In camera color presets vs. post color alteration/correction

[Jack Jenkins]

I have several questions about this, I know there is not just one answer, I was just looking for more general philosophy/work flow for the color presets.

1. For the measurebator in me, I was wondering if the quality of the in camera color presets is superior or inferior in quality to doing color alteration/correction in post?

2. In terms of work flow, how do people treat the in camera color presets. Do you act like you would if you were using a film camera - IE: have a preset for KODAK 5229 for night shots and another preset for daytime etc...

3. Isnt it better just to shoot very neutral and then make adjustments in post?

4. Is it harder if you have used the in-camera presets to then re-correct in post if you so choose?

5. If you use a particular preset on one chunk of footage and then you decide you want that same look on some other footage that did not get shot with a preset is there a way to translate a preset's settings into something like COLOR FINESSE or some other color correction software?
I know that in most color correction software there are the same sort of controls as in the preset controls, I just dont know how different say a +3 on the red pedestal in-camera is as opposed to a +3 on the red pedestal in After Effects or FCP.

[Kris Bird]

Couple points...

- You seem to make the assumption that any changes you make (in post or in camera) are purely aesthetic... This isn't the case. Altering Master Pedestal, Knee, Coring, sharpness, etc. can IMPROVE the image captured, in a way that can't be done in post. There is more data (dynamic range) and bitdepth accuracy available at capture than in post, the aforementioned settings dictate how the camera interprets and 'bakes' this info down into your 8bit signal on tape.

- Regarding aesthetic colour/etc choices- strictly, in-camera is better, for obvious reasons (high bit depth processing prior to 8bit quantization and compression). IF you can develop a look in-cam, with REAL tests, developed whilst having the camera connected to a good monitor and spending time tweaking live, and then testing that in a variety of situations which reflect the varying conditions of your film.. then this is technically preferable to shooting flat, and obviously saves you a lot of time in post (grading HD can be slow). This can certainly be true for event work.

I'd recommend that you treat master ped, setup, sharpness, coring, knee, gamma, NR as ONE thing, and all of the colour stuff as something else. Work to understand these settings and what suits your different programme styles (I have one for promos, one for cine, one for corporate, and one corporate low-light)... none of these alter colour. I also have a few SUBTLE colour altering presets which take one of my base presets and expands it slightly .. saturation boost, slight colour tweaks..

my plan is to-

- make my base presets even more colour-neutral. Meaning, maybe altering colours slightly away from 0 0 0 0 0 will make it MORE colour neutral ... (as in, colour-chart neutral).

- develop more subtle colour toning presets which are free of undesirable casts .. to minimize (or in some cases eliminate) post work... for corporate this is feasible, but I'm no where near ready to do this for a promo or film. too risky.

hope this helps your thoughts

[Don Palomaki]

Well said Chris!
8-bit signal, significant compression and 4:2:0 on tape is not like a RAW image from a digital camera.

[Jack Jenkins]

Thats the kind of answer I was looking for Kris, thanks.

[Win Edson]

I don't want to cause an argument here, so keeping that in mind, I'll say that I'm still not convinced that obtaining a neutral image is not the best way to go. I'm a graphic designer and I've been using after effects and final cut pro for years now and I feel like I have so much power with their adjustment range that I'm only limited by my imagination.

Kris makes some excellents points that the in camera presets aren't purely aesthetic. So what I'm going to do is start experimenting with the presets to get the sharpest most prestine images while being careful not to crush the blacks. I'm not going to desaturate at all, because that's easy to do in post while you can't 'up saturate' without loss. I'm a big fan of overexposing a half stop (unless that totally blows out detail in the whites) because adjusting levels down is lossless compared to increasing levels. As far as colour adjustments, contrast, and other effects, I'll leave that to do in post.

So after reading this thread I think I'm going to create the best 'neutral' preset I can as opposed to just using the camera's factory settings.

[Don Palomaki]

I think you can probably get away with more post processing with SD than with HDV thanks in large part to differences in compression and image encoding. However, what goes on tape is still is not a RAW image. Less noise can mean better compression. It all goes back to meeting the customers expectations. Please share your results with us.

[Alessandro Nucci]

Is there a different between American and European XHA1? For example, can I take a preset for an american guy and put it in my European camera? Or there is still a PAL vs. NTSC legacy in HD? Colour space and so on...

In fact I tried some of the presets posted here but some of them are really bad on my camera...

Alessandro

[Eric Ramahatra]

there's no PAL vs NTSC in HD because it's just as well defined as
1280x720 at 24p, 25p ,30p or 60p footage
or 1440x1080 50i for a HDV one.

PAL and NTSC are just for DV because of 50i or 60i.

[Jose Ramada]

Alessandro,

Please take a look at the Preset for PAL users Thread in this forum. I think you can find something interesting that will answer some of your doubts.

Regards,
Jose