F3 sharpness around the edges

[Guy Jackson]

I do not own an F3 yet but I used it on few shoots lately.
As of the case of renting cameras I did not had the time to tweak it to my taste yet ,so i I solved by using filters and lighting while working with the camera default settings.
Once I’ll get my own F3 the first thing I need to address is the sharpness, I have been using Sony cameras for the last 20 plus years …fast forward to the 900 which gave us 24 fps (thank you Sony) I always felt Sony cameras were very sharp around the edges which led me to buy a Panasonic Varicam eventually (my super 16mm video camera)
Color aside, Sony has this sharpness around the edges that takes away from the “film look” to my taste: Panasonic got it right with the Varicam (720P?).
Now with the F3 and using sharp Prime lenses you can almost cut yourself with that image,
On a recent shoot I had no time to play with menus so I just used soft-FX in front of the glass, that shoot had me realized that I have to explore the detail issue of this camera and tame it down without loosing resolution.
Other then that :using a Nano at higher bit rates I got to say that Sony gave us one awesome camera.
We should also thank Nikon and Canon for making Panasonic and Sony come out with big sensor cameras that we would have probably had to wait to for years if not the DSLR revolution.

anyone have tips of making it less sharp?

[Nate Weaver]

First thing I did with my camera after I powered it up was go into Picture Profile 1, turn on Cinegamma 1, and turn off the detail circuit and aperture circuit. No joke.

The camera has plenty of resolution, it doesn't need either. It has plenty of great looking natural resolving power.

[Timur Civan]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

First thing I did with my camera after I powered it up was go into Picture Profile 1, turn on Cinegamma 1, and turn off the detail circuit and aperture circuit. No joke.

The camera has plenty of resolution, it doesn't need either. It has plenty of great looking natural resolving power.

+1

Cinegamma 3 is good too.

[Alister Chapman]

Either turn detail off or set it to -15 to -18 depending on what you want your images to look like. This will reduce the harsh detail correction edges. If you want to soften the image taking detail below -25 will start to soften the image. At the very least you want to bring the detail level below -14 to minimise any aliasing. Cinegamma 1 is the same curve as Hypergamma 4 used on the F35, F800 etc, CG 3 gives a brighter image than CG 1 but can be difficult to avoid skin tones suddenly starting to compress. Note that CG's are designed to be graded and anything shot using CG's will look a little flat and washed out unless you compensate with a bit of negative black gamma (black stretch).