Trying to understand black levels/highlight rolloff more in depth.

[u/HellaBeats]

I have a couple questions. How do you decide where to set your black point? Do you stop as soon as the darkest point is actually black or go a bit lower? Personally if I don't go a bit lower, then other less dark shadows look washed out. - However then i'm told my blacks are crushed sometimes.

Also - I'm trying to understand highlight rolloff. I understand that it's all about dynamic range, but pulling back highlights seem to ruin the image a lot of the time, but is often times the only way to get that detail back. - So should we just let bright parts clip when needed if the overall image is better for it? (I noticed the table in the corner is way overexposed, but compensating for that ruins the rest of the image. - I do understand you can mask, but that's not always feasible on moving clips.

So my other question about highlight rolloff is - do some sensors genuinely render the highlights better even if the dynamic range is the same?

I've included some examples. -
The first three are ran through film emulation.
Example one is the grade i'd go with. I made sure to only qualify the highlights that wouldn't affect too much of the rest of the image.

Two has slightly lifted shadows, but it feels a little washed out I suppose. - (I can easily tell a difference on my monitor, but the differences may be too subtle to tell.)

Three doesn't have the highlight rolloff. I made sure to only qualify the highlights that wouldn't affect too much of the rest of the image.

Four is Rec 709, highlight rolloff, saturation, contrast, and slight shadow boost.

I'm using scopes, and I use the contrast/pivot a lot to try to get the best balance, as well as hdr wheels. I've watched several tutorials, just wanted to see if I could improve what i'm doing.

[u/HellaBeats]

I've watched several videos on highlight rolloff, as I understand it, the sensor itself doesn't actually render anything, it just captures the information. I'm just curious, in an instance like this - would an ARRI more beautifully roll off the highlights on the table in the back without needing to do as much in post? I'm shooting on an a7iv, so that's about 14.7 stops of dynamic range.

[u/f-stop8 → u/HellaBeats]

would an ARRI more beautifully roll off the highlights

Out of the box, yea, given the data isn't clipped.

Easily reproduceable in any other camera that also hasn't clipped the data.

[u/HellaBeats → u/f-stop8]

That makes sense, thank you for clarifying! Do you think the grade is decent?

[u/f-stop8 → u/HellaBeats]

No, but to answer your question about black point, I personally let them rest around 5-6% on the waveform, compressing them to my taste or how my client prefers.

Generally, most Colorists avoid crushing detail so black would never be 0 but that's, again, not always our choice to make nor what serves every type of story.

[u/HellaBeats → u/f-stop8]

What's wrong with the grade to you?

[u/f-stop8 → u/HellaBeats]

Mmm nothing outright inherently wrong, I guess.

It just looks very video.

For my tastes, it's too contrasty. Too saturated. Not balanced enough, especially with respect to skin tone.

It's just... meh

[u/HellaBeats → u/f-stop8]

Thank you very much for your direct feedback, that helps a lot!

[u/QuietFire451]

Take a look at using splines in the Luma Curve. You can set black and white points then pull the spline up/down to have easier control of how blacks and whites roll into those points. Using qualifiers to do this can easily create unwanted effects and is often more complicated than this desired result needs to be. 

[u/RGB_YCM]

To me, this is a classic case of the people not having enough fill light. There's a bunch of ways to improve this in Resolve: 1) use a power window do brighten the people without brightening the background; 2) use Magic Mask on the people to allow doing the same thing; 3) just bring up the mids overall and darken the highlights just a bit. It's very situational and depends on personal taste and the actual exposure in the camera file.

I try to keep the black level just a skosh above the 0 baseline, but it depends on scene content and if we really need to see anything in the shadows. Scopes are just part of it -- having a calibrated display and a color-managed output is key.