” slider here too.  That can give some interesting results.  Use the Primaries / Color wheel panel. ( or what ever you like really… You can use color curves here too)

5: Contrast: This is where you put in your contrast into the Log Curve.   I use a combination of the Lift/Gamma/Gain dials and the luminance curves to get it where I like it. Use what works for you.

6: SKIN Node:  This node serves ONLY one purpose. You isolate the skin tones with the qualifier, and go back and double check your three strip mix on the Vector scope.  Like below.    This is a quality control node.   I don’t make adjustments here.

Everything beyond the Skin node is traditional grading.   Masks and qualifier adjustments, overall color grading, and the “look” you want to apply.  You could probably make a compound node out of the 3 strip section to make it simpler.  I like to personally keep them expanded to be able to dig back in.  I generally, do Contrast Node first, then Tint Node, then find the color balance with RGB and Saturation. The skin Node is last to make sure the humans look right.

Use the RealWorld11 Power grade to set the look of the starting point of color for each scene.   Then you can just work traditionally.

OK, so thats how it functions.
Have a blast!

PART II: The Shooting LUT:

Now, on to the LUT building section of this project.

Because, this 3 Strip process is just a manipulation of channels with no OFX in play, you can actually generate a LUT from it.  So the LUT in the google drive folder above, is actually utilizing the 3 Strip process.  It’s carefully crafted from test charts and a variety of footage to build a “do it all” on set LUT.  This also means, thats its not perfect overall, however its the most flexible LUT I was able to build.  More on that in a moment.

With the very generous support of Tim Kang of Aputure Lighting, providing me space to work in, I set out to design that onset LUT, that would use the full contrast range of the GFX100 II’s Flog2 gamma curve, as well as have a color palette that I found to be beautiful.  Now that I had a rough idea how the 3 Strip process worked, the first step was getting good footage into it.

It all boiled down to the following steps.

1:  LUT build for on set use.  This is to help me use as much of the Flog2 curve I could, to feed the post “Real World” 3 Strip process.
A: Color balance the LUT to neutral.
B: Contrast expansion of Flog2 to reach black and white points.
C: Contrast curve to add a pleasing feel to the image.

The way I did this was I shot some Tungsten and Daylight test images with charts and skin tones.   Then I built a scenario where the scene had true black and white in the same scene, a LED light with diffusion and a piece of shaded and boxed black jewelers velvet.   Then I collected a few various scenarios of footage on  GFX100 II.   Shots around the house, interiors, exteriors, the street, the desert, and the ocean.  I used a Sekonic C-800U color meter to measure the quality of the spectrum in the Tungsten and Daylight sections to maintain purity.

Then what happens is you start doing what Tim Kang called, LUT averaging.   You start with the Color charts and human face.  This point I need to create really clean colors, that are neutral.  I have to be able to put the tungsten look on the daylight shot and the daylight look on the tungsten shot and get minimal color shift.  At that point I split the difference between them and thats the color “accurate” balance.  The trick here is that there are two color accurate points of reference.  Since the camera is balanced to the light source and both light sources are accurate and full spectrum, you can trust that the reproduction will be faithful.  This LUT I am building will have to work for both daylight and tungsten, and it should not matter the light source so long as the spectrum is full.  The white balanced camera won’t be able to tell the difference. Then you save that power grade.

The setup:  There is little importance to the brightness and contrast of this image.  This is just to see the chart, and get perfect white balance.  Its basically still in LOG.  The only nodes manipulated are the TINT, RGB and Saturation in this phase.

That saved power grade is then applied to the contrast test scenario footage. Without touching the color, you adjust the contrast node until black hits “0”, and white hit’s 100.   So now you have centered the color across two black body radiators, Tungsten and the Sun, and dialed in the black and white points of the sensor and log curve.

The last step in the LUT building is now developing the contrast curve.  Just because I stretched the white up to hit 100% and the black down to 0%, doesn’t mean the curve is nice to look at.  I took a ton of GFX 100 II footage and adjusted each one, individually, saving and passing the power grade forward.  Then cross referencing back to the beginning clips to see if the look still worked.  This is where the LUT averaging really starts to take effect.  In total, I made 52 versions.  I thought I was done at version 41, and named it REALLIFE_1.

Classic mistake.

10 versions later I think I’m happy with REALLIFE_11.  All in all, this process took almost 2 months to complete.   Next time with all the trial and error out of the way, I can do it in a much shorter time.

I hope you found this all useful.  Enjoy the LUT and Color workflow.  Thanks for reading.

-Timur

Welcome back to Tstop blog!

In the last few years the film industry has changed, and nearly every element of the filmmaking process has made wondrous advances.  Especially camera equipment.  There are so many new digital cinematography tools available to us right now, with different sensor sizes, light sensitivities, resolutions, and capabilities.  In this article, I will discuss how all of this presented me with a unique problem, how to directly compare lenses made for different formats.   Luckily, there is also a unique solution.

I am working on shooting a film thats in the development phase.  This past winter, my director, and I discussed the creative possibilities of shooting the whole film on a single focal length.  It’s a creative choice that would lend itself to the story.  Seems simple enough, as the name of this post implies, Alfred Hitchcock famously shot Psycho with only a 50mm Spherical lens.  I figured why not the classic 50mm.  It’s a great focal length for this purpose, not so tight that backing up for a wide is impossible and is pretty flattering to talent in a closeup.  I didn’t think too much of it at first.  Pick up your favorite 50mm and be done with it.   That feeling changed as soon as I started thinking about which camera system to shoot on.  I was initially just going to shoot a quick little test with my three favorite 50mm lenses; Cooke S4 T2.0, Bausch & Lomb Super Baltar T2.3 and the Zeiss Super Speed MKII / III T1.3.  A quick “Hitchcock Experiment”.

Then something struck me.   The cameras we shoot on today, aren’t necessarily S35 sensor size anymore.  As I type this, there are commercially available Digital Cinema cameras that have sensors that range from: s8mm, S16mm, S35mm, “Stills” Full Frame and the new frontier of Digital Medium Format.  This changes things with regard to what a “50mm” is.   When we are talking Super35, the 50mm is the next common tighter lens from a “normal” 35mm.  However, when using a stills full frame Digital Cinema camera, 50mm is now the normal focal length.  Step up to an even bigger sensor like Digital Medium format, and a 50mm falls on the slightly wider than normal end of the spectrum.  What I needed to be testing was field of view, not necessarily the actual focal length.   That is roughly 47 degrees field of view.   Thats what a 50mm on Super35 sees.

Having to contend with multiple formats did complicate the matter a bit,  but it also offered an interesting opportunity.  Now that I’m not necessarily limited to S35 anymore, What about my other favorite lenses?  Specifically full frame, and Medium format options.  I shoot stills on a FUJIFILM GFX100s.   It’s a Digital Medium Format mirrorless stills camera, that has a very large 44x33mm Sensor.  Full Frame is 36mm x 24mm, and the 16:9 extraction for video is about 36mm x18mm.  The GFX100s sensor is using about 44mm x 25mm in 16:9 video mode, though thats its only option for sensor area in video.  I have two definite favorite lenses for the GFX100s that are in that 47 degree FOV range. The Pentax 645 75mm F2.8, a beautiful vintage lens from the 1980’s and the FUJIFILM 80mm F1.7, modern, crisp and sharp.  I figured I should test all my favorite lenses, of each format, in their native intended format, but choosing the focal length that gives me as close as possible that 47 degrees.   My plan was somewhat thwarted, when I realized I’d have to change camera bodies for each group.   Comparing lenses directly to each other, but with footage originating from different cameras is not going to give me quite the clean comparison I was looking for.   The different cameras will impart their look on the test subject, and skew the results.

(***Very important note here…. Most cinema camera manufacturers have their own sense of what these formats should be sensor dimension wise.  For example, the “S35” of a RED Helium, is a different size than that of the Alexa35, which is different than the Alexa XT, which is different than the Alexa Classic, which is different from the Canon C300, the Varicam, the F55, and so on.  They are all roughly close to each other, but also in general much bigger than the 16:9 shaped 3 perf film gate… So while the target field of view (FOV) is 47 degrees… The lenses in the test will never truly produce that exact FOV.  Variations in the lenses themselves, the target formats, and whether the lenses are even available in the specific focal lengths necessary to make an exact 47degree FOV, meant I had to accept a little leeway. I decided instead to try to find the lenses that matched FOV between the formats that was still reasonably close to the look of a classic 50mm on S35***)

I went to NAB this past spring, and was discussing my challenges with the camera prep on this film with my friends at the FUJIFILM booth.  “I just wish the GFX could shoot all the smaller video formats natively, then I could test all the lenses on one camera” I said.   They smiled and asked me to contact them in a week when NAB was over.   NDA signing later, I was eventually introduced to the GFX100 II.  Whats different about this update to the GFX line, is that FUJIFILM really put a lot of thought and care into the Digital Cinema side of the camera.   It’s similar in spirit to the latest small mirrorless from FUJIFILM, the X-H2S. The new features are things like high frame rates, 10 bit 4:2:2 4K and 8K ProRes recording on board, 4K 60P, improved dynamic range and an even better Flog2 gamma just to start.  The GFX100s, the model I have, was really only able to do up to 30fps in 4k in a AVC intra style H265 codec in 10 bit 4:20 color.   While its footage is still great, you are limited to the full size of the sensor and 29.97 fps as a max frame rate in 4K.  What really stood out to me was that the GFX100 II, can shoot multi format. You can choose to shoot in full “GF” (Medium format), “PREMISTA”  (Full frame), and a “Super35” crop on the sensor.   Medium format…. Full Frame…. S35… on one sensor.  This was the tool I needed to be able to try out my “Hitchcock Experiment” and get “The Permit” in the can.  Now it gets interesting.

THE TEST:
Ok, so now that its possible to do this test with results I can actually compare directly, what exactly am I doing?

What I didn’t want to do was a dull lens test.  I wanted a scene, not a lens chart.   So I came up with a concept paying some homage to “The Conversation”, Francis Ford Coppola’s classic.  My writer friend Joseph Piscopo penned a script that accomplished what I needed technically and with great entertainment value.  The look of this test, is very similar to the intended look of the feature project, so its a good way to see what lens will be a good match for the mood of the film.   What you are going to see is a short film, broken up by “days” in the story.  It’s designed to be repetitive in nature, so that we could shoot each day with a different lens and its accompanying format.  The shot consists of a tracking stedicam shot, as the main character shows up to work each day, taking a long walk through a factory.  The actors movements and the movements of the camera are as consistent as we could possibly make them.    There are a few key moments to look out for, detailed after the test film below.

These are the lenses in order of display in the film.  All were shot at T2.8 (T2.9 for PREMISTA zoom).

***In the film, Lens #9, the control, shows up first and last to book end the test with a very ubiquitous known quantity, the Alexa Mini, and a popular lens I use often, that I feel is very neutral, the PREMISTA 28-100 zoom.  Just to give a sense of what a familiar camera will look like in the scene.***

My goal, is to see which of these lenses, in their native formats, S35, FF and Medium Format, captures the mood of the scene the best. This is the most subjective test I can think of, and thats the point.  There is no winner.  They are all amazing lenses.  I use them all regularly.  The goal is not to see what lens is “best” technically… The goal is to see which lens/format is “right” for the storytelling.  What makes this test unique, is that for the first time, I can compare not only the characteristics of the lenses, but how they behave in their intended format and how the format also changes the perception of the mood and feel of the film.  Bear in mind, this is also all coming from the same camera.  The exact same D/R, color science, and light response.  The GFX100II is the currently the only cinema camera on the market that can shoot three different motion picture formats, all in 4K-8K.  This gives the cinematographer access to not only 120 years of Cine glass, but all the Full Frame, and Medium Format lenses of the past, in their intended formats ( or at least close to it), can now be used to their fullest.

NOTES BEFORE WATCHING:

-The room metered at a T5.6 @800.  I used a Formatt Hitech Firecrest .6 ND filter to maintain a T2.8 across all the lenses, as thats my preferred shooting stop.  The filter does of course create some reflections under certain circumstances. The most visible one is in the doorway near the red “Exit Sign”.  The over head lighting in the background makes a small reflection that gets kicked back to the sensor.  This was not visible without the filter in place. It is not indicative of the performance of the GFX100 II

-I opted to try autofocus with the FUJIFILM 80mm F1.7 lens on “DAY 2”.   As its a stills lens, and the GFX100II was in beta firmware, I wasn’t able to use its repeatable manual focus function.  I didn’t want to mis represent its capabilities before its finished.  Essentially, it makes the AF lens behave like a manual lens with repeatable focus movements on the electronic focus ring, allowing for the use of wireless follow focus units.  But, it was a cool chance to test out the GFX100 II’s face tracking ability in video.  I think it did very well, it remained locked on the subject the entire shot, only hunting when pointing at the surveillance station for a moment.

-You will see a single edit jump cut in Day One / Lens 1 PENTAX 75mm F2.8.  This was for audio purposes, as there was interference in one of the takes over his dialogue, and there was a lighting issue on the tail end of the cleanest audio take, when he reaches the surveillance table. I did not want to crop in to help seam the shots together.

-Both cameras, GFX100 II and the Alexa Mini were rated at ISO800.

Without further delay, Please enjoy “The Permit”
You can download the original file from the Vimeo link.  Its in 4K ProRes if you would like to see it in its full quality.

THE PERMIT:

BTS Video:

THE STATIONS: Some things to keep an eye on.

1 – The Roll Gate. The scene opens with the roll gate.  The exterior is 8-9 stops over key as compared to the ambient interior.  What I was looking for here is how does a large broad, over exposed element effect the characteristics of the lens.  How did they handle this extreme lighting situation?  Does the artifacting take you out of it the story.   Does it look “weird”….  All things to look out for.

2 – The entrance. As the character continues, we enter into the big room.   There is a small light above the talent right at the first turn designed to ping the lens from a high angle.  Does it register at all?

3 – The factory floor. As the character continues in the big room.  This is one of the longest vistas in the interior.  The parallel lights and distant background give a good sense of the bokeh, and how the location reads in relation to the character.  Is the background too out of focus to read well etc… This section is available light.   Sunlight filtering through sky lights. I was looking for loss of contrast, and any artifacts from having many smaller light sources in the frame.

4 – The doorway. The next turn is designed to mimic a neon, or LED exit sign.   I was looking to see if there was any color veiling from having a ton of red light in the frame.  This was more specific to the older lenses. Super Baltar, Super Speed and Pentax.

5 – The Long Walk.  This section has a row of three fresnels rigged out of frame, providing three levels of backlight.  The first just hitting the talent, flagged from camera.  The second tilted up slighlty to hit the talent and the camera with an additional unit hitting the lens more aggressively to create a flare.  The third, hitting just the talent, but with a 2nd unit hitting just the camera sepreatly.  I wanted to see how off of frame flares are handled, as well as how the background separation is in a wider frame.

6 – The surveillance table.  Here there is some mixed light. A tungsten lamp illuminating the table, and a daylight backlight. This is the darkest part of the scene, its also when the camera gets the closest. I was looking for how the focus fall off, bokeh, contrast, black level and formats effected the scene.

WORKING WITH THE GFX100II:

It is always fun to try out new cameras.  In this case, I was VERY VERY impressed.  The GFX100II is stellar.  Not just how it looked, but how it worked.  It felt like I was using a proper cine camera.  The controls were simple and straight forward.  Its built “tough”.  Featuring a full sized HDMI connection, a strong and snug lens mount with no play and a removable EVF.  The removable EVF is great because it lowers the profile of the camera and left more room for accessories.  We had no overheating issues but still attached an aftermarket cooling fan for extra protection, but I didn’t think it was needed.  The battery life was very good, better than my current GFX100s.  I shot a combination of Prores 4K and 8K. The super35 modes to get the proper S35 frame size, you have to record in 8K. Its basically “pixel for pixel” readout.

I used a Fotodiox Pro – PL to GFX lens mount adapter.   The same adapter I use on my GFX100s.  A testament to the quality FUJIFILM puts into their cameras, the mount was spot on collimated on both of the bodies.  You could use the lens marks with a measuring tape.  With other mirrorless cameras I’ve owned, shimming a PL mount for one body didn’t mean it would be correctly collimated for another body in the same line.   It bodes well that both were just about perfect.

We also used a Kondor Blue prototype cage to mount accessories and rails.  The camera was powered by from a battery plate that also powered the Teradek Bolt 6 – XT with panel array on the receiver. I reached out to my friends at CSLA , Teradek and SmallHD, and asked if they could help out with this project. I needed to use the most powerful wireless system they had.  I knew the walls of this factory were going to be a problem.  Graciously they let me borrow the best of what they make.  Amazingly, the Bolt 6 was able to reach the video village consisting of a Small HD 24″ OLED monitor, with a crystal clear signal through thick brick walls and at times over 150 feet of distance with zero line of sight.  It was a life saver.  We also used a Teradek RT wireless Follow focus, and 1st AC Ryan Patrick O’hara mapped all of the lenses, so that each individual lens would have the same focus throw on the hand unit. This way as we rehearsed the move, regardless of the lens, it would feel the same to him.  He is living autofocus that never misses.  It’s remarkable.

Considering the length of the takes, and precision of the move, our Stedicam operator Jason Leeds, SOC, certainly appreciated the light weight of the build.  I capped us at 3 takes per day/lens in the script.  It worked out to about 30 takes in all… each over two minutes counting frame up and slate. Thats a long time to be framed and moving with precision.  Jason is an amazing operator.

Now… the part I love…. The image…. I recorded in Flog2, FUJIFILM’s new log gamma.  It’s flatter than the previous version and it needs it to store all the image data.  The GFX100 II has excellent dynamic range and color.  I didn’t put it on a XYLA chart, but it felt close to the Alexa Mini in over all dynamic range. The Mini had a stop or so more highlight latitude.  The GFX100 II was MUCH cleaner in the shadows than the Alexa.  I would comfortably shoot it as high as 3200 ISO.  As you saw, in a real world filmmaking scenario, the GFX100 II held its own against the gold standard in the industry, the Alexa Mini. I would even be bold enough to say I preferred the color science in the GFX100 II.  It always locked in on the skin tones easily in the color suite, and it represented the other colors in the scene very accurately.  Even the Mini sometimes shifts aquas and teals to green or blue.  The GFX100 II was dead on with colors, from everything from skin, to wardrobe, to the elements in the location.

The ProRes footage is very easy to cut.  While the GFX100II can do 12bit 4K RAW over HDMI to a recorder, I opted to shoot ProRes as I felt thats what most users will shoot.  It graded and edited like butter on a M1 mac.  Even the 8K footage.

To maintain consistency, I used FUJIFILM’s Flog2 to Eterna LUT.  I metered the factory location with a Sekonic C800 Color meter, and found an ambient color temperature of 5100K.  The Cameras were set to 5100K and not rebalanced for the rest of the shoot.   The factory lighting was consistent, and we shot so quickly that the sun did not have a very drastic shift.  Any color shifting you see between the days is imparted by the lens.  The Control footage from the Alexa I did however grade a little bit using Film Convert’s Fuji Film looks as a starting point. It tracked surprisingly well.

I realized something thats actually kind of cool.   Since you can have three different format based DOF characteristics, You can in theory carry three “47Degree FOV” lenses, and choose between them for the kind of DOF and background separation you need in a particular shot, while not changing the “rules” of maintaining the same field of view.  Think if it as changing lenses, without changing lenses.

THE PRODUCTION:

It was important to me to really give this test a finished look.  There is no more real world trial for a lens than actually shooting something with it in the field. With the support of some amazing people we pulled together and made what I hope was entertaining as much as it was informative.

I wanted to create a world, and see how the lenses reacted to the world.   Our production designer Abigail Stanton worked tirelessly and really made the place feel lived in and real.  Not only did the film have a sense of time and place, but small details like finger prints and crumbs on the table really pulled it all together.

Josh Benson our gaffer, spent the better part of a day carefully blocking skylights and windows, then re lighting big sections of the walking segment to maintain the look and feel of the space.   We had very limited tools, but the G/E team made the most of what we did have.  We had only a handful of my own personal Rayzr lighting: three Rayzr 7 fresnels, 1x 2×1 Rayzr MC400 max panel, 4 LED tubes, and 2 Rayzr Mono lights.  Josh somehow lit 100,000 square feet with only that, a few Cardelini clamps and a couple rolls of duvateyne.  Brilliant gaffer.

The incredible acting talent that came to help out and bring the characters to life.  Mousa Hussein Kraish and Bhavani Lee.

CONCLUSION:

I know what my favorite lens is out of the bunch.  Whats yours?  That’s the point of this.  It is purely subjective.

I found this project very personally informative.  It was an interesting experience, seeing how certain lenses brought the scene to life.  Their characteristics just happened to mesh with the content…. to me….  I would be willing to bet that different people have differing opinions of which lens that actually is.

I was excited that the stars aligned so that I could actually perform this test.  This would not have happened without the generous support from FUJIFILM, not only supplying me with a beta camera that was physically able to make this all possible, but supporting the production and bringing me the fabulous production team at Pairadox Studios: Jackie Merry, Casper Hanney, Nhung Nguyen and Tani Shukla.  Without their support this would have been impossible.

I also want to thank Creative Solutions LA, Teradek, Small HD, Keslow Camera, Sigma Photo Corporation and Rayzr Lighting for their support.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did making it.

Welcome back, thank you for reading.

This is really two posts in one. This section and a quoted section at the end, from a post from a week ago that highlighted a preliminary test for Sigma fp Cinema DNG workflow.  Last week’s post, it seemed initially like I had unlocked some extra dynamic range out of the RAW files.  I have spent the better part of the last week talking with colorists and engineers about what I was seeing. Despite being a cinematographer for about 14 years,  one thing I never dove too deeply into, was post production. Last fall, I decided to try to learn how to color grade properly after seeing the amazing things Steve Yedlin was doing.  It was amazing how much control he was able to extract from the footage of nearly any camera, by fully understanding how the color and post process pipeline works in combination with on set practices.   It’s been about 7 months since I started on this “self help” project.  I have been watching all the same tutorials, youtube videos and workshops as everyone else.   One thing I know… despite how much I have learned, I realized I know almost nothing.  That fact became even more apparent last week, especially considering what I learned since.   I was wrong about what I was seeing in the initial test.  While impressive to someone who took the footage at face value, it was really nothing miraculous.  The difference being,  I simply followed along on the workflow of someone else; Juan Melara, and did it “right” for once.  While it looked like initially that I was unlocking some added dynamic range, I was really just setting up the project in a more advanced, and more advantageous starting point.  A starting point that let me see what the fp was actually capturing, and work with it in a way that was familiar and effective.  The fp footage seemed to take on better image reproduction qualities and seemed to perform nearly as well as the much more expensive and impressively specced Panasonic S1h.   So while the results are not false by any means, I did a few things… wrong.  Well not wrong, inefficient and clumsy is more the right description.

After posting my findings, I was contacted by a few colleagues who specialized in color and post.  They could see that I was doing it “right”, but that I didn’t really know WHY it was right.  This is why the film community is so important.  There is no way I could have learned as much as I did without the time other people gave me.  Mentorship is a priceless thing. I had a multi hour conversation with a more experienced resolve user Tim Kang, colorist Juan Salvo and briefly Deanan DeSilva.  They explained that Cinema DNG being an open source format means that there is not necessarily a set way of filling that container with information.  So what happens is you are at the mercy of how the camera is going to display the data from within the CDNG container.  Then, there is the issue of how the editing/grading software is going to take that and display it to you.  They may not line up.  Of course, you can just work with the RAW CDNG from the fp as is.  There is nothing wrong with that method.  For me, I was never happy with the highlight and shadow handing out of camera. It felt too crunchy.  To help speed up the process of getting the footage where I want it, taking advice from both Tim and Juan, I found what works best for me.   The method transforms the CDNG into linear space and converts it to ARRI Color and LogC, just like I did in that first test.  However, the difference is how I got there.  I chose ARRI color science and LogC as an output because it has the most established workflow overall. I have tons of looks, grades, and plugins that work with Alexa footage.  (A quick side note, Tim Kang also showed me a method thats very clever, for workin with LOG files with transformations that make them behave as as if they were RAW.   I will detail that in another post.)

The starting point: 

Under Camera RAW:

Decode : Clip

White balance: As close to what you think you shot the footage at, or a little off if you prefer warmer or cooler, but it wont matter cause you can adjust it in the WB node with the Linear RGB values.

Color Space: P3 D60 ( the widest one CDNG allows, if using R3D or ARRIRAW you can choose the native colorspace, plus when using other RAW formats you will get more options, CDNG only has REC709, Blackmagic Color and P3D60, I don’t use the BMcolor space because there is no transform option for it in the ColorSpace transform too)

Gamma: Linear

Highlight Recovery (off)

Then I make three nodes:

1 White balance/Exposure

2: Output Transform

3: LUT

Also, very important, make sure under the Color Wheels tab, you turn LumMix to Zero for the WB/Exposure node. It basically messes with saturation as you change values to keep the saturation and luminance in check, but since we are looking for a more “manual” way of doing things, it can cause problems in this stage in the Linear space.

Next thing you do is on the Output Node, add the Colorspace Transform tool.  Don’t touch the other nodes yet.

Set it to:

inputColor space: P3-D60,

Input Gamma: Linear

Output Color Space: ARRI Alexa

OutPut Gamma: ARRI LogC

(you can also do RedWideGamut/Log3G10 or V-Gamut vLog for output color,  Make sure the gamma and color space are matching for now, unless you REALLY know what you are doing or are planning on grading fully manually with no camera luts)

Its all about getting to a nice starting point with fp CDNG files. Remember this is just one way of 100 to grade footage. But I like how this gives me control before and after the point where the Log image is created, and the looks are applied.  Also, making changes BEFORE the conversion to log will have much bigger effect down the pipeline, cause you are “changing the ingredients” to stick with the cooking analogy.

Below, is the older post I initially made, and I am including it, so you can see the road to this current method of working. What is different between the two, is that the additional node between the Camera RAW tab linear output and the Transform tool (2nd Node) lets you fine tune the data before it gets “baked into Log”.   Also your controls with the wheels in the Color tab are finer than just picking an ISO, and punching in a white balance.

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“After some deeper testing….. I think the Sigma fp “might” have more dynamic range than Sigma says.

I have been testing and using the fp for some time now.   According to Sigma, the fp has 12 stops of dynamic range.   This has always been a bit underwhelming, as the standard these days seems to be 13 stops -14 stops.  However, the camera has so much going for it that, its still a very versatile, and intriguing camera. RAW recording, 4K, Full frame, excellent lowlight performance in a package thats smaller than my Teradek wireless video transmitter.   You can build it up to be a pretty effective cinema camera, or strip it down to be a great little pocket camera.

To over come its somewhat limited Dynamic range, I had been using the old “MiniDV” technique of protecting the highlights when exposing in RAW.   Knowing that because the footage is so clean, I had a couple stops to pull the image back up and bring some balance back to the image.   After spending the last 4 months doing quarantine research about colorspace transformation and raw processing ( thanks Steve Yedlin, ASC) I started playing with different RAW development methods. I took the fp DNG files into resolve, set the RAW settings to Linear gamma, P3D60. ( a Juan Melara trick)  Then I applied the colorspace transform tool in the OpenFx tab.  Then I selected the input space/gamma (P3D60+Linear), then the output color space/gamma to ARRI Alexa and Log C (or V-Gamut/Vlog, or RWG/Log3G10 if you need to mix cameras), and watched as 3 stops of highlight detail magically appeared…..

See attached stills from the fp RAW:

3: Using Color space Transform tool: Conversion to ARRI Alexa Color space and LogC.  Pay attention to the highlights in the tree and the obnoxiously brightly lit house.