How to Use EL Zone System | Turn Your Camera into a Spot Meter! smallHD Indie 5

[@biharits]

The little sigmas also got this feature with the recent firmware update, it's so cool to work with 👌

[@J_HNP]

This is great. For years, I’ve built my own false color within the SmallHD OS system, and it’s always been based on stops vs IRE. So happy to see this widely adopted. Thanks for the great content!

[@JustinPhillip]

Great to hear!

[@Ranger7Studios]

The Sigma FP now has el Zone and false color. This seems so much easier to use and understand. :)

[@TheStrade]

Amazing, thanks. After watching a bunch of your videos I'm very much thrilled to learn how they did it i the old times like 60's. Greetz

[@LesterKamstra]

What a great explenation! Bought the Cine 5 few months ago but still need to look deep in this feature, great and easy explenation!

[@JordanPulmano]

This is incredibly helpful. I have been researching picking up the Cine 5 and this feature alone is selling me on it! Thanks for such a great video.

[@JustinPhillip]

Glad to help! Thanks!

[@Justin_Allen]

Great explanation of the EL zone usage.

[@esotericmoniker]

This was a great walkthrough not just about the feature but how to actually achieve specific looks. Well done!

[@JustinPhillip]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it 🙏🏼

[@zvkvhs3818]

I use a false color monitor for my photography and research and as useful as I find it it’s not completely accurate with the results I would like. I didn’t even know smallhd had released such an update as of now. Thanks! I hope I can incorporate this flawlessly into my workflow.

[@jamieandrei]

This is sik.. I always thought this is what false color / IRE vals helped with BUT this is ratio based, no faffing around with calcs.. love it.. more insight into setting up a scene.. a Sunday arvo well spent.

[@JustinPhillip]

You bet!

[@SuchetB]

I’ve haven’t used false colours yet, I’ve had access to it, however I am now wanting to use ELZONE and this video has really helped - thank you for this Justin. 😎🎬🎥⛩

[@JustinPhillip]

Glad it was helpful!

[@dukebozikowski3801]

@@JustinPhillip Great video! Do you you know how the camera gets the stop value? I'm assuming it just knows the log curve and settings and from there it takes the IRE reading and maps it into stops. Maybe I'm wrong but since camera photosites only measure light voltage from photons I don't see how it would work any other way.

[@JimRobinson-colors]

The log stops is confusing to me - you would think that it would perform a color space transform to linear and with the middle grey from the log for calculation of stops. So what you are seeing is not really the log stops - the input is just calculated with the correct middle grey values. A real log to test stops would never associate to a light meter. A measurable value I think would need to be linear. When I look at the colors - some of the choices look strange to me - and the ones that are hard for me to get used to are the stops over - I understand the cool colors below middle grey and warm colors over. But if I was designing it the swatch at +1 to me is too close to the 1/2 stop - they blend too easily for my eyes to quickly see. And the similarity of +2 and +4 at a glance are too close as well. But below middle grey - that completely makes sense to me - especially dark green to mid green to a bright green. Feels like they could have use yellow with the same scale above middle grey to step up to the orange swatch. There must be a reason that I don't see I guess.

[@JustinPhillip]

👌🏼

[@willianaleman6114]

Thank you for the informative insight. Dado Valentic’s Look Designer has implemented the EL Lachman Zone System in Davinci Resolve. So, it can be used in post-production too.

[@dathofilms]

This is amazing. I was wishing False color had this precision. WOW. cant wait to try it out. Thank you for sharing!

[@J_HNP]

If you’re working within the SmallHD OS, you can build custom false color ranges. You’d just expose to middle grey, then align your custom colors to stops up and stops down. It’s pretty cool!

[@dathofilms]

@@J_HNP but would it be still so detailed? Like can u assign half stops as well?

[@J_HNP]

@@dathofilms for sure! I have mine very similar to the EL Zone, with slightly different colors and full stops for anything below middle grey, and 1/2 stop for the first color above middle grey, then every stop after. I originally designed it to allow me to see my contrast ratios when lighting faces in scenes. For example, for more dramatic scene, I like the fall-off on the face to get to about -3 stops at it’s darkest. For the highlights, I usually like +1.5-2 stops. With my color scheme, it’s dark orange at the bottom, and light pink at the top. As long as a face sits in that space, I can move on to other balancing steps.

[@jamieandrei]

@@J_HNP so you got like a 5 stop exposure spread across your face if I read that right.. nice!

[@J_HNP]

@@jamieandrei haha, indeed. Very insightful when evaluating your ratios.

[@VIPAH]

I've been using False color on my Arri Alexa + 4:3 without a light meter and judging my exposure based off the IRE values it gives me in camera. It was great for what it can do for me, but i'm interested to see this EL software can match my Sekonic light meter readings and give me a precise F stop. I know some DP's like to underexpose their footage by 1/4 stop or half, and then gradually bump it up in Post. Thanks for the intuitive explanation on this subject matter.

[@jean-paulcodaccioni7774]

So smart ! Thank you very much for such interesting, helpfull and clever approach of light and shadow... Great job!

[@JustinPhillip]

🙌🏼

[@rafael_daguerre]

El Zone really looks like something wonderful. And I hope to soon have access to this method. In my case, I use the Fuji X-H2S, so I would have to buy the SmallHD monitor to use El Zone. Today, I have the Atomos Ninja V. So for now, I use False Color as a measure to help exposure. It's not always decisive in my work, but it's a good help.

[@jordanhurd1988]

They just added os 11 to the original ninja v and v+. One of its features is EL Zone. However it is a paid upgrade to use it.

[@philpritchard5173]

Nice. Thx Justin.

[@jmvdigital]

To me, I always use a custom false color to see shadow and highlight clipping for MY camera and log curve. And then using that to basically expose as reasonably over as I can without clipping. The goal for me is to get as much clean data off the sensor as possible, and do actual exposure correction during grading. “Correctly” exposing in-camera can lead to lower usable dynamic range and noise during grading. No need to decide during the shoot whether you want it to be darker or lighter.. that’s not the time/place to be “dialing in” in my opinion.

[@JustinPhillip]

🤔

[@mabitzz9484]

You are probably shooting on sony - right?

[@jmvdigital]

@@mabitzz9484No actually.

[@persvanstrom]

I wishf I could use EL Zones, looks so promising, but don't own any SmallHD monitors or Flanders production monitors. Great video m8 and thx for great content.

[@RobbScholarTube]

Man you killed this! Thank you!

[@JustinPhillip]

🙌🏼

[@RicardoKleine]

Fantástico, extremamente didático, obrigado por compartilhar!

[@ChrisKluepfel]

This is awesome! Is it gonna be a standard for other platforms as well e.g. bmpcc?

[@JustinPhillip]

Hopefully one day

[@PakshiMedia]

I am following your setups . Thanks

[@jesseyules]

Love this! Thanks.

[@theseventh2609]

Thanks bro

[@dfc9944]

Hmm interesting

[@miguelangelcalderon3315]

great video! btw, you've been using the camera control with the komodo for a while, right? is the dongle too problematic for rigging? I just hate looking at how long and unflexible the thing is but it would be nice to get some camera control. any opinion would be appreciated. :)

[@JustinPhillip]

oh yea that thing is super annoying, just use these and attach it directly to your cage the best you can: amzn.to/3LSZYaM

[@krishnansrinivasan830]

Awesome & Thanks :)

[@mitchellfilms]

Hi Justin, great tip spot metering via the Log pipeline for SmallHd monitor. Installed it in combination with Sony Fx3 and works smoothless. I’m wondering, what is the easiest way to calibrate the monitor? Or is factory calibration out of the monitor good enough? Cheers Mitchell

[@JustinPhillip]

if you wanted to do it the right way: guide.smallhd.com/a/1433771-how-to-calibrate-your-monitor-with-free-software-pagesos-4

[@jonathanl7883]

I send slog out of my fx6 but monitor on my small HD with a LUT. Are the stop values indicated representative of the flatter log signal? Not sure if I am phrasing this question clearly enough really.

[@JustinPhillip]

if you program the correct pipeline into the monitor settings, like i show at the top of the video, then it will read correctly off of the log image and not the Lut

[@digitaldevigner4080]

I have always felt false color was rather useless as a one size fits all system. No two log systems are the same and most false color systems were based on rec709 making them even more useless for log. The only real way to use false was monitors that provided the ability to dial in custom values and colors. Every other system was a crude toy at best. With that said IRE is just a form of measurement and all format stops will have a IRE value. For example Canon C-log3 has a middle gray IRE value of 34 IRE. +1 stop is 43 IRE and so forth. There is nothing wrong with IRE and it’s actually more accurate than stops since stops work in 1/3 increments or in some cases whole stop increments. IRE is a 100 scale so it’s more precise. Don’t rule out IRE just because some hate doing math. It’s not outdated at all. People just got lazy understanding how to use it properly. Stops in 1/3 increments with 12 stops have about 36 increments vs IRE which has 100 increments. IRE is 3x as precise.

[@JustinPhillip]

Fair enough!

[@iamkubrick]

Thanks for this video. Just wondering if this is similar to ‘Gio Scope’ on red cameras?

[@JustinPhillip]

Yes, it is

[@nikolozgabedava6934]

Is that Komodo OG or X

[@JustinPhillip]

OG

[@MusthafaAboobacker]

For EL Zone to work properly, camera monitoring output is set to LOG and a LUT needs to be loaded to monitor to get the look ?

[@JustinPhillip]

EL zone bypasses the LUT. But camera does need to be exporting the log signal without a lut. In other words, load lut into monitor

[@MusthafaAboobacker]

@@JustinPhillip Thank you. So if we output Look enabled via SDI, the El zone exposure will be based on the look. There is a conversion setting on Image Pipe line to SDR. Any idea about it ?

[@ZEROFilms_]

There are two outputs settings for the komodo (LOG3G12 and LOG3G10) on the SmallHD monitor. I tested both and the settings leads to different stop values, even if the scene is the same. If you put a lens cap on, you cant reach the black color (-6 stops) with LOG3G12, only with LOG3G10. So I guess LOG3G10 is the way to go for the komodo?

[@kmshairstay]

Curious about this too!

[@JustinPhillip]

yeah, people been asking about this, technically that is true, the komodo is 3G10. i guess if you need the most maximum dynamic range, i.e. ultra low light or extreme window scene, day exterior, etc 3G10 would be best. For this small demo, it wasn't an issue for me, considering i wasn't needing to maximize dynamic range

[@ZEROFilms_]

@@JustinPhillip Okay I see, that makes senses

[@trevorallen_dp]

Would you say that the EL Zone does the same thing as the Red Gio Scope in finding the accurate contrast ratio in a scene?

[@JustinPhillip]

100%

[@danabeldp]

Recently updated my 702 touch to use EL Zone with BMD Gen 5 Film. My question for you, after setting the proper color pipe. Will I get correct EL readings if i am sending a LUT out of camera to the monitor for reference? Or do I need to expose directly from a LOG image. I’m assuming I can send a LUT out and expose with EL since its more so the color space and curve that is needed.

[@JustinPhillip]

If the color pipeline is set up correctly, and the proper signal is being sent out via the camera, then EL Zone should not be influenced by the LUT. Best to not send the LUT downstream of the camera body via HDMI or SDI. Then have the LUT on in a seperate page and when you swipe over to the Exposure page, EL Zone will not be influenced by the LUT. However, if you’re sending the LUT to the monitor via the camera, it could negatively affect the EL Zone

[@danabeldp]

@@JustinPhillip thanks so much for the reply. I shoot on Ursa 12k so it’ll be as simple as setting up one of my custom buttons to toggle lut on and off.

[@MedicenChang]

How different is the EL Zone tool v.s RED's GIOSCOPE? :o (Other than being useable in any camera)

[@JustinPhillip]

it's essentially the same

[@audrichelbert8986]

What about blackmagic camera's ? Thanks

[@JustinPhillip]

Not sure if their color profiles are available in the pipeline

[@amorsel]

@@JustinPhillip Yeah, I foolishly discovered this issue after I purchased a 702 OLED used. I can't believe I'm going to have to revert back to my GH5 to start learning EL Zone.

[@Thaddeuspryor]

Justin......what color pipeline are you using for the KOMODO ? Please help as red isn't in a option in the SmallHd 5 Os upgrade.

[@JustinPhillip]

yes it is. I show it in the video. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqqvhnqPjbtnpZY

[@JustinPhillip]

i show in the video, you can use 3G10 for maximum dynamic range, or as i did in this small setup, 3G12 also works

[@mwscuba]

ok this is a great system for us old farts who grew up with film, but what if your using a Venice with a greater range than +6 or - 6 stops ?

[@JustinPhillip]

😳 curious how much of that beyond 7 stops actually holds detail

[@mwscuba]

some claim 16+ @@JustinPhillip

[@mwscuba]

the Venice 2 i use gives High Base ISO3200 excels in low-light, High Dynamic Range capture, with an exposure latitude from 6 stops over to 10 stops under 18% Middle Gray, for a total of 16 stops. High Base ISO 2500 offers an exposure latitude from 6 stops over to 9 stops under 18% Middle Gray, for a total of 15+ stops.@@JustinPhillip

[@bradleykussy]

Is EL Zone only available for SmallHD?

[@JustinPhillip]

no, it was first implemented in Panasonic Varicam

[@bradleykussy]

@@JustinPhillip interesting 🤔 I kind of remember that now when I had my Eva1. How can you use EL Zone on other camera brands?

[@willianaleman6114]

@@JustinPhillip New Atomos displays have also implemented the EL Lachman Zone System.

[@tycooper7780]

It was not invented by Ed, it was invented by Ansel. Ed tailored it to cinematography

[@JustinPhillip]

😆

[@user-f5xt2op9t]

This video could have been 1/3 as long if you just stop repeating that "the colors are different than the scale used in false color."

[@JustinPhillip]

🤣