AC90: Looking for landscape settings advice

R Hudson

R Hudson

Well-known member
I have Barry's book and I have been experimenting with looks a bit but I am short on time now and was just curious to see what kind of input I could get from others here. I am traveling to Colorado tomorrow and I am taking my AC90 with me in a backpack. I will be outdoors shooting a lot (mostly during the day) and I was curious as to any scene file adjustments that may work great for landscape shooting. I am operating under the assumption that it will be quite sunny (if not I won't be shooting as much). I have a Polarizer, an ND6 and an ND9 to work with.

I am just looking for any recommendations for settings to get vivid, colorful, sharp footage right out of the camera with no intention of doing color-correction afterwards. Well, not unless absolutely necessary anyway. I will be busy doing a lot of hiking at altitude (I am a lowlander so it's a little more work) and looking to get the best footage I can directly. I will be shooting stills as well (with a DSLR) so I don't have time to experiment a lot while I am out there for only 5 days.

Points of interest include Garden of the Gods and Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs, various areas on the way between Colorado Springs and Breckenridge and Silverthorne, Breckenridge and surrounding area, Loveland Pass (Mount Sniktau), Mt. Evans, Trail Ridge Road to Rocky Mountain National Park (including the park itself), Estes Park, Ft. Collins, and a little bit of Denver itself.

Any help with recommended settings would be most appreciated. If I had more time to experiment first I would but time is short now.

Thanks :)
 
I tried these settings recently to try and obtain some real POW!!! Probably over the top but here we go:

Detail Level +4
V Detail Level +1
Detail Coring -2
Chromo Level +2
Master Ped -2
Auto Iris Off
DRS Off
Gamma Low
Knee Mid
Matrix Norm 2

I can almost feel Barry G recoiling in horror but the point was to get a real kick to the footage.

The default Scene 3 settings may serve you well. Try those in the first instance. A recent poster itemised all the defaults so look that up rather than reset your cam to factory defaults if you have already overwritten Scene 3.

And as you know from the book - page 35 - you need to stay no higher than f8 to optimise sharpness, then out with the external ND's.

Pete
 
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Thanks Pete.

I'll give that a little try and see what I think. I'll set-up one of the scene files this way and then I can toggle through a couple to see what I think.

I should add, I plan to shoot mainly in 24P.
 
Not recoiling at all -- those are reasonable settings for getting some real oomph to the footage. I might recoil a little bit at detail +4, but other than that, I'd say they're reasonable, and I might even recommend going a little further on the chroma level.
 
Oooh...I like it.

I made Pete's adjustments with mods suggested by Barry for a hybrid seting.

We'll see how it goes. So far I like the look!

Thanks guys!
 
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This probably comes too late, but since I live in the Rockies, would just point out that with 300 days of sunshine a year on average, getting punch usually comes without the need for baking in too much sharpness which can be unfixable later. Sharpness can always be added in post. And that segways to my second point, that I always grade everything, not from necessity but keep in mind the AC90 like most video cams is recording exposure to 109%. Each f-stop represents a doubling of light so there's a lot of compression in the highlights, some of it recoverable by reducing gain in post. The recorded luminance range is about 16-255 for a properly exposed high contrast scene. Reducing the gain setting in post to 0.917% usually results in a final luminance range for grading that's close to 16-235. If the luminance gamma curve remains within video legal levels, clipping is avoided on the display device.

Personally, I don't like lowering the master pedastal either. So for most properly exposed scenes, it already comes in around 16. Lowering it further in-cam is crushing the blacks. If you have to raise it back in post, the noise is raised with it.

Where possible, I try to "expose to the right" on the histogram. Barry covers this very well in his book, but you must be careful not to overexpose, which would not be hard on the AC90. But when you can do this, you can move the curve back to the left in post, thereby lowering the noise floor.
 
Tom, my purpose was to create a profile that I can call up that has instant mass appeal and preferably requires no post processing. But I'm sure you understand that! I get fed up staring at flat profiles sometimes :- )

Pete
 
I wasn't objecting to your settings but since you were brave enough to post them, it appears that way. But I do have a deeper frustration with the sharpening settings than usual with the AC90 because it's been harder for me to predict, they seem to vary somewhat with the scene, so I dial them back, since it's getting graded anyway.

To elaborate, I increase the sharpening and my initial reaction is positive, then I spend more time looking at the footage, it starts looking more video-ish. But compared to some of the stuff that started out flat looking, then comes alive later on in post, fog and mist, rain...with realism, almost dslr like, but with full HD resolution.

And also the problem of recording at uncorrected 109% exposure, means some detail in the highlights can be brought out in post.
 
Thanks to you as well for the great info, Tom.

So far I am finding that I could use more ND at times. I was using my ND8 filter and I was bumping into f6.8 a lot so I stacked-on my other ND4 and that brought it back down a bit more but when zoomed-in all the way I would sometimes be a bit underexposed to the point where, for ideal exposure, I would need to add gain of +1 or +2. If I wanted to run a single filter in daylight full sun in the Colorado Rockies this time of year I think I would ideally want an ND16.
 
On paper yes, ND16...but in practice, you can run into issues with color casts and IR contamination. I think a less dark ND 0.6 can be more ideal and without the worries if you do the following:

1.) Use GAMMA CINE-LIKE D.
2.) Use no more than DRS 1
3.) Use Auto Iris Level -1
4.) MATRIX NORM2 at least. (The image is low on color, so as Barry said bump the CHROMA LEVEL up to suit your taste in addition. That's where to get the *pop* without over-doing sharpness.
5.) Let the camera pick the optimum setting for shutter, iris, gain and internal ND (in combination with your external 0.6 ND.) You do this by touching the screen, then touch SHTR, then touch AUTO.
6.) With Zebras at 100%, if you see more than just a little bit of zebra, aim the camera around the sky until the zebra goes away or almost goes away, then touch the IRIS A/M switch on the side of the camera to lock the exposure so that highlights are not blown out when you recompose for the shadows. With Auto IRIS Level set for -1 (and your external ND 0.6), there will not be too much need for this, just the occasional very high contrast outdoor daylight scene. When finished shooting, revert back to step 5.) (above) for the next scene.
7.) With external ND 0.6 alone, the reality for this cam in 1080/60p is that faster shutter speeds chosen by the camera will retain fluid motion, and never stop down smaller than f/6.4 which in reality is a diffraction protected f/2.8 + internal ND.

That's how I shoot for Colorado outdoors in daylight. If it misses the mark it won't be by much yet retains a very gradeable master if you need to.
 
Just when I thought I knew a bit something about the AG-AC90 this thread with posts from Ashton Lamont and Tom Roper proved me wrong. Thanks!
 
Tom Roper said:
On paper yes, ND16...but in practice, you can run into issues with color casts and IR contamination. I think a less dark ND 0.6 can be more ideal and without the worries if you do the following:

1.) Use GAMMA CINE-LIKE D.
2.) Use no more than DRS 1
3.) Use Auto Iris Level -1
4.) MATRIX NORM2 at least. (The image is low on color, so as Barry said bump the CHROMA LEVEL up to suit your taste in addition. That's where to get the *pop* without over-doing sharpness.
5.) Let the camera pick the optimum setting for shutter, iris, gain and internal ND (in combination with your external 0.6 ND.) You do this by touching the screen, then touch SHTR, then touch AUTO.
6.) With Zebras at 100%, if you see more than just a little bit of zebra, aim the camera around the sky until the zebra goes away or almost goes away, then touch the IRIS A/M switch on the side of the camera to lock the exposure so that highlights are not blown out when you recompose for the shadows. With Auto IRIS Level set for -1 (and your external ND 0.6), there will not be too much need for this, just the occasional very high contrast outdoor daylight scene. When finished shooting, revert back to step 5.) (above) for the next scene.
7.) With external ND 0.6 alone, the reality for this cam in 1080/60p is that faster shutter speeds chosen by the camera will retain fluid motion, and never stop down smaller than f/6.4 which in reality is a diffraction protected f/2.8 + internal ND.

That's how I shoot for Colorado outdoors in daylight. If it misses the mark it won't be by much yet retains a very gradeable master if you need to.
Click to expand...

Thanks Tom. I will do some experimentation utilizing the methods you suggested by me now that I am back home. I planned to shoot almost exclusively in 24P so that is why I didn't want to use auto shutter. I wanted to retain a fixed shutter speed and add more ND for proper exposure. In hindsight, I didn't shoot a lot of action so auto shutter may have worked just fine for the landscape shots that I did. I was concerned about possible UV or color cast from ND. Your method sounds like it works well for 60P. Have you tried it with 24P?
 
I have not shot 24p with the ac90. I cut it with a Sony pmw350 shooting 30p.

24p makes it a different ballgame, agreed.
 
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