I've been playing with the standard PP today; keeping the most neutral STD3 gamma curve, I only changed the matrix to Hisat and applied some minor adjustments to the colour pairs (no Knee setting alteration, though).

The outcome is indeed better saturated than the out-of-the-box look; it also seems to span more dynamic range (even and broad histogram distribution). However, one thing worries me: with the automatic iris setting, and the sky being just on the verge of over-exposure (a few 100% zebra patterns here and there), the sky colour gets blown-out to white everywhere except behind the thin tree branches where it stays blue; there is no gradual change (lack of midtones) between the two areas, which causes a nasty looking effect.

Please take a look at those grabs: the first is at the instant of aiming the camera at the sky (it all gets clipped); the next show auto iris closing and the sky behind the trees going blue. The difference between the blue and white is so sharp it looks very bad indeed. Later, I'm closing iris even further to retain the sky true colours, but of course the foregroud is underexposed. BTW, sorry for wrong WB -- didn't care for that at this particular experiment.

Now, my question is this: does anyone see a similar behaviour using the standard setting (STD3 gamma curve), or something is wrong with my camera?

Does this happen when using a cinegamma curve?
And no, I've never noticed this problem with my EX1 (maybe a standardgamma problem? I have always used cinegamma ;))


regards Dennis

Piotr...

Have you read Adam Wilt's review of the EX1? There's a great deal of useful info in there.

One of the comments he makes is the special nature of the cine gamma curves in the EX1. In contrast, the STD curves are linear with fairly abrupt clipping at the hi end(clipping). The CINE curves give a much softer transition to superwhite and black, more like a "S" curve, which should be quite familiar to you.

Also, check the white clip level in the menu. Most user set it to 108%, rather than a hard clip at 100%. I beleive 108% is the factory setting.

What NLE are you using? If you don't have 32-bit processing, the images will be hard clipped at 100%, not revealing the actual performance capability of this amazing camera.

No Dennis, it doesn't happen with cine curves (they have their own highllight compression voodoo, and don't even allow to play with the Knee settings).

However, the STD3 curve - while not the most impressive - is supposed to be most neutral and universal, hence my worries about the camera.

Once somebody recreates it using STD3 and Hisat matrix, I'll accept the fact as another ting one should be aware of when shooting, and will stop worring about my camera. Thanks!

Piotr...

Have you read Adam Wilt's review of the EX1? There's a great deal of useful info in there.

One of the comments he makes is the special nature of the cine gamma curves in the EX1. In contrast, the STD curves are linear with fairly abrupt clipping at the hi end(clipping). The CINE curves give a much softer transition to superwhite and black, more like a "S" curve, which should be quite familiar to you.

Sure Bill, I know the cine gamma features and have been using them long with great results.


Also, check the white clip level in the menu. Most user set it to 108%, rather than a hard clip at 100%. I beleive 108% is the factory setting.

You mean the zebra setting, right? I have it at 100%.

What NLE are you using? If you don't have 32-bit processing, the images will be hard clipped at 100%, not revealing the actual performance capability of this amazing camera.

Yes, I'm using Vegas and this abrupt change from unclipped to clipped area is only more pronounced in 32bit video mode...

white clip is not the same as zebras at all. zebra is just a viewfinder alert, the whiteclip is a picture setting and abrubtly cuts off any image above its setting.

white clip is not the same as zebras at all. zebra is just a viewfinder alert, the whiteclip is a picture setting and abrubtly cuts off any image above its setting.

I'm not saying it is - I just understood Billl was asking for the zebra. Bill, did you mean zebra? I had said I didn't change the standard Knee setting, if you mean that and I got you wrong...

I could be wrong here but it looks like the EX1s zebras only show you what is at the defined level. So with zebras set at say 100 and only a little bit of the sky showing zebras it could be that the rest of the sky is well over 100.

I think your problem is the mistaken belief that Standard 3 is the most pure image. As everyone tells you it drops of sharply and it WILL blow out easily. For the shot you are doing with STD3 to get what you want you must cut back your iris. Don't rely on the histogram and if using the luminance measure keep highlights below 100% (don't try 108% like you can in Cine4). Your foreground will be dark and that is why when shooting in idiot mode this camera has a backlight button.

I could be wrong here but it looks like the EX1s zebras only show you what is at the defined level. So with zebras set at say 100 and only a little bit of the sky showing zebras it could be that the rest of the sky is well over 100.

Could be that, Bob - this is how zebra 2 behaves (around the set value of say 70%, rather than everything above it). On the V1, the zebra didn't behave like this though, i.e. eeverything above 100 was covered with stripes... Will check tomorrow how it behaves on the EX1, but my impression is it never turns off once above 100 (actually it can be set to 107).

What do you think of these grabs? I never saw a behaviour like this before, and of course I did sometimes use non-cinema curves;) As I said, one should be able to rely on the standard, defualt, factoy chosen gamma curve (STD3) - and advising me to alway use the cine gammas is not answering my doubts.

Please take a look at those grabs: the first is at the instant of aiming the camera at the sky (it all gets clipped); the next show auto iris closing and the sky behind the trees going blue. The difference between the blue and white is so sharp it looks very bad indeed.

Now, my question is this: does anyone see a similar behaviour using the standard setting (STD3 gamma curve), or something is wrong with my camera?

It does look a bit odd, but without being there a playing with settings... iris, ND, etc... It's hard to say.

Doesn't the auto iris have a compensation parameter in the menu?

P:
Maybe you should go into the menues and reset your camera to factory defaults. Then try this agin watching the LCD and see if you can reproduce this. IF you use auto iris in this type of shot you MUST use the backlight button.

Doesn't the auto iris have a compensation parameter in the menu?

Yes it does - but how would it change in this situation? The sky as either totally blown (overexposed), or can be made all blue by closing the iris - but then the darker areas are severely underexposed... In the middle (i.e. with proper average exposure), I'm getting those blue patches behind the trees - as if they casted shadow on the sky, enough for it to stay un-clipped. What is the problem is the abrupt change between those clipped and unclipped patches - looks awful.

P:
IF you use auto iris in this type of shot you MUST use the backlight button.
Not necessarily - on other cameras, I could choose to either expose properly the backlit area thus totally blowing out the sky colour (similar to the upper left grab in this thread's initial post), or keep the sky blue at the cost of underexposing the foreground (like in the bottom right grab). But I never got patchy sky like this!

I almost feel like this is someone saying I filmed a person standing with their back to a window when it is bright out and I cannot expose their face properly without blowing out the background. In this situation it looks as if either the sky will be properly exposed or your darker foreground will be properly exposed. If the shot works better with cine (as it would) use that. I don't think this is a problem with the camera. We are given a wide range of image control options with this camera and many of them need to be used to optimize different image situations.

I almost feel like this is someone saying I filmed a person standing with their back to a window when it is bright out and I cannot expose their face properly without blowing out the background. In this situation it looks as if either the sky will be properly exposed or your darker foreground will be properly exposed. If the shot works better with cine (as it would) use that. I don't think this is a problem with the camera. We are given a wide range of image control options with this camera and many of them need to be used to optimize different image situations.

Benjamin, let me repeat again: I perfectly understand no camera will give me both background and foregrounf perfectly exposed and saturated if the backgroud is brighter, and this thread (and my problem) is NOT about this obvious phenomenon. What worries me are the patches I'm getting on the sky in all iris settings apart from the two extremities (upper left and lower right). The patches are tightly surrounding the foreground trees, and not necessary the brighter/darker areas of the sky itself (like the clouds). And this is a flaw to me.

Tomorrow I'll reset all Bill's "truecolor" matrix settings, and repeat the experiment with just the basic Hisat matrix and STD3 gamma. If the patches are gone, the culprit will be narrowed to the matrix pairs setting. BTW, I'm still uncertain how to interpret them, so please somebody explain to me in laymen's terms what increasing/decreasing does to the following matrix pairs values:

R-G
R-B
G-R
G-B
B-R
B-G

TIA.

That does look very strange Piotr. Do you have any other processing happening on the camera such as skin tone detail or col correction etc?

It looks as though the camera is handling the light around the branches differently to the rest of the frame.

That does look very strange Piotr. Do you have any other processing happening on the camera such as skin tone detail or col correction etc?

It looks as though the camera is handling the light around the branches differently to the rest of the frame.

At last someone who can see what I'm talking about; thanks so much Paul! And no, I didn't engage skin/colour correction.

PLEASE, do me a favour and try to recreate this. The settings are Bill's "truecolor" PP:

Matrix---------------------on
Select---------------------hisat
Level...............................0
Phase..............................+6
R-G................................+75
R-B................................0
G-R................................-18
G-B................................-23
B-R................................-33
B-G................................+11

Color Correction..............off
White.............................off
Detail.............................on
Detail Level.....................0
Detail Freq......................0
Skintone.........................off

Knee..............................on
Auto knee......................on
Point.............................90
Slope............................0
Knee SAT level...............50

Gamma Level.................0
Select...........................STD3
Black............................-15
Black gamma.................-9
Low key sat..................0

TIA, Paul.

I use Bills TC2 profile but I use the CINE1 Gamma. The closest shot I have is attached.

regards

Paul.

Yes, all Bill's PP's are fine with cine gammas. The problem is only appparent with the STD3 one, which is the factory default and as such, shouldn't "offer" surprises like that.

Piotr...


Judging from the images you posted, everything looks severely overexposed. There's a lot that happens when things get that far overexposed...CA rears its ugly head, etc., etc.
Looking at this image in CS3, EVERYTHING is pushed to the right end of the histogram. Please excuse my bluntness, but, this image need to be canned. Go retake the image, watch the histogram when you take it, be sure the peak is well centered in the histogram. It's not worth any more time discussing it.

PIOTR: I have discovered what's going on here. I have reproduced your effect and with the CINE gammas and not just SRD3.

Like you I set up bare trees against a clear blue sky. Your case is particularly extreme as I think you have the sky way overexposed, but I got the same effect with correct exposure.

I don't how this works in the camera, maybe connect to the knee drop off, but in the areas where the silhouette trees are the software is recognizing an area darker than the surrounding area and the black stretch is dropping the effectice exposure in that area which brings out the blue in the sky!

I just went back at looked at all those frame grabs.
What's happening is the fine foliage is acting like a ND filter, that's why you see remnants of the blue sky around the branches.
At a guess the blue channel is clipping and/or the chroma sampling is blurring out the fine detail so in the second grab you don't see the fine branches.

Have you tried turning the auto knee off for a start, maybe the auto knee settings are too extreme. i rememeber many years Sony sent a new camera that was top of the line, and the auto knee was going crazy . Most people I encountered just thought it was normal, but the affects were horrendous. I'll try to check my camera as well. its definitely not normal.

I agree that the shots are way overexposed and strange things are happening. That is why I always shoot this .6 to .9 ND grads on all exteriors with a mattbox. You can also adjust both the highlights and shadows knees to get an additional stop or two worth of detail off of the defaults.

In post, you can then add the contrast back in. I found the camera defaults in very contrasty situations like sunsets... were not very good, but adjusting the settings, made a huge difference...

To add to what Greg says I have found this camera just hates overexposure in high contrast situations. The Standard settings being high contrast of them selves make this even more so than with the Cine gammas that smooth extreme contrast out.

The consequence of this is that this camera likes a bit of under-exposure. If you expose so the EX1's histogram is at maximum width I guarantee you will have a poor over contrasty image. Cut back on exposure until the histogram covers the center 80% and you will see much improvement.

This is the reason I said previously in the pp thread that picture profiles mean nothing without stating exposure levels which is the same as stating what zebra level you use. I never use the default 100% - it over exposes despite this cameras super-whites. I set my zebras at 95% and make sure no zebras are showing except where I deliberately want the picture to blow. Bills profiles for example are set at top 100IRE and if I shoot my normal way with Bills profile it is too dark so in that case I will set my zebras at 100%.

I don't how this works in the camera, maybe connect to the knee drop off, but in the areas where the silhouette trees are the software is recognizing an area darker than the surrounding area and the black stretch is dropping the effectice exposure in that area which brings out the blue in the sky!

I just went back at looked at all those frame grabs.
What's happening is the fine foliage is acting like a ND filter, that's why you see remnants of the blue sky around the branches.
At a guess the blue channel is clipping and/or the chroma sampling is blurring out the fine detail so in the second grab you don't see the fine branches.

And this is exactly what I was trying to say in my poor English - thanks guys for confirmation, and the proper wording.

And of course I do know the sky IS overexposed, but this is noexcuse - sometimes you just have to everexpose the sky if something else is of more importance.

And no, I didn't change the default KNEE settings, so it's not the reason. I'll try and do it today to find some compromise to avoid this.

Anyway - a very important thing for Sony to address in the next firmware update!

Piotr...


Judging from the images you posted, everything looks severely overexposed. There's a lot that happens when things get that far overexposed...CA rears its ugly head, etc., etc.
Looking at this image in CS3, EVERYTHING is pushed to the right end of the histogram. Please excuse my bluntness, but, this image need to be canned. Go retake the image, watch the histogram when you take it, be sure the peak is well centered in the histogram. It's not worth any more time discussing it.

Bill,

The only severely overexposed frame is the upper left one, put here for comparison sake, and this one does NOT shaw the flaw I'm talking about - the sky is uniformly white...

The problem appears in the next 2 grabs, and is most severe in the properly exposed (balanced with the foreground) conditions.

The last grab (bottom right) is severely underexposed (if one wanted to properly show the foreground), and the problem vanishes again - the sky is blue not just directly behind the trees....

Do you understand my point now, or still think "It's not worth any more time discussing"?

I just went back at looked at all those frame grabs.
What's happening is the fine foliage is acting like a ND filter, that's why you see remnants of the blue sky around the branches.
At a guess the blue channel is clipping and/or the chroma sampling is blurring out the fine detail so in the second grab you don't see the fine branches.

Bob,

It's been established that the KNEE setting have not been played with; do you think that the problem I showed might exagerrated by the settings I used (pls. see above post for details)? I don't think so, but then I confess I''m not quite sure how the specific colour matrix pairs are working (could you explain them to me, please?)

And one more thing to explain why I was so alarmed: the problem looks much, much worse in the actual moving video, as the blue remnants are not stationary - with camera movement, or any slight variation in exposure, they move around the sky as well, changing not just the location, but intensity as well. Heck, the patches look like they have life of their own, suddenly vanishing here to only appear there!

I never use the default 100% - it over exposes despite this cameras super-whites. I set my zebras at 95% and make sure no zebras are showing except where I deliberately want the picture to blow. Bills profiles for example are set at top 100IRE and if I shoot my normal way with Bills profile it is too dark so in that case I will set my zebras at 100%.

This is a very important point, Michael - as it confirms why I have noticed this undisputable flaw in highlights compression algorithm only after having dialed in Bill's profile. The same gamma (STD3) without matrix modification may look flattish compared to Bill's PP, but at least it allows to keep the sky safely below 100% and still have the darker picture areas exposed enough, and not oversaturated due to underexposing.

So, the conclusion is that if one is after more saturated colours, he better use one of the gamma curves and not saturate colours with the STD3 one!

With the V1 for instance, it's so obvious: if I want vivid punchy colours, I engage cine colour and cine gamma 1 (or even 2), and I'm good to go. Never saw a problem like this here (but I admit I never tried saturating colours with the non-cine gamma, instead for my in-hose, lowlight picture profile).

Just opened one of those images in PS.

Question: What software did you process this in and what mode?

Just took a quick look with PS which shows what I'd have expected to happen in this situation. You have full digital clipping. The white areas of the sky read 255,255,255. The blue areas closest to the white areas read around 243,255,255. Surely you can see what is happening. All channels are clipped, when there's the slightest falloff in light one goes slightly below clipping and you see blue.

It looks odd because normally the first thing to clip are specular highlights, that they're clipped to white looks natural. In this case only certain parts of the sky are clipping and you're getting a normal color shift between clipping and just a tad less light. I'm pretty certain I've seen this happen with other cameras and I've certainly seen it with my EX1, I just went Oops, don't do that. It's perhaps more likely to happen in higher end camera with more dynamic range or different gamma curves where the onset of clipping is more gradual.

The problem is very easily fixed, 1/4 stop more or less exposure and you have either all blue or all white sky.

Thanks Bob for your time and effort.

Yes you're right it's easy fixable, also in post - I'm not expert on this, but in Vegas it's enough to pull Highs towards 300deg a bit in the CC FX, and the blue sky is retrieved. However, after this experience, I think I'll also adopt the "Oops, don't do that" attitude while shooting! Even though it's not that easy - I didn't notice this happen on the LCD; but again I wasn't looking for it, either. Now that I know it might happen, I'll take additional care.

And yes I did exaggerate it by taking the snapshots, posted in this thread, from Vegas in 32bit mode - in 8bit it's not that much pronounced.

Good to know it's sort of normal with higher end cameras - I have just made a considerable step up my learning curve :)

And yes I did exaggerate it by taking snapshot from Vegas in 32bit - in 8bit it's not that much pronounced.



In 32bit Vegas does some 'interesting' things with certain footage from the EX1. Nothing actually gets broken but as you've seen it can make a problem worse unless you process the output correctly. That most LCDs tend to clip highlights even more doesn't help either.

OK so I recreated tests with STD3 and Hisat matrix, and the bottom line is that - with standard KNEE settings - it's no good for even slightly backlit situations. To avoid the higlights clipping unstability (i.e. staying saturated behind the "shadow" of e.g. trees, while blowing-away to pure white elsewhere), one must stay way into the left exposure side, which tends to badly oversaturate even slightly underexposed areas.

The PP in question might be of some use, but requires KNEE adjustment. Will be playing with that and report.

Thanks everyone for their response, and sorry if my post has been a little bit too much alarming.

This will happen with an F23 or a Genesis if the exposure isn't correct (film too). Watch the Zebras and the histogram while you're shooting. Looks like later in the day to me, without much direct sun hitting the ground. The range of the scene is beyond that of the camera, so that's why your fourth frame where the sky is holding the foreground is underexposed. Watch the histogram and the zebras while you're shooting, and make a creative decision about which one to expose for. If you want to try to hold detail in a scene like this, try the knee function in the PP (manual, not auto). If you go too far you'll get some odd posterization, but it really does help most of the time. The other solution for a shot like this is a polarizer...

-Sean

Piotr. I think Skies are always something to be mindful of.

Piotr. I think Skies are always something to be mindful of.

Ditto, and memento ;)

There's a reason why manufacturers, like Sony, provide factory settings in their products that are extremely conservative. It keeps amateurs from getting themselves in too much trouble and blaming the equipment for malfunctioning. Problem is, the stock settings don't squeeze all the performance out of their equipment that they're capable of.

So, if you take settings designed to squeeze maximum latitude out of the EX1, you CAN expect the following to happen:

1-exposure has no headroom for error, sloppy camera work will show up without much effort.
2-mild exposure and gamma curve adjustment in post may be required, but, the rewards are more detail in the shadows and the highlights.
3-using fixed black and black gamma settings in conditions of widely varying exposure without adjusting the curve is doomed to failure. Sony put various presets in the EX1 that should be used with some knowledge of why they are used
4-use of the in-camera lightmeter (aka auto exposure)is doomed to failure. use of the in-camera zebra is a step in the right direction
5-extreme settings designed for controlled lighting situations should not be used in places where dyanmic range is all over the map(like outside)
6-weird effects when the assumptions used to generate the settings are violated
7-endless, and I do mean endless, discussions about what went wrong

In the end, the operator needs to think about what they are doing.

Bill,

Do you think it's also possibble that the EX1 software doesn't consider the color matrix settings in zebra-trigerring calculations, only displaying the zebra basing on the luminance levels between the iris and the matrix circuitry - hence overexposing areas without even displaying zebra on them?

Piotr....

all the lightmeters I'm familiar with function by measuring luminance, only. They are all calibrated to place "proper exposure" in the middle of the gamma curve when looking at an 18% gray card. This is why I say you can't put 100% faith in what the light meter, or auto exposure system, is telling you. Real life isn't an 18% gray card. At least, not my life.Exactly what area of the image is the camera light meter deciding exposure? Is it an RMS meter, spot meter, or weighted meter? Sony has never told us. Expecting the auto exposure system to faithfully tell you the proper exposure 100% of the time is a fool's errand.

Despite the great exposure latitude of the EX1(I beleive Adam Wilt measured 10 f/stops)pointing at the ground for exposure then shooting the upper two thirds in the sky, will result in blown out skies.

On the subject of your specific question, I doubt the zebra function takes into account chroma values. It works strictly off of luma. Before you go running off crying that the color matrix changes have caused exposure faults, bear in mind that the saturation level can be greatly adjusted with a levels control without bad effects on the exposure readings. Sony even provides us with the HISAT preset for the purposes of increasing the gain in the color circuits.

The color matrix settings, themselves, function primarily as "hue" controls. Gosh I hate that word "hue". If you envision the colors on a wheel, red-orange-yellow-green-blue-violet---then back to red, the matrix adjustments provide for a means to "rotate" the colors on the wheel as individual R, G, and B channels. All I've done with the matrix settings are to reposition each channel on the wheel according to a calibrated chart telling me where the colors should lie, not where Sony says they should lie. This will NOT effect luminance readings with the lightmeter or zebra.

Having said that, keep in mind that luma and chroma are two different things. (Yes, I know, mathematically, one can relate the luma values to the chroma values.) The Truecolor preset I provided does two things. 1-It establishes luma settings(black, gamma, and 100%IRE) for maximum exposure latitude.
2-It establishes chroma adjustments(color matrix) for more lifelike colors. I'm tempted to say that this is somewhat of a subjective adjustment, but, it really isn't. A very carefully calibrated test chart was used to set the color matrix up. Now, I could have been irresponsible with my measurements, but, in the end, I'm very happy with my results. I decided to share those results. You can use them or not, entirely your choice. Latitude and headroom are mutually exclusive. You can't get one without compromising the other. Every photographer must find a place of balance with which they are comfortable. Manufacturers tell us, in their factory settings, where THEY think the compromises are. They have different priorities than users.

Amazingly, the color matrix values work very well at a wide range of luma settings. So, if you think the blacks are crushed, feel free(as if you ever weren't) to adjust the luma settings to give you more pleasing, more forgiving, or whatever, exposure values. My own objective was to maximize the amount of data I'm recording. Sometimes this isn't the most pleasing image when viewed without final grading in an NLE. A skilled and careful use of the Vegas Levels and Color Curve FX will yield things in your image you didn't realize were there. But, use them like a tasty spice, (red New Mexican chile comes to mind, not that stuff Chris calls Chili). Use sparingly and with finesse.

ahhh...one more thought...
I'm very happy to share the "science" of all this. After all, science is the public domain, anyone can do what I did. But, I won't share the "art" of what I do. That's proprietary and protected by the heavy arm of DRM....or it's supposed to be.

I have only looked at this shot in the stills on the web, but it looks like to me like something is wrong with a camera setting. It should not be neccessary for the operator to have to work around problems where the camera is treating the sky behind the trees differently than in the rest of the picture.
I don't know what it is, but telling the operator to underexpose slightly may be a fix in this particular shot, but its important to figure out what is going wrong because a professional camera should not do that in my opinion. I hope this is not a by product of the CAC lens function or anything else peculiar to the camera because it looks unacceptable to me . The knee should be creating a gentle roll off not a hard clip taht is different in different parts of the picture.

i neIed to learn a bit more about knee settings , but I noticed that the slope was "0" on your settings - what does that mean? Does that effectively get rid of a gentle roll off? I guess I'll look that up right now.

By the way in my mind the histogram is useless for this kind of exposure issue and useless for most exposure questions except the most general sense of whether you are weighted toward under or overexposure and you ought to know that anyway without looking at the histogram.

Has anyone every seen this on another professional camera.

- Lenny Levy

Leonard,
he was not using the cine gamma curves which roll into the highlights. He was using the std3 setting.

I've got plenty of sky images holding up decent latitude.

Here's an EX1 frame grab. It was shot about 11:00 AM.
I believe it was Cine3

Leonard,

While I fully agree this behaviour is unacceptable, I'm slowly coming to terms with it. You see, we're trying here to squeeze maximum quality from a standard (i.e. non-cine) gamma curve, which has been used in conjuction with considerable colour saturation increase (with both Hisat matrix adoption and several primary pairs adjustmenst), but WITHOUT even trying to optimize the curve's KNEE settings...

As I said before - if you want to get saturated and rich colour, either use cinegamma (e.g. CINE1) which takes care of the proper KNEE setting itself, or adjust the KNEE with a standard gamma (like the STD3 used in this case).

Otherwise, don't expect good results with backlit scenery, cause you will either end up with this ugly patches I have shown, or you will severely overblow the backgroud, or you will get nice and rich blue sky but severely underexposed and over-saturated foreground.

Well maybe I've forgotten what to expect in this situation on an ordinary video camera, but i've been shooting professionally for over 20 years the vast majority with cameras in standard gammas - not cine gammas, and that looks wrong to me.
What looks wrong isn't that the camera can't handle the whites in the sky, but that its treating the sky behind the trees differently. You shouldn't have nasty abrupt clipping with areas in the sky abruptly having no color and others having color, that's just unnacceptable.

Maybe I need to look at those pictures more carefully again.

I am confused about one technical thing though.
I looked up point and slope and those settings don't look weird as "0" is a mid point on the slope, but when the auto knee is on does that mean your point and slope numbers are overridden?

I am confused about one technical thing though.
I looked up point and slope and those settings don't look weird as "0" is a mid point on the slope, but when the auto knee is on does that mean your point and slope numbers are overridden?

Yep. Leaving Knee on auto overrides all your fine-tuning to the point, slope and saturation.

Leonard, you say you've never saw such behaviour with your 20 years with cameras that didn't even have cine gammas; perhaps this is the clue? Now that the cine gammas are available, the standard curves are more "relaxed" and left to the (knowledgeable) users to shape. My experience is much less than 20 years, but I must admit on the V1 I never pushed the standard gamma so hard!

Anyway, this really isn't nice - that's for sure. This grab has not been exaggerated by the 32bit Vegas stretching; it's exactly how it looks at playback time on my monitor (and it's really difficult to rate it as "severely overexposed", either - as Bill is suggesting):

Maybe I'm over-reacting here - and my head did tend to gloss over some of the technical analysis - but i still find myself disturbed taht an ordinary setting on the EX-1 would do this.

I'm not comparingm it to V1's or any other 1/2" "semi-professional" cameras , but rather to run of the mill 2/3" professional Sony & Ikegami cameras taht I've been using for many many years. You should be able to shoot decent looking pictures in standard gamma without being terrified that if you overexpose your sky the picture will start artifacting. To me its completely unacceptable.

Now I don't ever recall seeing this with any semi-pro video camera either like an DVX100 or an HVX200 or even a PD100 for that matter.

It sounds like the only thing you did unusual was add some saturation to the matrix - is that right?

Am I over-reacting here? I mean this is a totally ordinary shooting situation.

Maybe you are right that you need to avoid the standard gammas. - that would be a drag. Did you try anything other than STD 3?

Maybe I'm over-reacting here - and my head did tend to gloss over some of the technical analysis - but i still find myself disturbed taht an ordinary setting on the EX-1 would do this.

I'm not comparingm it to V1's or any other 1/2" "semi-professional" cameras , but rather to run of the mill 2/3" professional Sony & Ikegami cameras taht I've been using for many many years. You should be able to shoot decent looking pictures in standard gamma without being terrified that if you overexpose your sky the picture will start artifacting. To me its completely unacceptable.

Now I don't ever recall seeing this with any semi-pro video camera either like an DVX100 or an HVX200 or even a PD100 for that matter.

It sounds like the only thing you did unusual was add some saturation to the matrix - is that right?

Am I over-reacting here? I mean this is a totally ordinary shooting situation.

Maybe you are right that you need to avoid the standard gammas. - that would be a drag. Did you try anything other than STD 3?

Leonard, you certainly are not over-reacting; my opinion is the same as yours and this is why I started this thread, and even added a suggestion on improving the algorithm behind it in the firmware update wish thread.

And no - apart from adding some saturation and slightly lowering blacks, I didn't do anything else to the most standard factory settings (it's exactly the Bill Raven's PP which he says he arrived at as the most neutral and natural colour setting, using WFM and things :))

Thanks for posting this Poitr and i will do some test myself.
I haven't really tested this camera very carefully just assumed that ordinary circuits like this would work properly.

As I mentioned I have seen sony send out misadjusted auto knee circuits on top end $50,000 cameras in the past so I'm hoping that's all it is.

Well, there's no doubt that it does look odd with your std gamma examples. I'll have to try to recreate this problem. I guess I have not seen it, since I mainly use cine curves.

Piotr...

Your image41 is not the same one that I saw that was very overexposed. Image41 definitely looks very strange...actually, it looks like the white balance settings are off.