FS7: another Sony Look or not thread

You're not knocking my work as they are camera tests only in my living room . She had no powder or make up applied other than many hours before . More critically she was just lit with a small Led . Nothing I would use on a shoot.
. male shots were jobs and he is far younger .
 
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Ok Lenny. I'll take a gander... but have to say I'm not sure this is a fair test... obviously the scenes with the two dudes were nicely lit and seem to have a more controlled dyn range than the other scene with the lady. I prefer the last 3 samples and will venture:

1st woman - Custom using Hypergamma
2nd woman - Custom using slog (really bad green cast on your first posting - 2nd "grade" better
3rd & 4th dudes - Cine EI slog3cine or perhaps Custom using std gamma w/ a sat boost
5th woman - Cine EI slog3cine
 
starcentral said:
At risk of sounding like an ass, the skin tones and skin rendition on the woman are really awful. Well at least I don't like them. They look nothing like the male images. The image of the woman to me seem so wooden, crunchy gradations, plastic skin, sony look.

I'm again very sorry to knock your work.
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Interesting. Exactly opposite for me. The dude's skin tones look horrible, I much prefer the skin tones in the lady's shots. I'm not sure but tanning salon may have something to do with it...

Having said that, I don't think any of the screen grabs has what I associate with "Sony look", which to me is mostly about how the details are rendered, not so much about the colors (which can be tweaked in post to some degree anyway). Since the screen grabs are of rather poor resolution, part of the possible "Sony look" is not visible.
 
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OK , Now that Sam has logged in I'm ready to reveal the facts. But first the why:

Ever since this camera came out I have read post after post about how horrible the traditional "Sony Look" is- how its nuclear, plastic and especially how you can’t get good flesh tones with it. Now I am very excited about Slog and Cine EI - but I’ve shot traditional video for many years with plenty of results I’m proud of. Moreover I’ve even sometimes preferred custom std709 to CINE EI. So I wondered whether I was just a hack with old man eyes, or was the hated nuclear “Sony Look” just a wee bit overstated. From the way people here talk I would expect that the hated “Sony Look” would stand out like a red flag. - Well apparently it doesn’t at least not for Flesh tones.

In both cases I made the CINE EI shot the control and made minor color tweaks to match on the other shots. Post was old fashioned FCP7. Also the gamma in FCP was apparently lighter before I made stills and posted on the web, so I agree that they are all a little contrasty and especially oversaturated.

The Man:
He’s a game designer and these were shot in the same room on different days because the client wanted to go back. We wanted a similar look.
#1 is Custom Std 709 shot on a SONY F3.
#2 is FS7 CINE EI Slog3 with extended 0-109% LC709typeA LUT burned in camera.
The CINE EI shot was underexposed a stop because I didn’t like the flesh tone at 60% (where I would normally put it) , however I raised it up to 60 in Post . Only other adjustments were for black level.

On the custom shot I made some minor adjustments in the FCP 3 way color corrector to get closer to the skin tone and used very small shadow/highlight filter corrections to basically add a little knee and toe to get a closer match. It was quite close to begin with a p[leasing skin tone I thought.w
All those corrections are things that are simple and typically I would do them on any shot , so I don’t think it invalidates the test. If something is nuclear you shouldn’t be able to fix it with a couple of mouse clicks.


The girl:
I remembered 3 test shots I did last November in my living room by a window with a small 10” cheap diffused LED as added punch and my friend Christina holding cards. The window and the LED were not perfectly matched and the window light was bounced off my neighbors house so had green foliage in it + was bouncing off the warm walls in the house . Not an ideal test but I wanted to try comparing a few different modes on the camera. It was not the way I would light a real interview and I would have put fresh powder on the model for a real shoot.
- The first shot is Slog3Custom mode Matrix off with LC709A added in post .
- The second is Custom Hypergamma 7.
- The last is CINE EI Slog3 with LC709A burned in camera (I also shot it SLog3 for Post LUT but they looked exactly the same.)

I don’t recall whether the color balance on the Custom shots was exactly the same as the 5600 CINE EI. Close but not the same as i recall because the light wasn’t exactly 5600 and it was mixed.

The Cine EI shot was my control. I did raise the level because it was a little under and dropped the black . Maybe I tweaked the SAT a touch. Then I tried to match the flesh tone of with the other 2 shots .

The Hypergamma shot was easiest. The color temp was warmer but the flesh tone was basically pretty good, so I just cooled it off and took a little green out, also used the shadow highlight filter.


The Slog Custom required a lot more work to get a similar fleshtone and if you look carefully you’ll see that there is more overall change to the back of the room.

What did I learn:

First viewers here were all over the map. It was obviously not clear which ones were the dreaded “SONY LOOK” . Some people did hit the mark on a few of them though they usually misstook a Custom for a CINE on another. Dennis I’m afraid had the worst marks (sorry Pal ) and missed them all. He did catch that the first shot of the man was a different camera, but i wouldn’t call Custom Std gamma on an F3 truly different at all. - So overall:
Not all Sony Custom need be nuclear, plastic or horrible and even could look similar to CINE EI. Keep in mind though that I use a homemade Matrix that I created largely for flesh tones and I don't necessarily like other matrixes as much.

However I did feel that the CINE EI color was the truest in general and seemed the least likely to need correction. It just felt balanced in a way I preferred and there is a pleasant way it desaturates with brightness that is harder to achieve. I felt the custom shots were easier to push the color around in which could give you nastier flesh tones more easily, but I need to test that in the future. (There are also many reasons to use CINE EI & SLog3 for dynamic range and in more colorful saturated environments so I intend to keep working at mastering it for burn in. )

The Custom std and hypergamma needed a little roll off in highlight to bring down shiny skin, (though I usually get that from powder & makeup anyway) while the SLOG handled that more easily.( That was expected)

The Custom Slog3 felt like its color was more troublesome and harder to get balanced at least with a 3 way color in FCP. Perhaps if I was more used to it I would have had better tools, but that is what Alister Chapman and others have suggested.

What I didn’t test yet is why I have sometimes not liked Custom w extended LC709 in the field when at full exposure due to its looking flat or compressed. Unfortunately I didn’t record those tests and will try to do so in the future. I’ll also try Art Ada,’s ideas about using the Varicam LUT with the LC709A gamut to solve that problem.

I also did some tests outdoors BTW which I hope to also post soon. Here Slog is more important because you have a wider dynamic range, especially for backlit scenes.

Also as a general caveat - these were tests for very controlled interview shots. A scene with wider dynamic range or changing dynamic range would likely show off the advantage of Slog3 more.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Hope you guys learned something also - I did for sure. Signing off for now -

Lenny Levy
 
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Well... hope I haven't made a fool of myself. However what flaws?

The conclusion for me is not that Custom is equiv to Cine EI , nor that CINE EI isn't generally superior ( I think it is ) , nor certainly not that any of these these examples are fabulous, but simply that the constant rhetoric here about about Custom flesh tones being nuclear and universally horrible has to be a tad overblown if with a few tweaks you can't always tell them apart.

i.e. Lighten up there's more than one way to use this camera. Nothing more.
 
We are all fools, no worries there.
vil2_joker.gif


I think a good test would be to shoot the same scene in each mode (much like I did with the color charts) and then show them in their exact out of camera look. For slogs you would have to add a Sony LUT, either LC709 or LC709A, and possibly the 709(800) LUT, and for sh1ts and giggles throw a Kodak film emulation LUT in there as well.

Part II of the test then is to tweak/grade or do whatever one feels is necessary to get the image to a point that is "acceptable". This might employ secret post sauce, LUTs, or manual grade by hand. But the person doing this must try it with all images from the camera; i.e. HG7 or 8, custom mode slog2/sgamut, cineEI mode slog3/sgamut3.cine, cineEI mode slog2/sgamut.

What I wonder is with Davinci's camera color matching feature what would happen if you tried matching custom HG7 to one of the slogs graded? Would HG magically transform or is that 2 stops difference or matrix really going to make it a big deal? It might also depend on the scene itself of course.

I still think Sony footage looks BEST thrown through Kodak's film emulation LUT which is subtle but goes a long way at removing the sony look. LC709A doesn't remove the sony look in my opinion, it just copies ARRI's REC709 color which is not the same as the final image you might get if you grade Log from the ARRI.

Anyway, who has the time to bother with all of these tests.
 
Just definitively shows there are a multitude of ways to use the camera to fit in people's specific workflows or preferred ways of working and still get results.
 
I don't think this is really any more useful than those "Can you pick the difference between the $500 lens and the $5000 lens?!" video tests. Under certain circumstances, you might not be able to tell any difference at all, but there are certain situations that bad lenses won't hold up and a good lens will... or more importantly: a good lens might have smoother focus/iris/zoom, less breathing, be more operationally friendly (AC markings, geared for follow focus, etc.)

There are just so many aspects of a tool beyond the end result that you see. In this case, you admitted that CineEI was easier to get what you thought were truer colors and that it was more troublesome to get similar results out of Custom footage... That's the difference that matters to me. If one process takes more work to get to a desirable end result--even if the end results are almost indistinguishable from each other--isn't that the method you'd want to use?

The same could be said as a reason why many people prefer the Alexa, it doesn't matter if another camera could emulate the look or be corrected to match, if the Alexa nails the look they want straight out of the camera, that's what they'll use.
 
Josh,
Actually i agree with you 100% but think you missed the point off the quiz. It was a response to the large number of people on this forum who put down the nuclear, plastic Sony look and vow to never use it as if its the plague. I do think it would be akin to someone telling you that your $500 Rokinon or Zeiss ZF, or Contax was a POS compared to the great results they get from their Leica Cine Primes. Or someone telling you that your FS7 even in Cine EI was just junk compared to an Alexa. Sure I'd rather have an Amira with a set of Cooke primes, but the trade offs in my world (which include cost) don't make it the best tool for most of my jobs.

I'd rather pull focus with a 100mm cine lens than any DSLR lens you can name. However I'm shooting fast moving run and gun at a trade show this week. It ain't going on my reel but it pays the bills and I'm very happy to be shooting custom with the Sony 18-200. I'd get fired if I showed up with a huge Cooke zoom.
The FS7 is not the greatest camera ever made, but it puts a lot of arrows in your quiver. Custom is one of those and it doesn't have to always look terrible ( though in the wrong situation it definitely can).

Lenny Levy
 
Lenilenapi said:
The conclusion for me is not that Custom is equiv to Cine EI , nor that CINE EI isn't generally superior ( I think it is ) , nor certainly not that any of these these examples are fabulous, but simply that the constant rhetoric here about about Custom flesh tones being nuclear and universally horrible has to be a tad overblown if with a few tweaks you can't always tell them apart.

i.e. Lighten up there's more than one way to use this camera. Nothing more.
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I think you have a point that custom is usiversally horrible is an over reaching statement.

There are various technical 'truths' - many going back to the 8bit EX1 and FCP7.

Plastic skin tone.

Various sony profiles have a knee where there is lack of contrast above a certain IRE (the curve rolls off)

Anyone who exposed so that skin was in this region got 'plastic' skin - exposing skin in this zone was operator error.

And this plastic look was when the image was presented straight off the camera.

With an 8bit camera and crappy grading tools like FCP7* colour that plastic could not really be corrected.

Today with the 10bit FS7 and decent tools (Davinci) it should be entirely possible to add that contrast back in with a suitable luma curve.

Nuclear highlights

Sony camera have a habit of clipping one colour channel before another in certain Custom configurations.

This could be seen often in shifted skies, 'nuclear' sunlit grass/flowers in the background of shots, and green or orange dough nuts around clipped point sources (internal halogens, the setting sun)

Again these curves were designed for the operator to protect the highlights.

Today we have the Luma/Sat curve in Davinci and these issues are trivial to grade out.

Of course you should shoot with zebras using one of these settings so should not have to grade them out because you should had closed the iris enough not not get them in the first place - operator error.

--

So Sony cameras have always functioned fine as long as you have known how they were designed to be used. protect the highlights, keep skin out of the Knee.

All good.

But 'modern shooting' with minimal lights may present situations where those two requirements (knee, highlight protection) may seriously impinge on your shoot.

I, personally, coming from a background of shooting raw stills with huge DR/latitude, and also very powerful easily portable 'strobe' flashes, have found those two limitations very hard to deal with as my video shooting has ended up having to be much more lit/formalised than the raw stills I am used to shooting and colouring.

Coming from 'ETTR school' the zonal protection (ETTL?) needed to make a Custom Sony camera look right was a very steep learning curve for me.

Having worked a little with the C100, C300 I would happen to add that really those cameras are equally bad as Sony cameras or 90% as bad maybe having slightly fewer colour shifts at the top end.

Simply 8bit baked is pretty horrible to work with but can look fine as long as you have enough control and dicipline on set to put exposure exactly where you need it to be.

S


*A side note on FCP7 - one reason that a 'threw it away' is those colour shifts on export. I dont know if anyone ever really got that worked out but the shifts really made it a non functioning bit of software to me with regard to colour.
 
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Notes on the shot of the lady and my phrase 'impinge' on the shoot.

Len I think you are experienced at making good choices in compromised situations - doubtless from years of operating.

Now to me the source is far too small, presenting unpleasant shadows on her face, which are not flattering and also somewhat age-ing, and also very 'fake' shadows on the background (near the chair) and nasty speculars on items on the table (pen mug, metabones)

This is an example of a 'compromised' shoot (typical todays commercial high paced work) - access only to one small (and poor CRI) light.

Ideally you would, as you have alluded, have used a larger source for your lighting rig - it is not your skill-set that is compromised it is the resource set available for that shoot.

Given this single light I would have probably attempted to soften it somewhat, either by bouncing or diffusion. But I would have taken a big hit on its power probably 3-4 stops, which I would have then had to open up iris or add gain - this would have lead to a more flattering portrait, more realistic background, but also presented a far higher probability of the window 'going nuclear'

Using such an approach we would really see the difference between the profiles I guess in that the Slog would start to sing once you really put the DR to the test.

I think you made the right choice - keeping the light bright but unpleasant - but it is not a choice I find easy to make when I know how it 'should' be done, as no doubt, do you.

On my recent doco shoot luggage constraints kept me to having a single LED for 'emergencies' - I slipped some 'net curtain' into my bag and actually lit all the interviews not with any fixture at all, but by taping the net curtain over windows and using the window as key; such is my personal allergy to the harsh lighting effect of small fixtures.

S
 
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F&V RV300 ringlight + softbox is cheap, tiny, travel friendly and great looking for these setups.

Alternately, I usually now have a cheap £100 Chinese Icelight ripoff in my tripod bag with a tiny reversing light stand as it doesn't add any more bulk to the kit, is rechargeable, bi-colour and throws out a nice soft light. In a pinch it also serves as a nice gentle ambient fill
 
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