Chris Leutger wrote:John Paines wrote: A more productive exercise might be, can either image be made to look like the other, even though they're not identical (including in front of the camera) at any point in the production chain? That at least might actually be useful, if only to the shooter/grader, as it would reveal to him his personal limitations using any given camera.
Thanks for this. When I watched the video (taken with the caveats cuz, as stated, "it's just for fun") I kept wondering how much effort would it take someone to grade one clip to look like the other. I have seen a couple videos on matching and it's not rocket science. On the YT vid, the commenters who discussed price and features seemed more reasonable in terms of identifying differentiation.
Hey everyone, I appreciate you guys watching the video and as a frequent reader of the forum, I appreciate it more as it feels good to be part of an active community.
A couple of caveats on the test, it's awkward to kind of shoot tests like this in an outside environment (period), you try to keep them as exact as possible, but at the same time visually interesting, as mentioned other people have done more accurate tests, and for some that would have been ideal, I'm not super technical with grading, I like a certain look and work with it. I remember reading John Brawley's comment a few months ago about camera tests, and the futility of sharing them, because at the end of the day everyone has a different methodology. Personally, I don't get the obsession of trying to make every camera look the same. We all know that with log - profile and a skilled grader, everything can be made similar, but that takes time, and again who decides which is the camera that we should base the look on? Personally, I prefer to judge cameras on how quick it is to get a good-looking image.
The points about color management are correct, however. I have to say that when I processed the FX6 with Da Vinci's color management, it did look a worse than the 6Ks.
I tried to use my normal shooting process of monitoring the 6K with an Alexa REC709 look and from there, pretty much no matter what in I do in post I get the look I want, and even when using Da Vinci's color management, I get a pleasing image that I think is good to go. I tried doing the same with the FX6 and it didn't yield desirable results. Now I had two options: spend hours color correcting to get it on par with the 6K, or go back to just applying the LUT I monitored with on the FX6. As you can imagine, with a throwaway YouTube video, it feels kind of a waste of time, and then if you don't match them exactly, it's still the same discussion about grading skills, etc. Hence the "lazy" decision to apply the monitoring LUT to the footage.
And to be honest, as I don't use the FX6 day in day out, it might be a fair conclusion to say I don't know how to get the best out of the camera. But personally, I think it's interesting how easy it is to get a pleasing image from the 6K, compared to the FX6. Personally, I do think one of the above comments about Sony colours not looking quite right is valid but because it's such a popular and it is a well-featured camera, everyone kind of accepts that everything about it is "awesome".
But to be honest, the whole point of the test was to point out the absurdity of the discourse about the 6K's sensor and image being inferior or unusable. Personally, I much prefer the 6K image. But again, it's subjective, so I keep my opinions neutral for the sake of the more "passionate" camera folk in the YouTube space. As someone who uses this camera in commercials, films and documentaries, I think this camera is a steal. But yes I know I need to get better at grading (or find a colourist who doesn't mind doing Youtube videos)
But I appreciate the feedback anyway, guys. Normally, I wouldn't care to explain things to the internet, haha, but as this forum has given me so much knowledge and insight over the years, I thought I'd share some of the why.