Color Phase biased in factory settings?

moldcad

moldcad

Veteran
In my front yard, I have a very good object for testing color fidelity of various PPs of my cameras: a wooden shed with tar paper roof. The boards are natural brownish, and - depending on the actual daylight - can adopt a slightly yellowish or reddish tint; also the dark-brown roof can have some magenta cast to it...

Anyway, here is what I have found testing various PPs for my FS100: no matter what other settings are, unless I turn Color Phase all the way down (to -7), both the wooden boards and the roof have definitely too much red/magenta to them.

So, I dare say the factory picture settings of this camera are definitely biased towards red/magenta ! This should always be kept in mind when adjusting your PPs.. . Almost as important as setting your WB right!
 
Someone with more knowledge should correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the color balancing of the
cameras is usually set to make decent skin tones out of the box. The settings for this may not work well
for hot objects that emit a lot of near infra red like a tar paper roof. At any rate, as you change the type of
red objects you may need to change the matrix to be more pleasing.
 
Dustin Moore said:
I feel like the color balancing of the
cameras is usually set to make decent skin tones out of the box.
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This should be true, but with the FS100 we know all too well how reddish the skin tones can be without taking special care of them in our PPs. This, plus far from perfect highlights rolloff, make people faces one of the most challenging subject for an average FS100 user.

My wooden shed with tar-paper roof example above only proves the point that the factory hue is definitely off, towards the red tones, and must be shifted in the opposite direction. Of course you're right that both the skin and wood or tar paper are "hot" objects, so IR contamination may play its role here, too - but even if it does, it's not as bad as it's on the original EX1 (before the R revision).

That said, due to the S35 sensor's ability to create shallow DOF we tend to use wide apertures - this leads to heavy use of external ND filtering - and that in turn can amplify the IR contamination effect.
 
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moldcad said:
... - this leads to heavy use of external ND filtering - and that in turn can amplify the IR contamination effect.
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Yeah, I was thinking about IR since a while, so I bit the bullet and ordered a special filter from Heliopan (called "BLF 1x, LW -0") today, that cuts IR and UV in one filter .

digital-video_diagramm.gif

I let you guys know what I find, when it arrives.

Frank
 
I tested IR and non IR with the nano and basically it's polluted to all hell and back if you aren't using some sort of hot mirror. The differences were obvious at just a glance at the image and in the parade.

IMO you absolutely need to have IR NDs, and not just for this camera but all of them if you're doing heavy ND.
Ive since stopped using my regular NDs and now have a 1.2 and 1.8. Goin to get a 2.1 and 1.5 soon.
 
Wonder why there is no adequate IR filter in the camera in the first place.
I guess there is one, along with the OLP, but it seems not to be enough.

I´m no fan of stacking extra glass layers in front of my lens.

Frank
 
Postmaster said:
Wonder why there is no adequate IR filter in the camera in the first place.
I guess there is one, along with the OLP, but it seems not to be enough.

I´m no fan of stacking extra glass layers in front of my lens.

Frank
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I actually think that it may be adequate if you're only NDing up to 0.9ish (probably the threshold) but beyond that there's probably a sacrifice somewhere that I'm not educated enough to know of. So, you've got to do it yourself. It's not such a big deal, to me anyway: no different on any other digital camera and I was kind of silly to think that it would be.

Even shooting GH2 knock-around, having the Tiffen IR ND combo in front of the lens I can see the difference. Plus, it's typically just one which isn't too bad a deal.

I forgot that you need much more on the FS100... Is there even an IR ND that goes above a 2.1??? You'd definitely have to stack if you want to shoot 2.8.
 
Like Frank, I'm no fan of stacking lots of filters in front of the lens - but as soon as the weather here gets better and I have some time for playing around, I'll try to combine my Tiffen T1 filter that I bought specifically for my EX1, with the Heliopan Vari ND. Will shoot the "hot" wooden shed, and post some comparisons of results...
 
Postmaster said:
Would love to see some of those "day and night" samples if possible Kholi.

Thanks, Frank
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I'll have to get back to the FS100 to do something more specific/extended, but I should be able to next week. Was planning on playing with the FS700 instead, will see what's up in a few days.
 
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