Congratulations, Boris! You’ve become a post tag!
(I see that it also happened once before a couple of years ago)
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I find interesting how perceived quality of an image is culturally shifted :
how some optic, processing and broadcasting characteristics of the film era that can be associated to “defects” is spontaneously recognised by many of us as quality indicators like :
reduced dynamic with blacks not black and even color shifted same for the whites, reduces high frequency contrasts that could be linked to the quality of the optic or focus.
I find these traits very pronounced on the given example (low DR and softness)
But then again the quality of an image, and edit is not about maxing the contrast and color capability of your medium 
More on the topic as @s7habo and @123sg have demonstrated here, thanks to colorbalance RGB, contrast equalizer and primaries, it’s almost a 3 module job on DT once the basics (technicals modules + WB and exposure compensation) have been taken care of.
@s7habo : Since I’ve had some difficulties to apprehend channel mixer (but I’m kid of ok with that now) I’m curious to know , Have you ditched it since Primaries is available or are you using both depending the edit ?
Interesting discussion.
There are indeed some things in edit that are particular to the cinematic style. Some things I’d like to add: pull down the target white in filmic / sigmoid for a more uniform look in the highlights. This can work a treat on moody portraits. Lifting target black also gives that sometimes desirable “fog” - just don’t overdo it.
However, I think the term “cinematic” itself is very slippery and hard to dissect - its meaning will also depend on each person’s own preferences and background.
For me, I think creating cinematic pictures starts well before even pressing the shutter button. The shots that I find the most cinematic tend to always have a sense of depth - either in form of clear subject-background separation, atmospheric haze or perspective. The best images seem to have a clear storyline and guide the viewer to read the picture. Often, those pictures tend to have a person in them.
So compose your shots well. Think about the storyline and use the leading lines, foreground, whatever you have to convey the story to the reader. Ditch that dehaze preset.
(btw: the most obvious cinematic tip is to shoot/crop 16:9 or even wider to be closer to the format used in cinemas 
)
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That’s a brilliant hint. I must test it immediately. Thank you!
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This post from Ming Thein might be of interest - confirms your statements about depth etc.
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It’s ironic that shallow depth of field is considered cinematic by photographers (who spend so much on f1.n lenses to try to achieve it 
). Cinema tends toward deep focus, as far I understand, particularly classic movies, because a good director can use blocking to control the image while providing more subliminal information for the viewer in the background or the geometry of the actors and objects. This great IGN analysis of Kurosawa’s High and Low is a good example and a treat of visual storytelling.
Even great directors like Denis Villeneuve who do use shallow depth of field tend to deploy it in the exact opposite way that stills photographers trying to be cinematic do. In the montage video of his work below, Villeneuve’s using the out of focus areas not generally to isolate the key action but to blur that action, forcing the viewer to strain to see what’s going on.
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Even great directors like Denis Villeneuve who do use shallow depth of field tend to deploy it in the exact opposite way that stills photographers trying to be cinematic do. In the montage video of his work below, Villeneuve’s using the out of focus areas not generally to isolate the key action but to blur that action, forcing the viewer to strain to see what’s going on.
Well, it’s not the opposite. I mean some photographers do, yes, but for me the blurred OOF background has to mean something to the sharp subject in the foreground (or vice versa). Otherwise there’s no point of the image except saying “yeah, nice bokeh, you isolated your object”. But that’s it, it’s one-dimensional. Connection to both planes has to exist to be good.
Denis V. is the master of cinematography for sure. There are only few directors that have that style for me and he’s one of them. Every one of his films has that signature visual style and tension-rich atmospherics. Can’t wait for Dune 2. Watched Dune 1 eight times in cinemas, all flavors.
And just days ago was watching Blade Runner 2049 again. Was blown away even more.
Agree. There’s a certain tendency to focus on style, sometimes with little regard to the purpose or meaning of a picture. Like what’s that stylistic turn actually doing there. It’s a major weakness in my own photos, for sure.
Wah!
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Wah!
xD Yeah I know. I was addicted and hugely inspired by the film, cinematography, music, story.
There’s a certain tendency to focus on style, sometimes with little regard to the purpose or meaning of a picture. Like what’s that stylistic turn actually doing there. It’s a major weakness in my own photos, for sure.
I think we all do when the lens is new or learning the new technique. Or just having fun.
But if working for the news agency taught me something back in the days, it’s the fact that every image has to portray something and tell a story. One of the tricks to use is the separation of the planes, where foreground emphasizes something that’s in the background, or vice versa.
[off hook] That’s why you should never trust a photojournalist working for the news agency on a sensitive matter - we all try to make the best photo by connecting pieces that are on the streets to tell a story. And those pieces are usually highly subjective or in-sync with the news.
Former wire journo here, so I hear you
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here’s my easy LUT-driven take on an old Play RAW image.
the LUT I used can be found here. It’s a homemade Print Film Emulation LUT by a professional colourist from Australia.
seeing as they were developed and used by the film industry in helping to prepare digital intermediates for printing back to film for distribution it seems a reasonable starting point for anything that might be deemed “cinematic”.
_MG_3103.CR2.xmp (15.6 KB)
as you might expect the LUT pushes shadows towards blue and highlights towards yellow, but more interesting - and harder to nail down with your own manual curve adjustments - is the tone mapping.
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Playing with the same file and continuing on your xmp. Also using same LUTs from that Print Film Emulation dir.
_MG_3103.CR2.xmp (54.0 KB)
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A lot of times shallow DOF is just used to not have to think about the background. But that is where every good picture starts - with the canvas. By just blurring the background any lack of thought going into the setup of the scene can be blurred. Pun intended. If you go deep focus every mistake in setup will be visible. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, especially at some official events where some PR person tries to control the images. David Burnett is a master of finding special solutions even under those circumstances.
The clips about blocking and out-of-focus story telling cater exactly to that: you have to have an idea of the whole scene, of what you want to tell to use the space available in the best possible way.
As photographers we most often can not set up the whole scene and direct people around. We have to move the camera to tell the story. It’s so sad to see photographers look at something, say “oh shiny”, get the camera up to their eye and take the picture. Only those with a lot of training and a waste bucket full of failures will stand in the right place at that moment.
In the walkietalkie linked above Billy Dinh says “Pick up whatever you can afford. And spend money on a comfortable pair of sneakers, because you need to be out there, walking all the time to take good photos.”
My 2cts: Take that initial “oh shiny” impulse picture both as a reference and your personal diary. Then start moving around. Most likely you will find an improved picture.
And sometimes all your planning is honoured with a little luck: both the wheelie and the hand movement of his buddy where just that. The general setup wasn’t. And the weather was just cinematic. =)
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That’s a perfectly doable thing in photography as well. You just have to mind that f1.2 lens so that there’s enough to go from in the blurry parts 
Much online material emphasize the most self-help like simplistic thinking. Even the “thoughtful” ones tend to speak only in cliches.
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And for some of that anamorphic look, add a bokeh shaping insert to your lens.
Hi Boris, could you share some example xmp triggering this issue allowing me to test ad hoc? Would be very interested for analysis if this has been fixed in master via Fix XYZ_to_xyY and dt_xyY_to_XYZ conversions by jenshannoschwalm · Pull Request #16071 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub or if it need more attention
Just take this raw file from Steven and move the global offset luminance slider in the colour balance module to the left and the artefacts will appear immediately:
DSC_4318.NEF.xmp (9,0 KB)
Yeah, thanks. I think this has been fixed in master & likely for 4.6.1 too via the mentioned pr. (There was a bug for color space conversions where luminance was zero. Could you check again and either confirm “issue being fixed” or “please keep on track”
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