FS-100 Picture Profiles

nyvz said:
I.. also helps limit highlights to 100ire to avoid various post workflows clipping superwhites
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I have been mulling this and wondering if it is one of the 'problems'

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As for the roll off I was more referring to the 5d being better - less so the 7d (now sold)

It seems almost to be proportional to chip size - in my years as a still tog it was always a problem with APS stills cams, not really beaten until the D3 which, changed my whole approach to lighting, before the D3 it was protect protect protect,

I amy have to go back to that for this gen of motion cams

S
 
morgan_moore said:
Currently In this aspect and this aspect alone, I think the canons are better

although looking at the image above maybe they are not that good either (see the flouro light)

S
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I've been shooting with the FS100 for two or three months, and if you limit the discussion to highlight rolloff where the highlights get clipped, I find this to be true (FS100 vs 5D), but barely. I carry both cameras and I almost always shoot with the FS100 first, and even when I've thought I might have problems with rolloff in a scene, I've been able to correct it adequately in post as long as I keep the exposure as low as possible.

I almost always use gamma-cinematone1, knee 105%, slope 0, color mode cinematone2. Using standard gamma (knee 85%, slope -2) and stopping down might get you a hair more latitude. If you can carry a WFM and use Frank's black-level technique, you should be able to get a workable image far more times than not, as good as the 5D at least. And the 5D has so many other limitations it hardly seems mentioning in the same breath (Canon glass aside).

This is arguably the most challenging issue for any digital camera to deal with, and if you look at the Zacuto test you have to spend at least five times as much on a rig (f3 with s-log) before you see real improvement over either the FS100 or the Canons.
 
Like many of us here, I've shot enough test charts and stared at enough WFMs and histograms to contemplate burying my head in soft peat for a couple of years for some sort of rest and respite.

But if anything sticks in the mind, it has to be that Cinematone is absolutely NOT CineGamma, and Knee should be taken round the back of the barn and shot.

I'll now relent and understand why the F3 is more than twice the price of the FS100; the little gap between 100% and 109% was where the magic happens with the EX1. The FS100, even with a well adjusted knee and using the histogram to pull down the blacks, still leans to plasticity (thanks Sam) in highlights of the Z7 variety and clips reds before anything else. Not as bad as the AF101, but as time goes on, I'm sure the knee only affects brightness and doesn't tell the colour what's going on.

Sigh. It's like coming to terms with the Z1 image with Black Stretch. It's as good as it's going to get, so deal with it and work with it. Don't bother trying to be clever with 100-109, don't try to be clever with black gamma, just plant your blacks an inch above the ground. It's just like Frank has been telling us all this time.

So maybe, after all, the FS100 is not the sort of camera that likes to shoot 'flat'. (Okay, cue chorus of 'told you so!')

Has anyone done the opposite - put positive slope on Knee over, say, 90% - and exposed religiously for peak white on 109% on zebras? It does seem like dancing with the devil, but negative knee vs good ol' CineGamma (EX1 stylee) isn't quite getting there for me.
 
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MattDavis said:
Like many of us here, I've shot enough test charts and stared at enough WFMs and histograms to contemplate burying my head in soft peat for a couple of years for some sort of rest and respite.But if anything sticks in the mind, it has to be that Cinematone is absolutely NOT CineGamma, and Knee should be taken round the back of the barn and shot.I'll now relent and understand why the F3 is more than twice the price of the FS100; the little gap between 100% and 109% was where the magic happens with the EX1. The FS100, even with a well adjusted knee and using the histogram to pull down the blacks, still leans to plasticity (thanks Sam) in highlights of the Z7 variety and clips reds before anything else. Not as bad as the AF101, but as time goes on, I'm sure the knee only affects brightness and doesn't tell the colour what's going on.Sigh. It's like coming to terms with the Z1 image with Black Stretch. It's as good as it's going to get, so deal with it and work with it. Don't bother trying to be clever with 100-109, don't try to be clever with black gamma, just plant your blacks an inch above the ground. It's just like Frank has been telling us all this time.So maybe, after all, the FS100 is not the sort of camera that likes to shoot 'flat'. (Okay, cue chorus of 'told you so!')
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Matt, what setting do you believe gets us the best result? I happen to like Standard vs cinematone, seems to get more info into the picture.
 
Richard Allen Crook said:
I happen to like Standard vs cinematone, seems to get more info into the picture.
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The crushing, awful truth: if you turn PP off, it's really not going to destroy your picture. Not like the EX1, which really only came 'on song' with CineGammas IMHO. Even the detail settings aren't quite so critical - EX1 could rip its own picture apart with bad detail settings, and blotch out skies with bad knee and Std Gammas...

Well, like I said, I hoped to shoot fairly flat, compressing highlights and picking up shadow levels - a bit like an EX1. This isn't working out as well as I expected, because when I shoot with a flat profile and correct in post, and compare it with a more 'finished' profile, I'm not sure if I'm getting any more on the FS100 (whereas you would get more if you used, say, Technicolor on a 5D, and you get -IMHO - nicer pictures on the EX1 using the CineGammas, even if you need to nudge down the midtones.

So... I'm concurring with Postmaster: CinemaTone2 with a smidgen (teeny weeny bit) of Knee, expose for highlights using Zebras, adjust your black levels using the histogram (I don't have a monitor with a WFM).

http://frankglencairn.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/new-glencolor-picture-profiles-for-the-sony-fs100/

CinemaTone 2 can be dangerous if just slapped in - too contrasty, burying black detail down below the foundations, yes it does a broad tonal range, but they're bunched in the blacks and the whites, no beefy midtone separation. So you need the knee and the black level - and perhaps black gamma, and you need to adjust blacks like you'd adjust any other exposure control. CinemaTone 1 is like CT2 but dialled back a bit; thought I'd be on CT1, but leaning back into CT2 now.

After initial good results, I continued to play with ITU709 with Black Gamma and all sorts of knee settings, and whilst 'nice' most of the time it could bite back with colour levels - red channel clipping, mostly. Horrible. Definitely into AF101 territory.

As my experimentation goes on, Picture Profiles seem to be more personal preference in the edit suite, rather than major technical production decision. The FS100 is more Z7-school than EX1-school. Darn. I wanted an EX1 with Canon 7D glass. That isn't actually what the FS100 is, and I think the answer is "$15k" aka F3. But having said that, the FS100 is still delivering very sellable pictures...
 
Good info Matt, thanks. I guess those settings seem to be keeping with the ideology that getting it pretty close in camera in an 8bit range, especially with regards to contrast, is the way to go, only applying minor grading in post...right? Everything inside of me screams that cinematone 2 drops the mid tones waaaaay to low and further separates them from the highlights....which is very very hard to correct in post, rather than sticking with standard and creating the look in post. I'm really surprised folks are using cinematone2 for grading. My scopes show everything toward the black range including skin tones, and the extreme slope toward the highlights. I thought we all wanted a relatively neutral profile that standard offers?
 
I may be proved wrong, but my rough tests with an Xrite Colorchecker seem to show that the ITU709 and Standard profiles seem to have slightly less dynamic range. That's with charts. With images, they look absolutely fine - in a Z7 sort of way (losing a little detail in clouds, shadows fill in quickly). Doesn't have that 'luminosity. With the CineGamas, you can see the broader spread of tones leaping out sideways on the histogram. Aha, I thought, surely that's LOWER dynamic range - like you say, wa-ay too extreme. Then, as the hours rolled by, flipping between shots, scrabbling through notes, it's almost, maybe, the same dynamic range pinned over different contrast settings. Sigh. Arguing for astroturf, against astroturf, then suddenly the brain IS astroturf (c.f. Larry Miller)...

In the Z1 days, we were warned off CinemaTone, and the rule was to engage black stretch at the expense of a little noise. The EX1 came from a different design team than the Z series, and I think a lot of work went into the 'Standard' settings so it wouldn't need much tweaking for 'straight out of the box' work.

But it's the relatively noise free blacks and a high black gamma that make the CinemaTone things get interesting again. You can boost the blacks quite a bit and not get into trouble.

After all, I just want that lovely expensive S-log look of exquisitely controlled highlights, luminous skin tones, no AF100 yellow rings around dabs of tippex on people's foreheads... I don't mind jumping through a few hoops of fire to get it.
 
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Did you just post a picture profile video on Vimeo, Matt? If that's yours, kudos...very well done. (http://vimeo.com/30252203) But alas I am even more confused. it says cinema tone is more contrasted than standard or itu709...which would mean effectively that there is less dynamic range? I'm hearing you say: "cinematone adds more contrast" and then "standard has less dynamic range.". Isn't that contradictory? Sorry to be such and idiot on this, haha. And I'm not arguing, just trying to understand. :)
 
Okay did some testing: tried both Standard and Cinematone 1 imported into Premiere Cs5 and color graded. Here's what I came up with.

Standard DOES appear to give you more latitude while shooting. I see much detail in shadows and the highlights are good. When I switch to Cinematone, the midtones and shadows are pushed down toward the blacks. It gives, clearly, a more authentic representation of what you see in the naked eye. I recorded both version in different lighting scenarios and the pulled them into premiere for grading.

Here's what I found out. Even though Standard LOOKS like it's bringing more detail in the picture, it's actually just pushing the midtones up, and crushing blacks more than Cinematone does. There is also some serious noise in the midtones perhaps due to pushing the midtones higher. So when you think you're getting more info in the standard setting...you're actually getting the accurate info in the Cinematone setting and the standard is simply pushing the midtones up.

Of course this is just what I've gained from my experiments today, but I think I see what Matt is getting at. The standard seems to make a much brighter picture...adding the most information but it's a little deceiving when just looking in the monitors. Pulling the clips into an editor and color grading the stuff will show you which profile is better for grading and which is not.
 
MattDavis said:
adjust your black levels using the histogram (I don't have a monitor with a WFM).
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And in an earlier post you said:

don't try to be clever with black gamma, just plant your blacks an inch above the ground.
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If you could take a minute to explain this process I would salute you. At the moment I'm using my FS100 without an external monitor to try and see whether an external monitor is necessary. So I only have the histogram to help me with the black levels. Obviously every shot is different and so as for using the histogram when you say "plant your blacks an inch above the ground" do you mean that given a typical shot with a wide latitude you need to bring up the black levels on the histogram to a certain level? I hope my question makes sense. Maybe there is no answer and it's just a matter of experience.

Also I think I read you say somewhere else that you don't have false colour or waveform. Is that because you prefer histograms or?

Thanks
 
Hi Searcher - I use the histogram in the viewfinder, which is a bit of an approximation, but I don't like clipped blacks any more than I like clipped whites, so if using CineTones 1 & 2, I do the equivalent of Black Stretch by upping the black level so I'm comfortable there's no more detail that I want 'hiding' off the left hand edge of the histogram. Similar, I think, to FelixGER's method.

Bringing these shots into FCX, which I must relent and admit to prefering for scopes over FCP7 and PPro, I can see there's a little bit of detail left over, so hence this idea of raising the blacks too far, then nudging them back with an eye on the histogram. To me, it feels like I'm 'planting' the blacks.

As I've been working with Histograms with the EX1, and now FCX, I seem to be happier with them - and one thing Histograms do better (for me, YMMV) than WFMs, is articulate well the difference between 109% and 100% white.
 
By the way, those videos will be disappearing on Tuesday or thereabouts, as they'll hopefully be moving to their new official home. Sorry about that - I uploaded them over the weekend using the Vimeo updater, but in the lateness of the hour I neglected to switch the Vimeo visibility to OFF. But I truly appreciate the peer review!

UPDATE: Have switched them off for now. Will post back when they're installed at their new home.
 
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Richard Allen Crook said:
Here's what I found out. Even though Standard LOOKS like it's bringing more detail in the picture, it's actually just pushing the midtones up, and crushing blacks more than Cinematone does. There is also some serious noise in the midtones perhaps due to pushing the midtones higher. So when you think you're getting more info in the standard setting...you're actually getting the accurate info in the Cinematone setting and the standard is simply pushing the midtones up.
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Dude, you nailed it.

This is why I was so confused over Andy Shipsides's original findings and resultant profiles. By shooting charts, it follows that CinemaTones do pack in additional information once you bend the top and bottom bits back in again. ITU709 and Standard are really good, but my take is that this was like the best the Z7 could do, and I wanted the CineGamma look.

Quite frankly, so long as you don't blow highlights OR CHROMA (my new bete noir), and keep your shadow detail in check, the picture will be okay. Are my clients going to pay the difference between a well behaved FS100 and an F3? No. If I were making my magnum opus, I might beg borrow or cadge an F3, but a camera in the hand is worth two (or more) from the rental shop.

I really tried ITU709 as that made a 'FLAT LOOKING' picture, but I don't know if it contained more info than the CT1/2 tricks, AND it was the profile (with ITU709 colour profile) that clipped reds in the 'Duck' interview, which I re-created with the oranges. The whole point of buying the FS100 was that it wouldn't do what the AF101 does - clip reds on talking head interviews in tricky lighting situations (about 30% of my work).

Four gammas, five colour modes, approximately four black level and three knee situations in each, that's 240 scenarios to film and check on scopes, then 57,600 comparisons to judge both qualitatively and quantitatively, to categorically state which is best. "ITU709 looks good at first take, but is likely to burst your red channel unless you desaturate" would be as far as I'd go at the moment.

BTW, should have suffixed that Larry Miller skit by adding "there are five levels of pixel peeping - six if you hang out on DVinfo.net".
 
Postmaster said:
Okay, I take everything back and stand corrected. Forget what I said.
One has the knee set all the way up to blow highlights if I want, and one has the knee to 75%
GlenColor1 highlights protected:

Black Level: variable
Gamma: CinemaTone2
Black Gamma: Range = High / Level = +7
Knee: Point = 75% / Slope = 0
Color Mode: Type = CinemaTone2 / Level =8
Color Level: 0
Color Phase: +1
Color Depth: R=-2, G=-6, B=-7, C=0, M=+2, Y=+5
WB Shift = All 0
Detail = Level = +1 / Manual Set = Off

GlenColor2 highlights blowout allowed.

Black Level: variable
Gamma: CinemaTone2
Black Gamma: Range = High / Level = +7
Knee: Point = 102.5% / Slope = -1
Color Mode: Type = CinemaTone2 / Level =8
Color Level: 0
Color Phase: +1
Color Depth: R=-2, G=-6, B=-7, C=0, M=+2, Y=+5
WB Shift = All 0
Detail = Level = +1 / Manual Set = Off

What I do is:
1. Dialing in my DOF for the scene.
2. Correct the highlights with an variable ND
3. bring the black levels to zero via the "Black Level" PP setting.
.

Frank
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Somewhat of a Newbie here....
Got a couple cams a few weeks ago. I've been doing a few TV shows in studio with kit glass and no PPs yet. (just getting used to the cams as time allows.)
The image is great straight out of the cam for what I've been doing. (controlled/adjustable studio lighting) (or maybe I'm just amazed at how much better it is than the 150....)

But.... I didn't buy all the nikon glass and stuff to just shoot "as is" so it time to start experimenting.

I guess since Frank has done so much research/testing I should start with these settings. (or maybe just stick with these)

Here's the part where I sound really dumb.
Looked briefly at the manual and it says the first 2 PPs are just copies of the settings when the PP are set to off. (i.e. no changes from off to PP1 or PP2)
My question....How do I impliment Franks profile changes?
Do you just change the settings in PP1 to match Franks? or do you import a PP like with a DSLR off a disk?

Sorry for the stupid question, I've just never messed with PPs much before. (never on this cam)
 
Sadly the PPs can only be set up on camera. There's no import/export, and you can't name them.

The settings listed in the manual (i.e. the first 2 PPs are just copies of the default settings) are just the defaults; you can set all 6 PPs to whatever you want.
 
So, If I change the defaults in PP1 and 2 to franks settings, I should be good? I'm hesitatnt with changing PP3-6 because without checking, I wouldn't know which settings are different from the defaults.
Also is there a "revert to factory specs" type button in the menus? (don't recall seeing one but the cams are at work right now.)
 
Yup, go for it! I have Frank's in 1&2 (actually, I'm experimenting with making GlenColor2 use the same WB as GlenColor1), and some from Abel Cine on 3-5, and 6 just for messing around with. According to the manual (page 43; I don't have my camera handy either), there is a reset in each PP to get back to default; but really, I don't think the builtin profiles are worth worrying about too much... ;-) But if you like, just make a note of all the settings in a spreadsheet first.

FS100 manual:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachm...259-sony-nex-fs100-manual-nex-fs100manual.pdf

AbelCine's profiles:

http://blog.abelcine.com/2011/07/25/fs100-scene-files-from-abelcine/

 
I'm so new to this PP thing that it's doing my head in. Hopefully someone can help me out...

I know when I do studio shoots / corporate stuff / short films which PP I use, and I am happy with that, but for outside sport shooting, I am just in over my head, I know this camera is not the ideal choice a sports shooter would pick, but I have.

I have been using:

GlenColor2
Black Level: (basic) -2, (controlled = variable)
Gamma: CinemaTone2
Black Gamma: Range = High / Level = +7
Knee: Point = 102.5% / Slope = -1
Color Mode: Type = CinemaTone2 / Level =8
Color Level: 0
Color Phase: +1
Color Depth: R=-2, G=-6, B=-7, C=0, M=+2, Y=+5
WB Shift = All 0
Detail = Level = -7 / Manual Set = on
V/H Ballance +2
BW Ballance Type3
Limit 7
Chrispening 0
Highlight Detail 0/blockquote>

For outside shooting, here is my latest video using this profile.


*All ungraded

And for me, that just doesn't look good enough, my GH2 does a better job.
I thought maybe it could be the lenses, but I was using the FD lenses on the GH2 aswell.
I really have no idea what I need to tweak with the PP to get what I want, I have read the Z7 manual on the PP and I'm still very unaware at what to do (I will give it another read).

I have tried other PP's, like the VariCam one from AbelCine, and that just looked horrible.

The look I want is 'vibrant' and that video I posted up there ^ look's really flat to me. I know with some color correction I could get it looking a lot better, but I want to try and get it as close as I can in camera.

I tried making my own PP and that was a disaster. I will definitely read up on them more and try again, but for now, can anybody help me?
 
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