Paulo,

Some people are getting confused.
What you have done is bring the camera into a ITU709 (or 601 depending on how DVRAck was setup) color space spec. Bringing the white chip to 100IRE is the OPPOSITE and contradictory of extending latitude (AKA dynamic range.)
This is in no way close to the maximum available latitude with this camera. Your knee is set at 100%... essentially turned off.
Your own histograms prove that knee at 80% and black stretch 3 render the most latitude.
The chips on the DSC chart are not representative of the brightest white in the world or the blackest black, they are just a spec, like colour bars, that allow all of us around the world to be on the same page.

I suggest reading this article by Michael Bergeron. http://www.24pdigitalcinema.com/cinegamma.pdf

It refers to the Panasonic Varicam, but the concepts are exactly the same.

Pretty much where I'm at with sharpening as well.

Hey Tim.

I'm a student of the School of Hard Knocks and you just gave me astrong lesson, thank you! :)
I'm not a cinematographer but I've been a professional bit pusher (aka software engineer) for 20 years and it was hard to figure out that a digital limiter, my own interpretation of the knee circuit, was going to give me more in the end product instead of less. I kinda immagined the knee as something similar to the audio auto level.
I couldn't find clear information about the subject, the most detailed description I found was in a portion of Scott Billps book: "In an attempt to soften the abrupt clip levels of video the knee compression circuit was devised". Of course the word "compression" didn't settle well with me. Later in the page he adds: "while this often creates better looking video, it isn't recommended for video destined for film due to the amount of information that is discarded in the equation" (boldface mine).

The article that you linked partially confirms this and the "squished" result that I'm getting from the WFM, when loading some other configurations, was interpreted by me as loss of data and not as "we are below the threeshold, we are safe".

Sometimes you gotta make a fool of yourself in front of thousands of people in order to gain some knowledge. Fair trade. :)

Anyway, do you know if the cinelike gamma in our camera is equivalent to the cinegamma circuit mentioned in the article?

Thanks again.

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PaOlo
http://www.paolociccone.com

Paolo,

The "true color' scene file pulls off some great overall saturation. I had it loaded in the camera while I was driving and shot some out the window stuff.
Lakeshore Drive Chicago IL (175MB) Info about the camera setup is this. I used the "true color" scene file WB 6500. ND2 with Aperature set to around F2.8 and shutter 1/500. The scene file pulls off some great color in this scenario.

Paolo,

I have been playing utilizing your parameters, and using Tim's Black Stretch and Knee parameters. Let me tell you that such combination has given me by far the best out of the HD100.

Just my 2 cents...

Luis

Hey Luis,

thank you for letting me know. Glad it worked for you. Tomorrow I'm gonna try the different combinations on real life scenes.

Take care.

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Paolo

Stephen, that looks so sharp! Thanks!

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Paolo

What did you guys decide were the best settings for the black stretch and knee parameters?

Well, Tim has posted his preferences of knee at 80% and black stretch at 3. I have mapped the User 1 and User 2 buttons to Stretch1 and Stretch3 for easy access. I'm running some tests in extreme lighting in order to find out what works best but I haven't decided yet.
I'll post some examples with clips from the camera and corresponding settings as soon as I can.

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Paolo

I dont think there is a best setting for them DJ. It all depends on the situation I think. If you are shooting a scene with a big difference between the light and darks, then you would want to use Tim's wide range settings to get the most detail out of the darkest darks and the lightest lights, but I think you will have minor detail loss in your mids. If you have very evenly lit scene and you use the wide range settings you will be losing detail on either the white or black end because there is no bright whites and dark blacks. So you would be squeezing everything into the mid range and then stretching them back out again in post. Does that sound right? Thats my understanding, but I'm a beginner. This is my first camera.

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Paolo,

I am looking forward to get from you the reporting on your testing (your parameters and Tim's Knee and BS (I mean BS = Black Stretch) settings.

Cheers,

Luis

Paolo,

If you get a chance, can you load my DARK INT scene file and take a look at it with your DSC chart. It's working very well in dark scenarios.

Refer to this post

Thanks, Stephen

Paolo

I'm curious to know if you've had a chance to check your set up numbers with a number of different cameras. You do get variations in these settings between individual cameras, so I was wondering if you'd managed to or were thinking of trying the same DSC chart set up with a couple of other cameras.

I realize the DSC chart is expensive, so not everyone is going to be in position to line up their own camera using one, but it could be worth while knowing the variations that do exist and come up with a good mean setting.

Brian.
I don't have access to other HD100, the one I tested is my own. I do realize that there are variations and tollerances and some cameras might react differently to my settings. Of course this is true about any scene file that we install.
I live in Santa Cruz and I'm defintely available if you are in the area and want to stop by with your HD100 to test it with the chart. Just shoot me an email and we'll arrange for the test.

I believe that an accurate chart is vital for any professional production and, with my article, I wanted to promote the use of it. I see many times that people print charts downloading files from the Net and using their color/laser printer. The truth is that all consumer printers can introduce color bias and shifts even when you pay attention. The DSC charts are expensive. It took me several months before I could force myself to pay the ~$300 for it but I think it's well worth it.

Just my $0.02


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Paolo

Hi Stephen. I will try it asap.

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Paolo

Thanks, I agree about the DSC or other high quality chart being needed to correctly line up the camera. I've used the DSC with the F900 and the Varicam and it's great.

At the moment I'm just looking at the HD 100 as a possible camera for a number of low budget feature films, so I'm extremely interested in all the issues that have been coming up regarding the camera.