colour sat on cam Vs in post

[Ali Jafri]

Hi people! Just wondering whether its wiser to boost colour saturation on the FX1 using the picture profile settings as opposed to boosting saturation in post specially since I'm capturing DV (PAL) through firewire and have the limited colour space of 4:2:0 to work with.

[Bob Hart]

Ali.


I have accepted my limitations as a camerman and prefer to leave the camera as close I can to what the manufacturer thinks is best and add my own touches via the manual choices available.

My manual choices are :-

Video Gain - 0db.
Iris - Manual.
Autofocus intermittantly used. - It is better than my eyesight.
Peaking On - Colour highlighted. - Helps my questionable eyesight.
Shutter - 1/50th sec also when using 35mm groundglass adaptor. 1/250th for aircraft props.
Manual white balance.
Default sharpness setting.
Default saturation setting.
1080i.

[Ervin Farkas]

Boosting saturation will put limits to color correction in post production, so leave it where Sony sets it.

[Ali Jafri]

Thanks guys, i do realise that my source has to be clean with as little tampering as possible, but my question still stands. Since i HAVE to boost colour saturation by a significant degree i want to know at what stage i should do it. The colour-boosted raw footage i have looks perfect to me and i've already experimented enough to get the saturation i want while staying within broadcast specs. Wanted to know if i can achieve the same (or better) results in post while staying within the dv colour space.

[Ervin Farkas]

If all you need is BOOSTING color, you might be OK doing it in-cam. But once all chroma has been boosted, it will be more difficult to do selective color correction in post. Raw footage does not have to look perfect, in fact most raw footage looks dull and not interesting at all... post production is where the color really starts working for you.

I would say, if it's not broken, don't fix it... if boosting in-cam works for you, then work with it. It will also cut down on your post time. Depending on your NLE (and your computer of course), color correction may add a significant rendering time.

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Some may not agree with me, but I use a slight lower saturation and a sharpness level of 3 (I increase this a bit If I'm using wide angle converters).

That gives me the kind of image that pleases me, no oversharpened edges, noise is lowered.

Looks more natural, less "video-ish". Suits better CC work.

If I need more saturation I just add a little in post, no problems whatsoever.

And just to clarify, I own a FX7. So things may be a little different on the Z1/FX1.

I have worked with a FX1 before, used almost these settings, but did not decrease the sharpness so much, results were good.