So video responds to light using Red, Green, and Blue. Whereas film responds to light using Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, and the fourth for the intensity of the light. As i was re-reading the canon XL H1 mini-site i noticed this:

R gain: This is for adjusting the white balance (WB) of the images. When the cursor is moved in the [+] direction, WB shifts toward red; when moved in the [-] direction, it shifts toward cyan. The coloring is adjusted to suit the user's personal preference in a range of -9 to +9.

G gain: Also for adjusting the white balance (WB) of the images, when the cursor is moved in the [+] direction, WB shifts toward green; when moved in the [-] direction, it shifts toward magenta. The coloring is adjusted to suit the user's personal preference. Adjustment is possible in the -9 to +9 range.

B gain: For adjusting the white balance (WB) of the images. When the cursor is moved in the [+] direction, WB shifts toward blue; when it is moved in the [-] direction, it shifts toward yellow. The coloring is adjusted to suit the user's personal preference, in a range of -9 to +9.

-now wouldn't this help in making custom presets more resemble film? If each is moved to the -9 position, you would be mixing magenta, cyan, and yellow- like film does.

-or am i mistaken?

Interesting,
Ben I tried this just now. Given it is night and I am shooting indoors,
But it looks quite wonderful!
That leaning towards Magenta (and green) that the Canon has isn't there.
and the colors seem surprisingly balanced.
I pumped the general color Gain, and took down all the individuals to -9 (except fot the Blue, which I put at -8)

The darks are darker and so I had to make sure I wasn't Pressing Blacks/ Gamma was Normal
Very Very interesting.
Can't wait to test it in the daylight.
Thanks,
J

Ben, excellent post. I'm excited to try it out.

The results form this are quit beautiful. The darks do become darker, and I always increase the overall color gain, but even though the darks become darker my favorite setting is with cine 1, knee low, master pedestal all the way down, setup levels all the way down, sharpness at -3, color gain at +5, and Red, Green, and Blue color gain all at -9, and everything else at normal. This to my eye resembles some of Kodaks more modern film stocks (maybe 5218) with the deep rich blacks, that make the rest of the colors pop. This is all being used with decent lighting, though.

-excited to hear what everyone else thinks

An excellent thread, and I hope this doesn't come across as being too silly, but here's some "extreme" examples of what you can do... maybe not all that useful unless you're remaking "Night of the Comet."

(No trashing that movie now, it's a sentimental favorite... one of my guilty pleasures!)

Hey Chris, I like the second frame. Very poppy and saturated like CSI:Miami.

Okay, no trashing CSI:Miami....it's one of my guilty pleasures!

-gb-

Chris, which values did you use in the second image?

Sounds interesting. I won't be able to try this until the weekend. Benjamin or anyone else trying this, would you please post either some footage or some stills?

thanks

Steven

Anyone tried this with an XL2? taking down the individual color gains and raising the saturation to compensate?

Whereas film responds to light using Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, and the fourth for the intensity of the light.

This isn't true; film has three layers of emulsion. Also, Magenta, Cyan, and Yellow are just opposites of Green, Green, Red, and Blue (I think...) when you're talking color not pigment.

The method may work, but it has nothing to do with film versus video.

Magenta Cyan and Yellow are secondary colors created by the combintaion of two of the primary colors Red Green and Blue when related to additive color.

vince

-that is true, black (key) is used when you make your prints.

none the less, the technique is interesting. CMY is producing a different color palette than RGB.

benjamin,

i agree. that's the kind of thinking that compels us all to look at things differently.

vince

The proof is in the pudding as they say. If someone can post a shot using the negative and positive values, it would make for an interesting comparison.

Frankly, if it looks really good, I really don't care about the theory :)

I am excited to see the result. Hibernating.

These four images in order: the default / no preset sample; the weird look that Greg called "CSI" earlier (it's RGN +9, RGM +9, RBM +9, RBM +9, GRM +9, BRM +9 -- just playing; feel free to tweak it these extremes down to something useful), and then R,G,B each +9 and RGB each -9. Obviously you'd need to compensate for exposure. I didn't here. The idea is to show how exposure would have to change with the preset. Also, I suspect an adjustment of Color Gain would be a huge help as well. So much for quick and dirty... I ran out of daylight. The whole thing needs to be done over!

Video cameras have three CCD's sensitive to, respectively, portions of the visible spectrum in the Red, Green and Blue regions. The three sensors produce, in response to increased or decreased light in their spectral sensitivity bands, signals which control the amount of either red, green or blue light emitted by a display. Because the primaries on the display don't match the spectral sensitivities of the camera the amount of signal from each of the three channels on the camera which contribute to the light output of each primary on the display are adjustable. The red gun (in a CRT) receives signal mostly from the red CCD but there are bits of green and blue signal mixed in as well. Simularly the green gun receives mostly green CCD signal with some red and blue and so on for the blue gun. Thus there are 9 gains associated with a color camera arranged in a 3 x 3 matrix (strangely Canon calls the off diagonal elements of the matrix "matrix" but the on diagonal, RR, GG, BB, elements "gains"). The R gain (RR matrix) controls the amount of R which goes to the red channel. The RG matrix setting controlls how much red goes to the green channel while the GR setting controls how much green CCD signal goes into the red channel, etc. By tweaking the matrix one can match a range of camera sensitivity characterisitics to a range of displays (with different primaries), compensate for differences in the spectral characteristics of illuminants and, of course, come up with some wildly creative color mappings like the ones in this thread.

Film has three layers sensitive to, respectively, portions of the visible spectrum in the Red, Green and Blue regions. In response to, respectively, more or less light in one of the spectral regions, film removes, respectively, more or less of a complementary dye in the corresponding film layer. Thus bright blue light bleaches most or all of the yellow dye incorporated in the film (reversal film being described though the result is the same with negative/print) whereas weak blue light removes little of it. As yellow dye absorbs blue light parts of the film exposed to a lot of blue light pass or reflect a lot of blue light and conversely. The red sensitive layer incorporates cyan dye and the green sensitive layer, magenta dye. With film you have something sort of like the RR, GG and BB matrix controls if you put a color balancing filter over the taking lens but you do not have the cross matrix elements to tweak unless, of course, you telecine and cross the channels in the digitized images.

In printing, the maximum density of magenta, cyan, and yellow (M,C,Y) often results in a dark muddy brown rather than a rich black thus most printing is done with C, M, Y and K with the latter representing black. In many printers there are 6 or 7 inks C, Cp, M, Mp, Y, K, Kp with Cp being called "photo Cyan", lighter appearing than straight C. Kp is "photo black", more of a grey. The driver takes an RGB (or more proabably Lab) representation of the image and maps it into the space of the printer.

Don't know if yu can see from these pix what this setting is really like, but:
http://www.thereelshit.com/Picts/kaisner_1.png
http://www.thereelshit.com/Picts/kaisner.png

pix compressed, nevermind the gg from the 35mm adaption

What type of adapter is that?

vince

Thanks for posting John. I assume this is done with your LetusXL adapter. It's hard to tell without a comparison of the "normal" RGB settings and the negative ones. I'm hoping to do some testing on Sunday. I'll post something when I do.

It is The LetusXL adapter..I think the batteries were quite low on the vibrater - I haven't seen that kind of gg pattern before. The stills I took were random screen captures that I was taking to use as thumbnails for the website, so I wasn't searching necessarily for the sharpest shots...The Letus really does a nice job

Thanks John,

I just ordered a Redrock M2 to use with a group of Nikon lenses that are being reconditioned. I'm eager to see what I can get out of it.

Vince

Excellent Vince,
I find, and this is just me personally, that I shoot with it more than I dont.
For example, The pictures are from a scene that I shot with both the stock lens (actually I shot it with the 3x wide) and also the adapter.
Editing it with the actors later that day, the consensus was to go with the 35mm footage rather than the regular HD look. It depends what you are shooting,
Mixing them together is hard. Getting nice wide shots with an adapter is also hard.
Nikon lenses are great. You will have a good time,

Back on topic, I find that turning down these individual RGB gains, for whatever reason, is very interesting. I need to explore it more,
But it seems to subltey shift the color of the Canon.
Is that possible? It seems to have shifted the color balance in a way that I like and could not find how to do with just controlling the RGB or the manual white balance.
Might also be my imagination and deep desire, so I am interested in what other people are seeing,
J

So I played around with these settings this morning and I can't say I noticed a huge difference. What I did notice is that there is quite a significant light loss (I haven't measured it but it's at least 1 1/2 stops). I'm not willing to lose that much light for a preset.

What I did notice is that there is quite a significant light lossThis can be seen in the frames I posted earlier (above at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=620392&postcount=16 in this thread). There would have to be some compensation for exposure, plus a boost in the Color Gain.

I'm discovering the same result. There seems to be a little more rolloff on the highlights and a little more detail in the blacks. But it's very slight.

It might make for a great "outdoor" setting. I'm going to keep as my #6 preset for now.

Yes, I agree there is light loss, and I notice that it goes to unusable brights quite fast.
and, like I said before, it may well be my frusteration with my own experience with the color on this camera, but it seems to have a subtley differently balanced color.
Don't know if that is worth the light loss, but I will be playing with this a lot more in the future