hey preset junkies!

here's a reference movie that i made yesterday. it includes images of the 18 presets, plus the 3 factory presets, plus 2 bonus presets (juan diaz' bleach bypass and his cine set-up, you'll hear me calling it "cinejuan"). setups for juan's presets are at this link:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...=bleach+bypass

in the movie, i call juan's presets, PRESET19 and PRESET20, fyi...

and to link to the reference movie:

http://www.planetestudios.com/specialsituation.html

it's an H.264 file, so you need to have Quicktime 7 loaded to view it. also, it's 97MB, a big file because i didn't want to downgrade it much, so it may take time to load.

i don't have an image of my own MEMORY preset because i compressed this before i tweaked it into being, and that's enough mad scientist experimenting for one day, gotta work, too....

for those who care, my studio overlooks the National Guard Armory, which is why i shot these particular images. out-of-the-window camera testing....

I just got my A1 today and these forum user custom presets are a godsend, esp. Bleach Bypass and CineJuan, although I like Panalook a lot as well. Thanks Meryam for the preview test footage, I found it very helpful in figuring out which presets were "cool" or not--for my purposes, anyway. ;-)

Color Saturation Preset
 

Could anyone please lend a hand as how to get vibrant saturated colors with the A-1?

Try my Panalook preset (preset #18). The colors are pretty vibrant. You can see an example here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=88560

Re: Color Saturation Preset
 

Your clip looks really nice Steven.

I shoot primarily in bright sunlight, and love the brilliant colors and contrast of my old Sony HC-1. I like the A-1's higher quality, but even with the color gain and RGB gains cranked all the way up to 50, it really doesn't seem to make much difference. Colors still look rather flat. Here's a short comparison clip to illustrate: http://californiabeachfeet.com/image...emos/A1HC1.wmv The A-1 was set to the Panalook preset with the ND filter at 1/32.

Has anyone else managed to match the saturated Sony look with an A-1 preset, or am I just resigned to more time in post production?

Tad, your real issue is not the preset you are using. The color information is there already, you just need to make a small levels adjustment in post.

From the footage you posted, I took a look at your A1 footage in Premiere and noticed that there is a lot of information missing from the black end of the spectrum. By adjusting the blacks so they are richer, all of your colors take on a much richer tone and can easily compare to the sony. Try it for yourself.

PRESET22 CaBeach
 

Thanks for the tips Steve, Felix Theissen for the XH editor, and to this great forum for the wealth of info. Finally managed to get pretty close to the sharp saturated contrasty look I'm after with some additional camera adjustments, and a few post tweaks in Vegas. I call this preset CaBeach: http://californiabeachfeet.com/image...s/PRESET22.CPF
And here's a short clip of what it looks like after a little post black level, saturation, and luminance boost: http://californiabeachfeet.com/image...os/CaBeach.wmv
Maybe needs a little more fine tuning.

Thanks Tad for your preset and beautiful clips! This proves my point that only tweaking the A1 to the extremes can replicate the saturated and sharp look of the Sony.

Tad, that's definitely closer to what you were looking for. I have a few words of caution:

1. Cranking things like sharpening and coring is going to compromise the quality of your picture rather than enhance it. Once you go over 0 sharpening, for instance, the camera is artificially enhancing the edges of your subjects and if you have to downrez to SD, this is going to cause you a lot of line twittering and possibly edge ghosting similar to chromatic abberation.

2. Cranking the color all the way up is going to increase the chances that colors like red will vibrate because the codec can't handle the intensity.

3. Cranking the pedestal and setup all the way into the negative zone will destroy any detail in the black end of the tonal scale. In other words, anything that is in shadow will be totally black with no info. If it were me, I would set the pedestal and setup to 0 and then apply a levels control in post. That would still give you the same look if you wished but would also give you more flexibility if you needed to draw information out of the black (so to speak).

Anyway, I am looking at your preset and working on a variation that will still give you the vivid colors but with less of a hit on quality.

Steven,

When you do get your variation on Tad
s preset finished (it looks like a goodpossibility),
would you put in an Excel format?
Then us mac folks can access it.

Thanks Tad and Steven,

David

David, I'll try to gather up the various presets that have been submitted since I originally transposed this download library, and get them formatted into a new version of that old Excel spreadsheet. Will try to get that done tonight.

Chris,

Not kissing a**,
but it is impressive how responsive you are...

Thanks,

David

New PRESET
 

Okay, I'm working on a new preset for those looking for more intense colors without going to extremes in the settings. Tad Ryan inspired me to work on something better than what I was getting from my PANALOOK preset.

I'm still working on it but I wanted to give you a preview from a test I did today. I should have it finished in a couple of days and will then upload it here. It will be called VIVIDRGB:

Vividrgb
 

Good points Steven. Can't wait to see your new VIVIDRGB preset. Thanks for working on this.

Can you type it out? I can't read a CPF file and am interested in your yellow bleach-bypass preset.