Hi there,

I wouldn't really imply to leave knee on by default, even if the point is high. Some shots won't exceed the dynamic range that calls for knee. The price of knee is highlight contrast reduction. And I prefer to avoid any hint of the bigger price for faces, pasty skin.

The Knee is on by default from the factory, what's worse is the factory default is auto, so you have no control whatsoever. For most people the knee will bring more advantages than disadvantages.

The knee set at 85 should have no significant effect on skin and flesh tones unless you are overexposing or have a lot of specular highlights in which case it should help.

I would never use DCC. Too much like auto focus etc. Contrary to how it is often portrayed the DCC option doesn't always give you better highlight information. If the DCC decides that the highlights are not important it will free up the tonal range for the other sections of the picture and you end up with more blown highlights.

But yes you should be able to get 600% by adjusting the knee slope in combination with the knee point. But personally I'd leave the DCC well alone.

Right you are, Auto Knee is Sony's default not only for EX but also for their full size cams. Is it so for your 700 also? One of the first things I do after factory reset when painting is turn Knee off. When I see a shot with illegal or lost detail in highlights then I'll play with it. Most of my stuff these days I don't know where it will end up so I have to observe the common denominator for levels.

On the PDW-700 the DCC is on the Bar/Camera/Cam+DCC switch so you can turn it off. I'm sure many camera ops just flick the switch all the way over to Cam+DCC. If you have the knee on as well the results can be nasty.

Very good work and a very nice contribution to our community. Thank you for sharing your knowledge Alister.