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Color MentorAuthor: Paul Hanrahan
Paul hanrahan interviews film industry professionals about the art and science behind color grading and image making in general. Language: en Genres: Arts, Film Interviews, TV & Film, Visual Arts Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Charles Poynton Interview.
Episode 13
Friday, 30 January, 2026
In this episode I chat to Charles Poynton.Many of you may know him as one of the foremost educators in our industry and he has had a formidable career. He is an independent contractor specializing in the physics, mathematics, engineering, and programming of digital colour imaging systems, including digital video, VFX/CGI, Digital Intermediate and digital cinema systems. He is involved in engineering wide colour gamut and high dynamic range systems. He does technology forecasting, systems modelling, algorithm development, video signal processing architecture, colour characterization and calibration and image quality assessment work. It was about 25 years ago that he decided that HD should have 1080 image rows, and square pixels.He has been involved in developing many of the industry standards that we use today.He wrote one of the most commonly used books for our industry titled: Digital Video and HD, Algorithms and Interfaces.In December 2024 he hosted a Metamerism Experts Day, which was attended by a wide range of industry experts to discuss the various ways that metamerism is successful and how it fails more regularly with technological advancements.We discuss the many complex topics presented at this event, and also his illustrious career.Hope you enjoy it.Charle’s website: https://poynton.ca/IMAGO article link: https://imago.org/committees/technical/metamerism-experts-day-debrief/Charles’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Video-Second-Algorithms-Interfaces/dp/0123919266/Color Mentor is on YouTube or your favorite podcast provider.We discuss:(00:00) - Start. (00:53) - Introduction. (02:46) - Interview starts. (05:49) - Flanders and Barco in Belgium. (07:39) - Charles’s history. (09:31) - Sun Micro systems. (10:24) - BT. 601. (10:54) - Battle for 1080 lines and square pixels. (20:35) - ICC development. (21:44) - Transitioning to LCD monitors. (23:31) - CRT monitors. (25:31) - sRBG standard. (27:09) - OETF’s and EOTF’s. (43:16) - CRT’s spikey spectrums. (45:19) - Metamerism experts day lead up. Bram and Steve. (49:29) - Don’t call it RGB yet. (51:30) - A quick history of color mixing and matching. (53:24) - Illuminant metamerism. (54:33) - Florescent bulbs and meat counters. (56:22) - Observer metamerism. (58:29) - Metamerism in virtual production. (01:01:10) - Multi-primary systems. (01:03:57) - Characterizing cameras. (01:06:06) - Nudging primaries. (01:14:06) - DLP and Xenon bulbs. (01:18:57) - Personal color matching functions. (01:22:01) - IMAGO article. (01:22:21) - Mastering gamut’s. (01:28:37) - Dynamics. (01:32:25) - Apple EDR. (01:35:49) - Cone fundamentals. (01:43:47) - Rec 2020 as container not target gamut. (01:48:31) - Problems of laser in cinema. (01:53:10) - Outro. (01:53:08) - End. Check out www.patreon.com/ColorMentor/ for colorist training and mentoring. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
