But in this last case if both cameras had the "same" default settings, shouldnt the asphalt be pretty close to the same color not having a magenta compared to a greenish? (take my sayings with a grain of salt, i am just speculating) (and trying to learn at the same time)

What white balance was used on each?

Mike

5600K on the white balance for both presets

5600K on the white balance for both presets

Doesn't look that it was that bright, looks cloudy, but at least they were both the same. Sure does not look good! :)

Mike

Interesting – notice the sidewalks in both. Tom’s use of Stevens preset looks decidedly more magenta, while Stevens use of his preset is more on the green side.

What accounts for that? Lighting conditions, the sun, time of day, etc?


What accounts for it I believe is that the calibrations are different between the two cams. Steven's preset is definitely better on his cam and worse on mine, and vice versa.

I understand. The only reason I am boosting the still with my settings is so that I can more easily judge color casts. Underexposure can cause colors to pop more than they should. I'll take a look at these tests in the morning.

Thanks for doing this, I appreciate it.

And I appreciate it too.

Okay Tom, here's the problem and potential solution as I see it.

I think if we are going to do a scientific test then we need to quit using a generic white balance like 56k. The shots I have taken have been mainly in the morning and evening light when there are natural casts. Because I created a neutral image, that means I am essentially changing the natural casts of nature and when the light shifts from the time I took the still, the color balance goes way off.

So here's what I did. I used a white card this morning to white balance and my preset looked horrible. I tried to calibrate it back to a neutral color palette based on the correct white balance and here's where I ended up:

EDIT at 12:16 PST: I just changed all these settings, they should be right now....the image remains the same

Gamma: Cine1
Color Matrix: Normal
Color Gain: 40
Color Phase: 0
Knee: Low
Black: Middle
Master Ped: -5
Setup Level: 0
HDF: High
H/V Detail: 0
Sharpness: 3
NR1: Off
NR2: Off
Coring: 0
Red Gain: -2
Green Gain: -15
Blue Gain: -3
RG Matrix: 0
RB Matrix: 0
GR Matrix: 0
GB Matrix: 10
BR Matrix: 0
BG Matrix: -13

Make sure you properly white balance the camera before shooting anything with this. Of course if you change the Color Matrix or Gamma, it shouldn't introduce any cast at all so it would work for your settings also. Let me know the results of your own tests.

Here's a still taken with the camera properly white-balanced:

Looks nice, but the long deep shadows indicate quite different kind of light - its effect on the picture is similar to cine gamma. So, again no good for comparison (altough your point about proper white balancing is valid of course).

I think this is okay for comparison because I white balanced for the dominant sunlight and most of the frame is made up of objects affected by that particular light. I don't usually white balance any other way. How do you go about white balancing for a scene, I'm curious.

Frankly, with the Canon I had to use a preset (or manually balance to a white card, when the WB was critical); the AWB I couldn't trust - it tends to be wandering which is even worse than a wrong but fixed hue. Now with the Sony, I shoot with AWB most of the time, with white walls staying all shades of white...

Aargh, I screwed up, ignore my last detailed post. The white balance was off, recalibrating now.

EDIT: I changed the settings in my previous post. Test them and let me know if I am becoming insane.....

This is an interesting thread insomuch as what we are discovering:

This preset (or any) will look ‘correct’ with the white balance balanced to that lighting condition at that time of day – and even in that particular location!

Or another way of putting my thought --

Since sunlight color temp can very dramatically through the day, it seems that a preset – particularly a preset for outdoor vivid color is very specific to a particular location at a particular time of day – with the white balance calibrated under those conditions.

Is it possible to create a present that works well under all outdoor lighting conditions? I would think that you would have to have several, i.e., early morning, mid-morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, early evening etc. Not to mention, the same presets under different lighting conditions, i.e., hazy, partly cloudy, cloudy, clear, etc.

I guess this points up the fact that you really need to tweak the settings under the current conditions in which you are shooting.

And this doesn’t even take into account that the perception of “vibrant” pleasing colors is highly subjective. The amount of variables that apply to capturing what pleases the eye are mind boggling.

Nevertheless – thanks for all of the work and posts – I do like the present under the conditions as shown in your latest example…

Very, very good point. This is why - after getting fascinated at first - I quickly dismissed the tweakability of the XH as being so much important. It's always better to record everything as true as only possible on tape, and only then try to achieve your desired look in post.

And as far as recording true, juicy and vibrant colours most of the time, there's nothing like the good, old Sony.

You are wrong and I will prove it, by cracky! :)

It's always better to record everything as true as only possible on tape, and only then try to achieve your desired look in post.


I love statements with words like "always". They "always" make me want to go break a rule.

Lots of times it's better to create a look in the field for a project, for a variety of reasons. For instance ESPN chose a tobacco filter for their SportsCentury series to give a certain look. One could argue it didn't make sense since they couldn't reuse the footage in other programs, but the amount of time saved in post justified the choice.

Well said :)

OKay, this preset thing is going to take a lot more work. Apparently there is still a lot of magenta in my preset. I think my solution is to work from an actual grey card to calibrate.

Stay tuned and I would love others to get involved in trying to create this preset without a color cast

Stephen, it's not that there's still a lot of magenta in your preset, it's that there is a deficit of the green gain, which is the complimentary color to magenta. Add some of what you took out back in, and the magenta goes away.

I'm trying things too, but when things aren't working out go back to the baseline. The color is not so far off with the system color that *everything* needs to be tweaked.

I'm reminded of a calibration struggle I had with an HDTV, where the picture just didn't look right no matter what happened with adds and cuts to the RGB gains. In the service menu, you had access to the color decoder, which is what we have with the matrix adjustments. The most basic adjustment to the color decoder is the hue, or color phase in the case of the A1. I see a lot of potential with your preset from the standpoint of gamma, saturation. Why not try a simple tweak to the color phase while leaving the RGB gains and RGB matrices zero'd? There's 18 presets in the DVI Network library, only 2 even touch the color phase, and some are just all over the map. The problem I had on the HDTV when RGB gains were up and down all over the place, was that it would be right in the highlights but wrong in the shadows, or vice versa. Or the color would shift across the gray scale. You're mention of using the gray card is laudable, but what if the combination of matrix adjustments cause a magenta cast at the low end of the IRE scale, and a green cast at the high end? That's the danger. ISF will normalize the gray scale tracking, so that the color temperature remains constant from 10 to 100 IRE. To adjust the gray scale tracking, the color temperature is set to 6500K at each IRE step. In other words, you need not just a gray card but gray cards that go from white to black. That's all the advice I will offer you. In my case, I'm going back to the basics under the assumption the hue is pretty accurate to begin with, and try some minor adjustments to the color phase.

Guys, I've often thought about getting an A1, but I really get concerned about the lengths you guys seem to be going to in order to get a simple, natural, color balance. What am I missing? I know the camera is capable of great video, but why can't you get great colors without adjusting 15 controls?

I've had the HV10 and now the HV20 and I simply pull the thing out and I get the kind of color & vibrance you guys seem to keep fiddling to get. I'm honestly not being sarcastic, but it is a concern if I were to go in the direction of an A1.

I've also got an FX7, but I honestly think the HV10/HV20 produces a superior HDV image to the 3-chip Sony....go figure.

Very, very good point. This is why - after getting fascinated at first - I quickly dismissed the tweakability of the XH as being so much important.

Guys, I've often thought about getting an A1, but I really get concerned about the lengths you guys seem to be going to in order to get a simple, natural, color balance. What am I missing? I know the camera is capable of great video, but why can't you get great colors without adjusting 15 controls?


Respectfully, I think you’ve missed the point here. The attraction of this camera (and the point of this thread) is that we CAN make fine adjustments that go BEYOND what most cameras (in this price range) are capable of. Indeed, what we are discussing here is the ability to fine tune and manipulate the picture in ways which most cameras don’t even come close.

In terms of a perfect “out of the box” look: if you want a great variety of color choices, load up the 18 + presets included in the preset section of this forum and go to it. That alone is a huge asset and a wonderful leaping off point into the flexibility of this camera. It’s like having 18 + “out of the box” cameras.

I like some, wasn’t initially thrilled with the ‘factory’ look/setting straight out of the box -- just read some of my earlier posts. But after I spent some time with this camera I was and am still blown away. After doing some green screen work with this camera, it’s HDV all the way and I’m not looking back!

And…I would not dismiss the ‘tweakablity’ of this camera at all. Quiet the opposite. I encourage anybody here to look at other’s work such as Steven’s and see what is possible with this camera. The look he has been able to achieve with this camera – both shooting and in post – is quiet remarkable. A look that is simply not possible with other cameras in its price range.

This camera was designed I believe to give the cinematographer in all of us (or those who have it in them) a vast and rich set of tools. Will some use it straight out of the box with all of the settings in full auto mode? You bet. But for them, they are missing so much of what this camera has to offer.

Perhaps this camera is not for everyone. There are those who want something with fewer choices. But to them I say go take a look at what others have been able to achieve with this camera (such as Steven) and try to reproduce that on a camera with less flexibility.

I take great pride in the fact that we are able to have a thread such as this – discussing fine tuning issues. I love that fact. I’ve not seen a thread such as this on any of the other cameras message boards!

GO A1!!

I would agree that in a perfect world where money and time is no object that images should be set up to capture the maximum tonal and color range and then be tweaked in post, but when you make settings in-camera it saves alot of rendering time and money on the latest and greatest post equipment.

Guys, I didn't want to upset those who went for the A1. I'm a control-freak myself, so I loved the tweakability of the Canon, especially when used from within the Console 1.1 - and I had an opportunity to play with it for 6 weeks! What I wanted to say though is that this tweakability isn't by itself making the A1 a better choice. As James pointed out, whether a preset is great or crappy depends on too many variables to always count on it. Frankly, if I were to make a critical shot, I would rather choose the default look rather than even the most "interesting" preset, because you can never be sure what it's really going to look like under given circumstancies, sometimes quite different than when you were creating the preset.

Unlike presets, experiments in post are reversible...

However, in a fully controlled environment and with direct capture with Console, using the XH picture settings can be really enjoyable and creative.

And I guess that's what I wanted to say. Yes, a given preset might look great under one particular lighting condition. Change the lighting just a bit and now that preset may look pretty bad. So in my mind the perfect camera should look VERY accurate using a fully automatic mode, but does have the capability to tweak beyond that. I'd generally want an accurate picture in a relatively auto mode and then have the capacity to tweak with camera controls or in post.

However the feeling I'm getting (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is that in a full auto mode the camera does not have quite the accurate color as some other HDV cams. I fully understand with the numerous tweaks available you can get there, but set to 'auto' the A1's picture is just not quite as accurate.

who buys a $4000 camera and shoots full auto?

More people than you would imagine...

Steven is of course quite right, there are a significant number of people who tend to always shoot in Auto mode with these camcorders, and there's nothing at all wrong with that. In fact, for those folks who are new to videography, I tend to go out of my way to strongly encourage them to go ahead and make full use of the Auto modes. But that's not the topic of this thread, so let's please return to the subject of discussing Steven's preset. Thanks in advance,

who buys a $4000 camera and shoots full auto?

Michael, please read what I said. I indicated I wanted a camera that's accurate in the auto mode, but is capable of being tweaked from that point. I don't think a camera should 'have to' be tweaked just to get relatively accurate colors in most situations.

Try this. I used the grey blocks of a MacBeth Chart to calibrate the preset this time. (All I changed was the green gain value) Someone please try this in sunny weather with lots of colors and post. Doesn't look like it's going to be sunny anytime soon here in Seattle.

Gamma: Cine1
Color Matrix: Normal
Color Gain: 40
Color Phase: 0
Knee: Low
Black: Middle
Master Ped: -5
Setup Level: 0
HDF: High
H/V Detail: 0
Sharpness: 3
NR1: Off
NR2: Off
Coring: 0
Red Gain: -2
Green Gain: -2
Blue Gain: -3
RG Matrix: 0
RB Matrix: 0
GR Matrix: 0
GB Matrix: 10
BR Matrix: 0
BG Matrix: -13

Michael, please read what I said. I indicated I wanted a camera that's accurate in the auto mode, but is capable of being tweaked from that point. I don't think a camera should 'have to' be tweaked just to get relatively accurate colors in most situations.

I don't think any camera actually has truely "accurate" colour. No sensor responds to light in the same way the human eye does, so camera manufacturers have to make a choice about how their DSPs render the voltages being received from the CCDs/CMOSs. What we think of as "natural" or "accurate" tends to change over time as particular approaches to colour come or go from fashion.

That said, I agree that Canon went for a particularly strange "native" setup. It barely sells the camera given the current trend for very vibrant looking images. And, as we've established, doesn't look terribly accurate (though I can't really make a judgement 'cause my monitor is on vacation at the moment). And the Canon Cine Gammas are a bit of a joke compared to Panasonic and (to a lesser extent) Sony's.

I would guess that the way to accurately dispatch any colour cast or weirdness in the image would be for someone with a colour meter and an accurate colour chart to test under controlled lighting. That way we could be sure that white is white, and all the other colours are technically where they should be on the scope.

Unfortunately I don't have a colour meter, and I don't trust my lights to be particularly accurate CT-wise, and, er, oh yes... I don't have a macbeth chart.... Otherwise I'd do this myself! ;-D

Hey Steven –

Check these out.

1. Steven vivid-wht bal.jpg: I white balanced to the available light.

2. Steven vivid-wht bal-less sun.jpg: Same white balance setting, less sunlight (sun went partially behind the clouds)

3. Steven vivid 5500k.jpg: White balance set to 5500K – and – ND 1/32, App – F2.8

I wanted to turn the preset off to the factory settings and shoot the same thing (and post a .jepg of it), but the sun disappeared for the rest of the afternoon – just as I was getting ready to do so.

I’d still like to do this – and think it would be valuable to do so in order to have some sort of visual baseline.

The preset is definitely vivid – and seems to work well with still life, nature, plants -- but I’d still like to see what it looks like on people/skin tones and other ‘real life’ scenarios where our brain tells us what looks right and what doesn’t.

Nice work – thanks…

Note -- the highlights are blown out a bit...sorry

I don't think any camera actually has truely "accurate" colour. No sensor responds to light in the same way the human eye does, so camera manufacturers have to make a choice about how their DSPs render the voltages being received from the CCDs/CMOSs. What we think of as "natural" or "accurate" tends to change over time as particular approaches to colour come or go from fashion.

That said, I agree that Canon went for a particularly strange "native" setup. It barely sells the camera given the current trend for very vibrant looking images. And, as we've established, doesn't look terribly accurate (though I can't really make a judgement 'cause my monitor is on vacation at the moment). And the Canon Cine Gammas are a bit of a joke compared to Panasonic and (to a lesser extent) Sony's.

I would guess that the way to accurately dispatch any colour cast or weirdness in the image would be for someone with a colour meter and an accurate colour chart to test under controlled lighting. That way we could be sure that white is white, and all the other colours are technically where they should be on the scope.

Unfortunately I don't have a colour meter, and I don't trust my lights to be particularly accurate CT-wise, and, er, oh yes... I don't have a macbeth chart.... Otherwise I'd do this myself! ;-D

Alex,

The purpose of this thread to evaluate a preset for the Canon camera submitted by Steven. Not to determine what camera has the BEST color.

Each manufacturer decides what they want for their base color. Some decide to have the colors more intense and to "pop!" Some have made other decisions. Pany likes the color to POP, Sony may be in the middle and Canon has mostly been in the lower or natural color range.

Canon for one, has decided to leave the colors at what I would call very normal, you may call them flat! If you want more vibrant colors, you can change the settings and get them as the camera has a vast number of adjustments! This is a matter of personal preference and some want one and some want another.

During one of my entries for the DV Challange, I left the colors "normal on my XL2," and I was criticized for it. The day I filmed at the beach it was cloudy and overcast and I thought the video looked very natural as captured by my XL2. Others thought it was bland and needed to be punched up. It may have cost me the win, and I later changed the footage in post to pump it up. But, the truth is that it was not "natural," it was changed from what was natural.

Some want one thing and some want another! It is just a matter of personal preference.

Let's just look at Steven's preset.

Mike

James, looking good. Thanks for your test.

A caveat for this setting: stay away from fire engine reds and neon orange colors like those found on some street signs. You will definitely experience a pulsing from them. But if you can control your environment to exclude these extremes, I think it is quite nice.

Okay, here are some tests I just did with the latest preset settings - post #77 (I can't tell if there is magenta in these because my eye sees magenta now whether it's there or not. This preset has damaged me psychologically):

I like those!

M

Those look like wonderfully natural colors to me. I don't see a magenta cast at all.

These settings show no color cast on my A1, so now you have a preset that works across platforms.

Alex,

The purpose of this thread to evaluate a preset for the Canon camera submitted by Steven. Not to determine what camera has the BEST color...

...Let's just look at Steven's preset.

I think you misunderstood where I was coming from. As I understand it Steve is looking to create a nice punchy preset that had a neutral colour cast. I was suggesting a methodology that could be tried to achieve that.

The other point I made was to respond to Ken Ross, who felt that a camera shouldn't have to be tweaked to get accurate colour. I was suggesting that "accurate" colour might be a subjective thing.

I wasn't makeing any comparative comments between the A1 and other cameras, other than to note (as you have) that Canon goes for a more muted pallette. And I certainly wasn't suggesting any sort of shoot-out!

Anyway, to my eyes the preset that has been created looks good. I've loaded it up, and I'm going to see if it works with my kids in the garden! :-D

Thanks everyone for comments and participation. This was a real learning experience but the lessons learned were very useful and will enable me to create other presets in a matter of minutes.

The key (assuming a preset with a neutral cast) was to shoot a neutral grey color (MacBeth Chart or Grey Card for absolute accuracy). Once I had the color intensity I liked, I simply balanced the RGB values by sampling the grey color in the shot and ensuring it had equal RGB values. There was some trial and error involved in this but I soon got a feel for what an incremental adjustment in camera would do. Of course there are much more scientific ways of doing this but I worked with what I had.

The reason it wasn't working before was I was trying to calibrate according to what my eye was seeing. I was thinking that the asphalt in my shot was close to neutral grey but, of course, that was absurd and it kept giving me erroneous results.

The key (assuming a preset with a neutral cast) was to shoot a neutral grey color (MacBeth Chart or Grey Card for absolute accuracy). Once I had the color intensity I liked, I simply balanced the RGB values by sampling the grey color in the shot and ensuring it had equal RGB values.

I wonder if you would care to share any specifics in regard to your method mentioned above? Perhaps a step by step explanation for those just digging into this like me!? Undoubtedly, you create beautiful images with your videography, and I sure many here would love to learn more from someone such as yourself.

I would like to follow your lead, but honestly don’t understand (based on your explanation above) how to calibrate the camera as you did. Any guidance would be very appreciated. Thanks again for all of your great input.

BTW -- the latest stills of your preset look great. I was curious about skin tones... very nice. And I love the Bokeh in the first image...

I want to keep the wonderful flesh tones of the above presets. It's very overcast and the light is flat in Denver on Easter morning. While it's expected that most people will adjust these settings to suit their intended application, an observation I'm seeing from the high color gain setting is noise. I think at color gain=40, from the signal to noise ratio there is less new color being added and the noise floor is raised. On the 50 inch 1080p plasma, I can see blooming of the colors and grain within the colors. By turning the color gain down to 25-28, there doesn't appear to be much real loss in saturation, but there's less overall noise everywhere in the picture. The noise that I see at high color gain also has the effect of negating sharpness.

Interesting Tom, I'll try it and maybe further experimentation changing the matrix settings may have less of a noise effect.

Anyway, like Tom says, this is a starting point and can be adjusted to taste. It would be great if those that use it as is and in a changed state posted some stills with info.

Thanks for the support,

Steven

I reduced the color level to 25 as Tom suggested and he is right, there is no discernible difference in the vibrancy but the noise level is reduced.

I wanted to test the preset's response to red so here are some more tests including another skin tone test with color gain at 25. While this is an intense red and it did fairly well, there are all kinds of reds that may look better or worse:

Interesting Tom, I'll try it and maybe further experimentation changing the matrix settings may have less of a noise effect.

Anyway, like Tom says, this is a starting point and can be adjusted to taste. It would be great if those that use it as is and in a changed state posted some stills with info.

Thanks for the support,

Steven

I'm leaving the matrix settings and RGB gains as you have them. Only the color gain, gamma and black level am I experimenting with. I don't see a problem with stills. The plasma however is more revealing than the LCD / PC monitors I'm using. I note that at +40 color gain setting, the processing seems less forgiving of the white balance. It might not be noticeable in mixed daylight, but in the current flat light, it shows up as a noticeable cast. But it's an "equal opportunity" cast because I saw it tend toward green at one end, and magenta at the other, without preference. It seems to be a consequence of the color gain being so high that the noise floor is on the threshhold of skewing the whites to either direction. But otherwise, the balance seems to be right in the center.

My last post slipped in after your latest stills, which look beautiful. Nicely saturated, and very clean, perfect balance.

...And beautiful bokeh! What zoom position and f-stop on those close ups?

Uh, don't remember the f-stop. I believe the iris was almost completely open and I was fully zoomed in. I took the shot from the other side of a large room.

Just so everyone knows what the final settings are:

Gamma: Cine1
Color Matrix: Normal
Color Gain: 25 (thanks, Tom)
Color Phase: 0
Knee: Low
Black: Middle
Master Ped: -5
Setup Level: 0
HDF: High (This can be "mid" if sharpness is 0)
H/V Detail: 0
Sharpness: 3 (adjust to taste)
NR1: Off
NR2: Off
Coring: 0
Red Gain: -2
Green Gain: -2
Blue Gain: -3
RG Matrix: 0
RB Matrix: 0
GR Matrix: 0
GB Matrix: 10
BR Matrix: 0
BG Matrix: -13

Just so everyone knows what the final settings are:

HDF: High (This can be "mid" if sharpness is 0)
H/V Detail: 0
Sharpness: 3 (adjust to taste)
Coring: 0


I agree completely and good observations. According to the Imatest software, at sharpness setting "0" the sharpening radius is very close to the 2 pixel radius standard sharpening level. HDF=high seems to apply a subtle high frequency filter to reduce moire and twitter, think bar code labels. On mid, I think the filtering is reduced permitting a reduced sharpness setting = 0. It's hard to see, but increasing H/V detail seems to raise the vertical resolution, but at unknown cost to the horizontal. I chose to accept the defaults since the picture is clean and artifact free.

Just so everyone knows what the final settings are:

Gamma: Cine1
Color Matrix: Normal
Color Gain: 25 (thanks, Tom)
Color Phase: 0
Knee: Low
Black: Middle
Master Ped: -5
Setup Level: 0
HDF: High (This can be "mid" if sharpness is 0)
H/V Detail: 0
Sharpness: 3 (adjust to taste)
NR1: Off
NR2: Off
Coring: 0
Red Gain: -2
Green Gain: -2
Blue Gain: -3
RG Matrix: 0
RB Matrix: 0
GR Matrix: 0
GB Matrix: 10
BR Matrix: 0
BG Matrix: -13



Do you know how this would work or relate to the XLH1?

Mike

No but you might want to try approximating it and see what happens. The tuning on the XLH1 is not as fine as on the XHA1. The scales for the matrices and the rgb gains are 1-50 on the A1 and 1-10 on the H1. I would say use your best judgment. Chris Hurd did a good job of approximating my Panalook preset which I created for the XLH1 originally.