mattfezz wrote:Hmm, not sure how useful this would be, Personally I have never cared about where middle grey is when actually grading or had a DOP/director ask. Only thing that sometimes gets asked is where the black/white level is.
Curious to hear other opinions though. I mean if its not hard to implement - why not? I guess it would be cool to have it as a scope option like you can do in other software
I too have never even thought about 'middle grey' when I'm grading but then I only grade for broadcast. Scopes and false colours/zone system are two different things really. Mostly a scope is used to measure scene referred levels, except with some HDR, such as Dolby Vision PQ, where it is calibrated then for display referred grading, i.e in Nits. The false colours/zone system are still essentially scene referred in the digital realm (film as in colour timing and darkroom printing was really always 'display' referred) and whilst you can see what is happening on a scope with all elements in the scene you would need to probably have the actual distorted colours to make direct comparisons, which is not really necessary, since scopes tell experienced eyes all they need to know already.
As I say this is a camera exposure thing that is best requested on the cameras and VA monitors from BMD. With deference to Ed Lachman, a respected DP, this I see as largely a marketing thing. Digital and film are really not the same, despite all the analogies and I don't see a huge difference from this and false colours, which being an old ENG guy, when I shoot I can't get my head round either. Even with film not everyone agreed with Ansel Adams - it was controversial for years. And I have never heard of any cinema DP having used the Zone system for motion pictures either.