Camera Settings and Set up - Problems with red colour

[Rowan Jones]

Hello everyone

This is my first time posting. I have found all of the posts very helpful and its great to find a bunch of knowledgeable people in the one place.

I've had my Sony F3 for a couple of months now, previously I have shot for TV with a Sony EX3 and EX1. I love the F3 to bits.

When not using the Sony primes, I use an MTF adaptor with Nikon glass.

Although I shoot a lot, I mainly shoot news and a current affairs programs and rarely have the time to set things up and go into detail, therefor my experience in this area is still developing.

I have downloaded the abelcine camera settings.

Firstly - What picture profile settings would you recommend for news style coverage. I like my shots to look nice straight out of the camera and ready for broadcast as my editors do not have too much time to play with it in post, but I can't make the image look too extreme because of the style of coverage.

Secondly - When shooting things for personal use, I am finding that the reds, especially on pale white guys are way over the top. Through some troubleshooting, I get the feeling that it is a combination of TV settings and the export to DVD settings, but I was wondering if anyone else has come across this in the camera? What could be causing this redness? The problem exists on the default camera settings, but more so on the 5DMKII Abel Cine camera settings.

Thanks again for all your help

[Leonard Levy]

Rowan, I've never noticed a problem with Red's in particular. I don't use the Abel Cine looks but i have seen them and they didn't look especially Red, so you might check the monitor you are looking at stuff on, or post some images.
For useable video out of the box , outside of the matrix settings I often use Std5 with the gamma at - 4, Blacks at - 5 and the saturation somewhere around high Sat + or - depending on the picture.

There are lots of matrix numbers out there and god knows how people figure that stuff out because they are all over the map yet often produce similar pictures. My own values are

R-G + 64
R-B - 10
G-R + 5
G-B 0
B-R - 5
B-G - 21

[Rowan Jones]

Thank you very much for your help Leonard.

Is there a site that you use for picture profile settings, or have you just played with it and use your own?

[Leonard Levy]

I came up with it using a DXC chart and vectorscope. Its very tricky stuff that's why all the recommended settings are so wildly different. This one might be a little red for you though.

[Dennis Hingsberg]

For what its worth on my F3 that I use to own, I also shot with Nikons and always noticed RED in the footage when shooting to internal SXS cards.

It drove me nuts and I always had to apply a slight curve to RGB curves to pop it out.

[Matthias Sachal]

Same here Dennis, footage always seems to have a warmish tone to it. Always gotta give it a slight push into the green highlights to make it neutral, but only on SXS.