Default Video Settings in FS700 Question

S

SGM

Active member
I'm curious on everyones thoughts on this.

My journey of making and starting my feature soon, next week to be exact, is making me understand that maybe Picture Profiles are not for me. I'm also told by reliable sources that you can do more harm than good by doing PP settings, especially if you're not too knowledgeable of the settings, etc.

I'm curious on:

1) Who has shot footage straight out of the box, meaning using the factory setting to shoot? And do you shoot default setting?

2) Any of your own or any factory setting clips via YouTube or Vimeo that you can link here?

3) What are the pro's and con's of shooting straight out of the box compared to PP? Or is it more personal choice? If personal choice, I'm going to leave the PP settings for a future project down the road, not for my feature which I have limited time until shooting starts. (I'm not color grading, maybe lowering saturation slightly and bringing black downs a tiny, tiny bit - other than that, no color grading, only filters via FCP X like "cool tones", etc)

I use most shallow depth of field lenses for my visuals so the "video look" isn't too much of a concern for me. My main concern is noise, artifacts, aliasing and lack of dynamic range.

And random question: The default video settings have how many stops of Dynamic Range built it? Does it not matter if not color grading?
 
I ask because on another board, my helpful friend posted this: "If I'm not heading for a grade or I'm handing my footage over to some unknown I'll turn off the picture profiles and shoot as is.

Shooting in overcast conditions and using a flat profile is going to give you headaches."

Rather than bothering them (it's been a headache with all of my questions with the limited time I have to get the pre-production visuals ready) I figured I'd give it a crack here and get your thoughts, etc.
 
hmmmm...I've never seen footage, straight out of the camera, that didn't need some kind of adjustment. Generally, the footage needs the pedestal adjusted. If the cinematographer did things properly, exposure was pinned to the highlights, meaning some adjustment (in post)down towards pedestal is needed. If the image was shot flat, saturation and possibly contrast need work. The more adjustment that's needed in post, the greater the chance of introducing noise and other artifacts. So, keeping a grade to the minimum is best...but, there's always SOMETHING that needs to be timed or graded. IMHO, shooting with default settings is not oiptimizing the camera range and capability. Correcting this in post is rather of a band-aid.
 
I think it's a fair point that PPs are complex, and there are things in there which I don't understand... messing with some of that stuff can cause subtle problems that you don't catch until too late.

However that doesn't mean that you can't make some adjustments in the parts of the PPs which make sense. For example using Cine gammas is highly recommended, and I don't want too much artificial sharpening, so I have a PP which is all the default settings, except:

CAMMA: CINE1
MODE: TYPE: CINEMA
LEVEL: 8
DETAIL: -4

I also have a few others where I've adjusted contrast by playing with black gamma and black level.

P.S. This excellent article (2 pages) shows the dynamic range available in the various cine gammas:

http://provideocoalition.com/aadams/story/cameras_sony_fs700_dynamic_range_presentation
 
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