Picture Profile Recipes

[Francois Dormoy]

Is there any rule of thumbs for determining what would be the best picture profile for a sunset versus one for an early morning shooting, one whem shooting an acquarium through the glass etc..?

[Rick Jones]

I've been loading Bill's PP TC2 into my EX3 manually. Haven't had time to shoot yet but hopefully shortly. My question is that when I examined the SUF files that are online here with the SUF file created by my EX3 after saving the profiles, they don't match at all. The codes are all different. I know I've got the correct settings based on the posts I've read here but I would expect at least some of the settings to be the same. Now a lot of them are 000001 which I would expect are the default settings. And the total number of entries matches. It's just that I would expect more of the settings to be the same.

So I'm leary of just loading the SUF as is into the EX3. Anyone else see this?

[Steven Thomas]

Rick, you're right, I would not try loading the EX1 SUF. You never know what may result from this.

[Roger Akers]

I've just read this thread from cover to cover and was hoping someone could post the entire 6 profiles that is being discussed. I cannot load the .suf file because I'm using the EX 3. Alternatively if someone has loaded them into an EX 3, I would be greatful if they could post the EX 3 .suf file.

Right now, I have one profile and that is bills post #120 in this thread. What are the differences in the other? It's possible that this has been discussed but I just tried to absorb a lot of information.

EDIT: To clarify,I would like to know the settings listed on page 8 and any updates if possible. They were these from Bill:
pp1: Steve Thomas' PP
pp2: original TC1
pp3: TC2 Cine1
pp4: TC2 Cine3
pp5: TC2 Cine4
pp6:TC2

[Larry Huntington]

I too would love to get the .suf of these 6 profiles for the EX3. Can someone please post?

[Dennis Schmitz]

Originally Posted by Sami Sanpakkila

Gamma Level..............+5
Select.............CINE2

PERFECT!
No more problems with High Contrast situations.
Combined this setting with Georges PP (with Level=-10 and detail=off).

Looks great!

[Matt Sturns]

do the PP's for the EX1 work for the EX3 also? I have heard that they do not work the same on the different cameras. If so, does anyone have any PP's for the EX3. My camera does not seem to have any PP's included with the camera. Thanks.

Matty S

[Greg Chisholm]

I have been following this thread for some time and I commend everyone involved... it is truly good stuff.

My question is: In order to do my own paint setting in picture profiles, do I need an HD monitor like the TV Logic which has waveform/vectorscope using camera bars as a reference, or should I plug into my computer monitor thru a device like the matrox mxo and use the appropriate chart from dsc labs?

What are the advantages of either... Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Greg

[Steve Minnick]

This thread is crazy long but I downloaded the setup.suf file on page 8 and tried to load it onto an SxS card (after renaming it).... and when I went to "recall" camera data it told me "NG" NO Data.

Anyone have this problem? Is there an updated file somewhere?

Thanks

Steve

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Hi everyone, I've mentioned this briefly on another thread a while ago, but has any one else noticed that -3, 0 and 3 db all actually seem to be more than just hardware gain? If you set your picture profile to one that clips at less than 109%, of course no matter what you do to the exposure, the maximum white value you can get is constant. however this is not true if you change your gain value. i tried std and cine gammas and set them both with gamma/knee values that caused white to clip fairly low (around 80-90%) while in -3db gain. when switching to 0db gain, white clip increased, and at 3db white clip increased yet again, but past that (6db, 9db, 12db etc) the maximum white value stayed the same (still under 109%). this is a very odd behavior, it makes me think that maybe 3db is the normal sensitivity for the camera and 0db and -3db are both just implemented in software. this is especially interesting since it probably means that if you set up your picture profile in -3db mode and you set it all up so that white just clips at 109% to fully use all your dynamic range and all 8bits, if you set your camera to 0db or 3db in that same profile, youll actually be cropping off highlight information. does this make sense? anyone else have any insight into this? makes me think i should set up all my picture profiles with 3db on so i dont accidentally lose highlight info by changing gain values.

to see what im talking about, try setting any picture profile where white clips under 100% and look at the histogram while switching gain between -3, 0 , 3, 6 etc. its easiest to see if your picture profile has white clip under 100% even in 3db mode.

until now i have been testing picture profiles and setting some of my own up. today i was just setting up some picture profiles using cine gamma modes and found that i had to adjust gamma number value to make sure white was always clipping at 109% and using all 8bits. i was doing this in -3db mode which required lower gamma numbers to increase white clip value. i found that if i did it in -3db it would keep its white clip in 0db up as well but not the other way around. i found that doing this was giving me some less attractive highlights though. then it occurred to me i was clipping my highlights off. maybe we just shouldnt use -3 and 0 db or need to have special picture profiles for them? is it just me or is it really annoying that when you are in a cine gamma mode, turning up the gamma number doesnt actually increase gamma, but it does mess with where your whites clip? what the heck is it doing?

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

oh yeah a few other things. i like the "real color" preset i got from this thread, looks great except that skin tones look weird if they are over exposed. seems like the matrix is calibrated only for midtone values. ive been using picture profiles with black gamma at +99 all the time and i love it. it doesnt look washed out, after using it for a while anything else looks so high contrast. i did a shoot in direct sunlight and it was amazing, the latitude looked so great that it almost looked like people had fill lights on them and everything was beautifully exposed. it allowed me to reduce exposure to save highlights but skintones were all still so well exposed because the shadows were so stretched out. i did a really quick test of latitude a couple weeks ago and came up with around 11 stops! it was really quick (so take it with a grain of salt please) but it was similar to the test i did on my hv20 where i got 9 stops.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

ok thats odd i tried to replicate the problem again of white level changing between 0db and 3db and it didnt happen. in one setting the level went up 1% but that is not significant. dunno why it was happening before, weird. maybe im going crazy. anyway it still happens for -3db but i already knew that.

[Buck Forester]

Wow, I was using the default settings on my camera because I hadn't had time to mess with profiles yet. I finally watched the entire Vortex DVD and used the basic profile that he recommended and what a huge difference! The colors pop and the highlites hold much better... it's like I have a new camera! And to think I was actually impressed with the default look... ha! I also have the same setting with a little more bump in saturation... looks so sweet right out of the camera. I have Final Cut Studio but I haven't tried editing yet, I'm sure most of this stuff can be done in post but I'm not sure I'll have to do much with this footage.

I also punched in Bill R's profile... I like it but it's sorta red. I like warm/red but it seems a little much. I'm sure if it was tweaked a little to tone down the reddish hues it would be great as another option. I'm not sure yet how to turn down the reds.

I loved my EX1 as soon as I played with it right out of the box, and I just keep lovin' it more and more as time goes on!

[Leonard Levy]

What is the basic profile recommended on the Vortex DVD?

[Larry Huntington]

What's the Vortex DVD?