Sony F350 paint, matrix settings to get me started?

[Simon Denny]

Anyone care to share some paint, matrix settings to get me started?
I have been playing around with the paint settings and now moving onto matrix settings but would like some experienced user's to offer me advice.

I have a Sony EX1 and I'm trying to match cameras.
With the EX1 I'm using Cinegamma 1 for outdoors and Cinegammas 3 & 4 for indoors, detail @-10 and gamma @ -8 I think.

One thing I miss in the F350 is the histogram that is in the EX1.

Thanks

[Steve Phillipps]

When I briefly had an F355 I seem to remember I liked the Cine Gamma that was really flat and went to 109%, gave good dynamic range. Then detail down to about -20 I think.
Steve

[Eugene Kosarovich]

The scene files that you can download from Sony are a great place to start, and then customize from there, that's what I did with their normal scene file and their cinegamma scene file, both of which are properly color calibrated by Sony. When looking at the cinegamma scene files from Sony, be sure to look at both the DV one and the HD one, since one of those files is set for cinegamma curves 1 and 2, while the other one is set for cinegamma curves 3 and 4, in terms of the color matrix, so your starting point would depend on which cinegamma curve you wanted to use.

I then tweaked things such as detail level(currently -12, but still experiementing), master black (-3 based on my waveform monitor testing), and black gamma(-20 with my cinegamma curve, 0 with the normal video one). My favorite gamma curve is the cinegamma 4 curve on the F335/F355. Though I have also used cinegamma 3 with the LBEACHC scene file from Sony for a very saturated and higher contrast look on some outdoor projects, but use that scene file with caution, I didn't find colors to be as accurate in that look.

I'm not sure if the cinegamma curves of the EX line match up with the same numbered cinegamma curves of the XDCAM HD line, since I've seen some graphs that suggest they don't, but yet I've heard talk that they do, so I'm not sure on that part. I'd be curious to hear if anyone knows for sure on that.

[Simon Denny]

Thanks for the help.
What about shooting in DVCAM and the detai,l should I bump it up a bit or leave it set @ zero. Is there anywhere I can find more info on knee settings etc.... and basic matrix use.
Thanks

[Eugene Kosarovich]

I have detail ON and set at 0 for DVCAM. Note that 0 is definitely not none. And when I look at the waveform monitor, I can definitely see the detail enhancement spikes. Looks good for SD to me. Detail is a subjective kind of thing, but I personally wouldn't recommend raising it above the 0 setting. Sony told me that the 0 setting for detail in DVCAM mode is supposed to mimic the traditional DVCAM look that the DSR-300 style cameras have.

And for HD, though I'm currently using -12 as I mentioned, the HD I've shot before recently I've had the detail turned OFF, which is what the Sony HD scene files have by default, and I liked that look. But I wanted to try giving it just a bit more, not just for the look of the HD, but to see what effect that had on my SD downconversions.

You might want to take a look at this thread, though it's about the PDW-700/800, I'm going to try some of the detail/aperture/frequency suggestions that Alister Chapman mentioned in that thread.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...iles-sony.html

As for basic matrix use, I haven't really seen anything written up on that. I understand it somewhat in concept, but not enough that I feel comfortable messing with the Sony calibrated settings. I'd love to see a write up on how to use it, if there's one around somewhere.

As for some good info on the various settings, there are some pdfs from Sony collectively called the Creative Shooting Techniques. It's a set of 10 pdfs that Sony sent me when I talked with them about this last year. I thought someone had the link to all of them posted here in a previous thread, but I tried searching for it and couldn't find the full collection. But here's one of them, dealing with knee aperture:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/f...ture_Edges.pdf

I have the full set of them, it's just over 5MB, so if no one posts with a link to the on-line versions of the whole set (I tried reverse engineering it from the above link but didn't have success), feel free to PM me and I can e-mail them to you.

Another good article to read is Adam Wilt's page about Sharpness/MTF/Aperture correction:

Technical Difficulties - Lookin' Sharp

And last but not least, here's some Alan Roberts BBC settings for the PDW700 and PDW530P. There aren't BBC settings for the F3xx series, but looking at these two pdfs can give some useful info:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/p...ony_pdw700.pdf

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/w...530P_XDCAM.pdf

But really with all of this, there's no one answer. Different shooting conditions and different subject material require different settings, as well as your own personal style decisions.

Have fun! :)

[Simon Denny]

Thanks Eugene,
I really appreciate the effort.

Cheers

[Simon Denny]

Hi Eugene,
For some reason I can't PM you from here, very weird.
Can you send me the pdfs from Sony "Creative Shooting Techniques"

Thanks

[Eugene Kosarovich]

Opps, it was a security setting, fixed now.

[Eugene Kosarovich]

Wouldn't it be nice if all Sony's XDCAM HD cameras actually used the same range for their settings as their manuals claim (+/-99)... Ah well, one can dream.

Anyway, since the PDW-700 settings aren't all directly possible with the F3xx series, I'm not sure where some of the settings I referenced above actually fall with the F3xx series, since the "0" isn't anywhere near the center position of the range of settings.

So what I've tried most recently is detail -10, detail frequency +60 and aperture +42. Are these really where the equivalent in the PDW-700 is? No idea.

BTW, I want to make sure I'm understanding correctly, the detail frequency is the actual frequency of the detail enhancement signal, so you're controlling how fine the enhancement detail is with that setting and NOT what frequency of detail triggers the enhancement, correct?

Now as for the aperture, since that's like turning up the treble on audio, is that going to be boosting the detail on noise? And if so, does one need to turn up crispening to counter that?

Thanks.