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False Color is probably the most useful tool cinematographers have at their fingertips, and I can say without hesitation— it sucks. Which is why so few cinematographers use it regularly…. But how can both statements be true? And did EL Zone solve the problem?

Well, False Color is an amazing tool because with a single click you can see all the individual exposure levels in your scene in real time. It’s like having a handheld light meter and testing every inch of your scene… but in real time from your camera as things are moving. You can, with practice, know exactly whether faces are properly exposed, how deep your shadows will be, and where you’re blowing out. And its color-coded so you can read it all with a glance… only… you can’t, really. There are too many colors, too close together in hue, and too small. I mean there can be two, three, or even four grays, for Christ sake, in some false color scales… and that’s because there’s more than one scale. Arri and Red have their own color schemes, with different colors and varying IRE… which will be different from the scale you’ll find on most monitors. And then there’s the issue of it being based on IRE versus exposure stops, but frankly I think that’s small potatoes.

EL Zone was developed to address the IRE problem. It identifies middle gray in your LOG profile (using IRE information) and translates the colors into stops of light from middle gray. This can make things easier when it comes to camera and light adjustments. It also uses a more sensible color scheme than most, which is I think by far its greatest improvement. The problem with EL Zone is that currently its availability is limited to just a couple of manufacturers and there are still too many colors– 17 to be exact!  What’s more, the colors are showing you stops of light, not what your camera can capture. You’ll need to know how many stops above and below middle gray your sensor can capture, and that changes based on ISO. If you wander away from your native ISO, your dynamic range changes… which means you’ll blow your highlights in an earlier color. And while it’s great that the Zone communicates info about your LOG profile exposure, you’ll need to keep in mind that it doesn’t work with non-LOG profiles. With limited LOG-ISO-specific representation of when you blow or crush your exposure, EL Zone easily communicates information about skin tone, but your full scene may require more than a glance at the screen.  EL Zone is also proprietary, which keeps other manufacturers from incorporating it in their monitors and cameras, and many experts and YouTubers are afraid to show you how to make your own version of EL Zone (which you can do).

I’m not going to show you how to make El Zone, because frankly I think we can do better: a customized false color system, individualized to your camera, based on your need for information, and you can install it on any monitor, even your phone. True, it doesn’t come pre-packaged all ready to go, but you can also make versions for gamma profiles. To do this, you’ll need a plug in from Time in Pixels.

First, let’s get a couple of caveats out of the way. First, this is essentially a LUT, so you need a monitor that supports custom LUTS (just about all of them). Even my phone monitor apps accept LUTS, so you’re probably good. Second, your PEL Zone (Personal EL Zone) is created with plugin from TimeInPixels and it costs $50. Now this may seem like a lot, but EL Zone is only available on a couple of higher-end monitors from Smallrig and Atomos (as well as certain Panosonic Cinema Cameras); if you really want it, you’re easily paying $50 for that false color system, and it’s not transferable. Second, you can create multiple False Color systems with the plugin, install them wherever you like, and keep them forever. It is, frankly, one of the better upgrades I’ve done for my cinema kit. TimeinPixels offers a free, trial version for you to experiment with to understand how it works, but it doesn’t include the ability to create your own customized False Color LUT.

You have to decide for yourself whether its worth the investment. So far I’ve created two False Color LUTS, one for SLOG 3 footage that hasn’t been gamma adjusted (in other words, still in its “flat” state), and one for footage that has been gamma adjusted (gamma assist for Sony camera users). I’ve loaded these onto my Atomos Ninja V and my Monitor Plus phone app (you can easily load it into Sony’s Creator app if that what you use). I’ll likely create another one for my Z CAM E2 and load it onto my second monitor. I also use the LUT in Davinci Resolve because it shows me when my skin tones are pushing towards clipped in the back lighting, as well as exposure ratios I might want to keep track of. It also helps me shot match exposure across clips and cameras (say in an interview setting) so that faces have the same exposure.Once you start using False Color, its rather addictive.

So how do you make a Personal EL Zone LUT?

First download the trial plug in from TimeInPixels and play around with it. Installation is super simple: download and unzip the file. Then double click and Davinci Resolve will ask if you want to install it. Say yes and you’re done. Make sure you’re comfortable with how the plugin works, and that it seems worthwhile. When you’re ready, make the purchase.

For my second step, I selected three clips from a recent project that I thought were well exposed in camera. As a general rule, if you’re a Sony shooter using SLOG 3, you’ll want the scene to be over-exposed by 1.3 stops. In reality, this is more complicated in high dynamic range scenes (which is why the PEL Zone is so useful). Find three clips where you think you nailed it. Then color grade those clips until you’re happy with the look. You want to do this before making your first LUT because you’ll match your exposure colors to that clip.
Go to your Color Page in Davinci and you should see False Color (Timeinpixels.com) among your effects. Create and new node and drag it onto that node. It will automatically set to a generic false color mode called R3D. To create your own click “Edit Preset.”

Now a heads up: Time In Pixels will pop up a new screen with your image and a control box for setting the False Color parameters. I use a 4K monitor, and it had considerable difficulty in displaying correctly. Sometimes (most of the time) my cursor would be down and off to the side of the controls it was clicking on. It was very annoying, but possible. I reached out to Time In Pixels, and they’d never heard of that problem. Strange, considering how common 4K monitors are in editing. The likely cause is your computer scaling your monitor programs so the font isn’t tiny. You can adjust your monitor settings to exempt Time In Pixels from scaling, but my computer had a hard time distinguishing Davinci Resolve from Time in Pixels. The Plugin is opening inside of DR, which I think causes the problem. Most of the time it didn’t look right; occasionally it did. But I could navigate all the settings in the dialog box, which is what you need.

At this stage it’s helpful to know what IRE your camera considers middle gray (Google it). I highly recommend having your middle gray be gray in your False Color, and your other exposure levels in different colors. Don’t repeat colors/hues at different saturations. Time in Pixels has some good tutorials on how to create presets, so I won’t go into the nuts and bolts of setting up ranges (you can either click on the control slider in the dialogue box or click and drag the tabs on the scale). You can choose how many colors; custom pick your colors (click on the color patch), and decide between hard and gradient edges.

The EL Zone uses light stops as their scale; every stop (or third of a stop) is a different color. Unless you calculate all of your lighting/exposure choices in stops (such as with ND, light power, and aperture), I actually don’t think this is much more helpful than IRE. Even if you do, that’s a lot of colors. One of the goals of the EL Zone was to be able to have your camera act as a spot light meter, but this makes for a lot of calculations on set… rather than just being able to see exposure differences on the monitor. So rather than use Stops as my scale, I created nine zones based on the information I need:

• Crushed blacks (0-3.5 IRE) Black
• Deep shadows (5-15 IRE) Dark Purple
• Mid shadows (20-30 IRE) Blue
• Shadow side of the face for dark skinned individuals (30-40 IRE) Green
• Middle gray (40-45 IRE) GRAY
• Shadow side of the face for light skinned individuals (45-55 IRE) ORANGE
• Perfect exposure for light skinned individuals (60-70 IRE) YELLOW
• Pushing the highlights for skin (75-85 IRE) LIGHT PURPLE/FUCHSIA
• Blowing the highlights everywhere (90-100 IRE) RED

Those are my settings, based on what I want to see. Yours might differ. Rename your preset, Save and Close.

Now’s a good time to see how your other color corrected images stand up. Apply your False Color preset to those images. Does it accurately read the image in terms of exposure?
Just by keeping it simple, you can improve on most of the False Color systems out there. Here’s a comparison of my False Color LUT and a Blackmagic LUT. Which is easier to read at a glance? Obviously, they’re telling you slightly different things (because Blackmagic is calibrated to its camera). But the upper gray section encompasses everything from 50 IRE to 87 IRE with just a minor gradation. How are you supposed to judge shadow and light on a face in a high-key image?

You may choose to stop here with your LUTS. You can export it and copy it to your monitor. Or you may want to create a LUT for your un-gamma corrected LOG. This can be helpful because your camera’s gamma assist will be slightly different than your color corrected image. To create a LOG-based false color LUT, take a screen shot of your corrected image with the False Color applied. Then turned off all the color correction nodes for my clip and go back inside the False Color creator. Using my screenshot, adjusted the sliders until your new preset matches your original. The colors of your LOG LUT should look exactly like your graded LUT. It will take some time because the flat image profile means the color scale is much tighter (with a lot of blown out and crushed areas in the IRE scale).

The LUTS created by Time In Pixels have one drawback: they don’t include the scale when you load them into your monitor. You’ll need to be familiar with your own color scale but that’s fairly easy because,. hey, you created it.

Here are my final thoughts on Time in Pixels False Color plugin. It’s a great tool. When you choose your own colors, you don’t waste time decoding the image on set. You can see with a glance what’s what. The plugin has a few bugs (like the display settings in 4K), and a couple of unavoidable shortcomings (like not getting a color scale in the LUT). And for $50 it’s a significant amount for a plugin. But once you’ve created your LUTS, the plugin works flawlessly in both production and post production for matching shots and analyzing your footage. If you’re ready to work with false color, it’s worth the money.  Now, what you might want next is an inexpensive Director’s Monitor to view it on. Check out our review of PC Monitors.