Settings for 'clean' footage

S

simple

Member
Hi Everyone...

I am film student and starting to plan how I will be shooting my graduation project. I am considering using the XH-A1 [which I am an of] and am wondering how best to set up the camera so that the recorded video is flat. I want settings which will give me the maximum lattitude for post production. Which of the settings are infact kinds of effects that can be added in post and which should be added in camera. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Sam
 
I just bought this camera and I can tell you that the settings are fairly flat out of the box. I have been shooting with the default settings exclusively. The raw footage has a washed out look but when I drop it in final cut and drop the blacks down, the colors come alive. I could be wrong but I am under the impression that there is a wide dynamic range by default. It sort of reminds me of working in film colorspace if you are familiar with that (Log vs. Linear color).

Because color correcting is so easy in FCP, I am not going to tweak my in camera settings yet. I want to do more tests but my guess is default gives you a lot of lattitude.
 
The colors you have out of the box on the A1 is REALLY flat and washed out.

It's definitely suggested that you have a little more colour than the basic preset as it's easier to desaturate rather than pumping in colour in post. If you can, do as much of your colour work in camera then do small tweaks in post.

Check out dvinfo.net's custom preset library.

I highly suggest the VIVIDRGB preset by Stephen Dempsey. Creates a solid, realistic image as a base.
 
Thanks for the responses so far. I'll give them a try...

Looking through the instruction manual for the Panavision Genisus it is interesting to see that-

"Panavision strongly recommends leaving the paint funtions off. Putting them on will change the color rendition of the camera and limit the latitude of the image"

I was wondering if the same might not apply on this slightly more humble camera, assuming I have as much time as I need to mess around in post.

Of course you can't turn the settings "OFF" as such. But maybe each setting has an optimum level for providing posibilities in post.
 
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