Detail Settings with cinema lens adapters and possible film out...
 

Now I've owned a Letus35 adapter and this comes from using that...

On my HD110 i've shot some footage (stock lens) with the detail set to normal or even +1 for a Chroma key test I shot and it wasn't unpleasingly sharp, kinda looked good for that application... That got me thinking, when I buy the new Letus35 thats coming out soon, would it help to keep the detail settings to normal considering the softness that occurs with a ground glass in front of the sensors?

It seems that people set their sharpness settings to MIN or OFF because when they shoot subjects they look quite sharp and "videoy" with the STOCK lens. But once you have a 35mm lens adapter (mounted directly to camera without stock lens, or on front of stock lens) some softness occurs due to the ground glass.

Has anyone done tests with this to show the differences between the two? In my own thought experiment, it would seem wise to keep the detail to normal considering the slight softness that will happen with GG devices anyway... Is there any good information to back this up or oppose this thought?

The second part would be doing a film out. Lots of people talk about how softness and degradation of a 720p happens when blown up and printed to 35mm positive film for projection... If you're using the stock lens for some limited amounts of shots in a feature, and you are considering doing a film out later on, is it wise to keep the detail on normal, for keeping in mind the stretching and softening when blown up to 35mm ? Ultimately I know this will be hard to match shots done with the cinema lens adapter, but just for better knowledge on this if anyone has done this before, would be great.

I'm curious to see what you guys think about this.

We ran some quick improvised tests with Zeiss HS Distagons and Planars on mini35 vs. stock lens before xmas.
We simulated difficult indoor lighting conditions
Didn't change the detail setting though,
but if you'd like I'll put up the Zeiss vs. stock lens sequences.

Giuseppe, when I used the Mini35, similar situation, ground glass, with a Cooke cine zoom we kept the detail at MIN and the image was perfectly sharp.

That would be very helpful to me, I plan on shooting a feature this summer using the new letus35 with Zeiss primes, I have a lot of testing to do ahead of me, but would love to see what you have.

Really? I very much do notice the sharpness drop from normal to MIN, i heard that this is actually a "Digital Sharpening" and adds some kind of visual noise... I have yet to do enough tests to see this, but already with the stock lens i noticed that at MIN it is softer and worrying about the sharpness suffering on a ground glass. I guess ill have to wait until i see someone elses footage, or wait until the letus comes out.

any luck with film outs? I've found very few information on actual HD100/110 film outs and their problems, its a mystery to me :-o

Paolo, what Cooke zoom was that? the 20-100 T3.1 ? We were actually afraid it would bust the mini35 because of its weight and size so we didn't test it but later the vendor told us it would have been ok.

how do you use this lens ? exclusively tripod-mounted I suppose ? do you think it's usable for indoor concert scenes ?

Giuseppe, I'll put it up hopefully by next Monday

That was it. You will need a solid support but it's definitely OK. Here are a couple of shots of the camera setup:

http://www.paolociccone.com/ImageLin...ageline-07.jpg
http://www.paolociccone.com/images/imageline-06.jpg

I would also think that if I knew the material would end up on 35mm and I used a 35mm adapter, that some detail should be added. HD normally needs some detail boosting. Even the F900 when used for features like SW has the detail boosted. HD is not the same as SD. For SD you should avoid detail boosting like the plague, even if going to 35mm. HD actually benefits from some detail boosting.

Yes, Mini35 is perfectly capable of accepting fullbore zooms as long as you are using the proper support as you would with any camera. See here for some historical pictures with the 300 series Mini.

Any opinions on the detail setting issue Charles? You're pretty experienced with 35mm adapters.

Thanks, Paolo
takes some planning at rock concerts in small clubs ! did you use that only in studio or also on location ?

Ah yes thank you. I had a feeling that was likely, because a varicam guy I know told me eveything was slightly soft when he went to film. But he said it was tack sharp on his hd monitor. He wasnt using a 35 mm adapter so I can't think of how much softer it would be with one.

i second that question. Thanks :)

That was the only time I got to work with that setup, although I used setups that were bigger than that (XDCAM with Fujinon 10x10 comes to mind). If your concern is about the stability of the the rig I would say that it can be used with a fair amount of movement. It all depends on the support. The system didn't seem to flex of go out of alignment easily.

tweak sharpness in post?
 

My feeling is if in doubt, shoot with less detail processing in camera.
It would be a lot harder to remove edge and artifacts from too much detail, while post-production sharpening and/or edge enhancement should be just as effective (I suspect much better), and adjustable to your specific shots and final delivery format. Especially for a film-out project.
Correct me if I'm wrong - is there anything about the signal path or method of in camera detail that is inherently superior to post-proccessing or is it just time? I realize you wouldn't want to do this in a HDV workflow with re-compression to mpg2.

Sean, you are correct. The so-called "detail" is an edge detection function that creates an outline for high-contrast areas. It's fast because it's implemented in hardware and it uses the higher color resolution of the sensor but it's an artificial edge enhancement that adds noise to the image, reduces the amount of compression achievable and it's irreversible. The camera does not create blurry images with the detail set to off or MIN. You can add edge enhancement in post and in doing so you can take advantage of advanced tools like masking.

If you have access to a waveform monitor I suggest that you shoot a chart, even a print out of a 11-step grayscale pattern will do. Once you have the chart correctly lit and centered you will see the characteristic "X" shape. Now set the detail to off, take a snapshot and then turn the detail to 0 or +3. Even at 0 you sill see a lot of "fuzz" around each square. That is all noise. On the other side, lower the detail and you will see that each square look actually sharper.

I'm not sure it's easier and better to add sharpness in post than in camera or if it's easier and better to add sharpness in post than to make it softer if needed. Tiffen has a new software version of their filters and pretty much any NLE will have some sort of soft filter. If it end up too sharp just use one of them as you would a diffusion FX for example. In my opinion, the in camera detail besides more accurate is also easier and faster. Now if you are doing stuff for DVD, I wouldn't see a reason to add sharpness at all, but for theatrical release and specially if using a 35mm adapter, turning detail off or to MIN will probably look out of focus on a big screen, even if it may look better on a studio monitor or in a gray scale test. Just my opinion.

It's definitely not easier in post! However once ideal parameters are found, it can be batch processed. I'm also very confident that you do not want to process footage to be sharp, followed by processing it it with a soft filter.
Artifacts get generated, and the 2 direction interpolation cannot be as accurate as unprocessed footage.

The camera detail you think is more accurate than what? There is a plethora of different approaches to adding sharpness. I wouldn't recommend just throwing your NLE sharpen filter at it. Edge enhancement, unsharp masking, and very specific algorithms exist.

Most important is dialing in the optimum amount - for the output. If it's being printed to film, this takes place at the final digital stage. You might even be uprezzing to a 2K intermediate for instance - that's where sharpening would ideally be done. Often there will be shot by shot decisions for the amount of sharpening = according to image content as well as the mood or intent of the shot. It's even conceivable you would be masking shots for selective sharpening.

I can tell you from personal experience that when downconvertiong and outputting to SD that there can still be benefits of sharpening at that output resolution and it's more effective than sharpening at high resolution first.
I believe it optimizes edge and detail interpolation more than the resizing.

Yet, any F900 shooters out there will tell you do dial in some detail if going to the big screen. It's been done since the F900 started being used for features. Why is that then?

That's interesting. Do you have any more information about this?

having put HD100 images up on a 16ftX9ft screen, post sharpening is a big no-no. **ANY** and **ALL* compression artifacts will jump off the screen big time. hugely ugly. while the small sharpening looked good on a down converted component SD monitor, it was horrible on the big screen. I had to remove the sharpen filters on all the shots I had used it on. post sharpening is not an option unless its going to SD only.

somewhere between off and normal, find a sweet spot which I think is about -4. the difference between off ( pure mush ) and min to normal is more like 16mm vs 35mm. I could easily pass off hd100 footage at normal thru about -2 settings as 35, go below and its more like 16mm. video cameras are designed to have a little sharpening because at off or min, they are not really showing the resolution they are capable of. its not evil to turn up a little, but I would not normally turn it above the NORM position because then it starts to make some edge artifacting because its over-sharpening.

you need to play a bit with it. for key work, I've shot at several settings and the last stuff I shot was at normal or -1 and it worked fine. progressive imaging is diferrent then interlace where there can and normally is a difference between fields that can make for problems.

At first I thought you were talking about any sharpening at all, including in camera. But I guess you mean post sharpening, in which case, I agree.

That's what I think too. -4 is a good compromise. But OFF or even MIN. is too soft. HD needs sharpening by nature.

By the way, I also think that when using a 35mm adapter sharpness could be slightly increased above that, specially for big screen release.

Just ask anybody who had shot a feature for theatrical release on the old F900 or search for articles maybe American Cinematographer on Hollywood films shot on the F900. You will see that sharpness was always dialed in. Not sure about the newer generation cameras like the Genesis or even the F23. But the F900 needed it. If the F900 needs it the HD100 needs it even more.

What I was hoping to get is a description of the phenomenon from a technical point of view. With all due respect, I am not interested in the aesthetic opinions, I'm trying to gather facts about how HD cameras work and I'm a bit surprised that a camera, any camera, would deliver soft images without additional "help" and I was interested in the rationale behind this.

That might be but it's not a logical consequence. Testing needs to be done. The cameras use different technology, different sensors etc. From my testing, MIN or -9, -8, with the HD100, works best.

I don't mean to be confrontational about this :), just "digging" for information on a topic that seems to be of interest for many of us.

I guess I'm the other way around. I barely ever worry about rationale or numbers. If it looks good for my eyes, it's scientific enough for me. One can discuss numbers and technicalities the hole day, but in the end of the day is what looks good for the eye that counts and not the why and how it looks good. All I said is just my opinion.

Not a problem at all Paolo. It has been a pleasure.

Giuseppe Pugliese

I developed my own lens adapter utilizing both 645 and 35mm lenses. I used them on my DVX and HD100.

I made several notes on this endeavor. After a couple of years on it i'm still making discoveries everytime i do some test shots. After getting sharpness, i dealt with falloff, after that grain and so forth.

To make a long story short, i found out that an increased detail on the hd100 when using a lens device with a ground glass, tend to exaggerate the grain structure since the detail cercuit will also try to enhance this. I wont preach a particular setting. Its a matter of taste. My suggestion is you view this on a monitor while changing the detail settings. shoot somthing black. You will notice dramatic changes in amount of noise or "enhanced grain" with the detail changes you make. In my case, I stayed at +1 and normal. Grain is there a wee bit, but then again, its a matter of taste.
The choice is yours.


Ted

That's the same for me, our eyes are the final judges but what I want to know is what the camera is recording. Because it seems weird that with detail set to OFF the camera generates blurry images. It doesn't make sense to me. Once the subject is in focus and the lens is installed properly, the camera should give a perfectly sharp image. I'd like to hear the definite answer, possibly from the manufacturer on what's going on. Is the sensor able to capture an image in full sharpness or it needs the help of an edge sharpener...

I second that paolo.

It is blurry to my eyes when detail is off.

i always wanted to start a topic about my HD200 sharpening but i thought i always had bad settings:
- i'm using TC3
- back focus was done with a chart
- stock lens used

Sharpening set to Norm gives a not so sharp image and set to min, it seems like out of focus !
why do my Hd200 does not give those "HD look" at all?!
It is much more like a DV scaled to HD !
i will link some frame grab but i'm very disappointed sometimes.

Just one time i used some testing settings, everything was nice! But didn't remember how i did it!
I have to shot a short within the next days so any advice will be appreciated.

Tests with Zeiss & Arri primes/mini35/GY-HD251
 

OK Giuseppe I've done a rough edit of the lens test, but the QT H264 file is 137 MB for 3m46s and I don't know how to upload a file this size.
Can anyone help ?

Michael & Steve - thanks for the added explanation. It does make sense that sharpening post-compression would cause issues with "enhancing" artifacts - which are even more of an issue with HDV than they'd be with the F900. I'm still learning the situations where artifacts start raising their ugly head. It was strange to discover they could be more of an issue with "simple" scenes like a uniform dark area, yet interpolated scenes containing more detail and motion with better results. I can understand that sharpening would not be good for the shots with artifacts. I guess you are saying that post-sharpening (taking place in a non-compressed environment from converted HDV footage) will actually bring out compression artifacts in footage which appeared clean before.
Steve - I'm curious about your tests on the 16x9 screen. Were you looking at actual film transfers from the JVC, or digital projection - if the latter, is it from a deck or streaming from a video card?
I've just started to look more critically at my footage going to a roughly 4x7 foot screen from the BR-HD50 to a 720p projector.
In short, some things look fantastic, others terrible...