I decided to start a new thread to continue the discussions on scene file settings for the PMW-350. This is a work in progress. Some of this may also be of interest to other camera users as I hope to give a basic description of what all the various settings do.

First off let me say that there is no "right way" or "wrong way" to set up a scene file. What works for one person may not be to anothers taste, or suit different applications. For me, my requirements are a neutral look, not over corrected or too vivid, but retaining a pleasing contrast range. I hope, as this thread develops to explain a little bit about each of the settings and what they actually do in the hope that it will make it easy for you to adjust the scene files to suit your own needs. I hope others will jump in with their suggestions too!

So first of all I have been looking at the sharpness of the image. The principle settings that affect this are the Detail and Aperture settings.

Detail enhances rapid transitions from light to dark within the pictures by exaggerating the transition with the addition of a black or white edge. So it only really works on object outlines and larger details (low frequency). The circuitry that determines where these edges are uses an electronic delay to compare adjacent pixels to see whether they are brighter or darker compared to each other. Because of this any rapid movement within the frame stops the circuitry from working. If you have picture with a lot of detail correction and you do a pan for example the image will appear to go soft as soon as the camera moves as the detail circuitry can no longer determine where the edges within the image are and thus applies less detail correction. A good way to visually gauge how much detail a camera is applying to a clip is to look for this. With a good high resolution camera, set up well, it should not be all that obvious, but a low resolution camera that uses lots of detail correction to compensate will exhibit lots of softening on pans.

As well as adjusting the amount of detail correction (Detail Level), you can also adjust the ratio of horizontal and vertical correction, the maximum brightness or darkness of the applied edges (white and black limit). The thickness of the edges (frequency), the minimum contrast change that the correction will be applied to (crispening) and you can tell the camera not to apply detail correction to dark areas (level depend).

The other setting that effects picture sharpness is Aperture. Aperture correction is a high frequency boost circuit, it simply, in effect, enhances transitions from dark to light or light to dark in fine detail and textures such as fabrics, skin, hair, grass etc. It's operation is not as obvious as "Detail" correction, but if overdone it can make textures sparkle with flashes of white or black, all very un-natural.

An important note about image detail is that if you have too much of it for the given image resolution then you get problems such as aliasing and moire which manifest themselves as rainbows of colour or buzzing, jittering areas in the picture. If you want to know more about this look up Nyquist theory. This is one of the reasons why downconverting HD to SD and getting a good picture can be harder than you might think as you are often starting out with too much detail (but that's another topic on it's own).

So... on to the PMW-350. Out of the box it's really sharp. The camera has full 1920x1080 sensors, so even with all detail correction turned off the image is still pretty sharp. However most viewers are used to seeing picture with some detail correction, so if you turn it all off, to many it looks soft. If you were going for a really filmic look, detail off and aperture off would have to be a serious option. For my customers though a little bit of subtle "zing" seems to be what they like.

I found that these settings worked well for general all-round use.

Detail Level -16 (maybe -14, reduces overall amount of correction)
H/V Ratio +20 (helps balance horizontal and vertical resolution)
Frequency +35 (makes the edges thinner, if your doing a lot of SD you may want to go the other way to -50 so that the edges can still be seen in SD)
White Limit +35 (limits brightness of white edges)
Black Limit +20 (limits darkness of black edges)

Aperture -30 (this one I'm not sure about yet, I need a better monitor!!)

If you are doing a lot of grading and work with low key scenes (large dark areas) you can use the level depend and crispening settings to help prevent "detail" being added to any picture noise. This makes any noise less apparent.

A starting point for this would be:

Crispening +35
Level depend +20

For normal light levels these are not needed with the 350 IMHO. If you are shooting with more than +6db gain then raising the level depend to +60 will help with noise.

Alister,

As I sit here at my desk I am putting together a proposal for the purchase of a PMW-350. This will replace our old HDW-730s. I haven't been this excited about a new camera in quite some time. Thanks to your review and a few minutes of hands-on time at a local Sony seminar, I find myself far too distracted and growing increasingly impatient. Thanks in advance for your willingness to post your results of hours of work with this camera and make us all better videographers/DPs.

Best,

Dave

Before anyone complains that I have missed stuff out or that some technical detail is not quite right, one of the things I'm trying to do here is simplify the hows and why's to try and make it easier for the less technical people out there. Lets face it this is an art form, not a science (well actually a bit of both really).

So what is a gamma curve anyway? Well the good old fashioned cathode ray tube television was a very non-linear device. You put 1 unit of power in and get one unit of light out. You put 2 units in and get 1.5 units out, put 3 in and get 2 out... and so on. So in order to get a natural picture the output of the camera also has to be modified to compensate for this. This compensation is the gamma curve, an artificial modification of the output signal from the camera to make it match TV's and monitors around the world. See Wikipedia for a fuller explaination: Gamma correction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction)

So, all video cameras will have a gamma curve, whether you can adjust it or not is another matter. Certainly most pro level cameras allow you some form of gamma adjustment.

The PMW-350 has 6 standard gamma curves, these are all pretty similar, they have to be otherwise the pictures wouldn't look right, but small changes in the curve effect the relationship between dark and bright parts of the pictures. Todays modern cameras have a far greater dynamic range (range of dark to bright) than older cameras. This means that the full dynamic range of the sensor no longer fits within the gamma curves used for TV's and monitors. In broadcast television any signal that goes over 100% gets clipped off and is discarded, so the cameras entire brightness range has to be squeezed into 0 to 100%. The PMW-350 sensors are capable of far more than this (at least 600%) so what can you do?

The older and simpler solution is called the "Knee". The knee works because in most cases the brightest parts of a scene contains little detail and is generally ignored by our brains. We humans tend to focus on mid-tone faces, animals and plants rather than the bright sky. Because of this you can compress the highlights (bright) parts of the picture quite heavily without it looking hugely un-natural (most of the time at least). What the knee does is takes a standard gamma curve and up near it's top, bends it over. This has the effect of compressing the brighter parts of the image, squashing a broad range of highlights (clouds for example) into a narrow range of brightness. While this works fairly well, it does tend to look rather "electronic" as the picture is either natural (below the knee) or compressed (above the knee).

The answer to this electronic video look is to replace the hard knee with gentle bend to the gamma curve. This bend starts some way down the gamma curve, very gentle at first but getting harder and harder as you go up the gamma curve. This has the effect of compressing the image gently at first with the compression getting stronger and stronger as you go up the curve. This looks a lot more natural than a hard knee and is far closer to the way film handles highlights. The downside is that because the compression starts earlier a wider tonal range is compressed. This makes the pictures look flat and uninteresting. You have to watch exposure on faces as these can creep into the compressed part of the curve. The plus point is that it's possible to squeeze large amounts of latitude into the 100% video range. This video can then be worked on in post production by the editor or colorist who can pull out the tonal range that best suits the production.

These compressed gamma curves are given different names on different products. Panasonic call them "Film Rec", on the EX1 they are "Cinegammas" on the PMW-350 they are "Hypergammas". The 350 has four Hypergammas. The first is 3250. this takes a brightness range the equivalent to 325% and compresses it down to 100%. HG 4600 takes 460% and squeezes that down to 100%. Both of these Hypergammas are "broadcast safe" and the recordings made with them can be broadcast straight from the camera without any issues. The next Hypergamma is 3259. This takes a 325% range and squeezes this down to a 109% range, likewise 4609 takes 460% down to 109%. But why 109%? well the extra 9% gives you almost 10% more data to work with in post production compared to broadcast safe 100%. It also gives you the peak white level you need for display on the internet. Of course if you are doing a broadcast show you will need to ensure that the video levels in the finished programme don't exceed 100%.

My preferred gamma is Hypergamma 4 (4609) as this gives the maximum dynamic range and gives a natural look, however the pictures can look a little flat so if I'm going direct from the camera to finished video without grading I use either a standard gamma or use the Black Gamma function to modify the curve. I'll explain the Black Gamma in my next post.

There are 6 standard gammas to choose from. I like to stick with gamma 5 which is the ITU-709 HD standard gamma. To increase the dynamic range I use the Knee. The default knee point setting is 90, this is a reasonable setting, but if your shooting with clipping set to 100% you are not getting all the cameras latitude (the Knee at 90 works very well with clipping at 108%). Lowering the knee down to 83 gives you almost another stop of latitude, but you have to be careful as skin tones and faces can creep up towards 83%. It's very noticeable if skin becomes compressed so you need to watch your exposure. This is also true of the Hypergammas and with them you may need to underexpose faces very slightly. The other option is to set the knee point to 88 and then also adjust the knee slope. The slope is the compression amount. A positive value is more compressed, negative less compressed. With the knee at 88 and slope set to +20 you get good latitude, albeit with quite highly compressed highlights.

If you want to play with the gammas and knee and see how they work one method you can use is to use a paint package on your PC (such as photoshop) to create a full screen left to right graduated image going from Black to white. Then shoot this with the camera (slightly out of focus) while making adjustments to the curves or knee and record the results along with a vocal description of each setting. Import the clips into your favorite editing package and use the waveform monitor or scopes you should be able to see a reasonable representation of the shape of the gamma curve and knee.

So my Gamma Choices are:

For material that will be post produced: Hypergamma 4609 (HG4)

For material that will be used straight from the camera: Standard Gamma 5 Knee at 90 with clip at 108% for non broadcast or Knee at 88 with slope +20 with white clip at 100% for direct to broadcast.

This is the kind of information that is free value added, that you can't buy, and enhances the usability and satisfaction of the product. Thank you Alister.

Regarding the knee, there is trick I do in the field, that rather than always just "knowing" what knee setting is correct for the situation, is to set the zebras on 100%. If the zebras are showing in the viewfinder, lower the knee point until the zebras go away, then go back up halfway, and try to take the zebras back down by increasing the slope. All the while, you are watching the result in the viewfinder. Perhaps you want to increase the knee saturation setting to pull some golden rays out of highlights in the sky. And moving the knee point in various combinations with the knee slope allows you to see and choose the particular details you want to extract.

For example, zebras appear in the viewfinder at knee point 90% that are gone by 80%. I may raise the knee point back up to 85%, followed by increasing the knee slope (typically from +10 to as much as +25), to make the zebra go away, if it will. If it won't, may have to lower the knee point some more. The intent often (but not always), is to match the knee point (where it bends) just below the clipped highlight, and then increase the slope of the bend so that it only is compressing on the highlight area. Increasing the knee saturation adds color to the compressed highlight, which can good or bad depending on the nature of the highlight itself, and the effect you are trying to achieve.

I'm often adjusting the knee to compress highlights in the sky, recovering cloud and sky detail. But another situation is indoors shooting toward a strongly backlit window. The window may have a covering, like drapes or shades. The details in those shades may be washed out, but by careful application of the knee controls, you can recover immense amounts of detail and texture in those drapes, imparting realism. The same if shooting indoors lit by incandescent fixtures, typically lamps with shades. You don't have to settle for blown out highlights, you can restore all the detail in a pleated lamp shade without adversely affecting the other parts of the scene. And you can do this all with knee controls and aid of the viewfinder or LCD, on a EX1/3 as well. This is not exclusive to PMW350.

Alister, Tom, thank you,

I have learned more about setting up my 350's paint settings in the last few post then the last few months of reading. I look forward to getting back home next week and trying a few options. My goal is to have 4 setting I can quickly jump to while in the studio and field. I am sure I will be back here with questions based on my failure and success while making adjustments.

In the posts above I looked at how the gamma curves effect the contrast range within the picture and highlight handling. I also noted that while I like the latitude (range) offered by using the Hypergammas that they produce a very flat looking picture. One of the adjustments that you can make to the Gamma curves is the Black Gamma.

Adjusting the Black Gamma stretches or compresses the bottom part of the gamma curve, this makes the darker parts of the picture darker (negative setting) or brighter (positive setting). When setting the Black Gamma you will find 4 different ranges to choose from. Low, Low-Mid, Hi-Mid and High. These settings determine the range over which the black gamma works. Low only effects the darkest 10% of the image, L-Mid the bottom 20%(approx), H-Mid the lowest 30%(approx) and Hi the lower 35% (approx). So if you just want to make your deep shadows and blacks darker you would use Low. If you want to make the overall image more contrasty you would use H-Mid or Hi.

I like to give my images a bit more impact so I often use H-Mid at -30. If the pictures are to be graded I would not use any negative black gamma.

Aperture -30 (this one I'm not sure about yet, I need a better monitor!!)

For filmic look one thing to do would be to dial down the overall detail, but boost the aperture correction (this will boost the detail on high frequency edges). To adjust this properly there should also be an aperture level setting so you can dial in where the effect kicks in.

This is the thing many people wanting a more accurate filmlook will need.

One thing I am curious about is why the Hypergammas are only compressing 460% overload down to 109%. On a 2/3" camera I would have expected it to be coping and compressing from 600%.

One of the first articles I wrote was about this;
http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/gamma.html

I've learnt a lot since then, but still relevant.

The Hypergammas on the PMW-350 are the same as the PDW-700, F900 etc and are all 460% max. It is possible to use the fixed DCC settings in the maintenance menu combined with the knee to get 600% D range, but I have not experimented with this in any depth to see if you can squeeze any more latitude out of the camera.

At this stage I would not recommend boosting the aperture setting, even with all detail off. The 350 is seriously sharp, boosting the aperture setting appears to cause noticeable "ringing" and sparklies on fine textures as well as bringing up the noise floor. I need to look at this in more detail on a better monitor than the one I have at home as this could be my monitor struggling with the fine detail, but I don't see this effect with my PDW-700, so I'm pretty sure what I am seeing is real.

It depends where the base level is on the 350. As we know 0 isn't necessarily 0.

If you reduce the main detail setting all the way then raising the aperture should boost only the mid-high's back up to compensate. So with a very reduced detail setting boosting the aperture shouldn't cause any issue. I say shouldn't because I haven't as yet had any opportunity to use the 350 myself, but that's how it usually works on cameras such as the F900, which is also very sharp.

If you reduce the main detail setting all the way then raising the aperture should boost only the mid-high's back up to compensate. So with a very reduced detail setting boosting the aperture shouldn't cause any issue. I say shouldn't because I haven't as yet had any opportunity to use the 350 myself, but that's how it usually works on cameras such as the F900, which is also very sharp.

I understand what you're saying here. Intuitively, it just seems that if you dial back the detail correction all the way, and then advance the aperture, you would be eliminating some situations where lower level detail enhancement could possibly benefit, while the benefit of the aperture would only apply to the one specific instance of high frequency detail. That would limit the enhancement to just the highest frequency portion of the picture which I would assume then is the intent of the filmic look you aspire to. So I don't know. Something worries me, that the detail enhancement could at times need to be intelligently applied for some lower frequency situations as well, which could not happen if the algorithm is being manually targeted only toward high frequency detail areas by aperture alone.

Because I don't know for sure, I'm inclined to continue pioneering on the current path.

Today, I shot a typical scenic landscape using the following settings.

1080/24p HQ (1920 x 1080)35 mbps
Zoom level: 20
Iris: f5.6

I locked everything down on a sturdy tripod, everything manual settings.

The detail settings:

Detail Level: -15
H/V Ratio: +35
Frequency: +35
White Limit: +35
Black Limit: +20

Then I shot the same scene at each of the following settings of Aperture, 0, -10, -20, -30.

I viewed the native 35 mbps/HQ EX clips unmolested on a 50 inch Elite 1080P plasma at 23.98 fps.

I positioned myself close enough from the screen to just, or almost just make out the individual pixels, about 4.5 feet. My corrected vision is 20-10.

To my best perception, I could barely tell, if at all, any difference in the image at any of the Aperture settings, 0, -10, -20, -30. While the scene lighting was not the highest possible contrast, it was evenly lit, (partly cloudy to slightly overcast), I could not see any ringing on edges or sparkling on fine textures. My judgment was that with these Detail settings, for this situation, the Aperture setting was not in play. That said, on a subjective level that may be purely psychological, something told me I liked the -20 Aperture setting the best. And I can't define why, but for now I think I should leave it at -20.

At this point, subjectively it's a lot easier to articulate about how I feel. At these settings, it looks spectacular. The resolved detail is effortless, the texture is organic and noise free. Certainly the PMW350 is not alone in possessing these characteristics.

Alister had mentioned in an earlier post that the detail circuit responds to a time delay, and that accordingly you could compare the effect of the detail being contributed by doing a slow pan which would disable the detail during the pan.

I just wanted to note that if you do this, be sure that the softening you observe is not the result of motion blur from an open or slow speed shutter. I shoot a 180-360 degree shutter most of the time, and motion blur alone will soften the perception during a pan even if the detail circuit was not being shut off.

I understand what you're saying here. Intuitively, it just seems that if you dial back the detail correction all the way, and then advance the aperture, you would be eliminating some situations where lower level detail enhancement could possibly benefit, while the benefit of the aperture would only apply to the one specific instance of high frequency detail.

It isn't just intuition, it's actually how and why many of Alan Roberts film look settings are set as they are. The ideal would to be able to turn the main detail off but still keep the aperture setting active.

I agree with what you are saying Simon. On my 700 I use detail "off" and aperture at +60 for a filmic look, but the 350 is a very different beast with different sensor technology and I think the sensors behave very slightly differently to CCD's.

Aperture "0" on the 350 is a higher level than on the PDW-700 and is giving a noticable HF boost. You can see this very clearly by turning aperture on and off. Certainly looking at fine textures boosting the aperture beyond +20 makes the picture un-naturally lively.

I did note during my tests that Aperture -40 (ish) is the same as Aperture off, certainly Aperture -30 is still boosting high frequencies. Detail at -30 appears to be the same as detail off, below -30 the picture starts to soften.

I would appreciate it if someone (Tom??) could confirm that you have to wind the aperture back to around -40 to see no difference between aperture on and aperture off.

I really do wish that they would standardise the base points for the settings on these cameras, and then ship the cameras with default settings that have been pre adjusted from those points. It would help a lot of people to understand how the cameras are initially set up. Ah well.

Might see if I can pop up to Prestons in the week and take a look at one. Has anyone got £12k to spare?

Just had another look to see if I could find the zero point for Aperture and there doesn't appear to be one!

Now I didn't use a monitor, I was just using the viewfinder and peaking trying to determine the point at which turning aperture on and off made no difference. Even at -99 aperture appears to be adding HF detail, certainly the peaking was indicating higher contrast with aperture on at -99. Certainly Aperture steadily increases the HF boost as you increase it from -99 all the way up to +99. If I'm correct then it's an interesting setting range and it makes me more comfortable with the -30 setting that I found initially.

I did some quick impromtu checks. Basically, I shot with my aformentioned detail settings,(mine about the same as Alister's), and then switched the detail circuit off, and shot again with just the Aperture set to +60 (per Simon).
Bottom line, +60 Aperture (alone) is strongly more enhanced on this PMW350 than the detail setting we have been talking about..

As far as where the Aperture circuit zero point is, around -40 on a practical, observable level. If I used maximal peaking in the viewfinder per Alister, maybe an infintesimal change in the peaking could be seen down to -90.

Nothing was answered by what I did, except I did see you could make a case as Simon noted for using the Aperture as the sole mechanism, but +60 is too far with this example.

I am back home and have some time over the next few hours to do some testing, I will look into Aperture settings and post what I find.

I have the Marshall 70P SDI corrected monitor on the camera running through Nano. Since the sun is setting and raining hard outside. I will use a few large still prints that have excellent detail.

Just so I am on the same page looking at the same settings I have two questions.

Alister your settings above are the only ones you have changed everything else is factory presets?

Tom when you change Multi Matrix, Axis settings you do each on its own to +5 correct? I do not see a (All) to change them at the same time. Just checking to make sure I am looking at the same settings.

Currently everything else is default with the exception of using Hypergamma 4 (4609).

Great Alister that is what I used for your setting. Also playing with Black Gamma on at H Mid -30 while using Hyper 4 and like it.

When I look at Aperture Off and -30 seems to be closer to me then -20. That is the case on the Marshall and the LCD. I also have the camera hooked up to a 40" Sony Bravia and interesting on that is seems more in the range of -35 equal to Off.

Interesting between Tom's and Alister's settings, I need to expose Tom's at F4 and Alister's at F5.6 to be the same. Just an observation.

Aperture above 0 with either setting is very electronic in the picture for my eye. Now at +99 the fine detail is better then my eye zoomed in, not that I like it just amazing how sensitive these chips are with detail.

Tom when you change Multi Matrix, Axis settings you do each on its own to +5 correct? I do not see a (All) to change them at the same time.

That's right Paul, have to do each on its own, individually.

Thanks Tom that is what I thought just trying not to miss anything as I move forward here.

I fooled around some more with the detail settings. One thing I noticed, the PMW350 stays ridiculously detailed even with the Detail Off, doesn't go at all soft.

The detail "on" setting I have been using is a subtle enhancement. When switched off, the high frequency details in the picture can still be enhanced by the Aperture Setting. With detail off, I experimented with Aperture settings from -20 to +30.

The resolved details seem so inherent, there doesn't appear to be any adverse noise effects caused by virtually any of the settings, very forgiving.

Agree Tom I have not been noticing noise problems while playing around with the settings.

Between -20 to +30 what Aperture do you prefer? And with detail on or off?

I found noise to become a little more apparent with aperture above +20, not a terribly noticeable until you get to +40. As I said detail off is a very valid option on the 350, especially for filmic looks, but I find many people prefer to see some detail enhancement as it's what they are used to seeing. It's difficult getting that balance between a neutral, un-enhanced picture and one that is not perceived as "soft" by some viewers.

Interesting you say that Alister. I have four Paint settings and one is called Film which has Detail off. I did some test with this setting and the Canon J15x9.5B4 lens and the picture was very "Soft" which is not to my liking but nice to have the option.

Second called ANatural has Detail On and the stock lens with aperture at -20 and detail at -14 I like the picture. This has the rest of the settings as you posted.

Third called TSat also has detail on with the extra punch Tom put in with the +5 in the Multi Matrix.

As with all of them it is still very early stages of a work in progress. But we are making progress.

I have four aerial shoot with lots of snow coming up in Feb. Any suggestions? My plan was to use Sat but as always I am very open to suggestions.

With Detail On, I am using Aperture at -20. What I want to try next is to increase the Black Limit from +20 to +35. On a very high contrast edge, I noted a thin black outline.

With Detail Off, and just using the Aperture as the primary detail enhancement mechanism, 0 or +10 looked pretty good to me, without the black outline on the high contrast edge.

But either way, Detail On (Level -15), Frequency (+35), White Limit (+35), Black Limit (+20) and Aperture (-20)

or

Detail Off and Aperture at (+10), they look about the same, except without the black outline for the latter. If I switch the Detail back ON, I think I can get rid of the black outline by upping the Black Limit to match the White Limit, i.e. to (+35), something I want to try anyway.

But again, not a lot of difference between Detail On (above settings), or Aperture (+10) and Detail Off.

But if the Detail On setting can be preserved, you have the Level Depend and Crispening features available to squelch the noise in the dark areas if you were shooting at night, or against club lighting or spot lighting, features that you would lose if the detail is switched off.

Paul, only reason I might recommend against my own Sat (+5) setting for that aerial shot with all the snow, would be to avoid putting extra emphasis on chromatic aberrations on the white snow, and since you will probably be grading in post anyway.

Tom I thought that thought as soon as I posted, but you did not added that much saturation. But it is always better to be safe so ANatural would be the best choice so far.

I will not be doing the post it will be a production house and your right max Latitude is always best.

From 25 feet away, zoomed 100%. Exposure locked.

The parameters for the picture on the left:

Detail: On
Level: -15
H/V Ratio: +35
Freq: +35
Blk Lim: +35
Wht Lim: +35
Aperture: -20

The parameters for the picture on the right:

Detail: Off
Aperture: +10

*********************************

In the area of the contrast highlights, the eagle's head, wings and the text are virtually identical. But there is a big difference. Look at the background area just under the eagle's wings. In the picture on the left, you can clearly make out the texturing of the white wall, whereas in the picture on the right, it is much less perceptable. The Detail-On circuit, rather than adding obvious sharpening, has extracted picture detail in the low contrast, bright area of the wall.

I didnt read any of the details before I looked at the images but to me the one on the left was clearly better. Wow, I would not turn the sharpening off on that camera if that shot is indicative of what happens. What about something like a clothing pattern or a resolution chart? I wonder if that detail circuit effects aliasing or moire. That textured drywall in the screen grabs wasn't particularly detailed where one could see artifacts.

Turning the detail circuits of does not change the resolution of the cemera. It only changes the percieved images "sharpness". In the eagle frame grab you have to ask whether the textured wall actually has shadows around the surface textures as that is what the detail circuit on setting makes it look like. Now I'm not saying this is wrong, it's a matter of taste. If you watch a film projected traditionally you will never see hard black or White edges around outlines, and many people will when seeing film and video side by side say that film looks soft. When I run my XDcam masterclasses one of my favourite eye opener slides is one that demonstrates a drop in image resolution due to excessive detail correction. At first glance the age appears sharp do to the heavy, high contrast edges, but a closer look reveals that the thick correction edged are actuallyasking the fine detail and textures within the image.
The one thing we are all agreed on at least is that the default settings are too high. As for the artifacts in the image they appear to be compression artifacts in the frame grab.

I'd also like to know whether the background texture was out of focus due to the aperture setting and distance. If that is the case then the sharpening of the texture on the left would be undesirable in most cases.

Great example Tom,

This confirms what I am seeing and helps us take one more step in the right direction.

Today I will try a similar test with a Fiddle Head Focus Chart in the foreground and with a detail water chart in the background, and post the results. I will use the the same settings and be zoomed in.

Tom how far is the lamp from the wall?

Turning the detail circuits of does not change the resolution of the cemera. It only changes the percieved images "sharpness".

This statement is spot on, Alister - unfortunately, most people tend to confuse sharpness (often artificial) with the actual resolution!

Of course, provided one knows what he's doing, it's a matter of personal taste, after all...

The screen grabs of the lamp is at 100%. There are jpg compression artifacts. Make sure you view these grabs at 100% on your monitor.

The textured wall is about 16 inches behind the eagle's wings. The iris opening was F5.6, zoom level 100%, so the spackled texture is somewhat out of focus due to the shallow depth of field.

Below the eagle's wings, the incident rays are striking the textured wall from above at approximately a 45 degree angle from the incandescent lamp in the fixture, so the appearance of the texture itself owes mostly to a shadow being cast by the embossed area of the texture.

With that said, please answer the question for me. Is the presentation of this shadow detail by the "DETAIL-ON" circuit correct? Or do you feel it is exagerrated and should appear as in the image on the right side?

I guess that without seeing the actual environment it is impossible for me to know exactly what shot is more accurate to reality. Given the choice I would have put that image up on a 24" production monitor and shot it the straight SDI signal to make those adjustments.

That having been said, I still like the shot on the left better, if only because the wall texture is more uniform and pleasing to my eye.

I have wondered about the best way to handle in camera settings like this sharpening detail. Much like a JPEG still where the information is "baked in" to the shot, I am hesitant to totally turn off in camera sharpening because I am think that those sharpening algorithms are designed tuned to that sensor and its attributes.

Thanks for your opinion Chris.

The expert panel seems about evenly divided. I found it interesting that the detail enhancement (at these settings) tended to extract the soft details from the wall texture rather than the high contrast transitions on the hard edges.

Ok I did a few test in my office. My studio is packed with gear so that is out today.

I used one Lowel Tota light off to the left side 5’0” from the Fiddlehead chart at 15 degrees.

The Fiddlehead was 11’-6” from the lens which is all the room I have today.

The Long Island Sound Chart is 16” behind the Fiddlehead chart.

Note the shade area on the right side of the Long Island Sound Chart due to the Fiddlehead. Also the chart had folds which I like since it offers a harder object to shoot.

I shot eight test four with stock lens, and four with Canon J15x9.5B4 IRS SX12 SD lens.

Stock PMW-350 Lens clips
Stock Lens AN-D (Alister’s Natural Detail on at F6.7)
Stock Lens AF (Alister’s Film with Detail off at F6.7)
Stock Lens TS-D (Tom’s Sat with Detail on at F8)
Stock Lens TF (Tom’s Film with Detail off at F8)

Canon J15x AN-D (Alister’s Natural Detail on at F4)
Canon J15x AF (Alister’s Film with Detail off at F4)
Canon J15x TS-D (Tom’s Sat with Detail on at F4.8)
Canon J15x TF (Tom’s Film with Detail off at F4.8)

Well the only thing I can say is based on what I see on the net since I do not have a 350 yet, so admittedly that isn't very much. The problem is that I don't know what the scene REALLY looked like, so maybe the one on the left is less accurate to reality.

The thing I cant stand is these -99 to +99 settings with no explanation, surely somebody at Sony could do better with the documentation of these settings and exactly what they do and do not adjust.

I am still an advocate of some capture sharpening at some degree, so I am hesitant to shoot with detail turned completely off. I am still a believer that the manufacturer knows something about how to best sharpen their own signals. For the sake of impressing people, it is probably overdone out of the box so finding that sweet spot when you dial it back has been my goal.

I understand that none of that blather is very scientific, but with the charts and experimenting, I have simply grown to rely on my eyes and a production monitor for making those adjustments.

I spent some more time with the camera today, looking at detail settings. I was comparing it with my PDW-700 which I have well dialed in now. I feel that I had backed the correction down a little too far on the 350. These are the settings I ended up with at the end of today as my general all-round setup:

Detail level -14
H/V Ratio +15
Crispening 0 (really doesn't need this raised at 0db)
Level Depend ON
LD Level 0
Frequency +40
Limit 0
White Limit +38
Black Limit +30

Aperture -15 (maybe -10)

My prefered Hypergamma is HG 4609 (HG4)
For extra "punch" Black Gamma ON, level -40, Range H.Mid

I have a couple of clips on my site in a zip file comparing the 350 and PDW-700, a 35Mb/s MP4 from the 350 and a 50Mb/s MXF from the PDW-700.
http://www.xdcam-user.com/samples/350-700.zip

Thanks Alister,

They both look like nice scene files and very close. I like the 350 clip when you close down the iris in the middle of the clip.

Are the settings you posted here all that you have changed?
The rest are default?
Multi Matrix is Off
Matrix > Off
Etc..

Interesting how you cut the H/V ration in half and up on Frequency and b/w limits. Do you find this a more natural sharpness then upping detail?

Will give your new setting a try and again thank you for posting your new findings.

Alister this setting seems very natural with a very slight punch.

Sharp edges with no fringe color on the edges
Exposure is easy and has very nice latitude

I have always heard the Hyper Gamma’s were nice and this proves it.

Thanks for sharing your setting and the experience matching to the 700.

Everything else is default.

I'm really liking this detail level now. I have a corporate shoot tomorrow and then of to Norway for the Northern Lights at the end of the week so hope to get some good material.

Great that is how I set it up.

Agree I think this is the best picture I have had from the camera to date. Good luck on your shoot and maybe next year I will come along on the Northern Lights trip too short a time frame this year. Enjoy

Alister, Paul & Tom,

Since all of you guys are lucky enough to have both the 350 and EX1/3 - just a quick question: how do the last Alister's settings keep up on the EX1, in terms of the best sharpness / natural edges / no noise exaggeration ?

Of course, some settings do not apply - but most should be the same!

What's most interesting to me is a balance between detail level (as a crude means to "sharpen" the image), and those more subtle ones (white/black limits, frequency, crispening and aperture).

Piotr the 350 exceeds the EX1 in all the areas you asked about. I have tested both cameras side by side and I will only shoot with the EX1 now when I have too. The stock lens on the 350 is OK and I tried a Canon J15x9.5 which was not up to the stock lens. So IMHO you need to buy nice HD glass to make the most of the 350. Canon HJ or Fujinon ZA, HA.

The Picture profiles from one can not be used in the other. I tried this for a test and it was not a good result.

The 350 handles the edge sharpness/natural look much better then the EX1. I say EX1 since I don't have a EX3.

The 350 really is the next step up in EX line and is worth the price.

Sorry have to run client just walked in. Happy to answer detailed questions later.

As Paul said the settings for the 350 don't cross over to the EX1 as the 350's default "sharpness" is higher than that of the EX. On the 350 I'm looking at a much higher amount of softening from the default than I would use for a similar look on the EX1.