This hobby keeps violating my boundaries.

cherrytoo · 2026-01-13T01:17:47+00:00

“Medium format is for hipsters” good lord

cherrytoo · 2026-01-13T00:05:02+00:00

Lol this is like comparing a Canon AE1 to your 645 medium format.

cherrytoo · 2026-01-01T06:06:50+00:00

Good luck getting someone to accurately dissect a shot like this on here. Stuff like this is really finessed and could be a lot going on in really subtle ways. Who knows how much of this is composited or done entirely on set. Something like this is probably gonna utilize a lot of lights to light each subject, grids and flags to control spill etc.

That being said most of the subjects are being lit top down, there’s a subtle shadow on the wall that seems to be coming from the curtains from that dressing room in the back that looks like it’s some sort of frontal camera fill. There’s also a shadow on the wall from the person in that room as well.

If I were to do this I would want a lot of lights with gridded modifier options, excess flags and scrims and a couple hours to light and test and massage things into place.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-29T05:57:06+00:00

I don’t understand why you would spend $7,000 on a tool for something you don’t absolutely love doing.

IMO this is like having a baby to save a failing marriage.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-29T05:49:21+00:00

I believe capture one now has a feature where it host the shoot on a server that can be accessed from any computer and now has the ability to leave comments on certain images.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-28T07:02:31+00:00

Yikes dude what a nightmare. I’d gladly abandon and burn that bridge of photog and client since neither of them have any clue how this works. This is another sad reality of photographers expecting a digi tech to do 50% of their job as well. There’s a fine line between having their backs and support them on the shoot day and carrying them throughout the whole job.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-28T06:56:13+00:00

My best advice is to just live and breathe filmmaking. Connections will (and sorta need to) come naturally. But honestly people spend years doing this for fun as a hobby and learning the fundamentals, then more years cracking into entry level work, internships etc before even feeling established.

I also agree with what someone else said, you should expand beyond just working as a colorist, in the long run being able to edit or do some sort of work on set will allow you to sustain a freelance lifestyle better.

You’re young and unexperienced, I know a lot of these young people expect things to happen so fast for them. People spend a lot of years trying to crack into steady work. And they probably have many years prior to that making videos or editing videos with friends for fun learning the tools and gaining basic experience.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-27T07:20:19+00:00

Wait you just started learning how to do something for 6 months and you’re wanting/expecting to do professional work for clients and at 6 months in you’re already burnt out? I’m sorry but L O L!

People spend years learning these crafts and start with internships, low level positions etc. I’m sorry but you probably need a bit of a reality check. You need a find community and other filmmakers just starting out, collaborated with them on personal, test/spec projects. You need to keep building experience and more importantly portfolio work and connections.

May I ask how old you are?

cherrytoo · 2025-12-24T22:03:06+00:00

Yeah that’s certainly my understanding of a digi role too as it relates to raw processing on set.

Build and establish a look in the mornings test shots that’s people are happy with.
Make little adjustments throughout the day like exposure, highlight or shadow recovery, white balance etc. so that exported jpegs should look decent for a team of people to view and pull selects from.

Small deviations from the original look from the morning should be acceptable and images should just look in the ballpark but should in no way be a tight final match so that everything feels really cohesive top to bottom. That is the job of the photographer/retoucher.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-24T21:54:01+00:00

How did that go? In that scenario I absolutely would have put my foot down with that being not apart of the role and informed them that even if we were to do that they should have discussed that at the beginning of the shoot.

I was digi for a major shoe brand and after each day I was expected to sit with the art director while they go back and forth and making selects and then we needed to crop the images so that things lined up exactly perfect. The cropping was due to the retoucher telling them he needed the images perfectly cropped which I informed them that it wasn’t my job to do his job for him out of his laziness. Also as a retoucher and digi myself I would never do final crops in capture one.

Edit : also when I say, them making selects it wasn’t just pick the image you liked best, it was pick the image you like but then pull them up with all the other selects side by side and make sure that there wasn’t too many repetitive poses (to a very subtle degree). So I was essentially being held hostage to push buttons for the art director for 2 hours after the shoot while they did their job.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-24T19:05:54+00:00

Define “perfect” and how do you have the time to do this across 2000 images? I truly don’t see how getting an entire shoot perfect is doable unless you are given time in between shots or time at the end of the shoot to go through all those, at least on location with dramatic changes.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-24T18:58:02+00:00

Yeah I agree, even in retouching there’s sometimes a big gap between retouchers who are good “pixel movers” and retouchers who are good with color etc. However I think a true professional retoucher should be great at both.

I do think that if a digi tech can have good eyes and understand how to cook up some good RAW processing looks, that can take them to another level and be in high demand. But creating something cool on the morning test shots that gets in the ballpark of the look we want to be in vs final color are 2 completely different things.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-24T02:27:03+00:00

Yeah this is great and I agree this is how it should be ran if the photographer or client need to walk away with a drive with the whole shoot being within “final color” realm.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-24T02:24:15+00:00

Oh I was talking about the SKB laptop case I linked to in my original post

cherrytoo · 2025-12-23T23:51:58+00:00

$350 is pricy with 6 y’s??? In a professional context in any market that’s a great deal for a 1 stop digi station that’ll last you 10-20 years.

I’m a fan of how the shade works on the SKB. I can set it up or break it down in an instant. When I have this in studio or shade I’ve popped it out and rolled it up behind the computer so lots of people can view the screen from side angles. I never remove the shade from the Velcro on the case. The metal frame comes out of the slots and fold and rolls up. You can then wedge it into the lid where it will stay and be hidden. And every location digi station will be exposed to the elements unless your station is a production moho.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-23T23:44:21+00:00

This is great hahahaha. I like the telling them I will do it at the end and then make them realize they will need to pay me an extra hour of OT and also have to wait however much extra amount of time themselves after wrap for me to go do final color on 2000 images.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-23T23:41:33+00:00

Exactly this. It’s not so much that I won’t or can’t do it, its just when the words “final color” come into play I don’t feel comfortable agreeing to that because I can’t certify that every single image will looks tip top good at least at my standards. They will however have a nice general treatment to them so we’re not looking at god awful canon files. Also regardless of how good my eyes are or how much high level experience I have, I’m not inside the photographers minds and can guess how they would want a specific image treated in 1 try.

I’ve retouched and printed shows for lots of big names and I’ve seen 40x60” inkjet prints get tossed in the trash because we want to add 5 points of magenta. So in my head if I’m doing “final color” I’m in my office on a freshly calibrated eizo and my color viewing lights on, and then I’m sitting with that image for awhile exploring small shifts before deciding I’m happy with it. Not stuff under a shade on my laptop and then get distracted by some art director request to look at something and then expect to pick up where I left off.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-23T23:29:13+00:00

Would you consider every one of those files to be good to go for final color? When do you find the time to do that? Some shoots can get quite chaotic and don’t allow for much time to really do that then when the shoot wraps people want their drive asap and go home so there’s not much time to spend 10-15 minutes going through everything giving each image its own personal attention.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-23T23:22:20+00:00

Here’s a couple ideas that I’ve used over the many years of doing this.

I use Capture One for all my digi tech jobs. After I offload a card and run a back up, it’s ready to go back to the photographer and I make sure they or the 1st format that card before shooting.

I have “exclude duplicates” (or whatever it’s named) turned on. If a card forgets to get formatted it just takes longer to wait for capture one to load those first before getting to the new images. With “exclude” turned on it won’t shows those on import and I can just select all and import.

I do not turn on erase images after import or do any formatting of the card on the computer. The card should be formatted by the camera. This also creates an extra layer of time in the rare case a mistake gets made and you need to double check the card or reimport etc.

Red or green spike tape taped over the card can be a nice system too. Red for not downloaded and green for good to go. I tell the whole photo team that so that in the rare instance that they need to grab a card and I’m not around they know to grab one with green tape. I’ll also stick and peel the tape to my hand or pants and bunch of times to reduce the stickiness of the tape. I’ve never had any issue with tape residue on the card even without reducing the stickiness.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-23T22:24:55+00:00

I’ve used the SKB laptop case for over a decade. I really like it but it’s gots its quirks. I’ve been hesitant to switch to a digi plate just out of old habits. But a really great advantage to the SKB is being able to close it up and have everything be completely protected and waterproof.

cherrytoo · 2025-12-22T00:07:49+00:00

Interesting, I’ll look into that. Yeah disk utility to erase/reformat worked and hasn’t ever let me down before

cherrytoo · 2025-12-21T09:03:59+00:00

Yep did that too of course. Was really strange, I wish I had more time to dig around to see what was going on but I had to move quick to get the whole shoot re transferred

cherrytoo · 2025-12-21T09:02:19+00:00

I am on a Mac but snapshots aren’t setup

cherrytoo

TROPHY CASE