Help Please, Profile Settings

[Stuart Wilson]

Hi folks,

on Sunday I will be filming a rugby game, kick off at 1.30 with my newly acquired EX3. Weather expected to be mixed, cloudy with possible sunny spells. Can anybody suggest any nice profile settings to give the colours a bit more punch and saturation, and also not overexpose the whites??

I have only just got the cam so please explain in jack and jill if possible as I am totally new to this sort of stuff.

I will be filming in 720p/50, can anyone advise what shutter speed I should use, cam is currently set at 1/125, is that OK?

Any other advice most welcome and appreciated,

thanks in anticipation

Stuart

[Juan Martinez]

Try the following before you shoot:

To make the color more saturated, go into the picture profiles/color matrix and chose high sat.

For high contrast (wide exposure latitude) scenes, try Cine Gamma 1 (clips at 109%) or Cine Gamma 2 (same curve, clips at 100%). The Cine 1 picture will appear slightly low contrast (milky), but it retains the full exposure latitude (is the safest). In post push the midtones down during grading to get the proper contrast, the image will retain gradations deep into the blacks and the highlights too. Further control with Black Gamma...

Only Cine 2 is normalized to clip at 100%, Cine 1, 3 and 4 are normalized to clip at 109%, therefore have 10% more gradations but you must always color correct to bring the white peak level down to 100% for broadcast. If the NLE clips the Cine-1, 3 or 4 at 100%, you will lose one stop of latitude and the highlights will look (and be permanently) blown. For a BluRay distribution copy, you can keep the highlights at 109%.

Cine 3, & 4 progressively lift the midtones and are eminently suitable for low key/low contrast lighting situations. These curves assign more bits to the -most interesting part of the curve- from the midtones down into the blacks. Grading not required.

Juan Martinez
Senior Manager
Sony Electronics

[Leonard Levy]

Juan, Thanks - that's the best statement about Cinegammas I've seen and makes me want to start experimenting with them.

When you said
"Further control with Black Gamma..."

Were you still talking about adjustments in post?

Would you consider adjusting (painting) the gamma and black gamma settings of the basic cine gamma curves within the EX-1, or are they designed to just be used as is, leaving adjustments like gamma and black gamma etc for the Std curves?

Also there was a post earlier comparing the F900 hyper gammas to the EX-1 cine gammas (below). Was that correct, and if so how would you describe the purpose of the HG1 and HG3 curves (325% D range instead of 460%). I was recently told that those were designed to be used with different gain settings.


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Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

I just got this from Sony.

PDW-700 has HyperGamma (Ver1.2 or higher) such as,

HG1 : 325% D-range is compressed to 100%
HG2 : 460% D-range is compressed to 100%
HG3 : 325% D-range is compressed to 109%
HG4 : 460% D-range is compressed to 109%

These HyperGammas are the same as HDW-F900.

PMW-EX1/EX3 has the same CineGamma as PDW-F335/355 such as,

CINE1 : Same as the HyperGamma HG4
CINE2 : Same as the HyperGamma HG2
CINE3 : Independent setting for EX1/EX3
CINE4 : Independent setting for EX1/EX3


Therefore, please use CINE1 or CINE2 if you want to use the same gamma curve as PDW-700 or HDW-F900.

[David Issko]

Originally Posted by Stuart Wilson

Hi folks,



I will be filming in 720p/50, can anyone advise what shutter speed I should use, cam is currently set at 1/125, is that OK?

Any other advice most welcome and appreciated,

thanks in anticipation

Stuart

Personally, I would shoot with shutter off. Too much emphasis on shutter speed in this forum is giving new (and even experienced) operators the wrong idea about shutter speed.

Best wishes with the camera and your shoot.

[Simon Denny]

I shoot @720/50p all the time and have shutter off. This format is also great to convert to SD DVD I find.

Thanks

[Stuart Wilson]

Hey Guys,

thanks for the advice. I shot the game using Cine 1 and it looks fine, a lot better than I expected. I'm afraid that the bit about black gamma went right over my head Juan, but clearly others have gotten some benefit out of it.

Me thinks this is going to be a big learning curve, never mind a gamma curve!!. I used my new pc with edius to edit the game and transfer to DVD and it looked just fine. However, this was done at my dealer, as I have never used edius before and was really a watcher, whilst they showed me a few good things. Will bring the pc home on Friday, and I know I will have some questions about using clip browser, I have a few things I need to do and want to make sure I dont destroy / delete the original footage before I have used it. So until then, thanks again,

Stuart

[Michael Maier]

Originally Posted by Juan Martinez

Try the following before you shoot:

To make the color more saturated, go into the picture profiles/color matrix and chose high sat.

For high contrast (wide exposure latitude) scenes, try Cine Gamma 1 (clips at 109%) or Cine Gamma 2 (same curve, clips at 100%). The Cine 1 picture will appear slightly low contrast (milky), but it retains the full exposure latitude (is the safest). In post push the midtones down during grading to get the proper contrast, the image will retain gradations deep into the blacks and the highlights too. Further control with Black Gamma...

Only Cine 2 is normalized to clip at 100%, Cine 1, 3 and 4 are normalized to clip at 109%, therefore have 10% more gradations but you must always color correct to bring the white peak level down to 100% for broadcast. If the NLE clips the Cine-1, 3 or 4 at 100%, you will lose one stop of latitude and the highlights will look (and be permanently) blown. For a BluRay distribution copy, you can keep the highlights at 109%.

Cine 3, & 4 progressively lift the midtones and are eminently suitable for low key/low contrast lighting situations. These curves assign more bits to the -most interesting part of the curve- from the midtones down into the blacks. Grading not required.

Juan Martinez
Senior Manager
Sony Electronics

Interesting. I have been using Cine 4 for low light for the longest time. Works fine.