My Preferred Preset - Test Footage
 

I've been playing with my XH-A1 for about a month now, trying this, that, and the other with it; messing with the custom preset parameters; shooting in all kinds of different light, etc. I've finally settled on my preferred "all purpose" setting, and I figured I'd share it here for anyone who is interested. I'm not sure if it's better to do it here or in the custom presets folder, but since I'm including a link to the test footage, I decided on this forum category.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I readily confess that I started with Steven Dempsey's VIVIDRGB, and then started messing with it to suit my own tastes. I didn't want quite the color boost that VIVIDRGB gives, especially since the A1 tends to be quite "reddish" in the first place. So I dampened down things down across the board (using, I might add, the cool little editor that I found on this site). The result is a preset I've named RICH_RGB. I guess I'm not worthy enough yet to include attachments in my posts, so I've simply included a link to my own website where the preset can be found. It's currently named PRESETxx, but of course, anyone who downloads it will have to change its name to load to the camera.

Here's a link to the preset: http://www.eschatos.org/PRESETxx.CPF

Here's a link to a minute's worth of video shot yesterday afternoon using the preset. The video is 1280x720, 55MB, shot in 24f, then just thrown in the editor and rendered to .wmv, no post-production, just raw out of the camera.

http://www.eschatos.org/Video/Test_Rich_RGB.wmv

Edit:

Here's a list of the preset parameters:

Parameter/Value
Color Gain/12
Red Gain/10
Green Gain/12
Blue Gain/20
RG-Matrix/10
RB-Matrix/10
GR-Matrix/10
GB-Matrix/10
BR-Matrix/10
BG-Matrix/10
Gamma/Cine2
Color Matrix/Cine2
Horizontal Detail Frequency/Middle
Black/Middle
Knee/Low
Noise Reduction 1/Off
Noise Reduction 2/Off
Color Phase/0
H/V Detail Balance/0
Sharpness/1
Master Pedestal/-6
Setup Level/-1
Coring/0

Looks nice! How does it perform with solid reds?
There's nothing red in the video, but the browns are rich.

It's nice, Will. I think it's a good alternative to VIVIDRGB for those that want a cooler color palette. What I miss in your footage, however, is the richness and warmth of the sunset colors (assuming your shots were of sunset)...

I thought the colors were nice... but the blue on the jeans was waaay too blue. Skies looked great and the dried grass looked good too. One question though... Is there EVER a breeze where that was shot?!? The shot of (I'm assuming it's you) on the windmill looked like a still photo with an animated gif for the head. I had to keep looking at the progress bar because I thought the player had frozen! Get this man some air!

Nice preset overall though.

LOL!! Nice description :)

Eric Weiss:

Well, I haven’t really shot any stop signs or tomatoes yet (although I’ve got a garden full of tomatoes if anyone’s interested.) My initial intention was to find something that would render a fairly realistic, and yet somewhat saturated, image of the red rock scenery in southern Utah. The VIVIDRGB was just too much for that kind of stuff. I’ve posted below a link to a few seconds of comparison video shot at Cedar Breaks National Monument. There’s about 15 seconds each of Factory Preset, VIVIDRGB, and RICH_RGB.

Steven:

It wasn’t actually sunset yet. It was about 6:30pm here, and the sun was still several degrees above the horizon. The colors were just getting into the gold, but not yet red – hence the bias towards the yellow in the footage.

Keith:

Actually, the jeans look exactly how they look in the video. Seriously. And believe me, the wind DOES blow here. Often. When I was at the same place the day before, the wind was blowing a constant 30mph, and I finally had to pack up everything before I got dust in every crack of the camera.

Here’s the link for the comparison between Factory/VIVIDRGB/RICH_RGB: (Don't expect any great cinematography -- the wind was blowing like crazy, it was cold, and I just shot a few seconds for my comparison and made a beeline for my truck.)

www.eschatos.org/Video/TestVividRich.wmv

(1280x720, 24f, no-post modification, 37 MB)

So much for this month's bandwidth allowance.
 

I guess I've now discovered how quickly 3GB of bandwidth allowance can disappear when you post a couple 50MB files on this website.

Oh, well. I apologize for anyone else who goes to access the .wmv links above and finds they're not there anymore.

Is there some place on the web where you can post high-res, high quality .wmv files?

I use MediaFire.com

Will,
I would greatly appreciate if you can find another host - I desperately would like to see and compare the different settings - planning on some holidays in southern Utah, and I'll bring my A1 with me!
Best,
Dino

I'll host them on my site until Will finds an alternative. I'm uploading now....

Will, let me know if you object.

I'll post links when finished uploading.

Right click and save as:

http://www.pinelakefilms.com/XHA1/TestVividRich.wmv

http://www.pinelakefilms.com/XHA1/Test_Rich_RGB.wmv

Will, thanks for sharing your preset.
I liked the colors of your posted footage.

And thanks Steven for posting it on your site so I could watch it ;)

Great job Will !!! Thanks so much for sharing this! I'll try this out on our next trip to Utah!

Steven, thanks for hosting the files!!!

Dino

Steven,

Thanks for hosting those clips. I've been busy for the past few days so I hadn't even noticed. In the meantime, I've entered into negotiations with my friend at my ISP about what he wants to charge me per month for some serious bandwidth. I'm starting a site where I'll post real estate virtual tours (I'm doing that just to get a little extra change to buy things like a new Letus Extreme so I can have as much fun as Steven is having.)

One thing I will say about the RICH-RGB preset is that I've found myself making variations of it for different times of day. In the first place, I've dropped the sharpness down to zero for everything. Then, for early morning shots when there is a bit of mist or haze in the air, I find myself dropping the pedestal and setup down a couple more notches. For late afternoon/early evening shots, I have been bumping the setup to 0 and stretching the blacks to add some more detail to the shadows.

The bottom line, in my very limited experience with the A1, is that you need to blow a few hours of tape doing nothing but seeing how the camera reacts to different situations, and seeing how you can manipulate the custom settings to affect its reaction. I now have three versions of my RICH_RGB, one for morning, daytime, and evening light.

I also will take delivery of my Merlin later this week, and then I will be shooting a music video for a local musician. I'm sure that process will result in a few more custom settings in consequence of matching the camera to a certain set of circumstances.

Isn't this fun?

Let us know when you get this site up and going.