Details "off" and poor servo AF...?
 

Hi all,

A few weeks ago I have turned the detail "off" as was suggested in here. Coming from stills it does make sense to me that the sharpening can be done in a more controlled way in post.
Today I have tried to do some birds (well actually bats) in flight filming with my EX3 and noticed the servo AF doesn't respond as quickly and as accurately as before I turned the detail "off".

Does this make sense or the two are not really connected....?

Thanks,

Ofer
Ofer Levy Photography

Makes complete sense, Ofer.

Peaking is also much less reliable with detail off.

Before more and more people start turning off (or down) the detail because it seems to be the current trend, just take a moment to ascertain whether or not it applies to the genre/client requirement and finished look of the project. It is all too easy to get caught up in the detail on/off hype, only to regret such a move without making an informed decision.

Be that as it may, I did have reason to turn off the detail for a recent job and the results were stunning. Really gave the program a nice, smooth look and feel to it.

My next job would have been a disaster without a reasonable level of detail, so on it went. It too was stunning for its genre.

A little food for thought.

Absolutely correct.

After a lot of experiments, I settled with detail on (and high) whenever I'm after the "out of the window" (videoish) look.

When I need that elusive "film" look, I usually crush blacks (so that there's less detail in darker areas anyway), and turn detail off (or set it to negative values).

The fact is that with plenty of details in the picture (due to the scene characteristic and applying a gamma curve with stretched blacks, like Cine4/Std4), turning edge enhancement off may render the picture really soft; on a 50" HDTV it looks no better than upscaled 720p. What's more, sharpening in Vegas will NEVER be able to restore the full 1080p sharpness of the EX with detail on, without introducing even more nasty artifacts than in-camera edge enhancement does (at least, not in Vegas).

Thank you for the input guys!
I wonder if sharpening in FCP works better than in Vegas - I am only getting FCP in a couple of weeks.

Don't get me wrong - sharpening in Vegas actually works very well, it's simply that sometimes, you cannot get the same detail level without introducing some other changes (like e.g. changing contrast and levels; this can be compensated for - but why struggle if the desired detail level can be acquired by the camera itself?).

That does it, I'm going back to full Detail on. I had it off, which was smooth but noticeably not as sharp (I haven't edited stuff yet in FCP so I'm not sure how sharpening in post compars to in-camera sharpening... I've only done it for 'still' photography), then I had Detail on set at -10, which seemed good but I still miss that razor look, so I'm going back to Detail On set at 0. I'm all over the board. I think the advice that the level of detail is 'situational' is good... if I'm doing a lot of motion and panning I'll keep it at -10. By the time I have all my settings nailed they'll have the Sony EX2. I really need to learn editing, I have over 5 TB of footage and not one single 'flick' yet, ha!

WOW!
Thanks for your support people. To me it stands out as common sense to set the PP (the detail being just one of a number of important settings) to the type of end result that is required.

It is, however good to know that detail off/on/+ve/-ve settings can really make a difference, contributing to the overall 'look' and now we all have a very good idea as to what those settings should be.

Thanks again.

Detail applied in camera is only applied to picture information. Detail applied in post production is applied to both picture information and compression artefacts, making them more pronounced.