Thanks, Che and Alex!

I guess I will do some test shots at -9 and 0, add sharpening in Vegas and compare these with native A1 footage at +6.

I've been using the No. 1 Cine setting, and I took the sharpness down a -2, I think, and pressed the black just a little. Looks great.

I like to keep sharpness at 0 or at -3. I think its too video-ish if you keep it all up.

Did some shooting over the weekend. Got some wonderful stuff and plan on posting it soon. I wanted to share some more about my experiences with sharpness and the A1. After much testing I decided to shoot with sharpness at -9 so I could tweak it in post. That way I wouldn't have to deal with a sharpness setting burned into my footage. Well it sounded good at the time but I got back and started importing into Final Cut and found that everything was soft. The strange thing, though, is that on my HD monitor, straight out of the camera, the same images are tack sharp. I thought there was a setting wrong in FCP but to my dismay the footage was importing soft in HDxDV as well. So, I thought I would go ahead and sharpen in FCP. It helped, but not without adding extra grain.

Later I did some camera tests at home and found that 0 sharpening does indeed look good in FCP and not too sharp either. What I deduce is that FCP is sharpening not only the original image but also any compression artifacts while the camera does its sharpening before laying to tape.

I still stand by sharpening only in post, just not with HDV. The format is too noisy and the compression is too lossy to withstand any sort of post sharpening. HDCam I would sharpen in post, DVCProHD I would attempt to sharpen in post but from my experience with HDV I'll let the camera do the heavy lifting there.

Below is the results of my tests. Cam set at:

-3dB
24p
1/48 Shutter
6.7f
3200K
-2 Setup
-1 Pedestal
Normal Gamma
Low Knee
Middle Black

Full res (1920x1080) FCP still frames are here:

http://www.chebutterfield.com/A1Shar...essSamples.zip

There are 4 files with the only changes between them being sharpening.

Thanks for posting these Che. I think I will go for -1 in the camera from now on.

Richard

Tannks, Che, your results are very much appreciated. Yes, I also have the impression that your -9-plus-FCP-sharpening-sample shows more artifacts than your 0-samle.

In agreeance with che, but then I turn to personal taste and for me -3 sharpness seems to give me the desired look I am after.

Nice tests by the way all.

Thanks Che. Very interesting. And I agree with Noel, Richard, Raymond, Bill, et al.: sharpness between 0 and -3 seems to give the most organic looking results.