Does anyone shoot with +1 Sharpness?

J

Jean Dantes

Well-known member
When using 'Superflat' and 'Cinestyle', it is recommended to turn sharpness all the way down to zero. However, I was just wondering if anyone uses these picture-styles with a sharpness of +1. If yes, do you think it looks better?
 
cinestyle seems to soften things a bit, yes. Guess you could do that, just make sure you keep an eye out for potential moire
 
The point of shooting Cinestyle is to have a flat image where you can add contrast back in to your liking. It's meant to be graded in post. That's why the contrast is low. Jeeze people don't you know anything. J/K
 
draven4 said:
The point of shooting Cinestyle is to have a flat image where you can add contrast back in to your liking. It's meant to be graded in post. That's why the contrast is low. Jeeze people don't you know anything. J/K
Click to expand...

I totally understand that. In fact that was how I was shooting before I tried adjusting the settings, with default values and grading in post. It just made sense to me that unless I was going to alter my color tones from the color in the preset, it made more sense to saturate in camera and not have to grade at all. I also found that adding a little more contrast in camera to the Cinestyle preset was all I needed instead of the LUT curve most of the time. The only thing I need to do most of the time is just lower the black level a tad and I think it looks nice.

It's just a matter of doing in camera rather than in grading when possible.
 
draven4 said:
The point of shooting Cinestyle is to have a flat image where you can add contrast back in to your liking. It's meant to be graded in post. That's why the contrast is low. Jeeze people don't you know anything. J/K
Click to expand...

Why add it in post if you can get it rite in camera?
 
So you have room for adjustment. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. Keep in mind people think things look great on set but when you get into the edit bay it can be a big difference to what you thought you were seeing. If you don't leave room in the image for adjustment then you could end up screwing up your footage.
 
I'm not a huge fan or artificial sharpness but the difference between that and grading is that it tends to be easier to color correct and alter the curve in most NLEs than to add subtle sharpness to the image. I'm always tweaking the CC in Avid but I've never tried to mess with sharpening unless I was using real finishing software. If you've got a workflow that includes a dedicated finishing program, then it makes sense to turn the sharpness all the way down but for many of us, I can understand the desire to sharpen just a bit in camera.

As far as grading goes, I think it's a bit more of a debate with this H264 compression as it seems there is a real danger in potentially losing color info and perhaps adding noise when you're using such a flat profile. If one was shooting in a more robust codec like DVCPro, then it would be a no brainer but H264 is so damn limited. I've only just started playing with the Canon DSLRs but I find that I go with the flatter stuff if I'm in a situation where I need as much lattitude as possible. For over cast days however or in controlled lighting situations where I'm not having to worry about blow-outs, I find myself opting for something like "faithful" or "nuetral" since I can get close to what in camera and not add compression to something I'm going to push a lot.

I'm not saying my method is the "best" way to do this as I really don't have enough experience yet to say what works and what doesn't. I just know that this codec is a lot more limited in post than what I got out of the HVX200 or even what I got from the Ex1.
 
better to add sharpness before picture gets degraded by codec cause when you add sharpness in post you can get codec blocky artifacts.
 
I never use a "sharpening" filter anyway. Increasing contrast in post does it for me. I personally like the way turning sharpness all the way down and contrast all the way down in the picture profile looks. To me it looks more filmlike.
 
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