FS700 Noise Test Across Cinegammas

[nyvz]

"The shadow areas that get denoised by AVCHD also tend to lose real detail unfortunately. This is yet another reason to expose to the right and keep your detail out of the shadows/noise if you are shooting AVCHD."

Hi, Noah--

Forgive my lack of understanding, but I'm trying to reconcile the concepts behind these two statements.

In the first, you are recommending exposing as much as possible without clipping highlights (whether via ISO, lighting as much as possible, or opening the aperture). This point I understand...in fact, I often actually overexpose "point" highlights in most of my shots (as long as they are not present in the skin tones).

It is the second point that I'm having trouble understanding...how to keep "detail out of the shadows" if one is also exposing as much as possible (whether via ISO, lighting as much as possible, or opening the aperture). Increasing exposure will bring out detail in the shadows, yes?

What am I missing here? Thanks!

I don't think you're missing anything. I was just suggesting that shooting highly compressed AVCHD gives yet another reason to make sure to "expose to the right". Both statements are saying the same thing, just offering additional reasons/evidence to support it.

 

[nyvz]

That makes a lot of sense actually. I was going about it all wrong. The FS700 monitor seems to be too dark in the lows and too bright in the highlights so I always feel like I am over exposing even by going with the histogram. I guess I should probably take a much needed personal shooting session with the camera to see what I can get out of it.

I'm curious about your nLog vs. the Abelcine set of profiles, especially the "log" version they posted. Where exactly would your two differ in terms of approach and what you're trying to achieve out of the camera versus what they are going with?

I haven't used abelcine's nexlog pp, but I did take a look at what they suggest. Their PP really pushes as far as possible to make things washed out and log-looking, but I'm a little skeptical of the value of that since there is no LUT offered and you would never deliver images that look like that, and it would be difficult to properly judge exposure and color monitoring with such a profile. Also I would probably never use the "standard" gamma curve they use when cine curves are available as they really arent designed for natural looking images, they are generally designed for a broadcast video look, which usually means small overexposure latitude and harsh color shifted highlights, etc. Such gamma curves like REC709/Standard are really designed to give you punchy images with little thought given to post-maniuplation, so you sort of have to nail your exposure since there is only about 3stops of overexposure range.

My nLog settings, on the other hand, are not really designed for log workflows, just to maximize dynamic and deliver natural images with as much highlight room as possible. It gives you a relatively low contrast image, but not really washed out or overly desaturated. I have shot several things in nLog and have been quite happy with them even without any color grading.

Personally I have been meaning to test other gamma curves more thoroughly, but its hard to suggest or use anything other than CINE4 since it gives about 5stops of overexposure latitude above middle grey, while most of the other gammas only give about 3-4.

 

[AndrewSP]

I haven't used abelcine's nexlog pp, but I did take a look at what they suggest. Their PP really pushes as far as possible to make things washed out and log-looking, but I'm a little skeptical of the value of that since there is no LUT offered and you would never deliver images that look like that, and it would be difficult to properly judge exposure and color monitoring with such a profile. Also I would probably never use the "standard" gamma curve they use when cine curves are available as they really arent designed for natural looking images, they are generally designed for a broadcast video look, which usually means small overexposure latitude and harsh color shifted highlights, etc. Such gamma curves like REC709/Standard are really designed to give you punchy images with little thought given to post-maniuplation, so you sort of have to nail your exposure since there is only about 3stops of overexposure range.

My nLog settings, on the other hand, are not really designed for log workflows, just to maximize dynamic and deliver natural images with as much highlight room as possible. It gives you a relatively low contrast image, but not really washed out or overly desaturated. I have shot several things in nLog and have been quite happy with them even without any color grading.

Personally I have been meaning to test other gamma curves more thoroughly, but its hard to suggest or use anything other than CINE4 since it gives about 5stops of overexposure latitude above middle grey, while most of the other gammas only give about 3-4.

Over the next few days I'm going to try both your sand abelcines, but your approach makes a lot more sense to me. I have seen some great stuff out of the abelcine nexlog, one in particular that caught my eye was https://vimeo.com/54525116
He seemed able to get some great results and overall it looks really solid. However, your profile seems like it would prevent me from screwing up my exposure too bad considering all we have for a monitor at the moment is a DP4. The onboard monitor on the FS700 is so disappointing, the first time I shot it I couldn't believe how off it was in judging exposure.

I've only been using CINE2 for the majority of my work, but I'm eager to shoot with CINE4 just because of the extra latitude.

Out of curiosity, what do you use for transcode from the internal codec? 5DtoRGB Batch with 601, Full Range Lum and everything else set at default seems to give me pretty decent results, but I'm wondering if you have another suggestion. I've been debating getting an external recorder like a hyper shuttle, something inexpensive as a stop-gap until 4K comes out so we at least are able to shoot it when we need to.

Thanks for your responses, the in-depth and detailed answers from you are really great and to be honest, are pretty eye opening.

 

[nyvz]

Over the next few days I'm going to try both your sand abelcines, but your approach makes a lot more sense to me. I have seen some great stuff out of the abelcine nexlog, one in particular that caught my eye was https://vimeo.com/54525116
He seemed able to get some great results and overall it looks really solid. However, your profile seems like it would prevent me from screwing up my exposure too bad considering all we have for a monitor at the moment is a DP4. The onboard monitor on the FS700 is so disappointing, the first time I shot it I couldn't believe how off it was in judging exposure.

I've only been using CINE2 for the majority of my work, but I'm eager to shoot with CINE4 just because of the extra latitude.

Out of curiosity, what do you use for transcode from the internal codec? 5DtoRGB Batch with 601, Full Range Lum and everything else set at default seems to give me pretty decent results, but I'm wondering if you have another suggestion. I've been debating getting an external recorder like a hyper shuttle, something inexpensive as a stop-gap until 4K comes out so we at least are able to shoot it when we need to.

Thanks for your responses, the in-depth and detailed answers from you are really great and to be honest, are pretty eye opening.

Cine2 would probably be my next choice since I occasionally find certain overexposed tones looking less natural than I'd like due to the knee value I use to compress cine4's superwhites, but I really do need broadcast safe whites since so many of my clients/editors use FCP which I find clips superwhites.

I'd definitely suggest everyone test for their own needs, and don't have any illusions that there is a perfect pp. There are only so many settings and though I like my nlog settings over most, I frequently tweak them for each project. There is no secret perfect answer to the fs700 pp's, but there are plenty of settings and ranges to avoid if you want natural images.