Z1 Picture Profiles-- my settings
 

I spent a few days tweaking the Z1 to get the looks that I prefer. Below I have pasted the text, but have a HTM if someone wants to post it--- Just email me. These are all on the warm side and have crunchy blacks, except #1. You can take these as a starting point for your own tests.

Because this is a pasted text file it will be kind of a mess on the forum, but you can make your own table. I will paste a comma delimited text version in the next post for you database junkies.

Picture Profiles for Sony HVR-Z1U
1 2 3 4 5 6
C Level +3 +6 +5 +5 +5 +3
C Phase 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sharpness 11 11 10 11 10 11
Skin Detail OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF
Skin LVL M M M M M M
AE Shift -1 -2 -1 -2 -2 -2
AGC Limit 12 6 0 0 6 6
AT Iris f11 f11 f6.8 f4 f11 f4
WB Shift +3 +4 +4 +4 +4 +4
ATW SENS M M L L L M
Stretch OFF OFF OFF OFF ON OFF
Tone OFF OFF T1 T2 OFF OFF
CineFrame OFF OFF CF30 CF30 OFF CF30

1- Basic Look
"2- Hi-Saturation Color- ""punchy"""
3- Film
4- Film Dark
5- High Contrast Subject
6- Hi-Sat Cineframe 30

"George T. Griswold, Jr."
"New Orleans, Louisiana"
www.videonow.info

This may be the same... I don't see the markers-- Again I can email the XLS file, or the HTM. I would prefer to have it available for download on the forum instead of sending out scads of emails.

Picture Profiles for Sony HVR-Z1U
1 2 3 4 5 6
C Level +3 +6 +5 +5 +5 +3
C Phase 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sharpness 11 11 10 11 10 11
Skin Detail OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF
Skin LVL M M M M M M
AE Shift -1 -2 -1 -2 -2 -2
AGC Limit 12 6 0 0 6 6
AT Iris f11 f11 f6.8 f4 f11 f4
WB Shift +3 +4 +4 +4 +4 +4
ATW SENS M M L L L M
Stretch OFF OFF OFF OFF ON OFF
Tone OFF OFF T1 T2 OFF OFF
CineFrame OFF OFF CF30 CF30 OFF CF30

1- Basic Look
"2- Hi-Saturation Color- ""punchy"""
3- Film
4- Film Dark
5- High Contrast Subject
6- Hi-Sat Cineframe 30

"George T. Griswold, Jr."
"New Orleans, Louisiana"
www.videonow.info

It seems that you are focusing on designing film looks, is that so? I will put up some of my settings tomorrow that I am starting with for wedding work, so I have settings for daylight architecture, daylight people, interior electric light people, interior candlelight people, interior interview people, glamour.

All of your AE settings are shifted down - is this for indoors as well as bright outdoors? I found my outdoors shots a little washed-out and improved with a "-1 or -2" adjustment. I was wondering if my camera was just out of adjustment. Do you know of anyway to test for that?

My objective with these settings is to get a nice saturated image without white clipping. I am not really after a "film look", but a video look that has depth and color. I also am adverse to the blue cast that most Sony cameras have.

I have an Ikegami HL-57 that makes a great picture, but the ergonomics are pretty bad. I had Roger Macie paint the HL-57 and it looks like a million bucks. www.macievideo.com

The key is a good monitor and you can get the look you want.

Ok, I'm a newbie here. Very new to the whole shooting video business and I just got myself a Z1 recently. I've been messing around with the picture profiles as well. I managed to find a look that I really like, but then the subject's color looks rather reddish when I transferred it to Adobe 6.5 afterwards. I tried desaturating and all that stuff but the skin color remain unsatisfyingly redder than the rest of the picture.

This is strange seems it looks fine on camera. Can you explain more about you picture profile settings? Like what kind of images are you getting for each of them.

Maybe this makes things easier to read.

George:

In your film setup, you use Cinetone 1. Have you actually used that??? I find that for interiors it is almost unusable. Cinetone 2 is even worse. And if attempting to use Cinetone, I find that Black Stretch must be enabled. (Bad Sony for not giving us adjustable Black Stretch). Otherwise, your blacks are crushed and many of the shadows are gone. I think Cinetone is a poor attempt by Sony of controlling peaking since it comes at the expense of blacks. It should have been better with something like Dynamic Contrast Control Plus or some kind of Dynamic Latitud Control.

In any case, thanks for sharing your profiles.

I have a page to post such things if you want to explain what you use each setting for:

http://www.stevengotz.com/pictureprofiles.htm

I still don't have time to sit down and write out all my settings so in brief: I don't use cineframe, I use cinematone and black stretch for interiors, I bump colour level to +2 or +3, usually have skintone level and detail on at medium. After watching Adam Wilt on dv.com, I have dropped sharpness from 12-13 to 10-11.

Actually, I have heard from DSE that he has no problem increasing sharpness to 12 or even 13 when using the Z1. Read it from a post in Video University, the HDV forum. I would trust more DSE than Adam Wilt who seems to just run tests and tests "in the lab" more than actually shooting. Also, DSE is the person to listen when it comes to HDV. I am not putting down A.W. by any means.

I found that at 10 the picture looks just too soft.

I have to say my favourite setting had sharpness right up there at 15 but I got a bit nervous over what AW said. I will have to do more test shots.

I have found that any sharpness under 12-13 looks murky..... reach for the diffusion instead.

George
New Orleans (Metairie actually)
Katrina update--- our house did not flood. I hit the road with my whole video business. Getting things put back together now.

exactly ! same here ...

I wouldn't call it murky or soft but I can see some sort of step in sharpness between 12 and 13 on my Z1. I can't be sure that I see the border AW mentions at 13-15 but I will try a few more tests.