Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

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Cuervo

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Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostWed Apr 27, 2022 4:39 pm

Panasonic varicam has implemented a new "false color" mode using Ed Lachman's EL Zone System. I suggest this would be a very valuable tool to have in Davinci Resolve. Noteworthy, is that this system delineates exposure in f/stop steps instead of IRE steps. I suggest IRE is an outdated and outmoded methodology in today's imaging environment.
https://www.fdtimes.com/2021/04/25/el-z ... chman-asc/
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aeronaut9

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostWed Jul 06, 2022 7:15 pm

Cuervo wrote:Panasonic varicam has implemented a new "false color" mode using Ed Lachman's EL Zone System. I suggest this would be a very valuable tool to have in Davinci Resolve. Noteworthy, is that this system delineates exposure in f/stop steps instead of IRE steps. I suggest IRE is an outdated and outmoded methodology in today's imaging environment.
https://www.fdtimes.com/2021/04/25/el-z ... chman-asc/


100% on this!!! I wish the current false color tool allowed more than 10 custom steps; why is it limited?
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostWed Jul 13, 2022 1:25 am

Call me crazy: I think it's better to adjust levels with a Waveform Parade Monitor and a Vectorscope:

Image

You can really see subtleties like specular highlights before they clip doing it this way.
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Cuervo

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostThu Dec 08, 2022 11:17 pm

I'm with you, Marc. However, scopes don't give the colorist much info about where the cameraman placed middle grey. There are beta systems, like Manifold Recording's GIO_LUT, that enable to tell exactly how the cameraman exposed the footage. The GIOSCOPE system is very similar to Lachmann's Zone System. Once middle grey is correlated to the DP's intent, the rest of the image is referenced in stops rather than volts(IRE). That, alone, is very attractive to me.
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Tom Early

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostFri Dec 09, 2022 1:21 am

Marc Wielage wrote:Call me crazy: I think it's better to adjust levels with a Waveform Parade Monitor and a Vectorscope:

Image

You can really see subtleties like specular highlights before they clip doing it this way.


The waveform won't tell you exactly where different parts of your subjects face are though, unless either you apply a window or they have very plain surroundings. I was recently reminded of a very useful video from Shane Hurlbut where he uses False Color on a Flanders monitor to expose his images. Worth watching for his impression of the Predator alone



The False Color OFX has something similar

False Color OFX.png
False Color OFX.png (88.56 KiB) Viewed 3016 times
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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostFri Dec 09, 2022 3:13 pm

Quite a robust test of this was performed by the International Federation of Cinematographers, their conclusion was, it is not a straightforward or necessarily ideal translation to digital (https://imago.org/news/the-zone-system-of-analog-photography-in-digital-cinematography/). If you want use it now though with BMD cameras, SmallHD monitors have the EL Zone system too. It's not really a post thing anyway, as Marc pointed out, where we tend to use waveforms, it's a camera exposure thing, so it would be perhaps a better feature request for there or the Video Assists.
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostFri Dec 09, 2022 11:31 pm

Steve Fishwick wrote:It's not really a post thing anyway, as Marc pointed out, where we tend to use waveforms, it's a camera exposure thing, so it would be perhaps a better feature request for there or the Video Assists.

That's exactly right.

For me, once you get 10-20-30+ years of experience, you know in your gut where middle grey is and what contrast is necessary for the image. But a lot of the time, we throw that out the window when the filmmaker wants to veer into a very "customized" image involving a lot of windows, masks, and gradients.
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Howard Roll

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostMon Dec 12, 2022 10:59 pm

The EL Zone System needs to be correlated with a transfer function to be accurate. It wouldn't work well for delivering 709 because there are only about 2.5 stops above mid grey. Everything above mid grey would be limited to yellow-orange.

My personal take is that the colors should in some way reference the luminance of the represented target specifically to avoid Predator-Vision. Above mid-grey the EL System is backwards as the brighter tones are represented by darker colors. I think a much better system would start black, blue, magenta, red, orange, grey, green, cyan, yellow, white. This would eliminate the crazy false contrast created by false color.

Good Luck
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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostTue Dec 13, 2022 7:38 pm

Cuervo wrote:I'm with you, Marc. However, scopes don't give the colorist much info about where the cameraman placed middle grey.


if middle gray is at exposure all is good.
if it is above is overexposed.
if it is below, is underexposed.

tell the cameraman to expose AT middle gray.
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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostWed Dec 14, 2022 12:06 am

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
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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostWed Dec 14, 2022 7:05 am

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.
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ShaheedMalik

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostWed May 10, 2023 2:53 am

I'd still like to see this implemented in Resolve as a type of scope.

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ShaheedMalik

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostMon Jun 26, 2023 12:22 am

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ShaheedMalik

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostSun Aug 06, 2023 10:06 pm

I would love to see this added to Scopes.
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bcortesl

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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostSun Aug 20, 2023 4:37 am

This is really important tool and BM should put this. And not only has to be in Davinci but also in the cameras for the DPs, because as explained the Waveform is linear but the stops are logarithmic.
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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostFri Oct 27, 2023 7:35 pm

This alone makes me think that we will soon see it added to Video Assist in an upcoming update.
Atomos is already implementing it in their monitors.
[quote="ShaheedMalik"]I would love to see this added to Scopes.]
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Re: Ed Lachman's EL Zone System

PostMon Jan 29, 2024 1:20 pm

hcapodicasa wrote:This alone makes me think that we will soon see it added to Video Assist in an upcoming update.
Atomos is already implementing it in their monitors.
ShaheedMalik wrote:I would love to see this added to Scopes.]

They really need to be added.

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