Picture Control in fastpaced workflow

S

stokstad

Well-known member
Hello,

I bought a d600 a few months back and have been learning the hard way about DSLR workflow. Now that im beyond the most obvious things to avoid when shooting with the d600 (no dx, 720p or cranking up the sharpness), i have started to experiment a bit more with the picture controls. Before I tried the neutral profile with no contrast and it didn't look great, so i mostly shot with the SD profile with some lower sharpness and contrast. Then I started to read alot on here about the flaat profile and other setups for doing alot of grading in post and expanding DR. All that is fine and im starting to learn the basics of grading etc. but some of the work im doing is under really tight schedules, so i only have about 1-2 days to edit an 5min thing and then publish. For that work Im looking for a PC that is kind of good allaround, with minimum grading required.

So my question:
With the d600 (or d800 im asuming they are kind of comparable), what would you recommend for this type of work?
Right now im leaning towards neutral profile with sharpness 0, contrast 0 (middle) and saturation -1.

Also, do you always crank sharpness to zero?


Example shot on SD:

https://vimeo.com/58057261

There is alot of editing with all the short clips that has to go in so my schedule is kinda tight.
 
Don't fear Flaat: if you're doing at least *some* color correction to each clip, and if you don't dislike the Portrait colors particularly for any reason, Flaat may be the fastest workflow: it's really easy to get a first grade, just apply a quick curve to re-assign contrast and you're done.

These are two same-day edits, with my workflow times in the comments: https://vimeo.com/59387517 https://vimeo.com/59311139
(that's a NEX-5N, but in terms of ease-of-grade Flaat for Nikon is pretty similar: they're all designed to have a near-log light-response function that makes them easy to grade)
 
Im gonna test some footage tomorrow and see how it looks. Just one stupid question: Sharpening is left at +1 as default setting on the flaat picturestyles, is this something you recommend or shall i change it to 0?
 
I don't have a strong recommendation for any of the settings, except contrast: set sharpness to your preferred value (mine would be 1, because I feel it's not overboard and yet it means I can live without post-sharpening; YMMV).
 
I shot the event last night with the flaat 10p, first impressions are rather pleasing. Although when shooting with higher ISO (2000-3200ish) it seems like you would almost want to add a bit more contrast in camera to get cleaner results. I'll post the result later on.
 
Result:

https://vimeo.com/62107376

All shot in Flaat 10p with sharpness 1 and saturation turned down two values. Sharpness, saturation, contrast and some other adjustments were made directly in premiere. My only problem is how hard it is to set the exposure right with these low-contrast profiles, since the d600 dont get a histogram or anything. I guess you get use to it but when your running around like an idiot trying to get different angles its kind of easy to miss.

Overall I think its a great profile and thank you for getting it out there.
 
* Glad you like it :)

* That looked like FUN

* My way to check exposure, back when I was shooting with a pre-ML T2i, was to take a still and look at its histogram. Not ideal, but it works, especially when you have doubs about a shot.
 
Some of the shots were underexposed and the 16-35 VR is not going bigger than f4, which is not ideal for that kind of enviroment. I shot an earlier event with the 24-70 at f2.8 and that was a big difference, but that lens does not go wide enough :)
 
And yes, its dark as hell in Sweden this time of the year, although it just starts to go brighter (you can actually spend time outdoors)
 
The exposure looked fine. I was talking about the crazy people dressing in 80s gear and hanging from the ceiling :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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