Investigating Colour Discrepancy problem in RAW Conversions and Searching for Progressive Digital Cinematography workflow for

Stop Motion Animation

ann leungschool of design, the hong kong polytechnic university

Student animation projects

Student Projects Outcome• Didn’t import RAW files but converted to .tiff

16, .tiff, .tga or .jpeg• Didn’t utilize the colour gamut & wrong colour

space• Image artifacts: pixelation and posterized

effects

Corpse Bride, Tim Burton (2005)• Canon EOS-1D Mark II• 2K conform to film output through DI process• Import RAWs into a proprietary software, then

output to Cineon log space (in order to bake the Eastman EXR 100T 5248 film stock look)*Cineon digital film system refers to the film scanning and recording h/w designed by Kodak and they introduced Cineon (.cin) file format in 1997

• Transforms to 2K DPX sequence* DPX stands for Digital Picture Exchange, a file format designed to preserve film negative data while obtained from digital film scanner.

Preliminary Test

• Shoot photos with Canon EOS 1000D & Nikon D70

• Imported the RAWs with:– DCRAW (free RAW converter, C language program)– Canon’s DPP and Nikon’s CaptureNX2– Adobe PS CS4’s CamRAW

• Compared their Colour space profiles using the CIELUV 1976 diagram

Image Acquisition

CIE(Commission international de I’Eclariage) 1976 L*, u*, v* Diagram

Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

CIE LUV & Colour Space

Image Acquisition and ‘Bayer Filter’

Bayer Filter (an algorithm called ‘Colour Filter Array’)Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Camera’s Sensor unit & Processor

• Canon – DIGIC; DIGIC II; DIGIC III; DIGIC 4; DIGIC 5; DIGIC 5+

• Nikon – Expeed; Expeed 2; Expeed C2; Expeed 3• Sony Alpha – BIONZ • RED ONE – MYSTERIUM-X

Nikon D90’s Sensor Unit

Nikon D90’s ProcessorImage courtesy of Nikon’s website

DSLR Camera Framework

Digital Cinematography

• Full digital workflow• Process image data with Imaging Science approach

and output them back to film afterwards• Being well accepted after the movie

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) which own the academy award for Best Cinematography

Digital Intermediate (DI)

Image courtesy of apple.com

Second Test Method

Table top setup in the Studio shooting. We only display results from following cameras:-•Canon 5D mark II•Nikon D700

The 4 lighting conditions

• Fig. 11 – Normal lighting• Fig. 12 – Red lighting• Fig. 13 – Green lighting• Fig. 14 – Blue lighting

• Fig. 15 – Red lighting• Fig. 16 – Green lighting• Fig. 17 – Blue lighting

Our experiments outcome

• Nikon D700 performed better under red lighting conditions

• Canon 5D mark II favored blue colour tone environments

• Different brands of camera exhibited different behaviors on colour visualization

• Animators are advised to carefully select their camera beforehand as well as the conversion method

Other intermediate conversion formats?

• R3D RAW (RED camera)• ARRI RAW

• DPX• Adobe’s DNG (Digital Negative format)• OpenEXR/HDR (www.openexr.com)• CineForm RAW (www.cineform.com)

• Adobe’s DNG CIE Performance

HD-DI WorkflowHigh Definition and High Dynamic-Digital

Intermediate Workflow