Other: Is Your Sony FX6 Soft?

[ahalpert]

S-Cinetone appears to be more clever than I first imagined, it has a great highlight roll-off, and seems ideal for low-mid dynamic range cinematic shooting where 10 bit Slog3 would yield a super thin waveform and fragility in grading. I have a PP with S-Cinetone gamma and rec709 gamut which is great for low light and is absolutely bullet proof in grading. Sony claim the S-Cinetone gamma dynamic range is 460%.

This is essentially what I do whenever the client requests a non-slog3 profile for quick color correction, except I use different specific settings. But the approach is the same - a relatively low-contrast gamma paired with accurate and saturated color out of the box. (I rarely ever blow out my color channels anyway - reflective neon vests and DJ party lights are the exceptions, perhaps? And i have a less saturated profile ready for those. I understand that when I'm using color gamut that's ready out of the box, I'm probably missing out on some hues that a wider gamut would require, but I believe those to be outliers? Most of the colors I capture, most importantly skin tones, look spot on this way.) And then the colorist need only tweak the contrast and they're there.

But I would add that slog3 doesn't look that noisy to me after the standard LUT is applied, even when you don't ETTR and whether I'm using all-intra h264 or long-gop h265 as long they're 10-bit.

 

[Andy9]

This is essentially what I do whenever the client requests a non-slog3 profile for quick color correction, except I use different specific settings.

Can I ask what those are?

 

[cyvideo]

If you think the image quality of the FX9 is noticeably better than the FX6, I'd have to disagree.

On the whole, I would agree with you. As I said, really, it is in the order of nit-picking to say either one is better. Any perceived differences could easily be done to a variety of factors. Both deliver amazing images for the price of the kit. Just think back to the F900R and its $100K price. Current cameras were beyond our wildest dreams back then.

BTW. Some interesting old camera tech chewed over on this channel:

Chris Young

 

[Doug Jensen]

I came here to escape the social media bubble of wrong think and general myths and bad advice .

Ha, ha, that one had me laughing out loud. The pot calling the kettle black. YOU are the one who brought your "wrong think and general myths and bad advice" to DVXUSER. I'll bet the folks on your social media sites got tired of your bloviating and ran you out of town on a rail. Well, your "wrong think and general myths and bad advice" won't go unchallenged here either. When you make outlandish claims and present your opinions as facts, be prepared to back them up with actual proof.

 

[Doug Jensen]

BTW. Some interesting old camera tech chewed over on this channel:

Chris, thanks for the trip down memory lane. Everything looks so old an archaic compared to what you can buy now for couple thousand bucks. I could nitpick a few things that weren't accurate, but one thing that really stood out . .

"the early history of sony getting into actual video cameras is an odd story because they weren't a major player in the video world until digital cameras came along.

WHAT??? Who do they think made most of the world's analog TV cameras in the 80's, and 90's -- not to mention Betacam? If they don't think Sony was a major player, who do they think was? Yeah, Panasonic, Ikegami, JVC, and Hitachi were all players, but the 800 pound gorilla has always been Sony long before digital came along. Also, it's a little click-baity to call these cameras "abandoned". Nobody abandoned them, they just got replaced by new and improved models. Same as every other tech.

BTW, don't you think granny had some pretty good handheld shooting skills for never having picked up a camera before!

 

[stewhem]

Just a quick comment on the "soft" thing. I've used both FX6s and FX9s on the same shoot a few times now and I'll stick with the comment I made when Doug's comparison video first appeared. Essentially, IMO the 9 is marginally, I mean marginally, more detailed IF you pixel peep BUT the 6 wins hands down with its autofocus and that can often make the 6 actually sharper. Again, I agree with Doug and Chris, both cameras are great value and quality and which you prefer will be probably be determined by the individual requirements of the shoot. You can't really go wrong with either if you know what you're doing.

 

[Doug Jensen]

Feel better now that you've gotten that off your chest? If it makes you happy, I'll concede I'm a complete asshole and not fit to participate in polite society. Yeah!! We found one point we can agree on. So, if you are able to calm yourself down and take a break from the personal attacks, maybe can we get back to the topic at hand. Let's begin with your comments about HLG3.

Anyone with an FX camera and Resolve can easily confirm HLG3 provides a far more robust image for grading than SLog3 under most circumstances. It's not rocket science..

As i mentioned before, this flies in the face of all the experts who understand HLG and S-LOG. HLG is not supposed to be graded -- that's what S-LOG is for. Even Alister Chapman, who I know you revere, has unequivocally said "My advice – don’t try to grade HLG footage." https://www.xdcam-user.com/2017/07/w...o-be-used-for/
I recommend reading the whole article. Alister is an engineer, and although we have several operational disagreements, I will say that he has a knack for explaining technology better anyone else I know. In addition, Alister and I have had face-to-face conversations about this very topic more than once and we are on common ground. And I've also had face-to-face conversations at NAB with Hugo Gaggioni, chief technology officer at Sony, about HLG. He says the same thing as Alister and me -- HLG is not designed to be graded.

So here you come along and say something completely different in multiple posts. We don't know who you are. We don't know your name. We don't know your credentials. We've never seen a single frame of video from you. And in addition to your comments about HLG, you've said several other things that are very questionable. So why should we take your comments at face value? As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Heck, I'd settle for ANY evidence. Please post some side by side test shots that show HLG3 grades better in Resolve than S-LOG3.

I know you're going to repeat that "HLG3 isn't for everyone nor every situation", and that is fine. I agree. There is no single setting on any camera that is right for every situation. So please show us some examples where it IS a better choice than S-LOG3. As you say, it's not rocket science and therefore should be easy for you to demonstrate to the rest of us that you are right.

Please show us.

 

[ahalpert]

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I really enjoy a good old-fashioned dvxuser flame war

 

[ahalpert]

Can I ask what those are?

My settings are for Sony mirrorless cameras and wouldn't wholly apply to the fx6. I don't have an FX6, I still have an FS7, on which I almost always shoot slog3/S-Gamut3.cine.

But on my fx3/a7siii/a7iv when I want to minimize color correction, I shoot slog2 with the black level turned down...can't remember how much without looking...maybe -7

And for color I use the "Movie" setting with the saturation turned up (+8 maybe?)

I have no idea what the Movie setting actually does. I just know that I prefer it to all the other built-in color settings. The color it produces is accurate and pleasing almost across the board. (If memory serves me, I discovered during testing that oranges tilt towards yellow. I'm not sure if this is intentional and is supposed to benefit skin tones but maybe it is.) But besides orange, the colors are quite accurate and I like them.

99% of the time, the dynamic range of these settings surpasses what is required for the scene. But it's pretty easy to adjust the contrast and get it where you need to go. I'd even say that that's the fun part of color correction. The painful part is usually fixing your colors. And with these settings, if you just want a normal look then next to nothing needs to happen with the color unless the lighting is mixed or not full-spectrum. Meanwhile, you have great highlight roll-off to work with.

But I think that what is more important than specific settings is employing a testing process to figure out what one likes for whatever situation. The underlying principle can be the same - a low contrast profile with accurate and saturated colors - but different people are going to like different settings that try to achieve the same goal.

I also played around with adjusting the color channels in-camera as I know some people do. For example, to try to fix the orange. But it seemed like when I fixed one problem, I would point the camera at something else and now that looked weird. So I decided to leave the color balance as-is. But of course, when you can import LUTs to camera and bake them in, you have access to more sophisticated tools to make those tweaks.

I would add that most of the built-in color profiles on sony mirrorless cameras look like garbage to me

 

[Doug Jensen]

Just a quick comment on the "soft" thing. I've used both FX6s and FX9s on the same shoot a few times now and I'll stick with the comment I made when Doug's comparison video first appeared. Essentially, IMO the 9 is marginally, I mean marginally, more detailed IF you pixel peep BUT the 6 wins hands down with its autofocus and that can often make the 6 actually sharper. Again, I agree with Doug and Chris, both cameras are great value and quality and which you prefer will be probably be determined by the individual requirements of the shoot. You can't really go wrong with either if you know what you're doing.

In fairness to the FX9, there has been at least one firmware update for the camera that supposedly improved the auto-focus performance. I don't have an FX9 so I have not had the opportunity to do any new testing to see how the two cameras compare while running the latest firmware. For all I know, the FX9 might be just as good as the FX6 now. But even if that were the case, I'd still choose the FX6 for all the bells and whistles it offers. BTW, the original purpose of the test was to compare picture quality but the AF performance was so different that we kind of got sidetracked looking at that. As far as picture quality goes, I don't seen a difference. And that was almost as surprising as the AF performance. I expected the FX9 to easily look better, and it doesn't.

 

[Doug Jensen]

I would add that most of the built-in color profiles on sony mirrorless cameras look like garbage to me

Have you ever tried turning off the built-in color profiles? I have an A1 and I've done my own testing with S-LOG, S-Cinetone, other REC709 profiles, etc. and found that my camera looks best when no picture profile is selected and dynamic range optimizer (I think that is the right name) is also turned off. It requires a little grading in Resolve to finish it, but that's how I'm getting the best results from the A1. Ever tried that on your mirrorless cameras?

Maybe you;re looking for a true WYSIWYG look that won't require any grading at all?

 

[stewhem]

In fairness to the FX9, there has been at least one firmware update for the camera that supposedly improved the auto-focus performance. I don't have an FX9 so I have not had the opportunity to do any new testing to see how the two cameras compare while running the latest firmware. For all I know, the FX9 might be just as good as the FX6 now. But even if that were the case, I'd still choose the FX6 for all the bells and whistles it offers. BTW, the original purpose of the test was to compare picture quality but the AF performance was so different that we kind of got sidetracked looking at that. As far as picture quality goes, I don't seen a difference. And that was almost as surprising as the AF performance. I expected the FX9 to easily look better, and it doesn't.

Good point. I haven't used an FX9 since that update. It might now equal the autofocus capability of the 6, but I agree again (surely I get some browny points?) I also prefer the overall package of the 6.

 

[ahalpert]

Have you ever tried turning off the built-in color profiles? I have an A1 and I've done my own testing with S-LOG, S-Cinetone, other REC709 profiles, etc. and found that my camera looks best when no picture profile is selected and dynamic range optimizer (I think that is the right name) is also turned off. It requires a little grading in Resolve to finish it, but that's how I'm getting the best results from the A1. Ever tried that on your mirrorless cameras?

Maybe you;re looking for a true WYSIWYG look that won't require any grading at all?

If you turn off your color profiles, doesn't that just leave you with "Creative Looks" which are essentially color profiles but with fewer options? And there must be a color setting at play, whether it's the same as the Standard option or the same result as sgamut3.cine with the standard LUT applied. There's gotta be something happening there... But hey if it looks good, it looks good. I'll give it a try.

I'm not looking for WYSIWYG because my feeling is that to do WYSIWYG you either need to apply different paint settings in-camera for every different scene you shoot and I won't have time for that. Or the more common approach is to use enough contrast for the lowest contrast scenes you shoot. And then you're going to get nasty blown-out areas all over the place in most of your shots. So, I basically go for WYSIWYG hue/saturation but my contrast will require adjustment.

After uploading these shots, I realized that they come out on dvxuser looking slightly washed out, so I'm putting them on google drive as well: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...usp=drive_link

difference looks like this, dvxuser on left:



Here's a high-contrast scene that ends up being close to WYSIWYG I would say (depending on your taste) with these settings, screenshot taken from VLC playback:



Detail is retained in the dress and the faces with dappled shadows don't look awful either. (Of course, it's a horrible lighting effect but that's life.)

More common are lower-contrast exteriors that will benefit from a contrast bump



certainly, cloudy scenes will need more contrast



and most interiors



Any relative grading ease here is probably just a reflection of using slog2 as a starting point instead of slog3... But I've gotten positive feedback from numerous editors from these settings. It's actually black level -12, saturation +8. and it looks like the "Movie" color matrix is the default color setting for some of the gammas you can choose in the picture profiles

 

[ahalpert]

You could just use HLG3. You could probably be able to turn SLog2 into something very close to HLG3 with a bit of black gamma adjustment down. I don't know if Black gamma adjustment is available on SLog2 profiles but you get my point.

Sure, use hlg3 if you like. I'm sure I tested it when I ran my tests 2.5 years ago and for some reason I preferred to use slog2

 

[morgan_moore]

There is a chance that slog is not the best.. but life is too short .. it is fine .. across many scene types .. editors mow understand it .. throw on a lut , maybe correct, dodge and burn before that lut. Sad picture? Shoot a better story

 

[ahalpert]

There is a chance that slog is not the best.. but life is too short .. it is fine .. across many scene types .. editors mow understand it .. throw on a lut , maybe correct, dodge and burn before that lut. Sad picture? Shoot a better story

Not sure if that's a reference to the picture profile I'm talking about, but the point here is not to use a LUT and to grade from scratch. But six of one, half a dozen of another

 

[AmbiSonde]

There is a chance that slog is not the best.. but life is too short .. it is fine .. across many scene types .. editors mow understand it .. throw on a lut , maybe correct, dodge and burn before that lut. Sad picture? Shoot a better story

I can see I am wasting my time so I have cleaned up the thread. ‘Dodge and burn before that LUT...’ Oh boy...

Carry on as you were.

 

[Doug Jensen]

If you turn off your color profiles, doesn't that just leave you with "Creative Looks" which are essentially color profiles but with fewer options? And there must be a color setting at play, whether it's the same as the Standard option or the same result as sgamut3.cine with the standard LUT applied. There's gotta be something happening there... But hey if it looks good, it looks good. I'll give it a try.

I have Creative Look set for Standard, but I confess that I have not experimented with the various settings. Like you, I'm not looking for a WYSIWYG look, so fine-tuning the settings seems unnecessary if I'm going to grade anyway. Maybe one of these days I'll have the time to put the A1 through it's paces like I do with the cinema and ENG cameras. I am certainly no expert on the mirrorless cameras, but I like the results I get with the settings I've settled on. Hell, the A1 already looks better than my FX6, so what more do I expect from it?

 

[ahalpert]

I can see I am wasting my time so I have cleaned up the thread. âDodge and burn before that LUT...â Oh boy...

Carry on as you were.

Sam has a photography background. But everybody knows what he means

 

[ahalpert]

I have Creative Look set for Standard, but I confess that I have not experimented with the various settings. Like you, I'm not looking for a WYSIWYG look, so fine-tuning the settings seems unnecessary if I'm going to grade anyway. Maybe one of these days I'll have the time to put the A1 through it's paces like I do with the cinema and ENG cameras. I am certainly no expert on the mirrorless cameras, but I like the results I get with the settings I've settled on. Hell, the A1 already looks better than my FX6, so what more do I expect from it?

Interesting that you say the A1 looks better than the FX6. Yes, there is still grading to be done with the profile I'm using, but the goal is to minimize the time it takes. In particular, for wedding videos my editors are dealing with a vast array of footage that has been shot on the fly in changing conditions. That can be a bear to deal with. One of the studios I work for asked everyone to shoot slog3/S-Gamut3.cine but then reversed course a short time later because they found it difficult. And the lead editor at one of my corporate clients doesn't seem to be a very comfortable colorist and he likes working with this profile instead of slog3/S-Gamut3.cine.