To grain, or not to grain? 

People don't really know how to properly apply grain, or have even studied how grain reacts to different levels in the scene. You see an insane amount of tubers throw on grain, halation, and bloom and think that's how film looks. It's like they've never seen a movie before.

I love this take, it captures and articulates so many of my own thoughts on cinematography so beautifully. I always felt similar about everyone chasing lens flares, it might make sense for a quick edit, but on a narrative film the cleaner and more pure the image the better the focus on the story, character, environment etc. In recent years I've started to slightly stray from my original taste and this was a beautiful reminder of standing by my original thoughts on clarity. Funny my main two lenses for long time were Zeiss 28 f2 ZE and 50 f1.4 ZE and I wanted to switch them out for the Otus' for a long time and never got around to it. Watching your videos are such great reminders to me of what I love in an image, keep creating!

Love this! Shots look so clean. Great work!

Your style is very refreshing

You don't miss..... keep hitting home runs. Thanks for sharing

I think grain can be misunderstood these days because so many people get it wrong. The thing that most people forget is that grain is not just some overlay when shooting on film- it quite literally makes up the image. These days film stocks are very low in grain to begin with and for many many years cinematographers and directors alike actually tried to get lower amounts of grain in their films Alternatively look at cinematographers like Harris Savides or Darius Khondji Who successfully use grain as part of the visual language of the film that they shoot As for people that try to achieve the look of realistic grain on digital, most do it as an overlay and it looks distracting and synthetic It’s important to understand how one is applying grain just as much as the amount of grain, shape, level of saturation it holds etc. Edit: it’s also important to note that because the image would in theory be made up by the grain (on celluloid)- one has to match the smallest discernible level of detail in the frame with the smallest particle of grain

I would argue that using a small amount of grain when uploading to RU-vid is actually better practice than none at all. This form of dithering helps reduce banding in areas of gradient, such as the sky. There are a lot of the shots in this video where the banding in the sky is quite noticeable. Unfortunately, this is just due to the compression RU-vid applies when re-encoding your videos.

Beautiful

Great video. While everyone gets caught up in LOOK by applying random effects for band-aid reasons, everyone forget about the STORY. STORY should dictate the visuals.

Love this

I am definitely guilty of whacking on the grain - in my latest vid I made a conscious decision to present some of the setups without grain and love the shots a lot more for that. Your channel and images are definitely persuading me to experiment with cleaner setups - still closely monitoring used Otus lenses 👀

Man you might have won me over! I may have to set aside the film emulation and clean things up a bit! Solid video man!

Gracias desde España por tu contenido, eres inspirador.

This is a great video, and on right on the topic of something I have also been thinking about. I think as all film makers, we want to make things look 'cinematic' - but what I am finding is that a lot of people on RU-vid think 'Cinematic' is using vintage lenses or dialling up strong effects like halation, bloom or grain. (Unfortunately, I myself also fall in the bucket of these types of film makers. But we shall learn and improve). Where as the shots in your video right here show that actually a shot looks 'cinematic' because of its composition, movement, lighting choices (natural or otherwise). Using this video as inspiration, I will do my next 'short film' without grain.

I really dig the video. Good points. I personally use grain on my videos because it’s connected with my art but sometimes I just want to shoot something which will not decrease the image quality of my camera which is fx30

Use grain mostly in the midtones, then you won't have to worry about reduced contrast. Also "against the grain" love it

Lovely framing. Fig fan ❤❤❤

Im a german film student and been visiting some Film festivals in Germany, Rumania and Luxembourg. I can say the new generation of Film makers also goes for a Gritty, Grainy and Contrasty look. Even when Things are Shot on Alexas, and i have to say i Like it. when its thought out it can work like a good cc to give it even more of a feeling.

Totally agree with you !

Some great points in here and also beautiful footage. For me, grain has its place but can be over utilized just like how a gimbal or drone can be over used. Grain works for some stuff and can look amazing and it can also look distracting.

Nice video

Clean lens gang. Vanilla ice cream gang. T* gang. We on the same page.

To me the film look is more than just grain or halation. Film has a certain texture to it that feels different than digital. Someone described it as being sharp but lacking in detail. To me digital is the opposite, soft edges but a lot of detail. It's something I can usually recognize very quickly and always prefer it.

I think the grain and mist filters and the overall nostalgic image is used to mitigate the effects of debayering, compression, chroma subsampling, lower bitdepth and all in camera processing. That's exatcly the reason why photographers don't use them. The need for such tricks falls of completely when you have a camera with a fully bayered raw image (braw is not one). That's when the need for good glass is at it's highest, since raw shows of every single imperfection of the lenses used. That's also the reason why you like the look of your sigma fp paired with a zeiss lens. Modern cinema cameras used in production today utilise raw with a combination of high quality lenses to create a beautifully rendered image along with set design and lighting

I think grain/film emulation/diffusion filters have their place and time and can look beautiful when executed well and is coherent with the story being told. I would argue that while there are lots of videography RU-vidrs that use&abuse those things, that’s just the tiniest part of the visual medium currently present in the world. If you look at most of the current TV shows, movies, commercials, music videos and social media content, it’s generally very sterile/non-filmic looking. Even giant Marvel blockbusters are, let alone soap dramas, reality TV, cooking vlogs etc. So I think that outside the small niche of “cinematic” content creators, the dirty/gritty/nostalgic look is barely overdone

Great video! Have to say i like grain or better said noise, i don't put grain on the footage but i don't care if there's noise from high iso

I like grain because it adds texture. I shoot at a little less than 1080p so it lacks fine resolution, grain helps fake it and also makes aliasing less noticable

I really like this video, and hopefully this is the start of a series of themes exploring the subjectivity of images... it's far more interesting than the same old technical or camera based content most channels focus on. I'm in agreement that grain is over-used, but not necessarily over-rated... Many of my favourite movies (anything from Denis Villeneuve, The Matrix - and even streaming series, such as a True Detectives or The Bear - have at least a hint of grain or grain-like image quality (ie BM-like noise). In my opinion, grain is just one way of achieving an atmospheric image that creates emotional responses that are deeply ingrained (excuse the pun). Grain is just one way of adding texture to an image, and texture creates a subliminal reaction to it... it's a "touch" sense that is being invoked or primed. Used this way, it's very subtle... but even if people aren't aware, I believe that used right it will nevertheless have an impact on a viewer's experience of an image. There is a brilliant book by Jennifer Barker called "The Tactile Eye" which is a dive into the phenomenology of the immersive experience of watching film. She points out that the texture - if we take the term metaphorically rather than literally - extends to everything about the film-making process that impacts the final image. Just as lens choice and camera movement change how we experience a scene, so do texture choices. Grain is a sort of meta-texture, I think... it sets a mood for a whole film, alongside all the other factors you've mentioned that affect the look and ambience. Speaking of Villeneuve, one of the things that his films always explore is ambiguity. Grain, to my mind, adds a bit of ambiguity 'dust' to a project... I suspect that's why he chose to film digitally for Dune, but then convert to physical film... My 2 cents!

Good clinical lenses are just really expensive 😂 I’d love to afford some Nisi Athenas, but it’s just a hobby, no money in it for me. Choosing a path between using grain or not sounds a bit dramatic, it’s just another tool in the box, but I’ve had the same thoughts even though I’m just getting started. I also refrain from the grain sometimes 😊

good thoughts! I can take something with me.

Camera and lens combo? Im guessing P6k w/ otus, looks amazing dude

I see you are a fellow fries without ketchup enjoyer 😎

Hey, do you export your video in MP4 file for YT upload?

Do you intend on trying the new Zeiss Nano Primes? 👀

Beautiful and food for thoughts as always . You finally chose to keep the BM?

what lense did you used on min 0:35?

Embrace the sharpness! Why make a digital video made for a digital platform and not a cinema screen look like another medium that film is. It is crazy how much effort is put on film emulation but so little to experimentation on what digital can do, extreme staff like people were doing with film since the beginning of the medium. Extreme color grading not another kodak whatever simulation. Enough with nostalgia, it has been milked to the max the last decade.

u have bad taste in film. thats all. like those mean girls who watch avatar 20 times a week

No grain, it just doesn’t look good in video but photography looks ok. The Creator doesn’t look good I didn’t like the look.

If you are struggling with RU-vid compression, you can try upscaling the original video to 48 FPS (with each image lasting two frames to maintain the 24 FPS rate) or even 60 FPS to trick RU-vid into giving you a better codec.