Bryan Worsley
November 24th, 2020, 10:29 PM
With naff-all else to do during the "lock-down" than go out for walks in my locale I thought I would capture the autumn colors last month, before the leaves fell, and take the opportunity to compare the 3 'looks' (Standard, Wide DR and Highlight Priority) available on my HF-G40, before and after grading in DaVinci Resolve.
Here's a montage of some of the (many) clips, all shot with auto exposure (Program AE), auto AGC, auto focus, AWB and default 'picture' settings, on a video monpod (Sirui 204s). When there was no wind, I was able to let go of the monopod (takes 5-10 secs for the wobble to settle) and record with the wireless remote. Where there was wind I had to brace the monopod as best, with the aid of a Manfrotto shoulder brace, so there's a bit of shake in some shots. No 'people' shots I'm afraid, other than other 'socially distant' travelers passing by.
So here's 'Ungraded' i.e. the original clips cut-edited in DaVinci Resolve, exported to Cineform (Best = Film Scan 2) and transcoded to x264 for uploading to YouTube:
https://youtu.be/FBqqkhSJtBg
And the same clips after 'grading' in DaVinci Resolve 16:
https://youtu.be/WgCzaHI-PO0
Color adjustments were minimal - for the most part I just balanced the blacks where needed; there were only a few scenes with a reliable 'neutral' reference where I could white balance. Also boosted the saturation a pinch in a couple of the 'Highlight Priority' shots. But that's all.
Wide DR is probably the most 'flexible' of the three and works very nicely with skin tones (sadly none here) and textured gradients. Looks glorious up on an HDTV, but personally I find it a bit too soft when viewing on a computer screen, especially after uploading to YouTube. The 'wider dynamic range', as perceived, comes at the expense of reduced local contrast and some loss in fine detail. So I experimented quite a bit with various sharpening techniques (in Resolve and post-edit) to try and bring back as much detail as possible without looking 'over-sharpened'. The best outcome, I concluded, was to apply a quite generous dose of 'mid-tone detail' (equivalent to 'Clarity' in Premiere Pro) to help restore local contrast, topped off with very light, scaled-back sharpening. Doesn't quite match the detail in Standard mode, but acceptable I think, and still looks glorious on an HDTV screen. I did try increasing the in-camera sharpness (in the 'Picture' settings) but it's counter-productive - it doesn't bring back any more detail and only accentuates sharpening artifacts (ringing). I also added a little 'mid-tone detail' to the Standard and Highlight Priority shots, but no sharpening per se. No 'denoising' was applied to any of the clips.
I hadn't paid much attention to 'Highlight Priority' before. The implementation on these Vixia/Legria camcorders is rather different to the 'Highlight Tone Priority' on the Canon EOS cameras, from which it derived. The camcorder clearly under-exposes to defend the highlights (arguably too much) but does not compensate, to an appreciable degree, in normalizing the shadows, as it does on the EOS cameras - probably because it would introduce an unacceptable level of gain noise in the process. So instead Canon promoted it as a 'look' that is best viewed on a monitor with increased brightness and boosted lower mid-tones - I mean, who is going to do that ? Perhaps not surprising then that it's appearance on the Vixia/Legria line models was short lived.
Which is a pity; when I got to grips with it in Resolve I found that the shadows could be boosted appreciably before noise becomes conspicuous and I was surprised at the level of fine detail that could be revealed - that was using the 'Shad' control in the 'Primary' color tool-set, not the log 'Shadow' wheel which lifts the black-point. In low-contrast scenes that can create a slightly unnatural "pseudo HDR" effect (adding back a little contrast helps) and in high-contrast scenes, with dark foregrounds (of which there are several in the montage), I had to resort to preliminary 'exposure compensation' (using the 'screen blend' technique) at the expense of some loss in highlight detail and a little clipping in some cases. But I think it works very well for preserving background detail (branches against sky line etc ) and bringing out fine textures in close-ups (not many in the video unfortunately). It definitely picked out more detail on the plumage of that Great Blue Heron at the end of the video, shot with full 20x zoom. Perhaps not surprising that many wild-life/landscape photographers use 'Highlight Tone Priority', or so I've read.
Anyhow, there it is. It's not 4K, but, hey, I love this camcorder and I've learned a lot from the exercise. Maybe of interest to others. Would welcome any comments.
Stay safe.
Here's a montage of some of the (many) clips, all shot with auto exposure (Program AE), auto AGC, auto focus, AWB and default 'picture' settings, on a video monpod (Sirui 204s). When there was no wind, I was able to let go of the monopod (takes 5-10 secs for the wobble to settle) and record with the wireless remote. Where there was wind I had to brace the monopod as best, with the aid of a Manfrotto shoulder brace, so there's a bit of shake in some shots. No 'people' shots I'm afraid, other than other 'socially distant' travelers passing by.
So here's 'Ungraded' i.e. the original clips cut-edited in DaVinci Resolve, exported to Cineform (Best = Film Scan 2) and transcoded to x264 for uploading to YouTube:
https://youtu.be/FBqqkhSJtBg
And the same clips after 'grading' in DaVinci Resolve 16:
https://youtu.be/WgCzaHI-PO0
Color adjustments were minimal - for the most part I just balanced the blacks where needed; there were only a few scenes with a reliable 'neutral' reference where I could white balance. Also boosted the saturation a pinch in a couple of the 'Highlight Priority' shots. But that's all.
Wide DR is probably the most 'flexible' of the three and works very nicely with skin tones (sadly none here) and textured gradients. Looks glorious up on an HDTV, but personally I find it a bit too soft when viewing on a computer screen, especially after uploading to YouTube. The 'wider dynamic range', as perceived, comes at the expense of reduced local contrast and some loss in fine detail. So I experimented quite a bit with various sharpening techniques (in Resolve and post-edit) to try and bring back as much detail as possible without looking 'over-sharpened'. The best outcome, I concluded, was to apply a quite generous dose of 'mid-tone detail' (equivalent to 'Clarity' in Premiere Pro) to help restore local contrast, topped off with very light, scaled-back sharpening. Doesn't quite match the detail in Standard mode, but acceptable I think, and still looks glorious on an HDTV screen. I did try increasing the in-camera sharpness (in the 'Picture' settings) but it's counter-productive - it doesn't bring back any more detail and only accentuates sharpening artifacts (ringing). I also added a little 'mid-tone detail' to the Standard and Highlight Priority shots, but no sharpening per se. No 'denoising' was applied to any of the clips.
I hadn't paid much attention to 'Highlight Priority' before. The implementation on these Vixia/Legria camcorders is rather different to the 'Highlight Tone Priority' on the Canon EOS cameras, from which it derived. The camcorder clearly under-exposes to defend the highlights (arguably too much) but does not compensate, to an appreciable degree, in normalizing the shadows, as it does on the EOS cameras - probably because it would introduce an unacceptable level of gain noise in the process. So instead Canon promoted it as a 'look' that is best viewed on a monitor with increased brightness and boosted lower mid-tones - I mean, who is going to do that ? Perhaps not surprising then that it's appearance on the Vixia/Legria line models was short lived.
Which is a pity; when I got to grips with it in Resolve I found that the shadows could be boosted appreciably before noise becomes conspicuous and I was surprised at the level of fine detail that could be revealed - that was using the 'Shad' control in the 'Primary' color tool-set, not the log 'Shadow' wheel which lifts the black-point. In low-contrast scenes that can create a slightly unnatural "pseudo HDR" effect (adding back a little contrast helps) and in high-contrast scenes, with dark foregrounds (of which there are several in the montage), I had to resort to preliminary 'exposure compensation' (using the 'screen blend' technique) at the expense of some loss in highlight detail and a little clipping in some cases. But I think it works very well for preserving background detail (branches against sky line etc ) and bringing out fine textures in close-ups (not many in the video unfortunately). It definitely picked out more detail on the plumage of that Great Blue Heron at the end of the video, shot with full 20x zoom. Perhaps not surprising that many wild-life/landscape photographers use 'Highlight Tone Priority', or so I've read.
Anyhow, there it is. It's not 4K, but, hey, I love this camcorder and I've learned a lot from the exercise. Maybe of interest to others. Would welcome any comments.
Stay safe.