Picture Profile Recipes

[Thomas William Alexander]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

An even better analogy is the "RGB cube" mapping. See here:

RGB color space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks Piotr for the information. I thought it might be as simple as Red, Green, Blue but I wasnt sure if there might be more to it than that. Now I have a lot of information to absorb on the subject.


Thanks:

Thomas

[Joe Lawry]

I've got a Multicam shoot coming up with 2 EX3s and 1 Ex1, and need to figure out the best way to match the cameras. Its going to have to be done in post obviously, however i'd like to get the most out of the cameras as possible.

I like the latest True Colour Profiles from Bill, however i know they dont work very well when it comes to the EX3.

Heres the basic settings i was thinking..

Matrix ...............on
Select................hisat
Gamma Level.............. 0
Gamma Select.............CINE1, CINE3, CINE4 (3 Settings)
Black..........................-8
Black Gamma..............0

So very blank settings apart from a couple.

Im also going to be doing the Online Edit for the show, so will be matching the cameras colours in the final edit.

If anyone else has any suggestions when it comes to mixing the cameras colour wise please let me know.

[Omar Idris]

Originally Posted by Thomas William Alexander

I was wondering if annyone knew for sure what some of the color symbols stand for on the ex1 in the pp settings? For instance: RG, RB, GR, GB, BR, BG.
The oporators manual does not tell what the anacronyms stand for and I have had no success finding any information on the web anywhere. Can anyone help me in this area?

Thomas

Hello everyone (first post)
Thomas, R-G, R-B, G-R, G-B, B-R and B-G are difference signals between the respective primaries. Think of the R-Y B-Y chroma difference signals for an analogy.

The reasoning behind the linear matrix circuit comes from the fact that in the natural world each of the primaries does have some contamination from the other two (either positive or negative). So for things like skin tones or grass to look natural this contamination has to be simulated in camera. This happens after white balance but before gamma correction hence the word linear. So really your white balance isn't affected by Matrix settings or for that matter by any other PP setting save the White setting.

The "Level", "Phase" "R-G", "R-B", "G-R", "G-B", "B-R" and "B-G" settings all work together to determine the final colour of your pixel according to the following formulae:

R′=R+α(R−G)+β(R−B)

G′=G+γ(G−R)+δ(G−B)

B′=B+ε(B−R)+ζ(B−G)

where:

R, G and B are the respective signals before passing through the linear matrix circuit and R′, G′ and B′ are the respective signals after passing through the linear matrix circuit.

α, β, γ, δ, ε and ζ are the matrix coefficients defined as:

α(Greek letter alpha)=−0.59a−0.59b

β(Greek letter beta)=−0.11a+0.89b

γ(Greek letter gamma)=−0.3a+0.2831b

δ(Greek letter delta)=−0.11a−0.4731b

ε(Greek letter epsilon)=−0.3a−0.7b

ζ(Greek letter zeta)=−0.59a+0.59b

and:

“a” and “b” are control parameters for chroma (saturation) which you affect with "Level" and hue which you affect with "Phase" respectively.

My guess is you don't actually set the values of the two control parameters or the six coefficients but scale them.

As you can see it is not a very intuitive exercise. Having experimented on say, a pixel with red as the dominant signal, positive values of either R-G or R-B (the ones that affect the red signal) will make the red in that pixel more vibrant and negative values less so. If the pixel had green or blue as the dominant signal however, positive R-G or R-G values would make red less vibrant and as a consequence green or blue more vibrant and vice versa. One can also see that gray-scale values are unaffected because the difference signals cancel out.

This is from research and experimentation on my part, so don't take my word as gospel. The equations however are Sony's or whoever dreamed up the linear matrix circuit.

Omar

[Simon Wyndham]

I think messing around with the matrix too much is not recommended. Sometimes you get a good look, but for only one situation.

The best settings to adjust are the detail, detail frequency, subtle gamma, black gamma and black level adjustments.

I always find that the blacks lack punch on Sony cameras, so that is always one area I look at for starters. It is possible to make a PP that works in the majority of situations, but it needs subtle and considered adjustment.

Certainly if you are looking at film style shooting you want to be looking at the detail and detail frequency settings.

[Clark Peters]

Simon, do you have any suggestions for detail settings?
Pete

[Dennis Schmitz]

Originally Posted by Clark Peters

Simon, do you have any suggestions for detail settings?
Pete

OFF :)


Dennis

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Dennis Schmitz

OFF :)


Dennis

lol...
very true.

The EX is the first camera under $10K that looks good without aritificial enhancement.(detail, sharpening..what ever you want to call it).

[Clark Peters]

It's easy to be dismissive about in-camera sharpening. If all you are using it for is to increase the apparent resolution of an image, then sure, turn it off and leave it off.

I think that may be a little short sighted, though. The Detail settings control how the camera responds to fine details. I have been experimenting with different settings for Crispening, Frequency, and the other parts of the Detail set. I am very interested in how Simon is using the Detail settings to get the look he wants from the camera.

Pete

[Simon Wyndham]

For a filmic look you can turn the detail off, but this doesn't help very much with the EX series because unlike cameras such as the F900 you cannot turn the detail off while leaving the Aperture correction on.

On most of Sony's full size cameras you can do this. Turning the detail off gets rid of edge enhancement across the board. But by tuning the Aperture (high frequency) detail you can get really fine adjustments that can mimic different film types much more closely.

This is not possible with the EX series of cameras though because they only have a broad detail adjustment with no separate Aperture Correction adjustment.

For this reason I would not recommend turning the detail totally off on the EX cameras. Instead I would suggest reducing the detail, for example to -20, and then adjusting the Frequency setting to, for example +40. The Frequency setting adjusts the coarseness, or width, of the edge enhancement. The higher the setting the finer and more subtle the effect is.

So it is possible to keep the edge enhancement but stop it from being intrusive. For documentary you may want slightly more enhancement than you would for a 'filmic' style. Turning the detail off can make things look a little too '8mm cine camera' to me.

One other tip I can give is that for low light shots with the gain kicked and shadow areas, you may want to experiment with the crispening function. This function is also useful when used in conjunction with the detail adjustment as it will not only allow you to fine tune the detail enhancement to avoid enhancing the noise, but it will also allow you to further fine tune the parts of the picture you would like enhanced of those that you do not.

[Bill Ravens]

Simon...

Many thanx for your explanation of how you use the DETAIL settings. I am off to experiment with your suggestions. Do you have an understanding of the KNEE APERTURE setting? Is this related to the APERTURE CORR on the F900?

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Hi Bill,

You can find the explanation here:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/f...ture_Edges.pdf

Cheers, and all the best for the New Year!

[Simon Wyndham]

On other cameras I usually leave the knee aperture off, although it probably doesn't harm to have it on. The effect that it has is usually negligible.

[Eric Gulbransen]

I "think" I just read through all the posts in this thread. Can't tell yet because the room is still spinning.. Do I understand this accurately - as of yet there exist no profile settings developed 'specifically' for the EX3? Because if that's the case I'm taking this EX3 to Santa Cruz - home of Paolo Ciccone, creator of the "True Color" profile settings for the HD100.

I have to wear a helmet to keep my brain from swelling when we talk about cameras. Man's a genius

[Simon Wyndham]

There is no magic setting Eric. Setting a camera up to a DSC Labs ChromaDuMonde will give a very neutral picture. By DSC's own admission, by setting up to one of their charts you are setting your camera up for a base level. Quite a flat, but accurate look as a starting point from which you can push things in the direction that you want.

On the other hand I was advised by one of the Sony engineers not to set up to a DSC chart. For their European cameras Sony set up using industry standard and accepted EBU charts, which quite clearly give different results to the DSC ones.

When it comes to creating 'looks' I find that it is like a dog chasing its tail. One of the keys to creating great looking video is shooting when there is pleasing light, or artificially lighting nicely. No amount of tweaking is really going to make a flat overcast day look good. Certainly the picture can be made more punchy, but detail risks being crushed as a result. Better I find to create an accurate representation of what is there and then tweak anything else in post. Or organise the project such that 'beauty' shots need to be scheduled around good light and weather.

Personally I think that Cinegamma 4 is great, plus perhaps HiSat. If you really are having issues with the harshness of the light then use Cine 1 so that you can raise your exposure and bring your shadows up while still retaining highlight detail.

Most other niceties will be taken care of by careful white balance (not just blind white balance), and the detail settings of the camera.

Going back to the DSC charts for a moment, I think that in order for there to be consistency people should list the steps they took with lighting, initial camera settings (ie making sure that their white balance is at 3200k and that their lighting is matched at precisely 3200k since this is what the cameras factory defaults are optimised for. Although I was told by by DSC Labs that you can white balance to your light, I cannot see how this can be done without skewing the results. After all we have to play dumb and assume the camera is tuned for 3200k and that we are bringing it in line with the DSC chart under precisely these conditions), and post a grab of their chart. These things need careful setup with totally even light and zero reflections. If such things are ignored then people will get wildly different, and inconsistent results from their settings.

[Tom Roper]

In response to Clark's request, and following up on Simon's observations about Detail setting, I have a detail profile from a prior post in this discussion that I'm very happy with and still using.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/955623-post359.html