COMPOSITION
DESIGN
COLOR
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Rec-2020 – TVs new color gamut standard used by Dolby Vision?Read more: Rec-2020 – TVs new color gamut standard used by Dolby Vision?https://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#bit-depth  The dynamic range is a ratio between the maximum and minimum values of a physical measurement. Its definition depends on what the dynamic range refers to. For a scene: Dynamic range is the ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene. For a camera: Dynamic range is the ratio of saturation to noise. More specifically, the ratio of the intensity that just saturates the camera to the intensity that just lifts the camera response one standard deviation above camera noise. For a display: Dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum intensities emitted from the screen. The Dynamic Range of real-world scenes can be quite high — ratios of 100,000:1 are common in the natural world. An HDR (High Dynamic Range) image stores pixel values that span the whole tonal range of real-world scenes. Therefore, an HDR image is encoded in a format that allows the largest range of values, e.g. floating-point values stored with 32 bits per color channel. Another characteristics of an HDR image is that it stores linear values. This means that the value of a pixel from an HDR image is proportional to the amount of light measured by the camera. For TVs HDR is great, but it’s not the only new TV feature worth discussing. (more…)
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Composition – cinematography Cheat SheetRead more: Composition – cinematography Cheat Sheet Where is our eye attracted first? Why? Size. Focus. Lighting. Color. Size. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) on the right. 
 Focus. He’s one of the two objects in focus.
 Lighting. Mr. White is large and in focus and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) is highlighted by
 a shaft of light.
 Color. Both are black and white but the read on Mr. White’s shirt now really stands out.
 (more…)
 What type of lighting?
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Mysterious animation wins best illusion of 2011 – Motion silencing illusionRead more: Mysterious animation wins best illusion of 2011 – Motion silencing illusionThe 2011 Best Illusion of the Year uses motion to render color changes invisible, and so reveals a quirk in our visual systems that is new to scientists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_silencing_illusion “It is a really beautiful effect, revealing something about how our visual system works that we didn’t know before,” said Daniel Simons, a professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Simons studies visual cognition, and did not work on this illusion. Before its creation, scientists didn’t know that motion had this effect on perception, Simons said. A viewer stares at a speck at the center of a ring of colored dots, which continuously change color. When the ring begins to rotate around the speck, the color changes appear to stop. But this is an illusion. For some reason, the motion causes our visual system to ignore the color changes. (You can, however, see the color changes if you follow the rotating circles with your eyes.) 
LIGHTING
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Photography basics: Solid Angle measuresRead more: Photography basics: Solid Angle measureshttp://www.calculator.org/property.aspx?name=solid+angle A measure of how large the object appears to an observer looking from that point. Thus. A measure for objects in the sky. Useful to retuen the size of the sun and moon… and in perspective, how much of their contribution to lighting. Solid angle can be represented in ‘angular diameter’ as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/steradian.html A solid angle is expressed in a dimensionless unit called a steradian (symbol: sr). By default in terms of the total celestial sphere and before atmospheric’s scattering, the Sun and the Moon subtend fractional areas of 0.000546% (Sun) and 0.000531% (Moon). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle#Sun_and_Moon On earth the sun is likely closer to 0.00011 solid angle after athmospheric scattering. The sun as perceived from earth has a diameter of 0.53 degrees. This is about 0.000064 solid angle. http://www.numericana.com/answer/angles.htm The mean angular diameter of the full moon is 2q = 0.52° (it varies with time around that average, by about 0.009°). This translates into a solid angle of 0.0000647 sr, which means that the whole night sky covers a solid angle roughly one hundred thousand times greater than the full moon. More info http://lcogt.net/spacebook/using-angles-describe-positions-and-apparent-sizes-objects http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/glossary/def.php.s=topic_astronomy Angular Size The apparent size of an object as seen by an observer; expressed in units of degrees (of arc), arc minutes, or arc seconds. The moon, as viewed from the Earth, has an angular diameter of one-half a degree. The angle covered by the diameter of the full moon is about 31 arcmin or 1/2°, so astronomers would say the Moon’s angular diameter is 31 arcmin, or the Moon subtends an angle of 31 arcmin. 
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Polarised vs unpolarized filteringRead more: Polarised vs unpolarized filteringA light wave that is vibrating in more than one plane is referred to as unpolarized light. … Polarized light waves are light waves in which the vibrations occur in a single plane. The process of transforming unpolarized light into polarized light is known as polarization.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_(photography) The most common use of polarized technology is to reduce lighting complexity on the subject. (more…)
 Details such as glare and hard edges are not removed, but greatly reduced.
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Is a MacBeth Colour Rendition Chart the Safest Way to Calibrate a Camera?Read more: Is a MacBeth Colour Rendition Chart the Safest Way to Calibrate a Camera?www.colour-science.org/posts/the-colorchecker-considered-mostly-harmless/ “Unless you have all the relevant spectral measurements, a colour rendition chart should not be used to perform colour-correction of camera imagery but only for white balancing and relative exposure adjustments.” “Using a colour rendition chart for colour-correction might dramatically increase error if the scene light source spectrum is different from the illuminant used to compute the colour rendition chart’s reference values.” “other factors make using a colour rendition chart unsuitable for camera calibration: – Uncontrolled geometry of the colour rendition chart with the incident illumination and the camera. 
 – Unknown sample reflectances and ageing as the colour of the samples vary with time.
 – Low samples count.
 – Camera noise and flare.
 – Etc…“Those issues are well understood in the VFX industry, and when receiving plates, we almost exclusively use colour rendition charts to white balance and perform relative exposure adjustments, i.e. plate neutralisation.” 
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Convert between light exposure and intensityRead more: Convert between light exposure and intensityimport math,sys def Exposure2Intensity(exposure): exp = float(exposure) result = math.pow(2,exp) print(result) Exposure2Intensity(0) def Intensity2Exposure(intensity): inarg = float(intensity) if inarg == 0: print("Exposure of zero intensity is undefined.") return if inarg < 1e-323: inarg = max(inarg, 1e-323) print("Exposure of negative intensities is undefined. Clamping to a very small value instead (1e-323)") result = math.log(inarg, 2) print(result) Intensity2Exposure(0.1)Why Exposure?Exposure is a stop value that multiplies the intensity by 2 to the power of the stop. Increasing exposure by 1 results in double the amount of light. 
 Artists think in “stops.” Doubling or halving brightness is easy math and common in grading and look-dev.
 Exposure counts doublings in whole stops:- +1 stop = ×2 brightness
- −1 stop = ×0.5 brightness
 This gives perceptually even controls across both bright and dark values. 
 Why Intensity?Intensity is linear. 
 It’s what render engines and compositors expect when:- Summing values
- Averaging pixels
- Multiplying or filtering pixel data
 Use intensity when you need the actual math on pixel/light data. 
 Formulas (from your Python)- Intensity from exposure: intensity = 2**exposure
- Exposure from intensity: exposure = log₂(intensity)
 Guardrails: - Intensity must be > 0 to compute exposure.
- If intensity = 0 → exposure is undefined.
- Clamp tiny values (e.g. 1e−323) before using log₂.
 
 Use Exposure (stops) when…- You want artist-friendly sliders (−5…+5 stops)
- Adjusting look-dev or grading in even stops
- Matching plates with quick ±1 stop tweaks
- Tweening brightness changes smoothly across ranges
 
 Use Intensity (linear) when…- Storing raw pixel/light values
- Multiplying textures or lights by a gain
- Performing sums, averages, and filters
- Feeding values to render engines expecting linear data
 
 Examples- +2 stops → 2**2 = 4.0 (×4)
- +1 stop → 2**1 = 2.0 (×2)
- 0 stop → 2**0 = 1.0 (×1)
- −1 stop → 2**(−1) = 0.5 (×0.5)
- −2 stops → 2**(−2) = 0.25 (×0.25)
- Intensity 0.1 → exposure = log₂(0.1) ≈ −3.32
 
 Rule of thumbThink in stops (exposure) for controls and matching. 
 Compute in linear (intensity) for rendering and math.
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