Kodak? I don't recall that one

I think he's referring to one of two different presets that approximated a particular type of Kodak film. Look at the descriptions in the spreadsheet on the first page of this thread.

Oh yea... I didn't even think of those two. Thanks

Bill

So this preset looks pretty darn close to the DVX which I thought was the goal of the Panalook preset. Should this be called Panalook? How about a three way shot of Panalook/VividRGB and the DVX.

It looks like the DVX is crushing the blacks more than the A1. It favors the Canon to my eye. It seems the Canon could be getting a larger lattitude. It also appears that the blue in the sky and greens in the trees are darker on the DVX despite the fact that the white vehicles look closer to blown out on the DVX. This points to more contrast on the DVX (or less lattitude.) I like the fact that the Canon is resolving more shadow detail and higlight detail to my eye. I do large-fomat printing for a living so color comparisons are always interesting to me...

Has anyone shot video of a grayscale to determine if the Canon can capture a higher white to black lattitude. I already sold my DVX so I'm no good for comparisons.

-Jonathan

It's looking good (and pretty close to the DVX). There's definately a touch more red in the A1 image - look at the clouds in the lower portion of the sky to the left of the lampost. I shot some footage with the previous settings and noticed that it added a touch of red to skintones - which wasn't a bad thing for pasty Caucasian skin (adds a nice glow), but I didn't have anyone with olive, brown or black skin to test it out on.

I won't bother posting the grabs as the settings have changed since and I don't want to confuse the issue.

I'm still having difficulty understanding what exactly each of the matrix settings does. Can anyone enlighten me?

Just for the record, I've done everything I'm going to do regarding this preset. For those looking for additional tests, I suggest you do it yourself and post anything you find interesting.

With every preset comes a million opinions and, while this will look great to some, others will find things they don't like about it.

The purpose of these presets is to use them as a starting point and adjust the parameters to what works best for you. As for me, I love this preset and will be using it extensively.

Thank you Steve I also love this preset and will use it often. Also it help jump start me on diving into adjusting the presets of the A1.

Nice job Steven. Thank you for all your hard work. I will definitely be using this preset. While I was a long time DVX user and loved that cam I have no desire to emulate it with my A1. I'm looking forward to much greater things with the A1 than my DVX was ever capable of.

Thanks guys and please keep in mind that I did not develop this to look like the DVX or HVX, it was just a coincidence that they were so similar. This preset stemmed from people wanting more vivid colors in general.

Yep. Not sure which of the two Kodak filmstock presets it was. I only liked one and that's what I've been using as a general purpose preset for interiors/exteriors. It gives me vivid (but not too vivid) colors without going all wonky with the reds/magentas. Panalook was a close second to the Kodak but not quite as colorful, IMO, and since I only need one general purpose preset, Kodak wins. I am keen, however, to more extensively test the new and final version of VividRGB.

I've tested all the presets under various conditions indoors and out and found the best for my needs as an independent filmmaker are Kodak and Juan's original, silvery Bleach Bypass. Some of the others might be useful under certain conditions, but not often. Of course, everybody has different needs, so YMMV.

BTW, this preset library is a veritable godsend. I would never have figured out this stuff on my own, or at least not without wasting a ton of time when I could have been shooting instead. Even though I won't end up using most, just having been able to test and compare them against each other has been a wonderful experience.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed a preset!!! Looking forward to more!

I love this preset also and will use it often. I deviated only in that I use it with the Normal gamma, but it captures beautiful color with that too. Well done Steven!

Nice going Steven,
this is a great preset.
I agree about this being a starting point
should anyone want to further tweak it.
All presets should be starting points.

One of the special qualities of this camera
is that it allows for a huge variety of changes
in the color characteristics.

Thanks everyone who contributed to these presets,
you have benefited us all...

David

Silly question but...I cann't find a link to Juan's silver bleach bypass cpf !?

Just type 'bleach bypass preset' into the search and its there. I used it yesterday and it's excellent. I think to get the best from it you need to overexpose by as much as 2 stops.

Nice tip!!

VIVIDRGB - This is one great preset, thanks a lot Steven, excellent work, thanks for sharing it!
Chris

I've used that bleach bypass preset for a short film and it looks fantastic!

Outside you only need to over-expose a little bit,inside,as I said by as much as 2 stops. I also added a light blue filter for an overall colour cast. I'll post some grabs when I've finished it.

Can't see presets above 20
 

I loaded all the presents in the PRESET folder. When scrolling through the presets on the SD card the A1 only allows me to select from 20. The presets numbered above 20 don't appear on the card even though I know I have 21, 22, 25 and 30 on the card. Is there another proceedure I'm missing?

Thanks

Jan-Arden Petersen

I've been banging my head against this very same problem and I think I found the answer... The A1 is limited to 20 presets, but it is ALSO limited to the numbers "1" through "20" for those presets. Meaning, presets numbered as 21, 22, 23, 30, etc. will not show up.

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be the answer.

Good luck.

In fact A1 is limited to 20 presets and also to the numbers 1 to 20. In practice this means that even you change the preset number by a name (ex. mypreset.cpf instead preset21.cpf) A1 will not recognize it.

I ended up printing a page with all the presets listed with name/number and description that I carry around in the camera bag for reference.

I also ran into the number limitation and just renamed the presets higher than 20 to a lower number, and put a few of the overflow into the camera preset section, which has 9. (but 7-9 are locked)

So you can have 29 presets in total I believe. (if you count the locked 7-9)

Trish

The trick is to carry around a second SD card containing another volume of twenty presets.

Gad
it's embarrising how smart some of the
little quips you come up with are Chris...lol.

That was a good one.

All the best,

David

hello,
i have found another preset...made with a vectorscope.

http://www.fxsupport.de/20.html

i will compare it to steven's vividrgb.

I don't seem to be alone in having problems loading the vivid preset. I only have 18 on the SD card at present and they all load fine. Even if I rename Vivid to 01 instead of 30 it still doesn't load.

Any Ideas?

The file could be messed up. I think I may have had trouble with the final vividgrb preset and just entered the values into an available slot manually. The values are posted on one of these final pages - I can't recall if I did that because i needed another slot or that particular preset just wasn't loading properly

trish

Just got my A1 this evening -wow - lots to learn.

I Downloaded the .cpf files to my Mac, created a new folder on the SD card called PRESET and stuffed them in. After puttting the card back in my A1 all the presets were immediately available. Got to love this forum and all the folks that have contributed.

I can't open the files on my Mac for some reason?

You don't "open" the .CPF files on a Mac or a PC. You open them in your XH A1.

You might want to try this nice little app:

http://www.felixtheissen.com/apps/We...and%20win.html

Presets
 

Does anyone have the actual presets list? I tried downloading these and they won't open.

PRESET05.CPF "LOWLT12" is for shooting in low light with 12db gain.

What are the exact presets for each so I can do it manually?

Thanks!

All of the settings are listed in detail, in the Excel spreadsheet in the first post of this thread.

One fundamental thing your forgetting is that the DVX100 here (in this case) is NTSC (411)
More than likely the A1 footage your seeing is HDV or downscaled HDV... (420)either way, its a different colour space, UNLESS both images are shot in DV mode on both cameras..

Another thing to note is the DVX is NOT a native 16:9 cam, so 25% of the CCD isnt in use, therefore its not taking in as much light, or resolving as many pixels as teh A1. Hence the lack of sharpness and gamma lattitude.

Dont get me wrong, the A1 is a brilliant tool, but when comparing one must be sure to be accurate in all aspects

here's a bit of custom preset sample footage:

http://www.planetestudios.com/bhutan.html

the first is panalook, the second vividgrb, and the third is my own preset memory...

a note: from shooting around in bhutan, memory looks best if you have some dramatic colors, there is a lot of red and orange in the bhutanese landscape, so the footage i shoot using it looked awesome. also, it helps to blow the highlights a bit....

Very interesting thread! I've only had my A1 for a week, screwed up my first shoot due to taking lights but not being able to figure how to use the machine (had EOS 5D brain on) but that may have been a good thing as it spurred me on to really get to know this machine. To be honest I was a bit scared of all the tweaks but after reading this thread and playing with the A1's custom settings have started to fall in love with it!

Anyway, what puzzles me is why Canon don't do what they do for us EOS users with DPP software and have a bunch of standard settings (eg, portrait, landscape etc etc) on the web site.

Top thread and very, very useful!
:)

Mike

Thanks to all those who set up and made the presets available. Great stuff.

Just one thing. I've got the PAL manual and the instructions for loading the presets is on Page 77 of my book.

Actually, once I finaly figured out that I didn't really need to load them but simply access them straight from the card, all became blindingly clear.

Once I've settled on six favourites I'll load them in the camera and keep the rest on the SD card.

Once again, thanks. This is a fantastic resource and I hope some day to be able to add something to it myself.

Help
 

I can't seem to download the Excel file.

What gives?

That's like telling a mechanic, "My car doesn't work. What's wrong with it?"

Can you elaborate so someone can help you?

Bill

Nevermind...
 

I got it now.

It was easy and they look great. Can't wait to test them.

Thanks Chris!

Vividrgb
 

Thanks to all who give such excellent advice. I am very glad I joined this group.

Just made the Vividgrb stettings in my almost brandnew A1 and wow, what a difference to the normal settings.

From Holland,
Henk