a7s custom picture profile

bill totolo

bill totolo

Veteran
I guess it's time to start a new thread instead of hijacking an existing one. (Here's the old thread).
This is my formula for the A7s. It was made by using the vector scope on the Odyssey 7Q combined with a DSC Labs Chroma DuMonde color chart.

Here are some samples:

Daylight/Sunset:
https://vimeo.com/139061000

Concert Lighting:
https://vimeo.com/141518704

This has only been balanced against daylight, I have not tested under Tungsten yet.
Care should be taken to make accurate exposures.

Black Level -4
Gamma: Cine 4
Black Gamma: Middle; Level -1
Knee: Auto>Auto Set Max Point 100%>Sensitivity Mid
Color Mode: ITU709 Matrix
Saturation -2
Color Phase -1
Color Depth:
R 0
G +1
B +2
C 0
M 0
Y +1
Detail -2 (*Concert footage shot at -3 Detail)
Adjust: Mode: Manual; V/H Balance 0; B/W Balance Type3; Limit 7; Crispning 0; Hi-Light Detail 0

Some more concert footage because it looks cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gsEHVkcNc8

 
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This has peaked my interest! We've been using our A7S quite a bit and SLOG stuff looks noisy and generally not very good. I am very used to SLOG in post from other Sony cameras we have, so something must be wrong. Which Picture Profile you using?
Thx
 
Nice work Bill!

That DSCLabs Chroma DuMonde chart is big bucks. Always wanted to get one. is yours a jr. or standard?

I'm going to load this profile and try it out. I'm sure it will be nice with 5500K LED panels too. I hardly use tungsten anymore. Kino's and LED's are taking me over.
 
LeavingTheCandy said:
This has peaked my interest! We've been using our A7S quite a bit and SLOG stuff looks noisy and generally not very good. I am very used to SLOG in post from other Sony cameras we have, so something must be wrong. Which Picture Profile you using?
Thx
Click to expand...

The A7s has a green push in Slog2 with S-Gamut The new A7rii fixed that and the new A7s mkii will also have the much improved color science.
 
Erik Naso said:
Nice work Bill!

That DSCLabs Chroma DuMonde chart is big bucks. Always wanted to get one. is yours a jr. or standard?

I'm going to load this profile and try it out. I'm sure it will be nice with 5500K LED panels too. I hardly use tungsten anymore. Kino's and LED's are taking me over.
Click to expand...

Erik,Specifically it is a FrontBox Series - HD Professional w/ 6 primary colors + Skin Tone, it's considerabley less expensive, but invaluable in setting up cameras for me.

You can see it here:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/465701-REG/DSC_Labs_FBP_FrontBox_Pro_Test_Chart.html

And here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7nELIDZJfw

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7nELIDZJfw" data-cke-saved-href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7nELIDZJfw">
 
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Erik,

I too have the Datacolor SpyderChecker but for shading I need something that hits targets in a vector scope which the Frontbox series does.
I haven't tested it against the 12+4 but the one I have hasn't disappointed me yet. I've used it on Varicam 2700, F3, A7s, and it's great for matching cameras.
 
One thing to remember while changing the Color Depth.

Going to the + on any color makes that color deeper. It doesn't change the hue so RED will be darker as you go up the scale like +10 and as you go down to -10 the color will be lighter. You wont see this change anything on the vectorscope.

Unfortunately you can't change the amount of Red or Blue in the Magenta tone alone, or in the others. Yellow & Cyan. The camera doesn't have a bias setting like that. If it did then the camera could be calibrated almost to perfection.

Color Phase will take all the colors and shift them together. Helps but it also can mess things up. Fix three colors but the other three are now off. Makes you a little crazy! I've been experimenting a lot in the last few days with my color charts I have. I blocked all the colors except the six primary colors that the vectorscope sees. That really helps clean up the scope so you see whats going on. In almost every setting the A7s takes Magenta hard towards Red. The other colors seem closer but Magenta is off the charts! No way to correct it just have to deal with it. Thats were it gets tricky. We all have a diffrent way of perceiving color so no wrong or right just what you perceive as correct. I'm going for skin tone first out of the camera as thats what I see as the most important. The trick is getting this as close as possible but it's hard to do without being able to adjust the bias for M,Y,C.

I'm interested to hear how others work with this limitation to get the most accurate color from the A7s or just cameras in general.

Tomorrow my DSC Labs FrontBox 12+4 arrives. I'm very curious to see how diffrent it will be from sing my DataColor SpyderCHECKR chart with the isolated six colors. Cant wait!
 
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Increasing Color Depth for red upto +7 helps a little, to delay the much to early color clipping/shifting of the A7S from red to orange. Really, it's so annoying, just try to film a red traffic light, hotel- or McD-Logo at night... And yes, it makes the red much deeper on cost of brightness. Is there any method on the A7S (or A7RII....) to delay the red clipping/shifting without increasing color depth too much?
 
Beware of changing the color depths - it dramatically increases the noise in the respective colors at high ISO's. It doesn't matter if you increase or decrease the color depth, the noise increases all the same. Admittedly, a small change of 1 or 2 might be tolerable, but there will definitely be an increase in noise at high ISO's. After experimenting with them, I've come to the conclusion that they're best left at 0. They're really the in-camera equivalent of secondary color correction. That's something that's best done in post production, where you have far more control over it.
 
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Agreed, this a really nice pp, works for me better than anything I've tried yet. I wonder if these same settings work as well on the a7s ii?
 
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Jody new a7s profile 2.jpg

Ron with new a7s profile.jpg

Whiney.jpg

All three ungraded.

Very pleased with this profile. Skin looks great. Made some suble changes but for the most part this is as good as I've seen from the a7s.

Cheers to Bill!!!
 
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