RED Komodo + Dehancer vs. Kodak 250D Vision3 Comparison

On a recent pickup shoot, I had the rare opportunity to film with both the RED Komodo 6k and an Arri SR2 with 250D Vision3 Stock at the same time.
UPDATE: I recently tried the FilmBox trial version, and with very few tweaks to temp and tint, I was able to get an almost exact match! FilmBox is way ahead of the entire pack if you want a quick conversion to film emulation, however it doesn't have as many settings to tweak. It's also by far the most expensive. You can get there with Dehancer, but you're going to have to do a bunch of hue adjustments and saturation tweaking. See my FilmboxLite comparison clip here - • RED Komodo + FilmBox L...
I decided to do a matching test, because I wanted to try out the different film emulation software that I own.
On the Kodak 250D, the CU shot was filmed on a 12-120 Zeiss T3 at around 35mm (90mm FF equivalent) and T9 at 6:30AM
On the RED, the CU shot was filmed on a 50mm Contax Zeiss at around F8 at 6:35AM, and then digitally zoomed to match the Kodak frame in post.
Out of all of the film emulation software (Cineprint16, Filmconvert, Dehancer, Juan Melara FilmUnlimited Powergrades), Dehancer got me closest right away with a very accurate brightness value conversion. Juan Melara's FilmUnlimited and Cineprint both had very nice blues and greens, but the skin tones were slightly off.
The default colors in Dehancer were very desaturated and there were some hue and saturation adjustments to be made for a good match.
All adjustments were made to nodes before the Dehancer node:
I increased the saturation on the RED using a negative saturation node (HSV color space, turn off channels 1 and 3, then boost gain by about 30). I also raised the Log shadows on the RED by about 5 to match my simple Kodak grade.
Then, the most glaring color difference were in the greens. The Dehancer conversion was rendering them way too yellow, so I dragged the yellow towards green in the Hue spider-web. The skin tone hues didn't change, just I put a bit more saturation into them. I also compressed the saturation along the purple-green axis, and did some rotation along the yellow-green-cyan towards blue.
Grain on Dehancer was set to about 10 intensity and 5-6 size, with 80% chroma color and a 0% film resolution to match the Kodak grain. All other settings (halation, bloom, compression, gate weave, breathing, etc.) were turned on but left at default.
I added a very light "Film Damage" with white dust spots only to the Komodo footage after the Dehancer node with a density of 2. All film damage settings except for dust were turned off.
I'm very happy with these results. I believe that it shows that given its 16-bit color image and around 13 stops of dynamic range, the RED Komodo comes within .5 stops of Kodak film and can be manipulated into a very close resemblance using a good matching tool like Dehancer and other basic adjustments.

[@tannerbrowningfilms]

Wow… great results. I guessed right! mainly how the bloom in the highlights are difficult to replicate digitally.
Still, you really have to squint and look to know the difference. .

[@decipher-me]

I mean I could easily tell which one is which but tbh only because I know what to look for. Dehancer really nailed the look.
But this scene (0:12) would give it away pretty quickly even if you don't know what to look for. The red produced an overly clean image

[@filmforjoy]

Pretty close there, there still subtle differences in these samples that give film an edge, but if it wasnt a comparison video it will be hard to tell that the komodo shots were not shot on film.

[@ScottJeschke]

Wow. Very cool. And very close. Thanks for sharing!

[@kennyfernandes]

Thank you so much for this video, it helped me a lot.

[@botbot3698]

filmbox is expensive but better, especially at incorporating the grain

[@VilkanVisions]

Nice to see comparision like this, Dehancer is really good :)

[@BarneyOram]

The difference is crazy to me. Film feels so alive. Digital can't get close to capturing that magic..

[@andersistbesser]

Its not magic, the picture is just worse. It looks unique but its worse, colors are not accurate and and and

[@thomervin7450]

@@andersistbesser Less color accuracy doesn't necessarily mean worse. Depends upon the look you're going for and your filming philosophy. I shoot with film and long ago realized that images are never 100% reproductions of life, so there's no point in being obsessed over that type of realism... unless you just want to get as close to the real world as possible, for whatever reason.

[@Cinnovations]

Grain is very elusive, even when emulated “accurately.”

[@oldwebshooter]

I guess A because around finer details like hair and the small leaf, it seemed to have a slight blockiness alias,

[@shaggyfeng9110]

Guessed it correctly from start to finish. The film has a calmness that makes the digital one looks a bit jumpy in comparison (maybe something to do with shutter speed or the way frame is generated).

[@DavidK-wg8wz]

you can tell if you put them side by side but if you intercut between say digital film emulation shots and real film shots, would you notice every changeup? Probably not. Will say though highlights are still almost impossible to get right with film emulation, even with alexas it's pretty noticeable.

[@joshuakellerman4104]

Agreed. The highlights have a "blooming" rolloff and maintain color accuracy 100% even when super overexposed, up to about +10 stops before they burn out, which is basically impossible to reproduce. But, a skilled cinematographer who knows how to control their exposure can make things look 98% like film.

[@DavidK-wg8wz]

@@joshuakellerman4104 very true
and in your opinion, when looking at say the first shot comparison, is there a detectable difference in skin tones film emulation vs film? Cause I cant pinpoint exactly what it is but they feel slightly different, like the film version has more organic spread to it

[@joshuakellerman4104]

@@DavidK-wg8wz I actually think there is less tonality and sensitivity in color in the film, but more sensitivity when it comes to the brightness values. You see that my Komodo is pickup up places where my skin is slightly more red or yellow, which makes the skin look blotchy. It can be fixed by taken out a bit of red of the Komodo footage, but it's too much trouble for me.

[@skullerhead6150]

pls make a tutorial on how to make it!!!

[@Cinnovations]

That was officially indistinguishable. It seems to only work well when grading side by side, but visual authorship is up to the colorist.

[@heutemalnicht]

I guessed correctly on a 24 inch 1440p screen. But i would say 90% of non-cinegeeks would never.

[@zarias2009]

What was your settings on film damage? Sometimes it looks so off to me, but here looks organic!

[@joshuakellerman4104]

I turn everything off except for dirt. Make the dirt white, and set its density to "2"

[@jameslongmire9151]

What resolution/sensor crop were you using on the Komodo?

[@joshuakellerman4104]

So, most of these were cropped in about 200%, or a 2.7x Full-Frame crop, meaning it was 3k / around a super16mm sensor which I believe is a 3x Full Frame crop

[@studio-filo]

Dehancer is so good

[@Hawa_Chapal]

Very expensive

[@joshuakellerman4104]

I would say that with none of them, the color is good / realistic out of the box, however the contrast and other effects are best with Dehancer (bloom, halation, and especially the grain)

[@RemmyMusic1]

blows my mind people spend 6 racks on a camera just to emulate the look of a shitty camera 😂

[@decipher-me]

You clearly have no idea how high perceived resolution of film is.
The entire dark knight trilogy is shot on arri cameras with kodak vision3 250d or 500t. Not a single scene was shot on an digital camera. Same for every Quentin Tarantino movie, many scorsese movies and so on.

[@RemmyMusic1]

what are you yapping about@@decipher-me

[@decipher-me]

u call the arri a crappy camera meanwhile quality movies where shot on such cameras@@RemmyMusic1

[@joshuakellerman4104]

It's true, I am emulating the look of low-rez 16mm film, but the great thing is, when I want to, I can have nice clean digital crispness as well. I paid for the options, not for one particular look.