F55: Replicating CineEI mode in Custom Mode… S-Gamut3 included. ;)

starcentral

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There's been lots of discussion on the shortfalls of the CineEI mode on the F cameras and how if only we had some of the features available to us that we have in Custom Mode!

On the F55 at least, it may very well be possible so I decided to test if it was possible to get the underlying look of CineEI mode in Custom Mode on the F55 camera. My results and full article was published by DVINFO.net if anyone wants to have a gander.

Cheers and enjoy,

Replicating CineEI Mode in Custom Mode on the F55

f55hingsberg-600x338.jpg
 
Dennis. It looks like that's much of what many of us have been asking for:
Basically the same color space as CINE EI with color balance adjustments available in Custom - along with Noise reduction also I assume?
Just throw in a LUT we've got it all.

Did you try different color situations - like fluorescent or other unusual color balances to see if any problems developed or if your in camera adjustments didn't get you into trouble.
 
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What I noticed about custom matrix S-Log3/sgamut3.cine like; is that if you spin the dial for WB color temp, the changes the WB makes in the LCD viewfinder are not very apparent. Obviously, an experienced operator is already going to know what the color temperature should be, but it seemed like I needed to switch to 709 to really make it obvious, then return it to sgamut3.cine like matrix for the take.
 
@Lenilenapi, this will let you get the white balance adjustment we've wanted with CineEI's color space and other benefits of Custom Mode like NR. Although Sony did add NR to CineEI mode on version 5 firmware for F5/F55 however.

I tried different color temperature light sources such as tungsten and daylight and everything worked as expected. I didn't try and bad fluorescents yet but I tried overcast sky and my white balance on the camera selected 7000K. Again everything looked perfect.


@Tom, on my OLED I can tend to see the difference of the WB adjustments but it in Slog modes for sure it is not as obvious like you say. Especially depending on what's in the frame. If there is something in the frame that is suppose to be pure white you can usually tell when its gone a bit on the cool or warm side, sometimes I just like having that ability to dial the color. It's what so many of us are asking for in CineEI mode, I just doubt Sony will make it happen. CineEI is a "cinema" mode as they see it.
 
starcentral said:
If there is something in the frame that is suppose to be pure white you can usually tell when its gone a bit on the cool or warm side, sometimes I just like having that ability to dial the color. It's what so many of us are asking for in CineEI mode, I just doubt Sony will make it happen. CineEI is a "cinema" mode as they see it.
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Sony NEEDS to make WB adjustable in CineEi if they want the Fs to be considered a "Real" cinema camera. Yesterday, I just did a network shoot where the FS7 was B-cam to the Alexa. The DP, who is a pretty well known, older, well regarded commercial DP, wanted to always shoot slightly warmer - 3500K, 4400K - and when I told him I could not dial in those temps, you could tell his skepticism for Sony just increased a bit.

Sony just need to get with the program and allow expanded WB because many pros much better than myself are used to that ability on the "cinema" modes of Alexa and Red. And things like that just keep Sony from being widely adopted into the upper stratosphere.
 
Let's hope it comes Ugene and maybe someone at Sony will see my article and listen! :S

I also see the crux of adding LUTs in custom mode, Sony would need a completely different set of LUTs for each mode because each mode has it's own set of color spaces. It would maybe even be more of a mess. What I noticed in my testing is that even with everything turned off in custom mode (which is supposed to be slog2/sgamut) it doesn't match the same setting in CineEI – so Sony is doing some weird **** there in custom mode.
 
gene_can_sing said:
Sony NEEDS to make WB adjustable in CineEi if they want the Fs to be considered a "Real" cinema camera. Yesterday, I just did a network shoot where the FS7 was B-cam to the Alexa. The DP, who is a pretty well known, older, well regarded commercial DP, wanted to always shoot slightly warmer - 3500K, 4400K - and when I told him I could not dial in those temps, you could tell his skepticism for Sony just increased a bit.

Sony just need to get with the program and allow expanded WB because many pros much better than myself are used to that ability on the "cinema" modes of Alexa and Red. And things like that just keep Sony from being widely adopted into the upper stratosphere.
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I'm sure users would embrace such a feature, and it could result in increased sales, but the lack of fully variable white balance in CineIE doesn't make it any less of a "real" cinema camera. Lets keep in mind actual film stock is predominantly produced with fixed balance for either tungsten or daylight - and that 35mm motion picture film is as "real" as cinema gets. The Sony F35, a highly regarded cousin to the Panavision Genesis that cost $250k upon release only offered tungsten and daylight settings in it's Cine/CineIE modes. "Real" DPs of the old school would use optical filter trays to push warm or cool. This is all a newfangled digital cinema idea that we need completely variable white balance. And it's happening in part because people are trying to shoot under mixed light and flourescent lighting conditions that were never considered cinematic in the first place.

Mind you, the inclusion of these feature would be great, but I don't think the cameras are any less "cinematic" or not "real cinema cameras" for the lack of this particular feature.

And lest anyone complain - this is merely my opinion, and I'm not telling you you're not entitled to yours - I'm just participating in the discourse.
 
+1

Viddovation said:
I'm sure users would embrace such a feature, and it could result in increased sales, but the lack of fully variable white balance in CineIE doesn't make it any less of a "real" cinema camera. Lets keep in mind actual film stock is predominantly produced with fixed balance for either tungsten or daylight - and that 35mm motion picture film is as "real" as cinema gets. The Sony F35, a highly regarded cousin to the Panavision Genesis that cost $250k upon release only offered tungsten and daylight settings in it's Cine/CineIE modes. "Real" DPs of the old school would use optical filter trays to push warm or cool. This is all a newfangled digital cinema idea that we need completely variable white balance. And it's happening in part because people are trying to shoot under mixed light and flourescent lighting conditions that were never considered cinematic in the first place.

Mind you, the inclusion of these feature would be great, but I don't think the cameras are any less "cinematic" or not "real cinema cameras" for the lack of this particular feature.

And lest anyone complain - this is merely my opinion, and I'm not telling you you're not entitled to yours - I'm just participating in the discourse.
Click to expand...
 
Viddovation said:
I'm sure users would embrace such a feature, and it could result in increased sales, but the lack of fully variable white balance in CineIE doesn't make it any less of a "real" cinema camera. Lets keep in mind actual film stock is predominantly produced with fixed balance for either tungsten or daylight - and that 35mm motion picture film is as "real" as cinema gets. The Sony F35, a highly regarded cousin to the Panavision Genesis that cost $250k upon release only offered tungsten and daylight settings in it's Cine/CineIE modes. "Real" DPs of the old school would use optical filter trays to push warm or cool. This is all a newfangled digital cinema idea that we need completely variable white balance. And it's happening in part because people are trying to shoot under mixed light and flourescent lighting conditions that were never considered cinematic in the first place.

Mind you, the inclusion of these feature would be great, but I don't think the cameras are any less "cinematic" or not "real cinema cameras" for the lack of this particular feature.

And lest anyone complain - this is merely my opinion, and I'm not telling you you're not entitled to yours - I'm just participating in the discourse.
Click to expand...

All I'm saying is that for Sony to compete against Red and Alexa, they HAVE TO offer basic things that top DPs now take for granted like customizable WB. It's 2015, maybe film did do it the CineEI way, but Alexa and Red just do it the new way and it's time to move forward.

The commercial DP I just worked with, who is represented by APA, is older and comes from film. He told he's thrilled with "new" things like build-in NDs which made it into the Arri Amira because it makes things simpler. He's told me something like: I'm used to always having to put in NDs, and now I can just flick a switch. It's awesome!

So yeah, I'm sure he has a nostalgia for film and the way things were done, but does he want to go back to only having WBs in 5500, 4200 and 3200? I highly, highly doubt it.
 
gene_can_sing said:
All I'm saying is that for Sony to compete against Red and Alexa, they HAVE TO offer basic things that top DPs now take for granted like customizable WB. It's 2015, maybe film did do it the CineEI way, but Alexa and Red just do it the new way and it's time to move forward.

The commercial DP I just worked with, who is represented by APA, is older and comes from film. He told he's thrilled with "new" things like build-in NDs which made it into the Arri Amira because it makes things simpler. He's told me something like: I'm used to always having to put in NDs, and now I can just flick a switch. It's awesome!

So yeah, I'm sure he has a nostalgia for film and the way things were done, but does he want to go back to only having WBs in 5500, 4200 and 3200? I highly, highly doubt it.
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I agree with you that Sony would please a lot of people by offering this feature. I just disagree with the suggestion that it isn't a "real" cinema camera for not having that feature.
 
starcentral said:
Let's hope it comes Ugene and maybe someone at Sony will see my article and listen! :S

I also see the crux of adding LUTs in custom mode, Sony would need a completely different set of LUTs for each mode because each mode has it's own set of color spaces. It would maybe even be more of a mess. What I noticed in my testing is that even with everything turned off in custom mode (which is supposed to be slog2/sgamut) it doesn't match the same setting in CineEI – so Sony is doing some weird s*%t there in custom mode.
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Yeah, LUTs in custom mode would be really difficult probably. I haven't tried super hard yet, but like yourself I cannot match Custom to CineEI. Custom just lacks that "magic" that Cine EI has. I really like CineEI, it's such a step forward for Sony. Just add more WBs and it will be even better.

Now that I wrapped my head around it, I love being able to rate the ISO and keep the full 14 stops. So much more pro than the FS700 where I can from.
 
Viddovation said:
I agree with you that Sony would please a lot of people by offering this feature. I just disagree with the suggestion that it isn't a "real" cinema camera for not having that feature.
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I never said it wasn't a "real" cinema camera. In fact, if you are going by the definition of old film stocks with defined temps, it's more "real" of a cinema camera than the competition.

So while the F's might not be a "lesser" Cinema camera than Arri or Red, it's definitely a lesser selling and less desirable cinema camera because of these excluded features; which hurts Sony and the people who use it since it's requested less.
 
Dennis thanks for doing this, jpg compression will probably muzz this up but I tried (Slog3) getting the EI image and overlaying it to the Custom image, then adding the 709LUT (which is quite steep and will exagerate difference)

The smaller colour areas within the main colour areas are the EI version - one may be able to see that there are minor differences in rendering of orange pink etc.

I would suggest those changes could be semi significant in terms of skin rendering.

S


dofference.jpg
 
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morgan_moore said:
Dennis thanks for doing this, jpg compression will probably muzz this up but I tried (Slog3) getting the EI image and overlaying it to the Custom image, then adding the 709LUT (which is quite steep and will exagerate difference)

The smaller colour areas within the main colour areas are the EI version - one may be able to see that there are minor differences in rendering of orange pink etc.
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Yes it was interesting to try out. Of course if you record RAW with R5 on the F5 or F55 then you can pick whatever flavour of color space and slog gamma in post that you want.

It was just interesting to be able to get these combos for internal recordings and draw some further conclusions about the 'custom' mode.
 
gene_can_sing said:
Yeah, LUTs in custom mode would be really difficult probably. I haven't tried super hard yet, but like yourself I cannot match Custom to CineEI. Custom just lacks that "magic" that Cine EI has. I really like CineEI, it's such a step forward for Sony. Just add more WBs and it will be even better.Now that I wrapped my head around it, I love being able to rate the ISO and keep the full 14 stops. So much more pro than the FS700 where I can from.
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I want to compare Morgan's overlays when I can view them properly on a monitor, not a smartphone screen; but on my F55, custom mode in S-log3 with matrix 'sgamut3.cine like' is close enough to EI that I can still apply with good result the LC709A post Lut in Resolve and tweak to match/cut with EI, with the benefit of in-cam adjustable WB settings during the take. The negative is not having mluts in custom, but a workaround is to use a camera matched light meter on set. In summary, I think the F55 does what it needs if not wholly convenient about merging all its separate features together in one mode.
 
Yes I applied the appropriate LUTs in post as well (Davinci Resolve) and from each mode they matched very well. The non-cine matched "closer" than the cine's matched, but overall very close. Would be easy to intercut.

My next test will be some actual shots with hopefully some wide color to see how well they match over just an ordinary color chart.
 
I think it would be most interesting to shoot a wide variety of color balances and look at them through a monitor that has a single SLOG 3 LUT like the small HD or the Odyssy 7 /7Q . If a single all purpose LUT was able to work well that would imply this may be an easier nut to crack .
Some questions remain to be explored -

- how far off the native color balance could you go before it might begin to show some kind of artifacting or odd color shifts .

- What the heck is the native color balance of these cameras anyway !!

- you might need at least a few LUTs for different ISO 's

This may be fundamentally different from what Red and Arri do . I don't know arri but Red is an elaborate system for color balancing the LUT itself , not the underlying recording while here you are changing the basic recording and stretching the response curve within slog itself . I don't know if that makes a big difference though as you would still stretch that response in post anyway. . Maybe you limit your grading freedom a bit ???
 
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