Color Rendition, Sony and Canon?

G

Gene Sung

Veteran
I'm very interested in the upcoming Sony FS700. I'm coming from a Canon background and am just tired of all their crippled cameras. I know that Sony has huge advantages in terms of resolution, low light and less rolling shutter.


However, is it me, or does it seem like Canon has an edge when it comes to color? After looking at numerous clips online, it seems that both companies take a different approach when it comes to rendering colors. Tell me if you think this is true.


1) It seems like Canon footage is more warm with reds and oranges, while Sony tends to skew more towards the greens. Many people say that Canon has that warm look baked in, but it seems like Sony has a green look that is equally as baked in.


2) Does it seem like the colors on the Canons have a bit more range? Some of the Sony stuff just seems a touch more monochromatic towards greens? Not sure if I'm just seeing things. Sony colors kind of remind me of the GH2.


3) I also seem to notice that the Sony's sometimes have a distinct shift towards purple. See attached pic. The purple cast really bothers me.


3) Is it pretty easy to tweak and grade the FS100 / 700 colors to look like the Canons if you want?


Maybe I'm just accustomed to Canon's colors so I'm just more drawn towards them.


But yeah, I feel like Sony's are a much stronger cameras in many ways, but the color thing has thrown me for a bit of a loop, and I would appreciate any feedback
 

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The purple is the result of heavy color grading.

Here is the video where that far left image is from, without the color grade.

 
gene_can_sing said:
1) It seems like Canon footage is more warm with reds and oranges, while Sony tends to skew more towards the greens. Many people say that Canon has that warm look baked in, but it seems like Sony has a green look that is equally as baked in.
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Out of the box I don't think they're great on either camera, personally. Sony and Panasonic skew green, Canon definitely skews orange. If you want accurate of the box you're looking at something more Nikonish or Alexaish.

2) Does it seem like the colors on the Canons have a bit more range? Some of the Sony stuff just seems a touch more monochromatic towards greens? Not sure if I'm just seeing things. Sony colors kind of remind me of the GH2.
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After thinking about it, I do think that GH2 and FS100 sort of share a similar look, but I do not think that any of the Canon cameras sub C300 have more range color-wise.
3) I also seem to notice that the Sony's sometimes have a distinct shift towards purple. See attached pic. The purple cast really bothers me.
Click to expand...

Have to be careful to pin the color on the camera, because some of that could be IR contamination, or mostly how people grade/color. MOre on this in a moment..
3) Is it pretty easy to tweak and grade the FS100 / 700 colors to look like the Canons if you want?
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I think so. A good colorist can closely match any look, maybe not exacts but close. If it's shot properly and you're already headed toward that look in camera (with sub RAW workflows). You could start out by using Canon glass, because it has its own distinct look.
But yeah, I feel like Sony's are a much stronger cameras in many ways, but the color thing has thrown me for a bit of a loop, and I would appreciate any feedback
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COming from someone that's never owned a Sony camera, and hasn't liked any of them (I had a fleeting interest in the EX1 + Adapter combo specifically for lowlight, but after using it became uninterested in Sony altogether. You can quote me here stating that I think the Sony look is as thin as a sheet of paper. I had used the FS100 before it was released, thought it was "ok" at best, and never returned to it until now.

I revisited the FS100 because I used a beta/pre-release FS700 for a few days, just running around and testing and was really impressed with how the footage looked despite beta/pre-release flaws. Now, the weird thing is that I lost all interest in the FS700 when I saw the FS700 demo video. No offense to anyone that produced the footage, and slow-mo is cool, but none of those things being shown were doing the job in interesting me.

The grades were very off-putting, some of the shot choices very dull, so on and so forth.

I'm glad I got to use the camera for myself or I would've totally passed it up as another Sony camera. And, I'm glad that I liked it enough to try the FS100 out again.

I think what you trade out are ergonomics (FS100 is probably the most awkward camera I've ever used, but it's kinda neat in its own way), a certain "thinness" to the image, and a few other quirks like confusing picture profiles--longtime owners are still figuring it out right this second. What you gain is extremely clean footage at lower ISOs even when the camera's being starved of light, sharp lowlight footage even after denoising, and a pretty damned strong implementation of AVCHD. This is with the FS100, the FS700 is basically the steroidal version of the FS100.

Looking around on vimeo, there really isn't much encouraging footage for this camera... James Miller has some neat stuff going on, as long as you keep in mind that the color's all "looks" that he enjoys or likes, and that they don't exactly represent what's coming out of camera or where you can go with it. Just... ignore the heavy and awkward grades in people's footage...

That's my pence, anyway.
 
Thanks guys for the clarification on the purple. I wasn't aware that it was a stylistic choice. To me, it looks a lot better without the purple, but each to his own as it was a stylistic choice.

Do you guys feel that on the Sony FS cameras, there is a certain color bias that it's drawn towards? I almost feel that Sony's are more drawn towards the cool palette (greens and blues) while Canon is more drawn towards the warm palette (Red and oranges). Am I just imagining this?

Overall, I feel that the Sony offerings are much stronger than anything Canon has, but yeah... I think I've just been conditioned to Canon's colors, but seems like nothing a bit of grading can't change.
 
I can only speak for the shot I did (the rusty exhaust pipes on that rack).
I shot this about noon, but was cutting it to a morning scene with purplish mood, hence the grading.
The original shot is fine.


I found this here pretty interesting:

 
Kholi said:
Looking around on vimeo, there really isn't much encouraging footage for this camera... .
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I am so ready to get the FS100 and the only thing that hold me back is the quote above.
Please excuse my ignorance but is the fs 100 has a better color range then my Canon 7D?
 
I just watched like crazy...... Whole thing shot on a 7D..... the camera should be the very last thing you obsess over. Lighting, composition, framing, these things all take precedence. I think we get caught up in the hype too much.

I love my FS100, it does exactly what it needs to. Ask yourself if your clients and your audience will ever notice the gained benefits of one camera versus another after everything is said and done.
 
Nostalgic said:
I am so ready to get the FS100 and the only thing that hold me back is the quote above.
Please excuse my ignorance but is the fs 100 has a better color range then my Canon 7D?
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Just in my opinion, and anyone feel free to disagree, yes. After exploring the FS100 now and being a previous Canon 7D/5D owner, I'd say that the range is far greater, but nailing it out of camera can be a chore. However, I feel like nailing color on 7D/5D is also a chore, often skin looks pasty and unflattering with those cameras.

I'm getting a pretty nice saturation and balance out of the FS100, but it does need some finessing in camera and after. Honestly... I think most digital images need it, anyway. Alexa's probably the closest to "right" out there, in my eyes.

On the Vimeo topic, I spent a decent amount of time hunting and could not for the life of me find anything consistently impressive from it, not like I could a few other cameras. But hands on, it is definitely great.
 
Yes, I think what Kholi said about the Sony FS cameras and the GH2 having a similar look is what is bothering me, because no matter how great the GH2 fan boys pump up that camera, I just hate the look that comes out of it. It just has this really dull, un-inspired look.

I'm thinking that the Sony FS stuff does look better than the GH2, especially the stuff that James Miller has shot, but not sure if that counts completely because he light wacks everything. And yes, it's hard to find much footage of the Sony FS cameras on Vimeo. Not sure why, but I wish there was more.

Such a hard choice as the FS cameras are far more robust than the Canons in pretty much every way, but the Canons just do color really well IMO, and that's a huge factor for me.
 
gene_can_sing said:
Yes, I think what Kholi said about the Sony FS cameras and the GH2 having a similar look is what is bothering me, because no matter how great the GH2 fan boys pump up that camera, I just hate the look that comes out of it. It just has this really dull, un-inspired look.

I'm thinking that the Sony FS stuff does look better than the GH2, especially the stuff that James Miller has shot, but not sure if that counts completely because he light wacks everything. And yes, it's hard to find much footage of the Sony FS cameras on Vimeo. Not sure why, but I wish there was more.

Such a hard choice as the FS cameras are far more robust than the Canons in pretty much every way, but the Canons just do color really well IMO, and that's a huge factor for me.
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I'm personally a fan of the GH2 image, more so than Canon's, but that's after adjusting for the green bias in post, etc. If you're looking for a camera than handles skin nicely out of the box, I think Nikon's what you want. Canon color is just too hollow to me, it lacks depth when dealing with skin, which is represented by several different pigments of color.

At the end of the day you're either going for the look in camera or you're okay with massaging in post.

I will say that I think the Magic Cam (BMC) is going to be the next best thing in the color rendition department under Alexa. That's a huge vote, and I'm not saying I'm right about it, but I think that it's going to sit right under Alexa. The reason I say this is because BMD's coming from a post workflow perspective and they MUST understand what real humans look like. Tuning backward from their color correction suite toward an image that has 13 stops of DR...

Well, like I said, it's a hunch. I can see it in the early footage from John, though. Even the raw stuff simply gamma and lift corrected, it's almost there.
 
Postmaster said:
I can only speak for the shot I did (the rusty exhaust pipes on that rack).
I shot this about noon, but was cutting it to a morning scene with purplish mood, hence the grading.
The original shot is fine.
Click to expand...

For sure. No disrespect/harm meant at all. Of everything in that video, your stuff looked the most natural.

I found this here pretty interesting:

Click to expand...

Epic consistently has the most depth out of each test. And, it should, a real [close to] raw workflow will always look better IMO. The others look like they were color penciled in comparison.
 
Hey Kholi,

You mentioned that you thought Sony's look is as "Thin as paper." How exactly do you define that?

----------

For the FS owners, can you re-tweak the RGB settings internally on the Sony FS cameras so it skews away from the greens and more towards the reds in camera, before post? I do tend to favor a warm palette.

I'm a major post tweaker so I always tweak it afterwards, but it is nice if it starts off a bit closer to my aesthetic to begin with
 
I agree that sometimes Sony's default colors look a little artificial. But I think the FS100 is easy to get in gear. Here are some lightly graded screen grabs that, I think, had some very rich colors...

SP-1.jpg

SP-2.jpg
 
Searched the internet high and low and found some FS-100 stuff that had really nice colors that I was really happy with. Maybe I was just overseeing the green initially, because these shots had none of that.

So unless Magic Lantern works a Jesus Christ level miracle (better resolution, Clean HDMI, higher frame rates) on the 5D3, I'm counting down until the FS-700 :)
 
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