5.0 Conclusion
Project Thoughts
This was a large technical group project that took an entire semester to complete. Each member participated in their strengths and a lot was learned! Not just from the technical side of things, but from a group project and organization point of view. At the time I thought we were extremely organized, but as I have worked on this blog, and forced to revisit everything I had on my hard drives; it could have been better.
I think one of the challenges of this project, and many technical writings, is that the end goal is not this blog, or final product. At the time, this was a technical paper, and video of the shootout and those were the priorities. Now I wish I had written notes about certain photos, and sectioned them off differently than what we did for the project. Because this was an IEEE paper, the organization was very different than how it was laid out in this blog. Set-up, procedure, data, and conclusion were in different sections. Finding which conclusion matched with each piece of data was quite time consuming.
If I could do it again, here are some things I would have done:
Vlog the entire project, and anytime we worked on it. (would have made an interesting video)
Section things off a little better
write an HDR paper that was intro, data, conclusion
write one for each section, then combine for the larger project
Spent more time analyzing the VFX and finishing my Green Screen meets MacBeth Chart ideas
Organize, label, and date Everything
The next year I completed my thesis, and though the scope of the project was just as big, if not bigger, there was more organization. It still needed a lot of work on the organizing side of things; something that I have done this past year. You can check that out here.
Below is from the conclusion section on the paper, and though most of this should be included with each individual section; it is still nice to have everything in one place. There is a video floating around somewhere, and as more data is recovered from this project, updates will be given.
Update Number: 1
Some new photos have been recovered, and a few charts were added.
Conclusions From The Team
When footage is playing back, our visual perception of artifacts such as noise and sharpness are lower. The perception of color can also change as the noise can be distracting and give color another appearance if the noise is not just Luminance noise. Running tests to calculate noise is different than rewatching footage to see if it is “noisy.”
The color reproduction scene was shown because of how aesthetically pleasing it was, even though we could not compare with the other camera.
The skin tone combo shot was given to the film as winner for its ability to reproduce skin tones in an aesthetically pleasing way, which is one of the most important things a Director of Photography is look for when picking a camera system.
Both cameras tied on the overexposure scenes. The image was able to be recovered without any problems.
The underexposure was a hard one to pick a winner. Both cameras had an image, but by a slim margin, the D21 was slightly less noisy.
As the VFX person on this project, I would disagree with this conclusion, but noise is different than grain.
For the sharpness component of this scene the D21 won hands down.
This was a combination that digital camera should be sharper than a 500 film speed, and used sharper lenses.
The one downside to the D21’s sharpness was it aliasing of the shirts where the film simply blurred the aliasing. because blurring is easier on the eyes than aliasing.
The film won the sharpness, because though sharper, artifacts can be introduced simply because of its sharpness.
The HDR scene was a hands down choice for film. Vision 3 500t, as per our test, has shown that it loves to be overexposed to reduce its noise. In this shot the highlights which were roughly 6 to 7 stops overexposed, were able to be completely recovered!
There were no noticeable coloration issues at all.
Also the underexposed part of the scene still had great detail in the batman costume in the darkness which was roughly 4 to 5 stops under.
The D21 on the other hand suffered some issue with the overexposure. The highlights began to blow out and cause some hue shift due to one color channel being clipped.
The underexposure area had less information on the black suit of batman. This made film the clear winner for this scene as predicted originally.
The film is noticeably noisier than the D21 for both the normal and underexposure.
The over exposure is not noticeably different but the comparison in the film is a little skewed as non corrected gray cards were used which resulted in the D21 having a bluish tint.
VFX
For both tracking and compositing, the D21 provided a much simpler time for keying and getting the results that the vfx artist wanted.
One thing to note, is that if enough time is spent, both can give very acceptable results as demonstrated by the compositing performed, where the two can hardly be identified from each other.
Overall the two cameras performed closely to each other. Each had their flaws but each can serve a unique purpose on set depending on the intentions of the DP. By a slim margin the Vision3 500t claims winner which we all agree with.
Conclusion
Both cameras put up a fair fight. We knew that the film would automatically be the noisiest but would provide color reproduction that would be much more aesthetically pleasing. There is no digital camera that has the dynamic range of the film. (As of 2015) That is one of the most important things, to create dynamic scenes with extremely high contrast that can be visually stunning to the viewers.
Green screen scenes are typically completed on digital cameras due to its significantly lower noise. This came out as expected where the film was significantly more complex to key but still not impossible. Each production is different, and film is still used, however it can be trickier to pull a key. Even though, rotoscoping is still used for a majority of scenes.
If you are looking for a camera that will provide instantly great color reproduction, have a cinematic feel and have that traditional grittiness for a rough subject, Vision3 500t is the film to shoot on to get that look with very little color correction and post production manipulation. If you want a clean image with minimal noise or green screen compositing or are looking for high sharpness the D21 would be the camera of choice.
