Yea, I'll provide something a bit better this coming week. It rained here today, so I couldn't really capture anything.

And I completely agree with you on RC1. I am probably going to shoot with it this week in an interview I have to do. We'll see how it works.

That was a Formatt 4x4 polarizer in mattebox. It shifts green on the EX1 when turned to minimum polarization but shows no shift at maximum. I haven't tried turning it around yet to see if that makes a difference. I also haven't tried a screw-in polarizer. Will be trying that this week.

Tested the Schneider circular Tru-Pol. Rotation makes no measurable color shift. White balance shifts about 3% toward cyan when mounting the filter. Need to re-white when the filter goes on or off. Panning with the circular does not color shift.

Tested a Tiffen linear polarizer. 90 degree rotation gives a 30% shift magenta to green! Optimize the polarization, white balance and pan 90 degrees can give a 30% green shift. Not good. Mounting it backwards made no improvement.

Neither filter blocked the auto focus system.

It doesn't take scopes and test charts to see this color shift. Just watch on the LCD screen as you rotate the filter or make a long pan in sunlight. Maybe someone can test other brands of circular polarizers and post here.

FYI George - the Formatt definitely shifts magenta-to-green on the EX1 (reversing the filter side makes no difference) but causes no shift at all on my Z1U, nor on my Panasonic AJ-D200 DVC-Pro camera I tested today. The Tiffen screw-in 77mm Polarizer does not exhibit any shift at all on the EX1. I thought maybe it was a CMOS thing, so I tried it on my HD-1000 (which is CMOS) and no shift.

Are either of these marked circular? I found the problem on linear, none on circular.

Both are linear.

So your Tiffen linear screw-in and my Tiffen linear screw-in give opposite results. Hard to draw a useful conclusion from that data.

Clearly not an issue that can be fixed with picture profiles, although a profile that increases chroma levels will magnify color errors from any source.

Anyone using a polarizer that causes a color shift should not combine it with any settings to increase saturation.

Correction - my Tiffen screw-in is a circular. My mistake. It's not labeled as such on the filter, but I went to put it back in the box and saw it on the label.

In shooting our last video university segment on using filters I was surprised to see the EX1 do the green shift while rotating our 4x4 polarizer. We also saw a strong magenta shift when using an ND.9 and graduated ND.6. No other camera in our collection does this with these filters. Interesting.

I have the same issue when using a B&W circular polarizer and a B&W grad. ND.6

Is there any rule of thumbs for determining what would be the best picture profile for a sunset versus one for an early morning shooting, one whem shooting an acquarium through the glass etc..?

I've been loading Bill's PP TC2 into my EX3 manually. Haven't had time to shoot yet but hopefully shortly. My question is that when I examined the SUF files that are online here with the SUF file created by my EX3 after saving the profiles, they don't match at all. The codes are all different. I know I've got the correct settings based on the posts I've read here but I would expect at least some of the settings to be the same. Now a lot of them are 000001 which I would expect are the default settings. And the total number of entries matches. It's just that I would expect more of the settings to be the same.

So I'm leary of just loading the SUF as is into the EX3. Anyone else see this?

Rick, you're right, I would not try loading the EX1 SUF. You never know what may result from this.

I've just read this thread from cover to cover and was hoping someone could post the entire 6 profiles that is being discussed. I cannot load the .suf file because I'm using the EX 3. Alternatively if someone has loaded them into an EX 3, I would be greatful if they could post the EX 3 .suf file.

Right now, I have one profile and that is bills post #120 in this thread. What are the differences in the other? It's possible that this has been discussed but I just tried to absorb a lot of information.

EDIT: To clarify,I would like to know the settings listed on page 8 and any updates if possible. They were these from Bill:
pp1: Steve Thomas' PP
pp2: original TC1
pp3: TC2 Cine1
pp4: TC2 Cine3
pp5: TC2 Cine4
pp6:TC2

I too would love to get the .suf of these 6 profiles for the EX3. Can someone please post?

PERFECT!
No more problems with High Contrast situations.
Combined this setting with Georges PP (with Level=-10 and detail=off).

Looks great!

do the PP's for the EX1 work for the EX3 also? I have heard that they do not work the same on the different cameras. If so, does anyone have any PP's for the EX3. My camera does not seem to have any PP's included with the camera. Thanks.

Matty S

Question about the process
 

I have been following this thread for some time and I commend everyone involved... it is truly good stuff.

My question is: In order to do my own paint setting in picture profiles, do I need an HD monitor like the TV Logic which has waveform/vectorscope using camera bars as a reference, or should I plug into my computer monitor thru a device like the matrox mxo and use the appropriate chart from dsc labs?

What are the advantages of either... Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Greg

setup.suf file?
 

This thread is crazy long but I downloaded the setup.suf file on page 8 and tried to load it onto an SxS card (after renaming it).... and when I went to "recall" camera data it told me "NG" NO Data.

Anyone have this problem? Is there an updated file somewhere?

Thanks

Steve

Hi everyone, I've mentioned this briefly on another thread a while ago, but has any one else noticed that -3, 0 and 3 db all actually seem to be more than just hardware gain? If you set your picture profile to one that clips at less than 109%, of course no matter what you do to the exposure, the maximum white value you can get is constant. however this is not true if you change your gain value. i tried std and cine gammas and set them both with gamma/knee values that caused white to clip fairly low (around 80-90%) while in -3db gain. when switching to 0db gain, white clip increased, and at 3db white clip increased yet again, but past that (6db, 9db, 12db etc) the maximum white value stayed the same (still under 109%). this is a very odd behavior, it makes me think that maybe 3db is the normal sensitivity for the camera and 0db and -3db are both just implemented in software. this is especially interesting since it probably means that if you set up your picture profile in -3db mode and you set it all up so that white just clips at 109% to fully use all your dynamic range and all 8bits, if you set your camera to 0db or 3db in that same profile, youll actually be cropping off highlight information. does this make sense? anyone else have any insight into this? makes me think i should set up all my picture profiles with 3db on so i dont accidentally lose highlight info by changing gain values.

to see what im talking about, try setting any picture profile where white clips under 100% and look at the histogram while switching gain between -3, 0 , 3, 6 etc. its easiest to see if your picture profile has white clip under 100% even in 3db mode.

until now i have been testing picture profiles and setting some of my own up. today i was just setting up some picture profiles using cine gamma modes and found that i had to adjust gamma number value to make sure white was always clipping at 109% and using all 8bits. i was doing this in -3db mode which required lower gamma numbers to increase white clip value. i found that if i did it in -3db it would keep its white clip in 0db up as well but not the other way around. i found that doing this was giving me some less attractive highlights though. then it occurred to me i was clipping my highlights off. maybe we just shouldnt use -3 and 0 db or need to have special picture profiles for them? is it just me or is it really annoying that when you are in a cine gamma mode, turning up the gamma number doesnt actually increase gamma, but it does mess with where your whites clip? what the heck is it doing?

oh yeah a few other things. i like the "real color" preset i got from this thread, looks great except that skin tones look weird if they are over exposed. seems like the matrix is calibrated only for midtone values. ive been using picture profiles with black gamma at +99 all the time and i love it. it doesnt look washed out, after using it for a while anything else looks so high contrast. i did a shoot in direct sunlight and it was amazing, the latitude looked so great that it almost looked like people had fill lights on them and everything was beautifully exposed. it allowed me to reduce exposure to save highlights but skintones were all still so well exposed because the shadows were so stretched out. i did a really quick test of latitude a couple weeks ago and came up with around 11 stops! it was really quick (so take it with a grain of salt please) but it was similar to the test i did on my hv20 where i got 9 stops.

ok thats odd i tried to replicate the problem again of white level changing between 0db and 3db and it didnt happen. in one setting the level went up 1% but that is not significant. dunno why it was happening before, weird. maybe im going crazy. anyway it still happens for -3db but i already knew that.

Wow, I was using the default settings on my camera because I hadn't had time to mess with profiles yet. I finally watched the entire Vortex DVD and used the basic profile that he recommended and what a huge difference! The colors pop and the highlites hold much better... it's like I have a new camera! And to think I was actually impressed with the default look... ha! I also have the same setting with a little more bump in saturation... looks so sweet right out of the camera. I have Final Cut Studio but I haven't tried editing yet, I'm sure most of this stuff can be done in post but I'm not sure I'll have to do much with this footage.

I also punched in Bill R's profile... I like it but it's sorta red. I like warm/red but it seems a little much. I'm sure if it was tweaked a little to tone down the reddish hues it would be great as another option. I'm not sure yet how to turn down the reds.

I loved my EX1 as soon as I played with it right out of the box, and I just keep lovin' it more and more as time goes on!

What is the basic profile recommended on the Vortex DVD?

What's the Vortex DVD?

Here's a link to the Vortex Media "Mastering the Sony PMW-EX1" Vortex Media's - Mastering the PMW-EX1 Training DVD

I highly recommend it... it goes through pretty much everything you need to get your Sony EX1 up and running. I do MUCH better with visual learning than reading manuals.

I don't even know the Picture Profile details the video showed because I changed the settings while watching the video with my camera in hand. I just know it made a big difference in my footage, mostly with punchier colors and better highlite control. Even if I had written down the profile details (which I didn't), I'm not sure it would be right for me to share it since Vortex Media created a commercial DVD with this information.

I would just say that this DVD was excellent for someone like me who is relatively new to the whole serious video world. It's like the manual coming to life, and believe me, I need a lively manual to figure things out, ha! There are a couple other DVDs on the Sony EX1 that I haven't seen but I'd bet they're very helpful too.

Since I don't want to come across as promoting Vortex Media's DVD training over others, here's a link to two others, which they probably review picture profiles too (but I'm not 100% sure).

Call Box

VASST : Inside the Sony XDCAM EX::Sony PMW-EX1 Training DVD

Actually, I just went to the VASST site linked above and played the YouTube clip on the front page and it talks about picture profiles in the sample clip.

It would appear from my first attempt to check my EX3 that the EX3 might need much different values than the EX1 to correct things like you have done Bill. I used an X-Rite Color Checker chart and the vectorscope pattern looks way off in Adobe On Location. The chart I use is not the same as you used but it does give the indication that there are big differences. I have a DSC chart on the way and will report my results

Once I get this done I will be on the way to providing my own feedback on different picture profiles and I hope I can provide some more details on the inner workings for others.

Can somebody confirm that the profiles done by Bill Ravens have the
"Detail" switched to OFF.
Thanks

Mark...

As far as color goes, DETAIL doesn't matter. Use it at your discretion. The contemporary knowledge is that DETAIL ON/LEVEL 0 adds sharpening. DETAIL OFF and LEVEL-40 is approximately no sharpening.

Thank you Bill.
My current PP are below how do they compare to your current ones?

MATRIX ON
SELECT HISAT
LEVEL 0
PHASE -5
R-G +75
R-B 0
G-R -18
G-B -32
B-R -27
B-G +13
OFFSET WHITE OFF
DETAIL ON
GAMMA LEVEL 0
GAMMA SELECT CINE 1/3/4
BLACK -4
BLACK GAMMA 0
SKIN TONE DETAIL OFF
LOW KEY SAT 0

Mark, how did you come across these settings?

G'day Steven,
Having gone through every post on this thread, I wrote down
every change that Bill made.
I think that these were the last he posted.
Unless somebody or he says otherwise.

I am beginning to believe that picture profiles made for one camera will not necessarily translate to the same look or output on another camera. I am still working on profiles for my EX3 using a DSC chart and then working with real life scenes. It certainly looks like my camera requires different settings than Bill has used to set his to proper colour reproduction.

I am using Premiere Pro CS4 to get its On Location but Adobe has made changes to the latest version in their great wisdom that removes the ability to scale vector waveforms. Without this ability to scale, it becomes much more difficult to adjust the colour matrix to match correct reproduction using the DSC charts. It is not impossible though.

I am noticing that different gammas have different apparent detail and colour mapping at zeroed settings.

This will take some time to fully understand all the interactions but I will post my profiles this next week as I have them developed so far.

Headroom
 

Hello, I am in the process of producing a film that is intended to be screened digitally in a local cinema/theatre and so I have been in search for the best picture profile for me, which in effect is one that will give me as much of a filmic look as possible in camera yet at the same time give me the maximum head room for colour manipulation in post. (The intended look for the end piece will be similar to Bourne Ultimatum/88 Minutes)

So in my search I have had meetings with several successful DOP's and camera operators of whom all gave me similar advice, which was; if you are shooting on HD give yourself as much room as possible for post production, so unlike many picture profiles that have become popular it could limit the grading process if the blacks are already recorded as dark as they can be before crushing etc.

This leads me on to ask the advice of anyone that has had the opportunity to experiment with different picture profiles and see the results on a big screen. What profile has given you the most headroom in post and how has the footage held up to vigorous color grading? Also I notice there isn’t much talk of the matrix settings in comparison to the amount of posts on this subject and so I would like to ask peoples thoughts on HISAT VS CINEMA and why people would choose one other the other when shooting drama based work. On initial inspection it would seem CINEMA would give me the most headroom in post but there must be a trade off between using this and HISAT seeing as it would appear to be so un-common with ex1 users.

Would love to hear your thoughts/examples?

Chances are excellent the factory settings are your best bet. These are the closest settings to "neutral" (across the board) that you'll find.

My experience is that as long as I shoot single-camera, my various PP's are useful and can produce nice results.

But when I was doing a 3 EX1 project lately, we decided to go as neutral as possible - PP off and manually preset WB on all 3 cameras.

The result being identical picture from all 3, easy to inter-cut in Vegas and with plenty of latitude preserved.

The reason most of us won't have too much to say about matrix is because it's subjective, there's no right or wrong if it gives you the look you're after, and to say that one is more correct than the other can sound disrespectful to those who use it to good effect for their own interpretations of art, or science.

For me, the hisat matrix doesn't work, but again it's just my opinion. The problem I have with it is that it seems oversaturated in the shadow areas, or with lower light levels. My preference is Standard +4. But it's just my opinion, and contrary to the majority around here, I use Std3 gamma. It's quite likely that hisat matrix works better with one of the cine gamma curves, so my observations could be skewed.

NOT ANOTHER DETAIL "ON" POST! Oh Nooo...
 

Opinions toward the detail "On" setting run about 30 to 1 against, or so it seems. I know I'm walking on thin ice, but I am wearing a lanyard.

My gift of sharing and caring, if you dare to experiment, is a well tested picture profile for the detail "On" setting that vanquishes the highly objectionable outline-halos of the default setting, while imparting a low noise organic texture with finely resolved detail that holds up to scrutiny.

Setting: On
Level : +1
Frequency: +65
Crispening: 0
H/V Ratio: 0
White Limiter: +75
Black Limiter: +75
V DTL Creation: Y
Knee APT Level: 0

Explanation:

- Black and white halos are the ringing, or overshooting at the transition edge of high contrast objects.

- The Frequency +65 setting narrows the width of a halo'd outline.
- The Black Limiter +75 setting clips the black outline at a higher IRE, where it's more like a dark gray.
- The White Limiter +75 setting clips the the white outline at a lower IRE, where it's more like a light gray.

I don't understand this surely the cameras are made from the same bits? Surely testing is done before leaving the factory to make sure a standard is met? Surely one persons settings would be close if not the same as anothers? If the Cameras out of the box settings are all equal as Piotr seems to say then why wouldn't colour profiles be too? Or are we saying everyones colour profile settings are what you get is a lucky dip?

Surely having colours accurately recorded and a film curve added to stop blown out highlights enables more information to be captured, than out of the box standard settings?