Help calibrating camera with DSC chart

[Simon Denny]

Yes used Cine 4 for ages on the Z90 and A7III, worked really and had great results, now I find Cine 2 with Cinema matches cameras right out of the box and I like doing a grade, also I use a Fujifilm XT2 and using the Eterna Film Simulation with highlights and Shadows at minus 2 matches the Cine 2 remarkable well.

[Paul Anderegg]

That Z90 PP is very undersaturated, with a very high black level (master pedestal), had to lower black -5 to get black to 0IRE, and raise saturation 150% in FCPX to look normal.

I will be trying to create best for live straight from camera REC709 once my scope arrives.

Paul

[Simon Denny]

Yep that's true, the blacks are high however a rough grade and I'm ok with this, yeah saturation is low and yes I also use FCPX and have to raise the color right up there. Cine 2 is not perfect however in our bright sunny days here in Australia I find it's handles the conditions rather well, I'm shooting a lot of Caravans and Camper Trailers throughout the day in 30 plus heat and very bright Skys so rather than Log Cine 2 with cCinema is going ok for now.
Previous to this I was using Cine 4 with good results.

[Simon Denny]

Hey on a side note, do you or anyone else know where I could email Sony with a future firmware idea?
I would like the Z90 to have an electronic level like they do with their A7iii etc...
Not sure if this is doable or even if they would respond however it's worth a crack.

[Paul Anderegg]

Originally Posted by Simon Denny

Yep that's true, the blacks are high however a rough grade and I'm ok with this, yeah saturation is low and yes I also use FCPX and have to raise the color right up there. Cine 2 is not perfect however in our bright sunny days here in Australia I find it's handles the conditions rather well, I'm shooting a lot of Caravans and Camper Trailers throughout the day in 30 plus heat and very bright Skys so rather than Log Cine 2 with cCinema is going ok for now.
Previous to this I was using Cine 4 with good results.

Yes, looks fine when graded, just a warnign for live or direct from camera users. Grading is as simple as pulling down the shadows slider and increasing saturaion in post.


Paul

[Simon Denny]

Yeah that's right, grading is a breeze as you mentioned, pull blacks down, add some saturation and the images start to look great, don't blow the highlights out when shooting on the Z90.

[Paul Anderegg]

My Leader scope arrived today...I excitedly set it up with my new DSC Camalign and a small 35 watt halogen light. Set the scope up to 75% 2x gain, and began fiddling with the color correction menu on the Z90. When I was done, I had put yellow and blue in their boxes, and left red alone, it was already proper in it's box. The end result was...yellows on scope, in the box, yellows on viewfinder and recorded video...green. I remember I had this issue the first time I messed with my X70, where I would put the red in the box and it would either be magenta or orange, never box/target colored.

So obviously, I don't know how to adjust the color corrections on the Z90...I previously (years ago) assumed these were designed to be used without scopes in the field to just point at something and change it's color to what you want it to look like on the LCD. Uggy.

So...I am wondering about the other scope settings...RGB, Ycbcr, those are options, they produce slightly different images. Maybe the scope isn't setup properly, a lot of options.

Before and after scope images attached.

[Paul Anderegg]

Here is what the REC709 (knee off) with color corrections looks like in FCP...scope was set to 133% to simulate 75% color bars, and saturation slider was set to 100 (200% level) to simulate 2x vectorscope gain. I can confirm these levels and targets match the vectorscope at 75% 2x. Am I imaging it, or does the yellow patch look green? Maybe my eyes are just tired from staring at the scope.

Chris, if I wanted to go in and adjust the color depths for 78% and 41% (41's more important), do you have any advice on doing that? My scope doesn't have a high pass, so it's either all luma or luma and chrome...gets messy seeing the color lines on the waveform. Decrease color depth raises the lines on the waveform, right? Also, there are two saturation sliders in the color correction menu on the Z90, the second one stretches the vector color out, the first one does I don't know what.

Paul

709 settings CC1 Y 15,22,0 -7, +3 CC2 B 1, 22, 0 . +6, -2

[Simon Denny]

Great work Paul, I do hope you share your findings, this is something I've always wanted to do with cameras that I own and owned.

[Paul Anderegg]

I will try to post all of the links I have come across, and pdf files from DSC , Panasonic, etc relating to calibrating cameras.

I just took another pass at my Z90, this time, I decreased the range that was being adjusted in the color correction (multi-matrix) system, so as to not let my phase adjustments skew colors in the in between relm (CDM zone) that I cannot see on the scope. Got much better results, not seeing the geen in my yellows.

I also hit my color depth settings. Going only on the researched advice to pay attention to the 41% color depth targetting, I did that, and aligned everything at 41 and completely ignored luminance at 78%...simply allowed them to go wherever adjusting the 41% range left them. The results seem very good...everything I point my camera at, every color, seems to match in hue as well as in richness and depth, luminance etc...so basically, I point at a banana, and it looks like a banana, point at weird cyan colored Logitech box, not too light, not too dark.

So, now that I undertstand my scope and chart a bit better, time to move on to the X320 with full matrix. I don't know how or if color depth can be set in the Pro Sony cameras...hmmm. I also scoped my old DCS Camalign which expired 2016...it was obviously not color accurate, and was visibly off on all color chips, especially red, which was several degrees into orange...so yeah, charts don't last that long.

Paul