Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

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Kyle Gordon

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Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 1:05 am

Hey guys,

I shot a talking head today, and her hair has some pretty distracting Moire. I shot it with a BMCC MFT in ProRes Film, thru a Cannon 24-105 f/4L lens (using the LiveLens adapter until the Speedbooster comes out).

I'm new to this camera, so any suggestions about post production, or new shooting techniques are appreciated.

I used to have this really bad on my 5d MKii, but then I bought a Mosaic OLPF and everything was great. Im waiting for them to make an OLPF for the BMCC too. But surely you guys cant be dealing with this in hair every time a leading lady gets a face shot?

Thanks in advance for all help!
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rick.lang

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 2:24 am

Do you have a screenshot for us?

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Kyle Gordon

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 4:51 am

its harder to see in a static shot, its more how it "dances" from frame to frame.

Ill try to make a video of it and upload soon.
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Zach Rutledge

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 5:28 am

I've been running into the same issues... mostly with patterns on ties that men wear. I've resulted to pulling the focus a bit to soften the image while shooting.
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Christian Horne

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 8:07 am

Most DoP rave about the hollywood black magic filters which have a fine diffusion quality, and are in fact using them in many film productions as they also help better fall off into hight lights. It acts as a OLPF which is missing on the BMCC, many DoP complain that the detail in the BMCC is so high that it is showing the make-up on their talent, this is another reason why U4K may not be taken well in Movie Production. Adding these filters will soften the image enough to get around the jaggies seen in a lot of BMCC footage and actually brings the image near Arri Alexa looking.
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karoliinasalmin

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 10:04 am

The moire is much more visible and much more severe in ProRes mode than it is in RAW.
Shoot in RAW if you want to have minimal moire. You can use a debayer method that creates minimal moire to combat it. Post-filtering is a bad idea, it is much better to pre-filter it at the debayering stage.
Libraw (a command line tool that runs on Mac and Linux) has algorithms that produce almost zero moire with BMCC RAW. I am getting quite good results with Resolve Smooth -debayer as well. I would recommend against shooting in ProRes if moire is a concern. Shooting little waves on a lake cause terrible rainbow in the ProRes mode but no rainbows in RAW mode.

Also otherwise the ProRes on BMCC is far inferior (a lot less detail) to RAW debayered and then scaled to 1080p. The scaling and debayering done in camera with current firmware is not very good. It is acceptable for me for many uses but for shots I am seeking quality, I don't use the ProRes at all. In BMPCC the ProRes and RAW look almost the same, but in BMCC the RAW looks far superior to ProRes. Because I process everything through Resolve anyway, it does not matter that my initial stage is raw (other than I run out of SSD space quite fast).
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Kyle Gordon

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 2:01 pm

Thanks for the answers guys! I haven't shot RAW yet, just got the camera and haven't installed Resolve yet, that's today or tomorrow.

Pardon my ignorance, but what are Hollywod Black Magic Filters?
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João Gomes

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 6:05 pm

karoliinasalmin wrote:The moire is much more visible and much more severe in ProRes mode than it is in RAW.
Shoot in RAW if you want to have minimal moire. You can use a debayer method that creates minimal moire to combat it. Post-filtering is a bad idea, it is much better to pre-filter it at the debayering stage.
Libraw (a command line tool that runs on Mac and Linux) has algorithms that produce almost zero moire with BMCC RAW. I am getting quite good results with Resolve Smooth -debayer as well. I would recommend against shooting in ProRes if moire is a concern. Shooting little waves on a lake cause terrible rainbow in the ProRes mode but no rainbows in RAW mode.

Also otherwise the ProRes on BMCC is far inferior (a lot less detail) to RAW debayered and then scaled to 1080p. The scaling and debayering done in camera with current firmware is not very good. It is acceptable for me for many uses but for shots I am seeking quality, I don't use the ProRes at all. In BMPCC the ProRes and RAW look almost the same, but in BMCC the RAW looks far superior to ProRes. Because I process everything through Resolve anyway, it does not matter that my initial stage is raw (other than I run out of SSD space quite fast).


How do you debayer using that "smooth" option?



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adamroberts

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 8:00 pm

The filter is Black ProMist. There is also a white ProMist that has a lower contrast.

In post you can try blurring the chroma channel. It won't get rid of it completely but it will soften it and make it less distracting.
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Kyle Gordon

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostMon Mar 10, 2014 10:18 pm

Again, thank you so much for the help.
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sean mclennan

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostTue Mar 11, 2014 3:27 pm

adamroberts wrote:The filter is Black ProMist. There is also a white ProMist that has a lower contrast.

In post you can try blurring the chroma channel. It won't get rid of it completely but it will soften it and make it less distracting.


Actually, I find the hollywood black magic (1/4) better than your standard black mist filter when dealing specifically with moire in talking head shots. (shirt/jacket patterns and fine hair detail)

Not sure what the technical difference is, but it's visible.
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Alexander Arndt

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostTue Mar 11, 2014 6:00 pm

i also can confirm a slight better visual performance so it seemd to me by using

Black Frost 1/8
White Frost 1/8

indoors portrait shots, great skintone, better overall contrast , darker blacks in shadow's etc but also in material like chrome and stuff just seemd better overall...
i will also try to setup an overall look of what the output does.

lex
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sean mclennan

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostTue Mar 11, 2014 6:53 pm

Alexander Arndt wrote:i also can confirm a slight better visual performance so it seemd to me by using

Black Frost 1/8
White Frost 1/8

indoors portrait shots, great skintone, better overall contrast , darker blacks in shadow's etc but also in material like chrome and stuff just seemd better overall...
i will also try to setup an overall look of what the output does.

lex


lex, are you stacking those or do you mean using them independently?
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rick.lang

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostTue Mar 11, 2014 8:49 pm

NYCcomposer wrote:Thanks for the answers guys! I haven't shot RAW yet, just got the camera and haven't installed Resolve yet, that's today or tomorrow.

Pardon my ignorance, but what are Hollywod Black Magic Filters?


Schneider has filters by that name. Try an internet search.

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sean mclennan

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

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ChrisBarcellos

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostWed Mar 12, 2014 2:04 am

When I hear about this, I wonder if we get to stuck on getting the sharpest glass around. Seems like I hear about this with L glass, more than the cheaper ones. Then again it might just be that lower end lens users just don't gripe about it as much.

When the 5D came out, I suggested that possibility. I am curious what others think.
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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostWed Mar 12, 2014 3:43 am

sean mclennan wrote:
Alexander Arndt wrote:i also can confirm a slight better visual performance so it seemd to me by using

Black Frost 1/8
White Frost 1/8

indoors portrait shots, great skintone, better overall contrast , darker blacks in shadow's etc but also in material like chrome and stuff just seemd better overall...
i will also try to setup an overall look of what the output does.

lex


lex, are you stacking those or do you mean using them independently?


ill stacked them together indoors, and used the white frost together with the irnd outside.
ill try to do a kind of how i did it soon,
wierd was like i felt when panning the camera that the picture just looked smoother :) like it supposed to be, i mean 1/8 is just that subtil
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Christian Horne

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostWed Mar 12, 2014 9:56 am

I thing a soft diffusion gives the image a more organic filmic feel, I add diffusion to my photography also as stills can often look way to sharp. The BMCC is very film like without any filtration granted but adding this kind of filtration I think gives the footage even more depth and helps with the aliasing and Moiré patterning issues. Also it helps the specular high light clipping by giving them a gentle fall off to over bright's. Another point with using this kind of filter is that if you need to scale your image up to 4K it can hide a lot of imperfections in the image.
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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostWed Mar 12, 2014 1:29 pm

sean mclennan wrote:
adamroberts wrote:The filter is Black ProMist. There is also a white ProMist that has a lower contrast.

In post you can try blurring the chroma channel. It won't get rid of it completely but it will soften it and make it less distracting.


Actually, I find the hollywood black magic (1/4) better than your standard black mist filter when dealing specifically with moire in talking head shots. (shirt/jacket patterns and fine hair detail)

Not sure what the technical difference is, but it's visible.


Different manufacturers have different names for their versions of the same thing. For example Formatt-Hitech in the UK call theirs "Movie Mist" and offer them in densities of 0.5, 1 & 2. They do Black, Clear, Warm Black and Warm White. - https://www.formatt-hitech.com/en/produ ... ts~45.html

They also do a "Supermist" versions that is a glass filter (the Movie Mist is resin). These are available in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 & 2. - https://www.formatt-hitech.com/en/produ ... ts~45.html

I guess is comes down to how they create the "mist" and what the material of the filter is.
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Alexander Arndt

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostThu Mar 13, 2014 1:02 am

i came across this link here on scarletuser....

http://www.scarletuser.com/showthread.php?t=5941
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sean mclennan

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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostThu Mar 13, 2014 1:26 am

Alexander Arndt wrote:i came across this link here on scarletuser....

http://www.scarletuser.com/showthread.php?t=5941


Alexander!! Awesome find! Thanks for sharing :)
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Re: Moire in hair on BMCC Closeup

PostThu Mar 13, 2014 5:28 am

ChrisBarcellos wrote:When I hear about this, I wonder if we get to stuck on getting the sharpest glass around. Seems like I hear about this with L glass, more than the cheaper ones. Then again it might just be that lower end lens users just don't gripe about it as much.

When the 5D came out, I suggested that possibility. I am curious what others think.


High end glass isn't just about sharpness. Color fringing, vignetting, distortion, focus precision, etc all come into play as well.

That being said I will always prefer to start with something sharper than not, in particular on the 4K camera that doesn't have these moire issues.

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