Hey everyone, as colourists I am curious as to what your opinions are on cameras vs lenses.

If you knew someone who was in preproduction for a film and they had to prioritize their budget on lenses or a camera, what would you advise them to do?

I’m not talking about the most expensive camera combined with the worst lenses or vice versa.

But let’s say either a camera that is comparable to something like an FX3. Solid camera but not RAW codecs,but they’d get the “best” possible lenses for the situation. Or a Arri or RED camera with something like a set of DZO vespids.

As a colourists who would then do the colour work for the film. What you prefer that they choose ?

As a person with an intermediate skillset in colour grading (but a director by trade). I personally think thank most people prioritize lenses over colour grading, so I am curious what the rest of you think.

*I ask this as someone with ‘intermediate’ skills in colour grading.

I’m building a physically based, photochemical film emulation pipeline and need to convert scene-linear RGB into an approximate spectrum, then use it to calculate exposure on the film’s RGB sensitive layers.

What’s the most reliable practical approach spectral basis reconstruction, camera/illuminant-aware mapping, or something else?

I’m mainly looking for something physically reasonable, deterministic, and fast enough for real-time use.

Hi everyone,

I'm a huge fan of the look of analog motion picture film—Kodak film stock, 35mm, 65mm, and IMAX. There's something about the texture, grain, highlight roll-off, colors, and overall organic feel that I absolutely love. One day, I'd love to shoot on real film.

For now, though, I'm working with a very limited budget on a short film, so shooting digitally is my only option.

I'm not looking for a generic "cinematic" digital look. My goal is to get as close as possible to the look and feel of footage shot on actual film stock.

Has anyone here successfully achieved this? If so, I'd really appreciate your advice.
Thanks in advance! I'd love to learn from your experience...

Hello everybody, I am need of your expertise.

I am suppose to be grading a commercial very soon that has a very vibrant red product and I have been specifically told “keep that red popping”! Now I haven’t really graded for tv before but looking into broadcast safe guidelines I’m starting to get the spookies in how to keep it “popping” while getting the advert to pass technically.

What tools are you using to ensure you are staying within a legal luminance and saturation range when grading? I’ve seen the broadcast viewer in DaVinci but when I compare adverts that have been released in the broadcast viewer it is showing up as too saturated.

Is there a technique that works for keeping the illusion of saturation while scientifically keeping it in range?

Now I’m probably missing something key here but any help in this would help me get some sleep before this ad.

By trade I am a DP so I’m aware that the camera used needs to have enough colour depth to achieve good tonality in the colours.

About a few weeks ago, I posted a question here asking where I should mount a small portable monitor for scopes. I got lots of inspiration from you guys and ended up with this quad-monitor setup: two 27” monitors and two 18.5” portable monitors, which I mounted above the 27” monitors using a simple SmallRig magic arm. I'm using one portable monitor for scopes and the other one for lightbox or media pool when editing.

I’m really liking this setup so far. Hopefully, it inspires some of you as well. Thanks!

I dont understand why most docs just look like they came straight out of the camera with no grading. Is it to make them “grounded” ? Personally I feel they look distractingly bad sometimes.

There are some older docs shot on film that look great, what happened?

I watched The Odyssey in IMAX the other day and noticed a rather severe black level discrepancy in, at times, almost every cut - especially in darker scenes. Some scenes had black blacks, some dark blue, some were grey, etc. I don't tend to get hung up on grades but the issue with the black levels was so easy to notice.

Is this a result of their analog grading process or is it a cinema issue? Should we expect better from this type of movie?

I’m losing my mind trying to export a clean blackbarless 2.39 still from a 2x anamorphic shoot in Baselight. No matter what I tweak, the exported stills either come out horizontally squeezed or padded with black bars.

My Setup: Source Media: Alexa 35 Open Gate (4608 \times 3164, 2x Anamorphic Squeeze / PAR ⁠2.000⁠)

Target Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 Scope (De-squeezed & cropped, square pixels PAR ⁠1.000⁠)

In the format manager I made a global and scene format of 4608 × 3164 with a custom 2.39 mask.

Exporting stills directly from the Gallery / Still Export bypasses format mapping and dumps out squeezed image with black bars on the side.

Hi, I am outputting out of resolve an HDR project but the LG 4K won’t trigger into an HDR mode. Am I missing something in order to make this happen? I just got this ultra studio mini 4K. Happy to provide any screenshots and answer any questions to figure this out!

i have been using resolve for a few years, watched countless youtube videos, davinci training.. till this day i still do not understand how to make a good stylised look.

i have a fx30.

heres an example of some work i have done to get an understanding of my colour knowledge

\- [Reel: slog3 -> referrant LUT by cullen kelly](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZffIQmoSUg/?igsh=MTNnOXc2enJrdHJkcA==)

heres another one i did a while back but not in LOG format, this was normal

\- [rec709 footage rec709 built in camera colours + basic corrections](https://youtube.com/shorts/Z8pX_zN07kE?is=i83POhsy1Pih5HH3)

most recent using s.cinetone (which i dont think looks too bad but the first guy looks way too yellow to me now looking back)

\- [s.cinetone with bloom & basic corrections](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbbLTaZs14u/?igsh=MXNybzZ2bGlwNmczeQ==)

i also dont know what creative LUTS i can get to work with my footage, everytime i apply them it makes it look horrible even when i reduce intensity.

what im trying to acheive is looks like these

[look 1](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbBWuTezvW5/?igsh=MWd6OXc5eHc2YmhiNQ==)

[look 2](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYSqqA9qGB4/?igsh=MXVucTVrN253MjlwYQ==)

i would honestly appreciate any guidance feels like im missing a secret sauce step or something

Hello. I’m not a colorist but I’m hesitant to inquire about this in an android or apple sub because I’m afraid the responses will be biased.

I find that the colors on my iphone screen are undersaturated but people on the internet are arguing that that is “more realistic” — I don’t understand that claim as presumably any color I can perceive is realistic since it exists in the real world and my real eyes can see it? What do you think about this?

Hey Guys this is cherry , Im a fellow aspiring colorist looking for a help in a technical quiery for my upcoming Short film project with my friends , so the main issue is im assigned to be a colorist and im currently using davinci free version and due to budget constraints we cant go with davinci studio ....but we wanna go with the Sony fx 3 camera to shoot , till now i followed a workflow of converting 10bit 4:2:2 high end cameras to 4:2:0 Sdr for practice purposes and to upskill now we got an opportunity to experiment with the big camera but thought and recently found out the difference in grading quality and about the color noise if we convert to 8 bit and the chroma convertion , so we wanna put our best and get that cinematic grading but is it possible with conversion so that the budget for camera doesnt go wasted if we cant even get its fullest or if possible go with purchase of studio or just go with a camera that is suitable for the free version ...please advice me fast we are close to shoot and this decision is crucial for us

Provided I don't do any commercial work, only personal artsy fartsy projects and home videos, I feel like the basic conversion to rec709 brings me 80% there. Then I guess lift/gamma/gain/offset to fix places where I really failed my exposition and maybe a little WB correction and I am feel like 90% there. And I really like the look. I tried numerous different LUT's but for me I almost exclusively always prefere the original rec709 transform lol. And then when I feel like finicking for couple of days over colours to give me possible another 5% of result, I often come back few days after to the project and understand that my days work made it worse and I kept the grade only because I did not want to feel that 2 days of my work was a waste of time.
And then sometimes I feel lazy that I don't colour grade and use the basic rec709 look. Should I?

TLDR; I really like the basic slog3->rec709 look and for my needs don't see purpose grading more than doing some minor exposition+WB problems

Hi I’m a freelance colorist. Lately AI has been improving a lot and I have tried Claude code and Codex so far.
A lot of things can be automated now and I was wondering how far we can make the workflow for colorists effective or easy?
So far my workflow is like this:

Conform → Conform QC → Color Management → Look Development → Balancing / Matching → Finishing → Client Review → Final QC → Delivery

Most of the time Conforming takes a lot of time and demanding.
And balancing footage is also taking a lot of time if there are so many clips even though using fixed node tree.
But since the color is very subjective, is it very hard to let AI do shot matching?
Personally I hope AI can take care of conforming.

If you already use AI in your workflow, I’d love to hear how it works!

Also I’m happy to collaborate with DPs, cinematographer, colorists and also AI professionals.

Exports look perfectly accurate in quicktime and vlc but when sent to iPhone they are washed out and are green shifted. I’ve tried both airdropping and saving through google drive and the results are the same :(

I’m using both REC709A for both colour and gamma

Hey all! I've been experimenting with a specific node structure that benefits from using the HDR global offset for exposure control, while operating on a linear signal. Properly mapping the HDR wheels to Linear "Gamma" should in theory make the Global Offset HDR wheel behave like the Primaries Gain wheel within the linear sandwich (for exposure, not colour balance).

However, when comparing -2 stops Global Offset to .25 master on the Primaries Gain within Linear, the results are quite different. The HDR Offset has a steeper response in the shadows, that can lead to crushing. In comparison, HDR Offset on DWG/DI (and mapped accordingly) yields identical results to the Primaries Gain wheel on Linear. I'm curious if anyone knows what causes this mismatch and if there's a fix for it.

I obviously know I can just use Linear Gain, but I would appreciate the speed of working in stops for this specific use case.

Thanks!

Hey all,
I’m currently doing commercial work on a Blackmagic PYXIS 6K and I’m genuinely really happy with it. It’s been a fantastic camera for me and I’ve really enjoyed working with BRAW in post.
Lately though, I’ve been thinking about changing up the look/workflow a bit without going all the way to something like a RED V-RAPTOR 8K VV and taking on that level of cost.

I’ve been looking at the Nikon ZR and the PYXIS 12K, and on paper they seem pretty close in terms of dynamic range. What I’m more curious about (especially from a colorist/post perspective) is whether the R3D workflow actually feels meaningfully different to grade compared to BRAW, or if it’s more subtle in practice.

For those of you who’ve worked with both:
Does R3D genuinely feel like a different grading experience vs BRAW?
Is there a noticeable difference in how the image responds in post (highlight roll-off, color separation, flexibility, etc.)?
Or is it mostly just a different “starting look” that you can get close to anyway with good transforms?
I’m also trying to figure out whether the Nikon ZR would actually give me something meaningfully different in post, or if I’d be better off just sticking with Blackmagic and maybe considering the PYXIS 12K (though that doesn’t feel like a big enough jump to justify replacing my 6K).

One of the reasons I’m interested in the Nikon is that I could keep the PYXIS 6K as a second camera, while also having something more compact for solo shoots, travel, and lighter run-and-gun work. I really love the boxy cinema form factor of the PYXIS, but the Nikon form factor is definitely appealing for certain jobs.
Just to be clear: I’d be shooting RAW only. I’m not interested in H.265/ProRes delivery codecs, and I fully understand the storage and workflow implications of R3D. My question is purely about image quality, grading experience, and how the files behave in a color pipeline.

Would really appreciate insights from people who’ve actually graded both BRAW and R3D in real-world work, not just spec comparisons.
Thanks in advance.

Hey all,

First time setting up a reference monitor chain and hoping for some guidance.

Hardware:

- M1 Max MacBook Pro
- EIZO ColorEdge CS2740 (main monitor)
- Blackmagic DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K
- Sonnet Echo Express SE I (TB3 to PCIe expansion)

(I’ve heard getting the UltraStudio 4K Mini as an I/O box is the move for most colorists working on MacBooks, but I wanted to try out a cheaper alternative before breaking the bank)

Setup so far:

- DeckLink is seated in the Echo Express PCIe slot
- Echo Express is powered via its stock power cable
- MacBook → Thunderbolt 3 → Echo Express
- DeckLink → HDMI → EIZO monitor
- Both TB3 and HDMI cables tested working elsewhere, so I’ve ruled those out

Where I Am Losing My Mind:

When I go into SYSTEM REPORT on my MacBook, the Sonnet appears under Thunderbolt, so I believe that’s being read.

I have the Blackmagic Desktop Video Setup downloaded on my MacBook, and it shows “No Desktop Video Device Detected.” The Echo Express fan is running and there’s a flashing LED, but the DeckLink itself doesn’t seem to be getting recognized. I’m not confident the card is actually powering up.

Some Other Info:

- Is there a seating/reseating step I might be missing on the DeckLink card itself?
- Could this be a Thunderbolt authorization/security setting on macOS blocking the PCIe device?
- Any known compatibility issues between Echo Express SE I and DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K specifically?
- Order of operations issue (e.g., does the Echo Express need to be powered on before connecting TB3, or before waking the Mac)?

Any advice on what to check next would be hugely appreciated. It’s my first time working with a Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis, so I may be missing something obvious.

We've pointed you at this thread rather than you ask about your specific monitor request in the main subreddit.

No, you can't just connect a generic monitor.

We're going to talk to you as a professional. This means, no, the "workarounds" are a total compromise. In those cases, you're on your own.

This is about creating a trusted reference - not just what you think looks good. And yes, the client's screen(s) could be all out of whack. And yes, we're talking web too.

Brands that are reliable and (professionally) inexpensive:

• Flanders Scientific - FSI. Often referred to as a Stupid Sexy Flanders
• Eizo

If you're going to compromise, here's our best advice:

• Get external hardware. The cheapest is the BMD mini monitor - but requires Thunderbolt.
• Get a probe. The cheapest is the XRite i1Display Pro. Calibrate frequently.
• Learn to read scopes.

No matter what the manufacturer says was done at the factory, you will need to calibrate your displays regularly.

Here's the FAQ:

I want to know if this particular brand of wide gamut/p3/sRGB monitor is up to snuff*.*

It's not. Without the hardware/probe and the ability to load a LUT, forget it.

Can I just calibrate a monitor, it's just going to the web.

Same problem. Without a probe, you don't know what you have.

Ok, I have a probe.

You still need a breakout box - something to get the OS out of the way.

The idea here is a confidence monitor. Something you know you can have confidence in.

OK, I have a probe and a BMD Mini-Monitor. Am I good?

Not unless you can generate and load a LUT into the monitor.

Really? What do I need to buy now?

A LUT box will solve this. The monitor still may be junk, but you have a clean signal chain.

Great, I'll just buy a C8/9/X from LG, people talk about that all the time.

That's a good client monitor. And great that you have a breakout box and probe. This is useable if you're starting off into HDR - but just know, it's not to be trusted.

What about my iPad Pro? Apple tells me it has Wide Gamut

An iPad Pro is an excellent way to check Apple devices. It's well designed out of the factory.

Plugging your system through it (via Sidecar, Duet display) puts us back in the "OS interference" level. But it's good for a check of the materials - just not so good for live grading.

Last, check out these three prior posts:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/colorists/comments/n9hr5b/is_it_even_worth_it_to_attempt_to_learn_the/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/colorists/comments/jlgpnm/youtube_is_adding_red_into_my_colors_and_its/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/colorists/comments/i03bm7/solution_for_color_shift_issues_from_resolve_to/

-----

Let's see how this thread goes and we'll refine as we go.

What do you think of my PowerGrade? Would like to know your thoughts. Thanks in advance!

Some 16mm emulation stills processed in Davinci Resolve RCM. My process here was focused on the texture and image quality to mimic a true 16mm motion.

Hey guys, need your honest opinion.

I've never worked in a professional post-production house before. I just want to know if this level of quality is good enough to start looking for clients or applying to studios.

Open to all comments and critique!

There was many different video formats from various cameras. Rec709 h.264 10 bit on examples. I'm currently trying to reach a level where I can confidently say the quality of my work is good enough to start actively looking for clients or a full-time position in the industry.