I'm sure there are cases where perfect re-creation of the colors that were perceived at the time a thing was shot are useful, but short of walking around with a densitometer and sampling everything, that is pretty unrealistic. Plus colors in the real world are made up of more than 256 levels of red, green, and blue and yet a lot of us manage to get by with 8-bit codecs.

I'm not really sure what the problem is if (in grading), midtones are introduced/restored that weren't present in the original lossy image.

@libertas

Also there is no objective way to determine the colors that are actually perceived by each one of us.

This is incorrect. Color science actually started from such experiments and advanced extremely.

@markr041

"Loading a REC202 LUT does not magically increase the REC709 color space."

Yeah, no kidding... in Film Mode aka LOG I don't believe it's clamping your available color Gamut to REC709 outputs...

Probably the standard video output setting is clamped to REC709 Gamut...

If there is information anywhere about the Film Gamma/Gamut being clamped to REC709, let us know - otherwise I think it defaults to WideGamut without clamping... but I could be wrong.

I totally know about Color Gamuts and Gamma being two different things... so, don't worry about me, I'm not your average LUTard . Just saying if you wanted to clamp your unmitigated signal into a BT2020 Clamped Gamut you could probably do that easily enough.

RAW sensor data should definitely not be clamped unless you clamp it or set your project gamut in resolve

@bannedindv I downloaded an original video clip from the camera. The metadata said it was REC709 color. I do not know whether it was shot in "film" mode, but it sure was flat and lacked color (which is good).

If we had an original "film" mode video clip we can see right away what the color gamut is from the metadata. I have not seen anywhere Blackmagic indicating it has a special wide color gamut, but I could have missed it. Nor do I see a camera menu item for color gamut type (but I could have missed it). There has been no mention of HDR in any of the PR about the camera (and I do not mean HLG).

I am just asking the question about whether there is wide gamut color or not from the camera. If so, I am sure DaVinci Resolve Studio will have the right transform to REC2020 color (the correct math). If not, then it is not possible to create HDR video taking advantage of its wider true color gamut spec using this new camera. Right now, Resolve Studio has the transforms for Sony SGamut to REC2020 and Panasonic V-gamut to REC2020, so I know with Sony and Panasonic cameras you can produce HDR videos with more true colors than REC709 (whether or not it provides the full REC2020 gamut and ignoring bit depth).

Of course you can take advantage of the extended dynamic range shooting RAW or shooting in film mode - let us not confuse the extra dynamic range and different luminance mapping of HDR with the issue of number of colors (or number of color gradations - bits). Without colors beyond the REC709 gamut recognized by the camera sensor or recorded, one is missing the other advantage of HDR. And thus it is NOT HDR.

@Lohmatij Oy! Here we go again (talk about damn).

I am talking about REC709 color gamut. Not DR range. I do not understand how anyone can read my above posts and still confuse DR with color gamut. I get that one code word for both DR and color gamut (REC709) is confusing, but still...And yes, gamut and gamma sound and look similar too, so I could see why there is confusion, but let's get back to the issue:

Sony offers Sgamut, Panasonic offers V-gamut, Canon has C-gamut. These are all color gamuts that contain colors beyond the REC709 color gamut (get it, color gamut, not DR). So, what is the equivalent extended color gamut for Blackmagic cameras? Is there one? what is it? where's the spec? Every original BM 4K camera .mov clip I have downloaded is REC709 color except the one RAW clip.

Is the extended gamut called "BMD Film"?

Btw, some guy is posting "HDR" videos made from the original downloaded BM clips. The original clips are all REC709 color, so these are bogus HDR videos in terms of color.

@markr041

I’d recommend you to download DaVinci Resolve Manual and read it throughoutly. You’ll get answers and better understanding for most of your questions.

For proper gamut transform I’d recommend using ACES or “DaVinci Color science”, it’s not gonna clip your DR or color gamut (LUT’s will). You can use it for BMPCC as well.

@libertas

Color is very subjective, there is no way to tell how different people perceive color, you can only make tests of how different people distinguish different colors. Studies did show that around 8% of men can’t perceive some colors, so they have a color blindness of some kind.

The only thing you can measure is how color on screen corresponds to color in real life. The problem here that there is no technology (real or futuristic or imaginable), which can fully simulate all light characteristics of a real subject, so you always have to make a simplified model for the sake of comparison. Even XYZ color space (the base of all color models we use in our days) can’t describe all colors accurately: for example there is a big chunk of purple spectrum which just can’t be described in math.

There is also no proper way to compare eye “parameters” to monitors and cameras. Everything you do is subjective: something can look good enough now and really bad after few decades. Eye is a really unique instrument, I don’t think there will be a day anytime soon, when we will be able to completely “simulate” it. Just a simple example: in Soviet Union there were experiments which tried to find out what is the minimum amount of light the eye an register. It was found out that after a proper adaptation (staying in a dark room for long time) a person could register a single photon (!!!) of light.

Oh my god. What a babe.

And the footage looks damn good too. But maybe I’m blinded by the model’s beauty.

She’s thrown off my gamut response.

@Lohmatij "for example there is a big chunk of purple spectrum which just can’t be described in math."

This statement seems ridiculous. What we perceive as colors are portions of the visible spectrum of wavelengths. Purples are the wavelengths at the short end of the visible spectrum (wavelength 450–400 nm, frequency 670–750 THz) and consequently can be easily "described in math."

If you want to say that no existing color space can accurately render every possible shade of purple, on the other hand, that may very well be true. I'm not familiar enough with color spaces to say.

@eatstoomuchjam

I wasn’t correct when I mentioned purple “spectrum”, the proper way would be to say “a group of purple colors.” I was talking about XYZ color model which can’t describe those colors accurately, and because RGB color model and all existing RGB color spaces are based on it, we can say that they will have trouble with rendering of those colors too.

Keep in mind that while some colors, like violet, can be described as a a single wavelength , some colors has to be described as a combination of different wavelengths. Purple doesn’t have any corresponding wavelength, it’s a combination of pure blue and pure red, 2 colors on the opposite side of spectrum. The other simple example is color “white”, which consists of equal combination of all visible wavelengths.

@bannedindv specs provided by the shooter of the Bubblegum video:

• RAW 3:1 4K DCI
• 24fps Project / 60fps Off-Speed
• ISO 400, 1250, 3200, 5000
• Samsung T5 SSD through USB-C

DJI Ronin-S

• Metabones EF to MFT T Speedbooster XL 0.64x
• Shot with Contax Zeiss MM primes: 35/f2.8, 50/f1.4, 85/f1.4, 135/f2.8 + Hoya Pro NDs
• 95% Ronin-S / 5% handheld.

Considering that even the top of the line 30 000$ high end color grading display don't even have the capability to properly display Rec2020 nor reproduce peak brightness necessary for HDR, I don't even know why the heck so many people actually want it in camera. Right now your only option unless you own two 4K laser Christie Projector is to generate a profile LUT to adjust your maximum screen capability to display correctly what it'll look like as a HDR output but you'll never be able to play with full gamut. And yes Vitaliy_Kiselev is right, you do color space transformation even from Rec709 to Rec2020, it all depends of your screen capabilities. The last tendency I've seen that messes up a lot of final output is people rushing to color Grade in P3 on their monitor (Eizo & BenQ to cite the most affordable). It's a huge mistake considering that it first don't display 100% of the gammut but has a gamma response that differs from the actual screen signal. It's far better to grade in RGB Rec709 and do a color space transform to DCI-XYZ, the result will be much more faithful if the display is well calibrated to Rec709.

But if it's a concern, shoot Raw and do your own color management. Footages looks fantastic btw, I'm waiting though to see some report on bug/crash and what that cheap price has to bring forward as a compromise. But just for the fact you might get Resolve studio, it's a very good thing.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev can you please split off all posts about colour "science" into an extra topic and cleare this one up to be only about the new BMPCC4k?

Cheers