Charles Poynton
I am an independent contractor specializing in the physics, mathematics, and engineering of digital colour (color!) imaging systems, including digital still cameras, digital video, HDTV, digital cinema (D-cinema) and digital intermediate (DI) systems. I am involved in engineering wide colour gamut (wide color gamut/wide gamut color) systems, including xvYCC. I do technology forecasting, systems modelling, algorithm development, video signal processing architecture, colour characterization and calibration, and image quality assessment. (More...)
I'm a PhD student at Simon Fraser University; my supervisor is Brian Funt.
I live in Toronto with my wife Barbara — a massage therapist and psychotherapist — and our two teenage girls.
It was 20 years ago today (approximately) that I launched the effort – ultimately successful – to establish square sampling (“square pixels”) as the standard for HDTV. I am the inventor of the number 1080 found in HDTV standards. My efforts resulted in my being awarded SMPTE’s David Sarnoff Gold Medal. See the entries toward the bottom of my Video Engineering page. (My pal Don Craig, who received a Sarnoff medal for a different and well-deserved reason, tells me that his density check reveals that it's gold plated, not solid gold.)
home office: +1 416 535 7187
e-mail: concatenate firstname at surname dot com
Tue. Feb. 16 through Fri. Feb. 19. I'll attend HPA Tech Retreat in Palm Springs, Calif. On Tuesday, I'll present a 4-hour seminar concerning High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI).
On Mon., Feb. 22, in Burbank, Calif., I'll present the 1-day workshop, Linear, log RGB, log neg, and Cineon printing density: What’s in your DPX file? sponsored by VTP and hosted at Dolby. The workshop will be of interest to visual effects supervisors, post-production and post/VFX/DI engineers, advanced-level DITs, and related professionals. I hope to present it in New York later in the spring.
In February or March, 2010, I plan to present a 2‑day seminar Stops, Steps, Looks, and LUTs: The Transition to Digital Cinematography in Oslo and in Munich. These seminars will appeal to cinematographers, colourists, DI technicians, and related professionals. Later in the year, this could take place in Los Angeles: Contact me if you want to encourage this activity.
I continue to be flummoxed by the absence of any viable, modern, realistic standard for the "gamma" — or properly, electro-optical conversion function (EOCF) — of studio reference displays for video and HDTV. With the demise of CRTs, and with the imminent introduction of reference-grade flat panel monitors, I believe that such a standard is now critically important. More information is available.
Copyright © Charles Poynton
