Project of mine! PP Help!

LiamR

LiamR

Well-known member
I've been testing out the fs100 outdoors and trying to dial in the right picture profile to get a very vibrant color! and I am having a bit of trouble, my only background is with cheaper cameras and DSLRs so going from 4 settings on the gh2 to a lot more on the fs100 is more than overwhelming!

Here is the project im working on at the moment!

http://vimeo.com/30297124

password: bill

and here are some screenshots of before and after color correction!

Before:

6232453604_ebbb1e3f2c_z.jpg


After:

6232455146_83f914d5bf_z.jpg


This was shot with AbelCine's CinemaTone2, and I am going out again this week to try Glencolor2, but before I do, can anyone give me suggestions to make it more vibrant before color correction?

Cheers!
 
I know there are people on here with much more experience than me but I just thought I'd give my 2 cents.

I'm wondering whether it's a tad underexposed? I think Frank (of Glencolor2) mentioned that he underexposes by a stop. And another user wrote this over on creative cow: "- Underexpose. For us the camera seemed to do better a stop or two underexposed. The image is super clean, so you shouldn't have issues with grain."

I think if you lower your exposure and try Glencolour2 you should be able to get a much punchier image without the unnatural look you got with your above example.
 
Have just put the varicam one in the fs100, looks brilliant inside, compared to Glencolour2 and AbelCine CinemaTone2, it is very vibrant!
 
I like my stuff always a bit desaturated and shy away from any chance of color channel clipping.
But you can always modify my PPs to be more colorful and vibrant out of the box, by raising the color level.

Frank
 
My first tests were using the cinematone 2 curve, with no real tweaking except keeping stuff at unity and turning that fake detail slider all the way down.

I found that those shots were really deep and rich in color by default, nice rolloffs, etc. Highlights look warm, shadows with traces of blue look very blue, etc.
 
+1 on keeping things a little desaturated.

But that's the double edge of Picture Profiles leaning towards maximisation of final image. Every shot needs grading.

Andy Shipsides has already shown that the Standard setup is really quite good, and if you want to take it further, you're going to need to add more work in post. That means you can shift shots around between scenes, it means you can make it broadcast safe without lobotomisation (in most cases), but all this at the expense of extra work in post.

Hey, at least we have this option now. At risk of sounding like the BOF that I am, a decade ago, I really had to fight and go down on bended knee to get the Online editor to apply a bit of Colour Correction (or pay heavily for it) and this was in FCP/Avid days, not 3 machine suites. Now we're all genning up on how to apply the Techicolor Lut to our flat footage.

A lot of this is technical rather than art - like applying the Zone system to negatives. Whatever it looks like in camera, it will look different after editing.

I'd just add a cautionary note of getting extreme looks (crushed blacks, clipped highlights, strong colours) in-camera: you can't undo clipped anything. Of all the camcorders, the F3 and FS100 are very clean in the blacks and there's less danger of noise than with, say, an EX1. And dudes, an FS100 is not an Alexa, m'kay? You'll need curve level editing to get your picture un-bent out of the camera originals, not just (to pick an example at random) the FCPX colour 'board', especially when playing the CT2 game. Apart from Postmaster, of course. Who is a master of lighting too. And that's the other half of the game.

PP and Editing workflow - Quick, Easy, High Quality, pick two.
 
Thanks for all the reply's guys, helps a lot.

I understand that color correction is needed and wasn't trying to neglect that fact and would rather have more control in post over the image, but the image was lacking some depth that I wanted and it seems the VariCam pp has definitely cured that, look forward to taking it out tomorrow!
 
Just be very careful. I have found that there is some 'strangeness' ESPECIALLY in the 'red' area of things. Not sure how to describe it, but reds can look
strange, oversaturated and 'blocky'. That's why I tend to like Frank's PP's. I can always add some saturation in post if I want. But if those reds get
recorded that way, you are SOL. I think the important thing is to try all these PP's in various situations and see what works. I actually have a
spreadsheet/document that has a bunch of PP's like AbelCine's and Franks and some others I have found. I will use them on test shoots, take notes and
modify one or two things about them if needed. I try to keep track of WHY I change anything if I do, and note that. Hopefully I will have a document
that will help me understand it all even more as I continue to play with the 'in camera painting' you can do with this camera.
 
Thanks for the info, didn't know that about the reds, will definitely be careful.

That is something I have started doing aswell, I have written out all of the PPs I am using so far, AbelCine, Glencolour, etc.. and going through and making changes as I see fit and trying to get the best results.
 
I filmed a scene tonight in the VariCam PP and I probably shouldn't have considering I had little to no light (using bars lights) but I did because of the rich colors and I had to film at 30db because of my slow lens (3.4) and it was the only one I could use because the director wanted the widest shots possible, and its my widest lens at 35mm, anyway, it was only a short film for fun, here are some screens (all at 30db)

6237472200_3d2e70ffa6_z.jpg


6237472196_ab7f972154_z.jpg


6237472192_d58ea3d6e3_z.jpg


6237472188_947e2a828c_z.jpg


They were all pretty quick setups and they didn't really care for the 'best' looking image we could get...
 
I have done some further testing (of other peoples PP) and I was using the AbelCine 5dSTD one on the weekend and it gave me a great looking image, I am going to have to dive in sometime and start making my own picture profiles...

6271885651_c975d72b9b_b.jpg
 
I got my hands on that a while ago, just haven't had time to read through it! Doing it now...
 
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