AF100 Shadow Blocking - What's the Problem?

Nate Haustein

Nate Haustein

Well-known member
I shot some footage the other day for a quick spot promoting a musical performance. Used the AF100, EOS lenses, and lit with kino-flos. Basic setup, nothing crazy. This was recorded with the AVCHD onto SDHC cards and I was using the Marvel's Cine preset (on second look, I think this takes too much color out of the image).


I brought the footage into Final Cut X, converted to ProRes, and did some very subtle color correction - dropped the mids a touch and added back some saturation. Looking more closely, however, I saw a problem:


I'm seeing shadow blocking in nearly all of the shots if I even so much as touch them with any type of filter. A subtle vignette filter magnified the problem. I've attached a few screen grabs to illustrate the issue (I upped the brightness just a little bit in quicktime to highlight it a bit more).


What is causing this? Is it normal? Is there a problem with my camera color preset? Would something like a Ki Pro remedy this sort of thing? Any thoughts are appreciated, thanks.

View attachment 47042 View attachment 47040 View attachment 47043 View attachment 47041
 
Wow that footage is FLAT.

Crush the blacks to try and save what you did with the ped in the preset.
 
I agree – my first thought was a messed up pedestal. Finished the project and it turned out fine (crushed the black like you recommended), but I definitely need to find a new preset next time. I enjoyed using Marvels Cine with 7D, but AF100 seems to be a different animal.

Would the pedestal setting be causing that strange shadow blocking? Here were the settings:

Detail: -6
V Detail: -6
Coring: -4
Chroma: -4
Phase: -2
Master Ped: -2
Gamma: Cine-Like D
Matrix: Norm 2

Thanks very much for your input, I do appreciate it.
 
Most of those settings are pretty good, Norm 2 is good for matrix, but in order to reduce noise further try switching Gamma from Cine-Like D to CINE-LIKE V, or for the least amount of noise to B.PRESS

And as Shooter suggested, turn Master Ped down a bit to darken the blacks. Default or even -2 I find is very flat. I like the Ped down at -7 or even lower, maybe someone else can suggest a Ped setting that works for them.
 
Would using an external recorder such as the Ninja, Nanoflash, etc. help reduce the blockiness in the shadows?
 
I did a few more tests, this time with a different, richer camera preset, and I can certainly see a difference in the blocking. I'm trying to get out of the habit of shooting super "flat" and then "fixing" the color in post. A little wiggle room is nice, but no reason to screw up the picture so much in the first place. Thanks all.
 
Those stills seem a little strange to me. I just shot some footage using the exact same settings and it doesn't seem anywhere near that flat.
 
He lightened the still to display the issue better.

I also am against the "magic bullet" approach to presets.

What you shot and what he shot are different scenes, lights, lenses etc...so it is probable / likely that the same preset setting will look different.
 
I upped the brightness a little bit in the grabs to make the blocking more apparent as it was my main concern in the original post. Below are the stills from the final program which are more near what was shot. The blacks seemed to be fine in exposure, but the strange artifacts were still appearing. It is possible that my settings were off...but I believe DRS was set to 0.


original-2.jpgoriginal-1.jpg
 
Ah ok, I seemed to have missed the part where you said you lightened the image in QT. That looks normal. I do think an external recorder would probably help in this case, but I'm not sure if it's worth it.

It seems to be in this test:
http://vimeo.com/25060362

However, the motion of subject matter is probably a key factor.
 
Indeed, the only thing it would do is make the noise slightly more finite and easier to remove in post. But it would be very marginal.

I'm trying to replicate your results with a similar clip and even when brightening the image substantially, I don't get as much noise in the blacks. So, I'm not sure what the issue is.
 
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