Color Saturation
 

The colors on my A1 seem a little bland to me. I am unsure which control to adjust to punch up the saturation a little. The posts I see with this camera do not look like the colors I am getting. Thanks for any help......
Newbie

Disregard..... I RTFM and found what I was looking for...but any experience with changing these settings is still welcome.

Try changing the gamma to Cine2 and up the color gain to +10 or +20, and make sure the color matrix is set to Cine2. Try setting the knee (highlight compression) to low and put Black to middle or press. Maybe turn sharpness down to -3 too. Sometimes dropping the master ped to -3 or -4 can look nice if you like a more contrasty look.

Just a few tweaks for a generally pleasing picture in most situations.

Color Gain
 

Just did a nature shoot. Turned up the color gain on the reds, and greens. Shot with the blacks on Press. Looks really nice, a lot better than out of the box IMO.
would love to show you guys some footage, I plan on capturing it by Tuesday.

*e

As a newcomer to all these adjustments (I had a GL-1 for over 5 years), I would welcome opinions on settings and a little real-world thoughts on what they do. I've read the manual and looked at Canon's Image Adjustment section on the website, but it's more technical than practical.

depending on wht type of filming you do, but in narrative, it is easier to CC clips that are a little flat in colors.

I'd agree with Jason about shooting flat. I shot 4 DVDs over the summer (with DVX100s). Two I tried to create the look in camera, and two I shot fairly "neutral" and pepped up in post.

With the first DVD I'd gone a little overboard with the crushed blacks. Initially I wanted to create a very contrasty look - but by the end I felt a much softer look was more appropriate.

However, you get much better results crushing blacks in post than you do stretching them, so I had to choose between an image that was either more contrasty that I wanted; or rather noisy in the shadows.

Personally, wherever you're going to do CC, I'd go for capturing the widest dynamic range possible - low knee, stretched blacks - and tweak it out in post.

Be careful with simple RGB gains/cuts. They affect the white balance. Check your shots of cloud whites and gray areas of the clouds, they may be tinged.

Sometimes it's more appropriate to tweak the kelvin settings in the white balance to achieve the warmth you are after.

I've seen comments elsewhere that the higher degree of compression used for HDV (compared with DV, for example) means that one should try a little harder to avoid post-production processing. If you know the "look" you want, and you can get it in the camera, then that will save time and picture quality further down the line. Does this sound sensible?

True words Mark. It's best to dial the look in when you setup the shoot. Post is usually meant to "fix" things. However, it's really hard (when dealing with 8bit compressed media) to get a computer to see what the camera couldn't put on the tape in the first place.

Let's put it another way. When dialing in a look within a camera, you working from a 4:2:2 10,12, or 14 bit master (depending on the internal A/D) and then laying that to tape. After which it's now an 8bit compressed copy. Which master would yield a better result? From which process do you have the advantage?

Didn't boost the gain too much, I mostly shot tight shots of flowers/plants, animals, and a waterfall. However one shot of the sky appears natural looking, thanks for your input.

*e

Yes of course... My point simply was that it's easier to give it a particular look in post than it is to "undo" a look that you've created in camera (but of course moderation is the key when it comes to post processing highly compressed formats).

For what its worth I've pulled 24F footage from Kaku into After Effects and performed some pretty severe color corrections on it - far more than you'd ever want to on a real project. And I was shocked at how well the stuff worked. I think that's what actually pushed me over the edge to get the XH A1 rather than wait another eternity saving up for an HVX.

You have to be abosolutely certain of accepting the look that you dial in (or paint) during the shoot. The same issue that limits your adjustments in post, will also hurt you if you wish to go back.

Which is why some crews find it an absolute must to hire an extra hand just to tote the broadcast monitor around for mobile shoots. (Never trusting the LCD or viewfinder beyond framing and focus). So if your not using a quality monitor to for a good approximation, then shooting flat is your best bet.

Another issue is being both camera man and editor. If you know a filter will aide or avoid some post issues, then it's a no-brainer.