HV20 cine mode more dynamic range?
 

Here's a 1:1 crop of 1440x1080 video stream, Cine 1/48 5.6 and AV 1/70 F5.6. This is a pretty typical result when shooting cine, getting tons more information where in AV or Shutter mode the highlights blow out more, plus gradations such as the window near the top of the frame look superb with cine mode.

Sample image

Very clear example, Wes. Doesn't this make you wonder about hidden parameters in the camera that Canon didn't care to expose at this price
level. I mean, its been said cine mode is changing things like gamma that are
user tweakable on the A1.



Jim

Wes, very interesting. I can see the blown highlights but I am also noticing a softness issue on the cine. Any comments?

I want to look at this more myself.

Tim

I have posted a comparison here:

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=92468

I think the Cine "softness" issue is simply a lack of in-camera sharpening in Cine mode.

This is a good thing! You can always sharpen in post. But you can't remove sharpening artifacts from a sharpened image.

Fergus's Cine test frame with medium sharpening, (http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=92468) looks about equivalent to the Auto frame (minus the blown out hilites), to my eye.

Mark

Boy am I going to start digging into this. Very interesting. Looks like cine a post processing is the big ticket. Hmmmm...

I locked the exposure at pretty much the auto setting and tried to get zebras looking similar at 70%. When I turned down exposure in AV mode so that the whites weren't so blown the rest of the trailer became much darker. The cine in general just gets more info in the darks and whites, is it just a higher contrast setting for the other modes I wonder. The little bit of contrast control Canon gives you in the effects doesn't do much.

Yes I agree with you Wes - Im starting to think that the cine mode could be very useful indeed

Quick OT question - having just received my HV-20 I haven't hit the manual yet. However, I assume when folks talk about zebra patterns they are talking about off camera monitoring, or does the HV-20 have zebra?

Thanks.

Michael,

It has 70% Zebra, 100% Zebra and Peak. How to use them properly in Cine mode I don't know as its mostly automatic.

Zebra - how to enable it
 

Neither ZEBRA nor PEAKING is listed in the DV20 manual's index. They are described under "assist functions" on page 43. After you select one of the functions, it is toggled by the FOCUS ASSIST button on the LCD display.

That is, FOCUS ASSIST zooms in on the image -- otherwise the zebra/peaking is 'on' and the image is normal size. "Peaking" is edge enhancement which artificially sharpens edges to help you focus.

Thank you very much for the information and references. I use 80 IRE (I would assume the % corresponds) normally for skin, setting the exposure to where the zebra crawl just disappears on the hottest spots. Have to find out where 70% falls in that scheme. In any case, that is a surprising feature for such an inexpensive camera. Still figuring out what other functional gems will turn up. Time to RTFM, methinks.

Michael:

I'm finding usin 100 on the zebra setting and backing exposure off from there to eliminate seems to work pretty well to give you best exposure in the shadows too...

Wes - thanks for your comparison. For me CineMode looks too soft and flat. That and the fact you can't lock a shutter have caused me to shy away from using it. You are right about the highlight issue though. My solution right now is to turn brightness and contrast down one notch -1 (and color depth +1 , sharpness 0) while shooting Tv mode. May revisit CineMode in the future but the idea my shutter could fluctuate makes me very wary of using it.

This might have been mentioned before but Cinema mode seems to try and keep the shutter at 1/48. It's only when you move your aperter to +1 or -1 that it seems to change your shutter.