How to improve black gamma settings?
 

HI,

I recently used my camera to film interviews outside and the camera was used as part of a production which included broadcast rackable cameras. The pictures where fine until I had to start doing interviews against a bright background. To exposure the subject enough to light up his face caused a halo effect as the background became to bright. A couple of the engineers told me I should alter the black stretch so as to get more detail into the face without having to overexpose the background so much. Unfortunately there is no Black stretch setting in the picture profile menu only Black Gamma settings. So I started to play with these and increased the black level in the low area but was surprised to see the same level in the mid and high settings and when I reset these back it also reset the low setting. So my point is why have a Low, Mid, High setting if you are effecting all at the same time. Does anyone have any experience with this they could help me with.

If I understand it correctly, each of the settings high, medium, and low refer to a different gamma curve, only one of which you'll be able to select. After doing so, you can then raise or lower that particular curve by setting it between +7 and -7.

For all around shooting, I've been using the following settings so far:

BLACK LEVEL
Master Black +10
Black R 0
Black G 0
Black B 0

GAMMA PD

BLACK GAMMA
Range High
Level -7

Alec Moreno
Wedding Art Films - Southern California - Los Angeles - Orange County - Video

Thanks for that, I hadn't thought about altering the master black as well, doesn't this cause a bit of black crush in shaded areas.

It can crush the blacks if you dial down the black level, or you can dial up to retain more detail. It's nice to have a lot of options in the settings, but it's also a pain too because it takes so much experimenting to find just the right numbers to go with for a particular type of scene...much less a variety of scenes.

Alec Moreno
Wedding Art Films - Southern California - Los Angeles - Orange County - Video