[Help] The Keep (Michael Mann, 1983) – 35mm Scan

[LucasGodzilla]

Looks like a lovely print. I saw this a couple of years ago on 35mm and it looked gorgeous.

Out of curiosity, do you recall any notable color differences between 35mm and the LD master from off the top of your head? I've always wondered exactly how blue the movie's supposed to look as a whole given the director's penchant for it (though we'll all find out soon enough when the proper scans come in, and that teased frame of the trucks is already a sign).

[HippieDalek]

Out of curiosity, do you recall any notable color differences between 35mm and the LD master from off the top of your head? I've always wondered exactly how blue the movie's supposed to look as a whole given the director's penchant for it (though we'll all find out soon enough when the proper scans come in, and that teased frame of the trucks is already a sign).

I can't say I noticed any dramatic differences, but then I'll admit that I don't know the film well enough to spot things like that. I seem to remember the colours looking pretty natural.

[shiftyeyes]

Preview image looks good!

[LucasGodzilla]

Some first reel scan previews came in today (along with some LD master comparisons thanks to our scanner)! I won't post all of them since there's too many, but you can see them on the SWT thread.

Though I do feel compelled to ask y'all, is it me, or is there a bit of noticeable chroma noise in it (most visible in the shadows)?

[LucasGodzilla]

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by chroma noise (which would be a digital artifact). The grain and such on display here seem inherent to the print. (and while we've yet to see it in motion, it looks very clean, which is equally exciting).

Well, I recalled TomArrow had some problems with the same scanner recently where the camera ended up introducing chroma noise (amongst other issues, all of which to a pretty extreme extent). It might just be me being paranoid though at this point.

[deleted user]

Crazy what a difference in colors there is. They completely ditched the grading on the LD it seems.

Keep in mind these are likely uncalibrated colors. This will get even better, color-wise. Noise, we'll have to see. But in the earlier scans there was also issues with flare coming from the sides which luckily seems to have been pretty much solved.

[zoidberg]

If the scan is uncalibrated how do you go about recovering the actual colours on the print? Do you get a LUT from the scanner

[deleted user]

@zoidberg

You scan a color target, which has reference colors. You then just have a tool calculate your calibration matrix and apply that to the data. Gotta scan it with exactly the same settings on the scanner as the film itself, meaning white balance, light, etc. Davinci can do it directly I think, at least for the Color Checker target, you just drag the target values mask over the target and let it calculate the correction. This pretty much does everything that used to be a problem with the initial scans - increase saturation, while simultaneously correcting reds and greens so they dont all look orange-y (depends on light source too ofc), while at the same time not leading to excessive saturation in other places.

A bit of trivia, many digital sensors seem to have a strong overlap of the green and red channels, which means that in the uncorrected raw data red and green bleed together and thus everything is orange-y and low saturation, while the blues tend to still look somewhat okay.

[HippieDalek]

Looks great! A really nice clean print. Can't wait to see this in motion!

[zoidberg]

Thanks for your explanation Tom. So what colour target is the scanner using?