Very first impressions of my PMW-350

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Tom sorry to hear you have had to deal with treatment. I hope you come back strong and have family close by.

My paint settings stay in the menu but it reverts back to the Standard setting on each shut down. Then I go and pick which setting I like. Would prefer it to stay on the last setting I left on shut down. I hope this is not a bug with my camera if we are both saying the same thing.

Oh my...thanks for sharing that. I had no idea it was reverting back to standard, I got so frustrated I just stopped saving them, perhaps my paint settings are in the standard file. I will check for that. And yes I am feeling much better, thanks.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

I'm still recovering from cancer treatments, can barely lift it, but that's coming back.

Tom,

Like you, I'm also recovering from serious health problems (cervical stenosis, needing 3 neck spine surgeries in a row) - hold on, man :)

[Tom Roper]

YOU too, Get Well my friend!!!!

[Alister Chapman]

There is a lot of confusion over what the various files save.

All file to sxs, then paint, reference, user file

All file should save the user settings such as assignable switches, zebras etc plus any scene files (paint) as well as reference and lens files.

Paint (scene files) will save your individual scene files.

Reference saves the settings you have set within the "standard" scene file.

User file saves things like zebra levels, assignable switches, output options.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

I goofed, sorry. I reran the Imatest, after realizing I had clipped the exposure, skewing the result. The actual resolution for 1080/23.98p is around 1000 lines both horizontal and vertical. Have made corrections to the earlier post.

Ah! I'm actually pleased to see the lower result! I saw your earlier one post and thought "that's theoretically impossible.....", then thoughts of "gulp, is that aliasing......?" ran through my mind.

Your corrected results are exactly what I'd hope to see.

[Alister Chapman]

I did think it was a bit high hence the " good... I think" in my reply. Interesting that the test is exposure critical, I need to think about the implications (or not) of that. I guess overexposure clips the edges making them artificially sharp? But then that's what aperture correction tries to do.

[Paul Cronin]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

There is a lot of confusion over what the various files save.

All file to sxs, then paint, reference, user file

All file should save the user settings such as assignable switches, zebras etc plus any scene files (paint) as well as reference and lens files.

Paint (scene files) will save your individual scene files.

Reference saves the settings you have set within the "standard" scene file.

User file saves things like zebra levels, assignable switches, output options.

I am able to save all the scene files and paint files that is not my problem. The problem is the camera does not remember when it is shut down and start up again the Paint file it was on. It goes back to Standard each time. This is annoying since with the EX1 it stayed on the same PP. Guess this has to now be part of start up or change the standard to the most used Paint.

[Tom Roper]

Thanks for the explanations Alister, Paul.

1.) Paul, I will check soon to see if it is defaulting back to the standard scene file on power up instead of sticking on the last selected scene file.

2.) Alister, if I deleted my lens and reference files (which I did), do I have to re-perform the flange back focus procedure even if I did not remove the lens from the body? Is it even necessary to have, keep or save lens files for the kit lens?

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Interesting that the test is exposure critical, I need to think about the implications (or not) of that. I guess overexposure clips the edges making them artificially sharp?

The test is not exposure critical if you are not clipped. My problem was that I was careless, and the dark background caused me to miss that the bright areas were clipped to 43%, and I ignored the warning Imatest gave because it was late and I was tired. It was also warning that the default detail setting (horizontal) was 21% oversharpened relative to the default 2 pixel sharpening radius in Imatest. Imatest saw that as extreme edge ringing, and I could see extreme haloing looking at the edge itself. Although Imatest will normalize the MTF to the standard 2-pixel radius, if you're 21 % oversharpened and 43% white clipped, GIGO.

What I'm saying, was I was in too much of a hurry, put garbage input and got back garbage output. I'm sorry about it, and I will be more careful and thorough.

Once I got the exposure under control, and put the brakes on the sharpening, the MTF curve smoothed out and you could see that now there was valid data produced.

[Charles Newcomb]

Am I going to have to know all this stuff if I buy one of these things? I was hoping just doing a white balance, using the right filter and trying to stay in focus would suffice.

Tom: If you ever get up to Salida, let me know.

[Tom Roper]

I go to File>Scene>File id.
I give a name to the file.
I go to File>Scene>Scene Store Mem>Execute
I store the named scene file to 001.
All good so far.

Now go to File>All>Store All Preset>Execute

Your named scene file is still there, and you can call it up, but all your settings in that scene file were wiped out from the Paint menu, GONE :-(

There is one way to recover the scene file settings:

Go to File>All>Clear All Preset>Execute
Then
Go to File>Scene>Scene Recall Mem>Execute>Choose named Scene File

Your scene file settings have returned to the Paint menu, but all your Operation presets are GONE. :-(

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Charles Newcomb

Tom: If you ever get up to Salida, let me know.

I used to ride the Rainbow Trail on my motorized trail bike from your fair city. I sure would like to get healthy enough to do that again...Rode the whole trail from Salida to where it ends up exactly I forget, somewhere not far from Crestone Peak, full day's ride.

[Tom Roper]

And yes Paul, when the cam is switched off, it defaults to the standard scene file, you have to reload the one you want.

Edit: No what am I saying? It unchecks the scene file, but it retains the paint menu settings.

1.) Load a scene file.
2.) Edit the Paint menu settings.
3.) Switch cam off, then back on.
4.) When it comes back on, the Paint menu has the settings exactly as how you left them, but they may be different from the scene file if you changed anything.
5.) Load the scene file to re-enable the defaults of the scene file.

[Alister Chapman]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

1.) Load a scene file.
2.) Edit the Paint menu settings.
3.) Switch cam off, then back on.
4.) When it comes back on, the Paint menu has the settings exactly as how you left them, but they may be different from the scene file if you changed anything.
5.) Load the scene file to re-enable the defaults of the scene file.

That's what I would expect it to do, that seems normal to me.


I'm not quite sure what's going on when you save the presets, but the idea of the preset file is to return the camera to your default settings, so any changes you've made in camera are going to be reset unless you have saved them.

You shouldn't need to redo the flange back but you may have lost any shading or flare settings for the lens. I don't know if a full reset will restore the lens file.

[Tom Roper]

Here are the MTF charts for the PMW350K, 1080/24p and 1080/60i.

This was the detail preset used for the 1080/24p:
Level -8
HV Ratio +35
Freq +25
White Limit +20
Black Limit +20

And this was the detail preset used for the 1080/60i:
Level -10
HV Ratio +35
Freq +25
White Limit +20
Black Limit +20

The curves are pretty smooth. One chart for horizontal, one for vertical, for both 24p and 60i.

These are offered as an aid in fine tuning the image detail settings for detail without artifacts. The MTF numbers I think this time are in fact representative. Obviously if the intent was to just pull spiked numbers, you've seen that I can do that. The numbers are less important than the shape of the curves. But I will summarize them anyway:

1080/24p horizontal corrected MTF50 = 1024 lines
1080/24p vertical corrected MTF50 = 929 lines

1080/60i horizontal corrected MTF 50 = 1050 lines
1080/60i vertical corrected MTF 50 = 696 lines

These numbers cannot be compared with any other tests, including my own previous testing, as I deviated from my own standard practice to insure the numbers are not skewed by white clipping, and that in-cam sharpness is within 5% or less of the Imatest default 2 pixel radius. That causes more conservative numbers.

As mentioned in a previous post, the reason for applying +35 to the HV Ratio setting is that it appears that horizontal and vertical sharpness are applied unevenly. The obstacle that presents, is that if you were to attempt to reduce horizontal sharpening by turning down the Level setting, the vertical could get undersharpened by the amount the horizontal was oversharpened, i.e. the setting is working at cross purposes. The horizontal and vertical sharpening are fairly close to each other in the examples below, so if you did want more or less sharpening, the level setting would move them together. The other thing you can see from the curves is the tendency of oversharpening to occur in the region of 500 lines. That tendency could be mitigated by increasing the value of the frequency setting, but you have to be careful not to go so far that it introduces noisy artifacts as it attempts to put halos around very find details.

Next up, I'm going to be reviewing how these detail settings work in actual scenes.