Colorists on Color Grading

Here’s a quick round up of color grading panels, displays and announcements from this years NAB. If you’re interested in the latest color grading gear this should get you started.

NAB Round Up

The Coloristos created this podcast live from NAB and give their summary thoughts on the best of the show, covering pretty much everything:

DaVinci Resolve 10, SpeedGrade CS7, Smoke 2013, the Scratch 8 preview, Mistika 7.2, and the new Baselight One Deskside and Slate Control Panel. They also cover new displays from Sony, Sharp, FSI, and Dolby, as well as major changes to Avid Media Composer and Symphony licensing, along with the curious omission of the RED Laser Projector at the RED booth this year.

Control Panels

Filmlight announced a new panel at this years NAB called Slate. Here’s a quick run down of the spec:

2 display screens with user-controllable back light (800×240 pixels resolution)
» 66 x soft mapped, soft labelled push keys with user-controlled brightness
» 3 x infra-red, optical trackballs with 6 point trackball mounting and bespoke
3rd axis rings
» 12 x limitless, rotary optical encoders with integral push switch

Speaking of Baselight here is a quick video on Baselight Editions from Scott Simmons at this years NAB. Baselight Editions brings high end color grading functionality (in a slightly stripped down form) into your NLE.

In this recent Coloristos podcast the three colorists chat through some of the most common panels on the market and the pros and cons of each. If you’re in the market for a color grading panel its well worth a listen before you hand over your hard earned cash.

LED, LCD, Plasma, OLED Explained in 3 mins

If you want a very quick primer on the difference between LED, LCD, Plasma and OLED TV’s then this 3 minute video will give you the basic gist.

For a more detailed look at the different display technologies Wolfcrow has a decent run down of the differences between all of the manufacturing technologies.