I want the one closest to reality. People should see an animal (that's the sort of video i do) in it's true color. IMO
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AG-DVX200 4K Large-Sensor Handheld Camcorder
- Thread starter Screenforme
- Start date
Vaughan Wood
Well-known member
Yes Barry, what you've shown is part of my problem. If you have another go you should be able to get rid of the orange and keep the ball red.
Also the 3rd girl suddenly looks like she's been through an spray tan booth with that orange 'glow', another problem we often have with dance concerts!
As a matter of record I've had this problem with school concerts mixing my HC-X1000 with the AG-AC160/130 combo and having pink tee shirts go orange (with the X1000), but it wasn't as bad and I could fix it.
This one's got me though, it's too hard, but it does show how similar the camera science is between the DVx200 and it's predecessor.
Cheers,
Vaughan
True North
Well-known member
Grade choices
Grade choices
The girls from left to right numbered 1 to 4
Girl #1 -the 2nd grade looks better
Girl #2 - the 1st grade looks better - the 2nd grade on this girl looks strange - orange'ish tint
Girl #3 - the 2nd grade sort of looks better but I am not crazy about either
Girl #4 - I slightly prefer the 1st grade but both grades are decent.
No one has mentioned the sky yet, but to me it almost looks purple in the second grade.
Grade choices
The girls from left to right numbered 1 to 4
Girl #1 -the 2nd grade looks better
Girl #2 - the 1st grade looks better - the 2nd grade on this girl looks strange - orange'ish tint
Girl #3 - the 2nd grade sort of looks better but I am not crazy about either
Girl #4 - I slightly prefer the 1st grade but both grades are decent.
No one has mentioned the sky yet, but to me it almost looks purple in the second grade.
Barry_Green
Moderator
The picture itself looks like that. It's not the camera adding that gritty grain, it's the source image.
No grading -- I'm just fiddling with internal color controls. This was a first stab at it.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Depends on how hot you're exposing it. If you overexpose it some of the color channels will clip. Lighted signs changing color is a classic case of at least one of the chroma channels being clipped. I can't say for certain that's what's happening here, but I'd suspect it is.
The two videos were shot in completely auto mode. One would think, that in this day and age of highly sophisticated camera electronics, provision would be made for the possibility of clipping in auto mode. In addition, with the camera's ability to "paint an image" why does Panasonic not provide a decent "baked in look" for its default scene file? Is the average user equipped to correctly set up their own baked in look? The manual indicates a whole myriad of combinations which are baffling to all but the cognoscenti!
Barry_Green
Moderator
If you shoot a largely dark area with a small percentage of the frame showing a glowing sign, you should expect overexposure on the sign. How does the camera know if you're intending to expose for the sign, or for the much larger dark area around it? That is pretty much the definition of a worst-case scenario.
Of course, if you wanted the sign to be most accurately rendered, you could have simply used the "area" function to tell the camera to concentrate its exposure on the sign itself, and I would suspect you would have gotten much better results.
I cannot answer any "why" questions; the reasoning for their decisions takes place in the factory and is not made available to outsiders.
But I can say this -- I took the time to set up the color with a professional chart, trying to get as accurate a color representation as possible. I then compared the results against the "baked in" look that you and others were complaining about. Those results are posted here earlier in this thread. And you want to know the funny part? Well, I'll let the comments speak for themselves. These are the comments I received on the pictures, edited to specify which picture was the new one and which was the Panasonic default scene file:
Based on those reactions, I would hardly say that the scene file 1 is any sort of "disaster"; people prefer it (generally) over a theoretically color-accurate grade (note: I didn't adjust saturation or contrast or gamma or any other parameter, I just set the color vectors in the boxes on the vectorscope).
The conclusion? There's no accounting for taste. A good-looking scene file is a matter of personal preference.
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Barry_Green
Moderator
What can I say, other than "patience please"? I've spent the last few months of my life working on The DVX200 Book, which is around 250+ pages of extreme de-bafflement (or, at least, I hope it will be), which explains every single function in fairly excruciating detail. It should be released this month. It will be a free download to all DVX200 buyers. Hopefully it will empower you to be able to tailor the camera's performance to deliver what you are looking for.
Second, I am working on some alternative scene files. You may like them better, or maybe not, because (as said above) a preference in scene files seems to be highly subjective. I encourage other owners to develop their own scene file recipes as well, and share them here.
slidemaster
Well-known member
Truely adding value to the purchase. Thank you Barry and Panasonic!
Mike Harvey
Veteran
This is why I tell people to never let a computer algorithm make their creative decisions for them. No camera can know what to expose for unless you tell it.
Bassman2003
Veteran
Barry, is this a difference between the consumer and broadcast sides of the company? My PX270 still to this day floors me with the color/image it produces. I am admittedly a tweaker by nature and I have a custom setup which emphasizes accuracy but overall the skin tones are amazing with this camera. If I remember, the base scene file was not bad at all. How could the DVX200 be so, "different"?
Barry_Green
Moderator
I can't say exactly why. The development teams were certainly different, and there are other factors that have me again urging patience...
Greg Smith
Veteran
Just to be clear, I was misquoted slightly in the first of the five user quotations in reply #1970 -- I actually strongly preferred the "tweaked" picture in almost every way compared to the original, and the other things I said there were in support of that opinion.
Can you share the specific changes to settings you made for that comparison? I have an opportunity to try out the camera in a major way in the field tomorrow (not a critical production, but some good subject matter to practice with), and would like to start from the best base possible. Thanks. I'm sure the book will have more detail about the procedure and I'm looking forward to that. Doing in without a built-in vectorscope is a bit tedious, however.
- Greg
Can you share the specific changes to settings you made for that comparison? I have an opportunity to try out the camera in a major way in the field tomorrow (not a critical production, but some good subject matter to practice with), and would like to start from the best base possible. Thanks. I'm sure the book will have more detail about the procedure and I'm looking forward to that. Doing in without a built-in vectorscope is a bit tedious, however.
- Greg
Barry_Green
Moderator
I think I quoted you accurately; the top picture was the tweaked picture; the bottom one was the original default Scene File 1. Your comments showed a strong preference for the bottom one. Is that not correct?
Those settings are lost in the ether, as I have continued refining it. There are things that I can say that might explain why, except that I can't say them, so all I can say is... patience please. But there is a built-in vectorscope; it's not great, but it's in there...
Greg Smith
Veteran
Yeah, you fooled me. I ignored the "in no particular order" part and assumed they were before-and-after. So yes, it's the original that I preferred.
I'll continue to have fun moving along my more subjective path until you are able to share!
- Greg
I'll continue to have fun moving along my more subjective path until you are able to share!
- Greg
Okay, from all of this I still do no understand what happened to make the camera come up with an image like the one here. My workflow was the same as when I have used an AF100A or a GH4. I lit the scene, I had the talent hold a white paper to his face. I zoomed the camera onto the white paper and pushed the white balance button while in Scene 1 and in preset B. Does the picture look okay or not?
I don't think it does. It looks ugly and mostly because of the color, so what was the operator error here, if it wasn't the camera's fault.
and here are two pictures from an orchestra shoot. The first one is the from the GH4. Looks pretty good to me. The one below if from the DVX200. They do look different. I could see that in the viewfinders at the time, but there was no way I could make the DVX200 look like the GH4....
I don't think it does. It looks ugly and mostly because of the color, so what was the operator error here, if it wasn't the camera's fault.and here are two pictures from an orchestra shoot. The first one is the from the GH4. Looks pretty good to me. The one below if from the DVX200. They do look different. I could see that in the viewfinders at the time, but there was no way I could make the DVX200 look like the GH4....
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