Leader's CINEZONE

Leader's CINEZONE

A fairly recent addition to Leader's product line is the CineLite II software which encompasses both the CineZone and CineLite applications, both extremely useful tools. CineLite basically lets you pick pixel sample positions on the SDI image and display the value in either % (IRE) or F-Stop - very useful for locating the precise value of something within a scene or if you're setting exposure based off a grey card. I was hoping to share some screen captures to illustrate how it works but for some reason the "capture" feature on the Leader LV 5330 does not work with CineLite. CineZone is very similar to the False Color viewing mode on a RED One but a little more intuitive in my opinion. IRE values from -7.3 to 109.4 are mapped pictorially using simple colors to represent the IRE values. Values over 100 IRE are displayed as white, values under 0 IRE are black and everything in between is represented from blue to red with green representing 50 % reflectance.  As I've mentioned before on this blog, CineZone is very intuitive and particularly useful for maintaining contrast ratios on faces and also great for working in bright conditions when the picture display is too washed out to evaluate.

To demonstrate, the following images where captured from my Leader LV 5330. The camera was a Panasonic HDX900 with a Fujinon ENG zoom. This crude test was done in my dumpy hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express Miami International Airport.

So here we've got your basic grey card and macbeth lit to key.

Here it is viewed in CineZone to verify. As you can see, the gray card is pretty evenly green. Note the scale on the right side of the image. It shows you exactly what each color represents on the scale from -7.3 to 109.4 IRE (%)

Here it is on the waveform, note how the colors correspond to the values. All CineZone is is a more directly visual way of displaying a waveform. Since using this product on jobs, I've stopped showing people the waveform and started using CineZone as my explaining tool. It's amazing how fast people can recognize specific areas of the frame that need more work.

And here is the beautiful scene revealed at last.

And the CineZone version.

Now let's have a closer look at the grey card. Here it is around the middle of the zoom range. Note there's no F-drop at this point in the range so it's pretty even across.

And on CineZone.

Now see what happens when we pan the light away.

Here's something else that's pretty interesting. Here's the same grey card but viewed from the end of the lens' zoom range. You can really see the vignetting you get on these ENG lenses.

There you have it - CineZone. Pretty cool!