The Final Grade

Just finished the grading process for 'The Combination' with a final check today of all the reels in the DI suite before sending to film out. The DI was done by the talented colorists at Efilm here in Sydney, on the Lustre system with monitoring on the Barco 2K projector.

Very happy with the final results, the RED has come through with pleasing results, not withstanding some scenes that were quite difficult to grade. Even though i rated the camera at 500 ASA, effectively underexposing, we had no noise issues in the image at all - at least not when viewing the fully calibrated DI room projector, or on the 35mm print. Going through a full DI process for filmout does put the image under the greatest real world scrutiny and the camera held up pretty well - except for some particular situations.

The most difficult scenes to grade properly were without doubt those shot under tungsten light, especially if low level or a bit underexposed. As the sensor is native daylight balance, the warm tones of a tungsten lit interior seem to push the colour imaging capabilities of the camera close to the limit in the red part of the spectrum. Of course it is possible to correct the balance in the DI suite but an apparent colour depth limitation rears it's ugly head making many shots look 'funny' and not quite right. Again, it is fixable, but does often require a lot more work on the part of the colorist to make images acceptable.

On the other hand, many of the scenes shot in daylight or with HMI lighting almost grade themselves and look terrific with just a simple contrast curve applied. In retrospect i would do a some have suggested and use a quarter blue filter on the lens when shooting tungsten, just to take a bit of red out of the image. Apparently the new Red Build 16  does have 'improved tungsten tolerance' which would be very welcomed. I look forward to testing it when next i have the opportunity to shoot with RED.