AC160 Black levels washed out and color undersaturated - share your scene setting?

L

littlefish

Member
Anyone else have this issue? With the default setting on the 160 (F1) the blacks are washed out sitting at about 8% rather than 0. Reds and yellows are generally OK, but Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta are far from the vectorscope targets and look undersaturated as I would expect from the scope. The F3 setting looks nice, blacks are at 0, but red and yellows are oversaturated, beyond the vectorscope targets. But I'm guessing with the AVCHD color space that some reds would be oversaturated as I've seen with DSLR footage, and HDV as well.

I am no engineer, but a friend of mine (a retired broadcast engineer) said I really needed an engineer to use the proper charts and adjust the blacks, color matrix and flares. Good engineers are hard to come by in our area. I realize that painting a camera for a particular look may be project related, but I was wondering if anyone already had this done with a generally good overall setting and might share their scene file setting for others to benefit.
 
Hi

I shot my first two weddings on F1 and had the same issue!! The groom's black jacket looked distinctly grey!! Colour saturation was poor too. Yes, the F3 setting is way better but a bit too much chroma...so far this is what I have changed the F3 settings to and replaced my F1 setting.
Detail : +2
Vertical Detail : 0 (someone said this introduces noise???)
Detail Coring : +2
Chroma Level : dropped from +4 to +3
Master Pedestal : -1
AutoIris : 0 (you can adjust this on the iris wheel when required)
Gamma : BPRESS
Matrix : Norm 2 (It's supposed to be Norm 1 in NTSC countries but we are PAL)
Knee : Auto
Skin Detail : Definately Off!!!

I leave Chroma Phase (A and B) at zero but cranking them plus would be good for stuff like sunsets

Everything else is pretty much left at default for now. These settings seem to work well both outdoors and indoors!!

So far these are the ones that seem to suit my shooting the best but it would be interesting to see what the vectorscopes say!!! It would be great to share your settings or comments too!!!

Download this PDF from panasonic it's VERY useful : http://www.filmrocks.com/pdf/AG_HMC150SceneFileHandbook.pdf

Chris
 
Wow, Chris... Thank you so much for letting people know about the Panasonic PDF.

I have a rock band concert w/ five musicians to do Saturday nite.

Lots of red, blue, green flashing lights and a ceiling mirror ball to worry about.

I have no clue how to set up for this but maybe some of the answers will be found in the pdf.
 
At least with the PDF you have some sort of idea of what the settings do which starts heading us in the right direction! With a rock band you are likely to have a lot of very bright areas and a lot of very dark areas..it might be an idea to tun on DRS but I wouldn't set it to anything but "1" It will help bring out the detail a lot better as it supposedly increases the dynamic range. The file above I also use for wedding dancing where there are coloured lights and the rest BUT I do use a video light too which helps the camera. Ideally if you have a second camera let it run at a fixed wide setting from the back, high up so you have the wide establishing shot to fall back on..if I do performance events my main cam is set up on a tripod at the back and gives me a wide shot of the stage and the performers and also I run my VideoMic on one channel and then an XLR feed from the mixing desk. Second cam is upfront and concentrates on individual performers..audio from this (from another Rode) is used to make sync easy with the main wide footage. Not an easy gig to do but it will be fun!!! Even on autoiris you can still adjust iris on the wheel if the footage looks like it's blown out or way too dark!!

Chris
 
Thanks Chris. I downloaded the PDF, very helpful. Panasonic should have this modified for each camera. I sent our 160 off to an engineer in another Province that does Panasonic warranty work to check the default F1 setting. I can't believe this is intentional on Panasonics part. Or maybe this is the new look for 2012 ;)
I appreciate you sharing your settings. Have you had a chance to shoot a DSC chip chart with those settings? We don't have one, not practical for us at 1k or so. But I was hoping to find a local colleague with one that I could do some mods and then see how they look on a vectorscope/waveform, once the camera is back.
 
Hi Folks,

So I am now back at work and after reading the initial post, I thought, hmm, very weird. So I grabbed a camera, a DSC chart, and a scope. Black is at about 1.4% not 8%. Green and Cyan does not hi the targets as observed but they don't on the majority of the cameras that are out there in this price range. (this is an engineering decision as it can introduce unwanted noise.)

So to the OP, reset the user file and the scene files. Black Balance the camera, white balance the camera, check the reading. If it is still at 8%, you should send your camera into a PANASONIC service center, there is a problem that no amount of fiddling with the scene files will fix.

Good luck!

Jan
 
Hey Jan,
Welcome back and thanks so much for jumping in. I white/black balance religiously, well maybe white balance more, but all that was done before the few shoots we have done (and tests) with the 160P. I sent the camera off yesterday, but hopefully the engineer from the company we purchased it from will be able to fix the issue. It sounds like some others are having the same problem with washed out black at the least.

Ironically the F3 scene file setting does give nice rich blacks and more saturated colors.
 
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Hi,

If your experience with the camera, or anyone else's experience is different than mine, PANASONIC should take a look at it. Please contact the vendor that you sent it to and tell him that he should send it to Panasonic for the fix.

Best,

Jan
 
Updated post:
The engineer took a quick look before sending it out east. Apparently the colours were very undersaturated and for some reason the camera came with the setup at 7.5 rather than 0.

I'm still curious how important the $300.00 zoom/focus upgrade would be.
 
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