After further trying, to milk out the last bit of the FS100 sensor, I think I finally came up with the “magic formula”.
It holds and rolls highlights better than any of my other profiles, gives more DR than ever and also is the closest you can get to S-Log in a FS100.
If you ever looked as a S-Log or Arri Log waveform or RGB parade you can see that most of the data lives between 20 and 80 IRE. This is what you get with this PP.

I gave it a test ride today, when I shot a commercial and I can’t hardly belief this came out of my FS100.

So here are the G-LOG Ultimate settings:

ZEBRA: set your zebras to 100 and make sure they never show up (unless in lights, chrome or other super bright and shiny things)
BLACK LEVEL: variable – as in G-Log, set your black levels a hair above zero IRE (or until the histogram touches the left side)

DON’T GET CONFUSED WHAT YOU SEE ON THE CAMERA SCREEN, HAVE FAITH, EVERYTHING WILL FALL IN PLACE.

GAMMA: Cinematone2
BLACK GAMMA: High/+7
KNEE: Manual/80%/+1
COLORMODE: Cinematone2/+8
COLOR LEVEL -2
COLOR PHASE -7
COLOR DEPTH: R -3/G +2/B +5/C 0/M 0/Y 0
WB SHIFT: all zero
DETAIL: Level -3/BW Balance Type3/Limit7 everything elese at zero

If you are in Premiere, the “Luma Corrector” gives you the best, non destructive performance.
Just grab the Pedestal slider and lower all the levels till they touch the zero IRE line. Done.

Make sure you dial in the color temperature (WB) manually with the little wheel, don`t do auto or push button (greycard) balance,
since that will screw up your color on the magenta/cyan axis.

Every color cast you might get, by doing this, is easily fixed in post.

I hope you guys have fun with the new PP.

Here is the link to my blog article with some pictures:
G-Log Ultimate 1.0 Picture Profile for the Sony FS100 Frank Glencairn (http://frankglencairn.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/g-log-ultimate-1-0-picture-profile-for-the-sony-fs100/)

Frank, will these same setting give the same look with a FS700?

Don't have a 700 here, so I can't say, but I doubt it, cause the 700 reacts different in the Hypergammas.
But maybe you take it as a starting point and tweak it from there.

Frank

There would be little to be gained on the FS700 as Cinegamma 4 already captures everything from the sensor noise floor up. Raising the blacks using black gamma just brings up the noise as well so you can't actually see any further into the shadows and the top end of the cinegamma curve is also capturing pretty close to the sensors limits.

I looked at this PP and while it does give a little better highlighby roll off, by raising the black gamma all that is happening is that the noise floor is getting pulled up along with the base levels. The signal to noise ratio does not change, so there isn't any increase in usable shadow information. I think what is happening is that the flatter looking picture gives you the confidence to expose lower and then correct in post, thus preserving your highlights, but I don't actually see any real difference in dynamic range. The raised black levels and noise floor mean that anything below 10% is just wasted data and because your not utilising your over exposure headroom fully your wasting another 10% at the top. So out out your available 235 data bits your only using around 200. The profile gives about an 11 stop range so that's only 18 grey shades per stop.

The lowered B luma will mean that this pp will handle sky better than other types of highlights, but could present issues with non blue highlights.
Just shooting at +6db and under exposing by 1.5 to 2 stop will give almost exactly the same result but without the loss of low end data.

Frank...
Thanks so much for your postings here and at the other board. Sure is a breath of fresh air so see people actually sharing information like this...

I would rather see 5 posts like this than 5000 videos shot with no information on how it was composed...

I looked at this PP and while it does give a little better highlighby roll off, [...]

I also tried this PP out, and it's definitely going to stay in my FS100. The Highlight roll-off is much better than with anything else I tried so far. And not just the blue channel (sky), but also green - the foliage stays green right up to the limit, instead of turning yellow... Didn't specifically try how the red holds up when close to clipping, but overall this PP gives a very nice picture indeed, plus it's safe - meaning I can use it with my FS100 on Glidecam (when some auto functionality just has to be used). It resembles the broadcast-safe Cinegamma 2 on my EX1...

Thanks Frank!

Well, I have found some flaw with this profile (even though I still consider it one of the best for the FS100):

I would like you to take a look at a couple of snapshots and tell me what's going on at the green foliage / blue sky contrasty borders, when they become grayish at the highlight roll-off. Without your profile, I suffered from a similar artifact we all know - shifting through yellow before clipping...

What do you think I could improve in the profile to avoid that? I tried under-exposing a bit which of course gets rid of these, but then the deep shadows become too dark (and the main point of your grading prescription - bringing shadows further down - become futile of course). BTW, the attached grabs are straight from the camera (no luma down-shift).

The Scopes apply to the grab on its left side at the bottom - again, straight from the camera...

Any suggestions? Perhaps the knee is misplaced for such contrasty scenes? TIA!

That's possibly an artefact of the weird way the color depth works by adjusting the luminance of saturated colours rather than the saturation. As the green trees are next to blue sky and both the green and blue channels luma levels are modified in the profile I suspect that close to the edge of the trees there is not enough green to get the full luma reduction that the G+2 setting is giving on other parts of the trees, so around the boundary the luma is slightly higher, pushing it into the modified knee, which is then reducing the saturation on anything brighter than 80%.

Try the profile with the all color depth settings at 0 and see if that helps. Color depth changes do some strange things close to the knee.

Thanks Alister, your analysis may be accurate. But then, it must be a synergy of both G+2/B+5 AND the knee setting, as plenty of other profiles I tried also have B and G channels' depth increased (luma reduced), and I yet none gives that artifact...

What I like about this PP is that - just like the EX1's Cinegamma2-based ones - it's very safe with highlight clipping protection, so especially for Glidecam work I'd like to continue using it.

Alister (and Frank) - what would you change first to try reduce this desaturation effect on green/blue edges, while keeping the above mentioned, general characteristics of this PP?

I did some quick testing on this profile and it looks really great. Need to do more but I think it'll be my main setting for most things.

I'd probably raise the knee level a bit but that will allow the highlights to go above 100%.

I have to confess, I have no idea.
But what Alister said makes a lot of sense.
Try all color depth settings at 0 and see what happens.

Frank

Frank,
Thanks agin for your great new preet...I've used it on several shoots so far ( but footage went to client, so hven't edited any of it yet).

I left a message on your blog, but not sure you got ir. Could you, or anyone, explain what you mean by

BLACK LEVEL: variable – as in G-Log, set your black levels a hair above zero IRE (or until the histogram touches the left side) ?


How do I st balck level as described above. Also confused about the histogram touching the left side.

Thanks
Bruce Yarock

I guess what I'm really asking is how do you set your black level per scene?
I'm kind of in the dark on this issue ( pun intended).
Bruce Yarock

AbelCine did tests with the FS100 saying that natively the camera has 11.5 stops of dynamic range. now would you say this increases the dynamic range? if so by how much? could it be possible it knocks it into the range of 12 or 12.5? maybe 13 like the blackmagic?

As Frank is now a BMCC shooter I don't think so...

The BMCC is so much better not only in terms of DR but in terms of a clean signal.

The FS100 makes weird things with the highlights. They get colored easily, what
makes your footage look so videoish. And they break in a very unnatural way.
That's why Franks profile puts the kneepoint down

Franks Profile was or is one of the best profils that tries to adress this.

Please don't mix measured DR and usable DR. Two different things...

what do you mean by measured vs usable?

Measured means in a studio environment with charts and vectorscope.

Usuble DR is the DR which you can really use for your footage. The FS100, which I have now, has a tendency to make highlights unusuable through giving them weird colours. The shadows can't be lifted that much in post because of the limited 8bit colours.

I'm preparing a full length feature with the BMCC right now. The BMCC is a whole different story in terms of DR. But in terms of lowlight it can't really compete against the FS100.
And it has the 2,3 crop against the 1,5 crop (S35) sensor size, which means your choice of glass will be limited.

I purchased a set of cinemodded Canon FD primes (24/2 - 35/2 - 50/1,4 - 85/1,8 - 100/2) recently. When Metabones brings out their Speedbooster for Canon FD, I have a great little cinemalike equipment for around 4000$ used. All fast lenses and pure lowlight ability that isn't matched by anything in this pricerange.

The BMCC needs special lenses and can't go higher than 1600ISO, which I try to avoid.

But the FS100 needs that weird profiles and you can never be sure if it works 100%.

I use G-Log Ultimate a lot, it's probably my go to "Run and Gun" profile if I'm not looking to grade footage. I'll adjust contrast and w/balance on everything but I don't use G-Log for footage to grade. I prefer CPF and the James Miller profiles for that, especially in low light but it depends on the situation as to which I will use.

I've seen colored highlights but it's something that changes with profiles and how you expose for the scene. I don't really have a problem with having colored highlights and I do mask them off and check them on scopes quite a bit. I've found it also comes down to what you are grading with as a tool. Some software do things like clip the highlights and mess them up in post or do funky things with contrast and create a bunch of macro blocking disco affects to highlights.

I guess I fall somewhere between "Measurable" and "Usable" DR and that would be "Practical" DR for me. I'm usually covering up some detail with DOF or a contrasty power window in post to draw attention to the detail I want so as long as it's there and clean I'm good. If I have to zoom in 800% to see a difference I know my audience wont be distracted by it and I've given up on worrying about stuff at that level, it's cut a lot of time off my workflow and time is money.