Michel Rabe wrote:I never liked the Sony-sensor-BMD-cams, even though Gen5 makes the most of it. I think it's great that BMD work on their own sensor and hope it makes its way in a Pyxis body one day.
It is somewhat of an anathema to me, Michel, as a mainly offline/grading online editor, who shoots too, to talk about inherent sensor looks; when I have to make them look all the same most of the time. I think a lot of shooters must simply not grade at all; and rely entirely on the Luts and looks of their footage.
A lot of footage I work with comes from Sony cameras and out of the box I really dislike that muted dull look. But you can make them look great; in fact anyway you want with a proper grade. A camera lut is a starting point in our workflows, and not something locked in. In fact quite often we completely disregard them, and grade from base log. (I should add, for clarity, this is broadcast where they rarely afford the luxury to the DP of having a say in the post development of their work, as say in features)
I really like the look though of my 'Sony sensor' Ursa Broadcast G2 log out of the box; the same sensor as the Super35 6K pockets. But then also everything looks the same to me on YouTube these days; because a lot of people are aping the popular trends, of the moment; whatever the camera and the tortuous comparisons so subtle, to me as to be virtually meaningless. 15 years ago there was a very big difference between the quality of the image from prosumer and professional cameras; now that is no longer the case; just the quality of construction and facilities.
Also you have to consider that just about any camera now vastly exceeds any display medium in terms of the colourspace and DR it can capture. The very best HDR 30K+ reference grading panels are 10 bit and a little more than P3 in their CS reach. And although DCP projectors are outside my professional experience, I believe they can not be any better either. There are no 12bit panels in existence yet. I seriously doubt most people have a need or can see a huge difference beyond 12 stops of DR too, for most situations. Log is just old fashioned compansion; the scene's vast DR is compressed with a curve on capture to the available SNR of the camera and expanded back out, on the timeline with a lut. That's why proper more meaningful DR camera tests should be SNR in db, ultimately. There is little actual colour science in 'Color Science' too, as marketed by manufacturers; merely a subjective 'nice' looking sauce, within the bounds of the sensor's characteristics.