NX3 Picture Profiles

[Eric Darling]

I'm looking for some guidance with picture profiles on the NX3. Specifically, I'm concerned about losing lots of detail in the highlights with the stock profiles, but I remain hopeful that a good picture profile can address that without killing contrast or other detail. I've also had very bad luck finding any concrete information online about picture profiles, and even less information pertaining to the NX3 in particular.

Does anyone care to share what they use in different situations?

[Ross Hunter]

I don't know if this is much help or not, but here's a comparison of various Picture Profile settings for the Sony PXW FS5.

YouTube (Short URL)

I use PP4 on my NX3 and am generally happy with it. That said, I need to do comparisons of the different profiles.

[Eric Darling]

Those are helpful, but the FS5 is even further removed than the FS100, the camera for which custom profiles are readily available online that I have been using as a jumping off point for the NX3's picture profiles.

Even so, the FS100 is a considerably different camera to the NX3, hardware-wise. The FS100 (and the FS5 for that matter) are larger single sensors. Certainly, being Sony cameras of relatively similar age, they share certain features and color science. But, they all respond to light differently. The FS5 has much more dynamic range than the NX3, and so you can't just take a picture profile from one camera and expect it to work the same way on another, even if they have the same picture profile menu settings.

I've settled on slowly building my own, through trial and error. It's a bit of a painful and unscientific process, but I think it's the only way.

[Rob Rothkopf]

Hi..

I've been having a BEAR of a time for the past two years trying to get my NX3, and now NX100, to properly record scenes containing saturated Peach/Orange/hot-pink. The cameras are seeing them as dark plum, and although I get close to correcting them in post, this doesn't help when I'm using them in a live switch situation.

Have you experienced anything like this, and found profile settings so these colors read properly?

--Rob

[Kelly Hughes]

Rob,

I use my NX3 for depositions, and I've seen quite a few shirts that are orange in reality come out more pink in the video. I just poked Michael's settings (from above) into my PP2 memory because that's one I don't use much. I'll try it out tomorrow. Others reported that the colors were too saturated, so I dropped my color level down to a 1 for starting out.

I've tweaked most of my profiles over the years by scrolling through them and picking the one that looked the best, and then adjusting color values of that profile to try to get the colors perfect. As a legal videographer, I wind up in random rooms with mixes of fluorescent lights (often different temps in the same room) and outside sunlight coming in from the windows, and often a mixture of both! It's a tough environment to try to get accurate colors programmed into profiles!

I've wound up using PP3 and PP4 the most, and I'll list them here. However, lately I have been unhappy with Caucasian skin tones coming out putty colored, but not so unhappy as to do a full reset and start over on all my profiles. So I searched for help to start over with one or two of my lesser used presets, and that led me to this page. So these settings may be useful, but I certainly concede there's room for improvement!


*** PP3 ***
Black level : 0
Gamma : ITU709
Black Gamma :
- Range : Middle
- Level : 0
Knee :
- Mode : Auto
- Auto Set :
- Max Point : 95%
- Sensitivity : Middle
- Manual Set :
- Point : 95%
- Slope : 0
Color Mode :
- Type : Pro
- Level : 8
Color Level : 0
Color Phase : 0
Color Depth :
- R : -2
- G : +1
- B : 0
- C : 0
- M : 0
- Y : +2 (attempting to get more "peach" into skintones)
WB shift :
- Filter type : LB-CC
- LB[color temp] : 0
- CC[mg/gr]: 0
- R Gain : 0
- B Gain : 0
Detail :
- Level : 7
- Manual Set :
- on/off : off
- V/H Balance : 0
- B/W Balance : Type 3
- Limit : 7
- Crispening : 6
- Hi-Light Detail : 0


*** PP4 ***
Black level : 0
Gamma : ITU709
Black Gamma :
- Range : Middle
- Level : 0
Knee :
- Mode : Auto
- Auto Set :
- Max Point : 95%
- Sensitivity : Middle
- Manual Set :
- Point : 95%
- Slope : 0
Color Mode :
- Type : Pro
- Level : 8
Color Level : -3
Color Phase : +1
Color Depth :
- R : -1
- G : 0
- B : -1
- C : -1
- M : -1
- Y : +2 (attempting to get more "peach" into skintones)
WB shift :
- Filter type : LB-CC
- LB[color temp] : 0
- CC[mg/gr]: +1
- R Gain : 0
- B Gain : +2
Detail :
- Level : 7
- Manual Set :
- on/off : off
- V/H Balance : 0
- B/W Balance : Type 3
- Limit : 7
- Crispening : 6
- Hi-Light Detail : 0

-Kelly