FS7: sharpness - aperture setting?

L

Lenilenapi

Carbonite Member
Are you guys generally running the FS7 without any detail or sharpening added?
A friend says he thought his was a little soft and raised the Aperture which he said was suggested in Doug Jenson's guide.
I haven't noticed that but recently shot some B roll that could have been snappier. That was shot with a Canon 24-105 with lots of ambient light hitting the glass. Could have been the lens.

lenny levy
 
I very rarely add sharpening to anything shot at UHD or 4k.

Quick ungraded still from today's interview thrown on a timeline and a LUT added with no sharpening.

302_0206.00_28_23_11.Still002_zpsnrzc8dyy.jpg


Full res version - https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnxu9nwc1ghjzex/302_0206.00_28_23_11.Still002.jpg?dl=0

I'm not sure I would want that any sharper.
 
The ideal (IMO) is like all camera settings is to ideally do it in post.

For example in Resolve you can create a node with sharpening applied but qualify that node to exclude the highlights and shadows so just the mids are sharpened.

If you are working for a camera to deliver workflow then I guess sharpening in camera is worth testing..

S
 
Nice shot, Ben. Which lens and lens settings were you using? What distance from interviewee was the camera? What camera settings (Cine, Slog2/3, Scene file, etc...)? And anything else relevant?
 
I always apply a touch of sharpening on a final nested sequence. This is necessary even when finishing 4K content in HD because when resolution is adjusted, pixels are moved around and interpolated, which results in a loss of edge detail. The only time I try to avoid this is when it comes to titles or graphics with computer generated edges. This is a method I adopted from my still photography background.

What I don't do is add additional sharpening to compensate for a lack of sensor or lens resolution.
 
Thanks guys it was more a quick example of a sharp shot as opposed to me thinking it is anything special. I should have graded it and brought the highlights down!

I only shoot CineEI slog3.cine. This was at 5500k. Haven't touched the native ISO2000 in post.

Contax 35mm f1.4 stopped down to about f4 on a camdiox focal reducer

Cheap £100 Chinese ripoff of the wescott Icelight for a bit of fill. otherwise natural light.
 
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Now that I look at them again... I don't know man... That "Sony look", jk lol...

Judging by these shots, I would say you've done this before... Nice job.
 
Cheers,

They'll all be prettier once I am done with them :)

6hrs of travelling today to record 2mins of interview. Fun :(
 
When shooting with a lossy compression format, you achieve the minimum quantizing error by avoiding emphasis of high frequency detail.

I did some objective testing with XDCam and I'm pretty sure XAVC will be similar, which showed that the same high complexity scene, shot with and without in-camera sharpening, then post-sharpened, contained more detail and less distortion due to block artifacts. Ever since that test, I have always shot with Detail OFF.

Unless you are dumping into a live feed, there is no reason to sharpen in-camera.
 
All things being equal it is perfectly reasonable usually to achieve sufficient sharpness in-camera without having to add it later on or enable a camera's 'detail' setting. If the issues are born of people shooting on inexpensive stills glass wide open without enough light there's a certain level of softness that is to be expected with that that no amount of post sharpening will ever resolve.
 
Most inexpensive stills glass resolves pretty well on kodakchrome64 or a 22mp stills camera - both of which eat compressed video 4k for sharpness.

S
 
The major point to take away from this is that sharpening in-camera should ONLY be done when expediency requires it (live broadcast). For anything that will be produced on an NLE, sharpening should be left to post. Sharpening in-camera puts a strain on the CODEC and significant quality loss results. My testing bore this out several years, ago. Since then, I have turned off sharpening in all of my cameras.
 
'or not used at all' is the nice bit to put on the end of that summation :)

Sharpness isn't the only quality of a nice image
 
I'll have to dig out the still frames from my comparison test, but the post-sharpened image contained significantly more useful detail than the in-camera sharpened image. The shot was of a busy street along a railroad. The barber shop sign was illegible in the in-camera sharpened image due to block artifacts, but clearly legible in the post-sharpened image. The CODEC preserved more useful image information without the pre-sharpening exhausting the CODEC's ability to maintain information with minimal distortion. I suspect this even holds true for ProRes.

As for downscaling 4K, the test footage I've played with needed no sharpening when downscaling to BD format. Any sharpening at all was 'too much.' None was 'just right.'

UPS says "out for delivery" on my FS7.. 3 boxes.. body, lens and accessories. I should be able to perform some first hand tests this evening and tomorrow.
 
I'm not disputing what you said. In-camera sharpening is the devil.

But a lot of times you don't need any sharpening if you get your shot right in the first place.
 
Thanks for all the input. Its kind of what I thought and until last week I've always felt my FS7 images were plenty sharp. I'm not sure why the Canon 24-105 material just looked soft to me. I was shooting in a factory with big shop lights and skylights in the ceiling. Though I didn't see any flaring, I know that lens is prone to it, so maybe all the ambience just affected the "snap" of the image. Can't remember whether I was using speed booster, I think generally not but I was bouncing between lenses & adapters.
I am still a little flumoxed by friend's reaction to his first shoot with the FS7 - "Looks a little soft" . At which point he quoted Doug Jenson suggesting to raise the Aperture.

I was hoping Doug would respond on here. Doug?

I'll try to get my friend David to post his side of the story here also. Not sure what lenses- Maybe older Canon FD's?

Lenny
 
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Lenilenapi said:
I was hoping Doug would respond on here. Doug?
Click to expand...


Oh, I'm watching this thread but don't care to get into the debate. People should do their own testing and come to their own conclusions. But with that said, I still stand 100% by the advice and settings I give in my book and video -- and I completely disagree with some of the comments made on this thread. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I also would not be satisfied at all with the examples that have been posted. I'm sorry if that sounds rude or anything, but that's my opinion.
 
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