Or should I go with someone like Doug Jensens? I've shot news for 10 years and haven't dealt much with settings as elaborate as on the f350. Do the scene files adjust things like detail, knee, gamma, and so on? Or is it just matrix settings?

The Sony files are as good a starting place as any and they adjust many of the different paint settings including detail, gamma and matrix. I think there are about 30 files in the Sony download.

I use the PDW 350 everyday and theses are the settings that I use.

Master gamma -3
Gamma select Cine 4 for indoors or when low light present, Cine 1 or 3 for out door shooting.
Black gamma - 3.

Knee.

Knee point 87
Knee slope 0
Knee sat level o
White clip level 105.

I will use a bit of gain when shooting in real low light situations up to 6db.

Cheers

The knee has no effect when your using Cinegammas. I thought it was disabled in the menu when you select a cinegamma, but it's been a while since I used an F350. The cinegammas are designed to go up to 109. Again I don't think white clip works when you choose a cinegamma. If you are clipping them at 105 you are loosing some dynamic range. You would probably be better off using cinegamma 2 which has a modified curve that does not go above 100.

Hi Alister.

I can use the camera with the Cinegammas and also with the knee on and this seems to work. I know on my EX1 I can't do this.
And yes you are correct about the white clip, my last post should have read 108 or 109 as I think this is the default.

Thanks

I may be wrong as I don't have a F350 to test this but if you use a knee with a cinegamma you'll never reach peak white. The cinegammas curve takes the sensors full dynamic range and compresses so that peak white hits 109%. If you add a knee you will compress the highlights still further and as a result never reach 109%.