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Mark Your Calendar! April 26th booth selection meeting for MTS2024
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Mark Your Calendar! April 26th booth selection meeting for MTS2024
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DSC Labs Exclusive SMPTE Charts

Available exclusively in the SMPTE Store

SMPTE CamBook® 3

SMPTE CamBook 3 is a precision tool designed to help optimize image quality in:

Engineering
 Align and set up cameras to REC 709
 Compare/match camera makes, models
 Test lenses for colorimetry and resolution

Production
 Select the best camera for the job
 Use as an on-the-set reference
 Color correct images in post

 

 Now available in the SMPTE Store

SMPTE CamBook 3 includes a number of popular DSC test elements:

1. CamAlign® colorbar/grayscale with “SpectroGray” patented spectrophotometrically neutral
grayscale, 12 chip colorbar with four standard skin tones, resolution trumpets and both 16 x 9 and
4 x 3 framing lines. The colorbar features DSC’s easy to use “in-the-boxes” vector colors, plus six
equally spaced intermediate colors and skin tones. Following good engineering practice, colors
are mid-saturation, producing RGB waveform levels that track uniformly when adjusting vectorscope gain.

2. Three useful “matte” reference chips - 18% gray , DSC Warm and 90% CamWhite.

18% gray - All DSC gray cards and grayscales use DSC’s patented "SpectroGray" process to produce spectrophotometrically neutral gray tones. This is important because other look-alike products typically have a yellow cast which, when normalized in a camera, produce images having a blue color bias. This can degrade a production, because it produces cold looking images and viewers typically prefer a warm look. Placing this 18% "SpectroGray" chip at your preferred mid-gray reference point (usually around 40 IRE - 280mV, but can vary based on taste, camera manufacturer or DP preference) helps to ensure that mid-tones, such as skin, are rendered accurately.

DSC Warm - There are times when the main object in a scene is a person and you want to give them a `healthy` looking glow, then white balancing to a CamWarm will do the trick without resorting to a bulky matte box and image degrading filters. CamWarms help video crews reduce set-up time for shoots while improving the production value of their images.

DSC CamWhite - white balancing cameras to a ``CamWhite`` lit by the scene’s primary light source is one of the keys to color reproduction excellence.

3. DSC BackFocus Pattern - Clients say that the unique "bow-tie" double stars speed back focus adjustment accuracy by popping into focus more easily. Exceedingly high dynamic range, brilliant white and dense black targets simplify setting critical focus in center and edges. Includes framing for 16:9 and 4:3 plus 1.85 and 2.35 digital film formats.

SMPTE OneShot™ Pocket Chart

The DSC Labs OneShot chart is designed to capture as much camera and scene lighting information in one shot as possible so that dailies look as close to the DP's intent as possible.

Matte Finish - unlike most other DSC Labs charts, the OneShot is printed with a matte surface to reduce obvious reflections. Glossy charts offer improved dynamic range as blacks can be made deeper and whites brighter, but film-style production schedules don't generally allow the time necessary to shoot a glossy chart and eliminate reflections. A matte chart will still show some glare if held at an improper angle to a light, and the contrast range of the chart is not as high, but it is overall much faster to shoot accurately in a high pressure and timesensitive shooting environment.

 Now available in the SMPTE Store

SMPTE OneShot Pocket Chart includes a number of popular DSC test elements:

The Gray Scale - The top row on one side of the Pocket OneShot chart contains black, gray and white chips. The gray chip is the most important as it is calibrated for 18% reflectance—the same as most spot meters. Placing this gray chip at your preferred middle gray waveform reference point (usually around 40 IRE, but can vary based on taste, camera manufacturer or DP preference), helps to ensure that mid-tones, such as flesh tones, are rendered accurately. DSC’s 90% CamWhite and Acuflect black chips provide optimum white and black balancing.

(An improper black balance can throw off the entire color balance of a scene and result in some very ugly looks.) Additional larger 18% gray and white patches are included on the back of this chart.

The Flesh Tone Row - The first thing a colorist does in a grading session is to look for flesh tone. Improperly rendered flesh tones are more distracting than any other color problem: we innately know what flesh tone looks like, and if it's wrong, nothing else in the scene will appear right. The OneShot's flesh tone row shows the colorist four common flesh tones, all of which fall along the I-Q line on a standard vectorscope.

The Color Rows - The ITU-709 high definition broadcast standard defines three standard primary colors--red, green and blue--out of which are created three standard secondary colors--cyan, magenta and yellow. These hues are reproduced on the OneShot chart and, when properly white balanced in a grading session, these colors should line up with the red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow target boxes on a standard ITU-709 vectorscope.