FS-100 Picture Profiles

Stephen Mick

Stephen Mick

Totally Usable
I had a few minutes before I headed out the door, so I grabbed my DSC Splash chart and shot a series of clips of the pre-loaded Picture Profiles. The first five are the pre-loaded settings, and the last one is mine, cooked up based on what I was seeing on screen.

This was shot with a Nikon 50mm f1.8 Lens.

I'm not considering this a scientific test, but take from it what you will. If I can find a way to upload the original ProResHQ version, I will. Probably later tonight.


 
Thanks for the clip, Stephen. I noticed that you did your test with an underwater version of the DSC chart. Does this chart measure out the same as the traditional DSC color chart. In other words, is there any kind of color "bias" built into an underwater chart vs. a regular one?
 
thxdave said:
Thanks for the clip, Stephen. I noticed that you did your test with an underwater version of the DSC chart. Does this chart measure out the same as the traditional DSC color chart. In other words, is there any kind of color "bias" built into an underwater chart vs. a regular one?
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Not that I'm aware of. It's simply coated to be water-resistant.
 
Thank you for the new footage! :)

So you prefer ITU709 over Cinetone 1?

Just found this video: http://www.vimeo.com/groups/fs100/videos/24667975

There is a knee option when using cinetone.
Knee Auto seems to bring down the whites below 255 without adding any highlight detail
Manual Knee seems to clip with a brighter white.
 
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Steven, what are your thought of this cam compared to the af100. I know they have different features and strengthes, but do you feel more comfortable shooting the Fs100? And if so why?
 
FelixGER said:
Thank you for the new footage! :)

So you prefer ITU709 over Cinetone 1?

Just found this video: http://www.vimeo.com/groups/fs100/videos/24667975

There is a knee option when using cinetone.
Knee Auto seems to bring down the whites below 255 without adding any highlight detail
Manual Knee seems to clip with a brighter white.
Click to expand...

I can't say which I "prefer" quite yet. I need some more time to get to know all of the different settings, and to do some additional shooting.
 
maranfilms said:
Steven, what are your thought of this cam compared to the af100. I know they have different features and strengthes, but do you feel more comfortable shooting the Fs100? And if so why?
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Well, since I've been using Panasonic cameras for a few years now, I'm obviously more comfortable shooting with the AF-100. But again, I've had the FS-100 for all of two days, and over time, I'm sure I'll get just as comfortable with the Sony.

What I can say is that so far, they're pretty comparable, and each has a feature I wish the other one had. The FS-100 has "expanded focus." The AF-100 has a waveform monitor.

But let's face it… There's really just no way around sensor size and sensitivity, and the FS-100 totally owns in those areas.
 
Yeah, what is funny to me is I *KNOW* the settings in my AF100 now, but I just was dialing in the settings on the FS100 and it's so different, I'm going to have to set up my 7D again and play around with both at the same time. I *LIKE* the look out of my 7D, always have, so for me, that is the first thing I did with the AF100, and THEN I dialed in the AF100 where I wish the 7D was better and got to the settings I like. With the FS100, the same thing is going to happen.

Where I am at a loss is how to set the knee. I've never had that option so I think I am going to need to set up some scenes with tricky highlights and play around with it to see what I am really getting. Given you can control the slope AND the knee point.
 
I'm having a bit of trouble with the manual knee setting
If I set it to auto, it seems to clip the highlights too abruptly, but when I set the manual knee point to 105% and slop to -5, the whole highlight area seems to get bigger (but smoother) and at the same time blowing out some of the mids

has anyone found a good neutral setting that seems like a safe zone?
 
knee point 95% seems to make highlights get too big, in my unscientific test
I kept it at 95% and set the slope to -5 and it seems to soften the bright highlights, but I don't know if it's preserving the information in those reduced areas
 
This provides a great explanation of the knee function (and the rest of the picture profile categories):

http://www.sony-asia.com/microsite/professional/hdv/pdf/HVR-Z7_S270Tutorial_e7.pdf

Question...do any of you push the black level up really high? Seems to get the most info in the shadows for post grading, so I tried it maxed at +15, and it feels wrong but seems to work well for grading. Reminds me of the Technicolor cinestyle for canon . What other settings has anyone found that's best for grading?
 
Texas Jones said:
This provides a great explanation of the knee function (and the rest of the picture profile categories):

http://www.sony-asia.com/microsite/professional/hdv/pdf/HVR-Z7_S270Tutorial_e7.pdf

Question...do any of you push the black level up really high? Seems to get the most info in the shadows for post grading, so I tried it maxed at +15, and it feels wrong but seems to work well for grading. Reminds me of the Technicolor cinestyle for canon . What other settings has anyone found that's best for grading?
Click to expand...

I've been experimenting with picture profiles and my waveform myself, and it seems like the black level of the onboard LCD is a bit too low so things can tend to look a bit higher contrast on the onboard than on my TVlogic 5.6" LCD after calibrating to color bars. Also I definitely like the look of black gamma set to high and +7 and only wish it would go a little higher and that there would also be further gamma adjustments. I do like the look of cranking up the black level to +10 or +15 partly because it gives that nice low contrast, soft look that sometimes comes from a bit of veiling glare. Also after dealing with DSLRS and even still with AVCHD where it is often a big issue for some workflows it is nice to be able to be safe and know blacks won't get clipped in post unless absolutely on purpose.

As for picture profiles in general. As expected, all gamma modes besides cinematone 1/2 have some level of highlight color shifting and unnatural looking highlight gamma and clipping. Even cinematone 1 color matrix seems to have a bit of color shifting in near-clipped highlights, so I've found cinematone 1 gamma with cinematone 2 matrix to be my preferred combination so far. Also the color depth option is definitely an interesting one, I've been experimenting with maxing out RGBCMY color depth all at +7 so far I really like the look, it actually seems to do a lot to keep colors truer through the exposure range, and perhaps even keep saturated colors from clipping early. I would probably use +7 color depth with color level turned down a bit since it really pushes saturation a bit. From what I've seen so far, though +7 color depth with ~-2 color level and cinematone 2 seems to have really natural colors and handles mixed color temperature very well. Next step is I'll have to use proper lighting and point the camera at my color chart and see what the vectorscope says about it

As for knee, it seems like a blessing and a curse. From what I can see, if you want the most natural highlight rolloff, the best option is cinematone 1 with knee basically off (manual, 105%, slope 0). As expected, knee does some crazy stuff since it overrides the gamma curve and introduces a hard angle which will always look pretty unnatural if you have any kind of gradient that covers that luma level. I rolled through lots of knee options while looking at a waveform and some combinations arent totally terrible, but I would definitely be very careful with knee since it has the potential to destroy the upper 30% of your luma range beyond repair. The hard angle of the gamma curve was generally always pretty visible when looking at gradients created by light falling off along a wall, you can decide where it is from 75-105% and it only looks good at 105% since its basically invisible there. On the other hand, it looks like all the gamma curves use superwhite >100%, which I'd always be careful of especially since I know some NLEs like to hard clip illegal white levels. Knee seems to be the only way to limit your white level for any gamma curve, and I've found that when using cinematone 1, setting knee at 75%, +1 gives a relatively subtle effect and squeezes highlights into <100% with white right at 100% without sacrificing any highlight latitude.

I've been shooting with the AF100 a lot as well, and so far the look I'm seeing from the FS100 is generally nicer and I like the picture profile options better. With the AF100 you're stuck with Cine V if you want to minimize hard clipping and highlight color shifting, and even then you really need to turn down saturation to avoid those issues further. The lack of expanded focus on the AF100 really kills me every time I use it, and the wfm/vectorscope is nice but its rather small and not well labeled. It may be an unfair comparison though since the AF100 package I shoot with is not mine and between the lens it has and the lack of expanded focus or external monitor focusing really just comes down to trying to get it on the mediocre built in lcd with evf dtl and hoping really hard that it is fairly sharp, whereas my FS100 kit has my tvlogic monitor which adds a wfm and really nice focus assist options.
 
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thanks for your valuable input, I'm trying your settings now and it seems to give me that nice low contrast image that I can grade more easily
previously I was using the ITU 709 gamma and the PRO color matrix, but your suggestion seems to give me a better image
 
Anyone have any luck with a profile that reduces posterization in the sky? I had a chance to grab a few clips with an fs100 and the posterization was definitely there, ugly.
 
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