F3: slog white balance

C

captslomo

Well-known member
I've got a project that just cropped up where they'd like to create the final look in black and white. I don't have an external recorder for the F3, but in a quick batch of testing, recording slog to the SxS cards seems to produce a much better look than just shooting my normal PP and removing saturation while upping the contrast.

However, I notice that I am stuck on a pre-set of 3200 with the in-camera slog, although several places on-line insist that the camera can be set to either 3200 or 5600. Anyone know where this can be changed? I've found an R or B roll off, which doesnt really make that much difference. Not sure if the processed B&W image is any better if it starts reasonable well white balanced, but I'd like to be able to check it to see.

I did also experiment with Abel-Cine's slog PP, but it looked slightly muddier than the slog alone.

Any suggestions?
 
If you're going for a B&W look, I don't think it really matters what the white balance is in the camera.

Here's a B&W experiment I did when I had my F3. No S-LOG or external recorder was used for this one. I'm sure WB must have been 5600.
I found that I could not get a 100% B&W look from the camera, I could get close but the last little bit of saturation had to be taken out in post and that was the only grading applied.

https://vimeo.com/39140086
 
Hey Doug: my only fear is that because we are making some historical references, once they get back in post, someone is going to want to do a chroma fade or something. As it is right now, the slog internal recording at 3200 outside is almost unrecoverable to normal looking video. But I'm not a CC specialist, so the post guys may be better at it.

The AB slog PP is much easier to grade back to full color, but seems to have a bit of a trade off in the B&W crispness department. What to do...what to do...

I saw your B&W clip when I first found out we were going to do this. Very nice. Did you save that profile anywhere? It looks pretty much like what I was envisioning for our project.
 
Just press the 5600CC button near the ND switch, that will toggle between 3200 and 5600. Also, if you use the picture profile version of SLOG instead of the card version, you can set whatever white balance you want.
 
G-man: Brilliant! That's one of those buttons I never use, so didn't even see it. Would it have killed Sony to make some mention of the slog application of that button in the operation manual?

I also had experimented with the Abel-Cine s-log PP, which is much less flat. I did find, though, that it was a bit muddier than the in-camera slog when converted to B&W. So this will work nicely now, in lieu of using s-log the proper way with an external recorder.

Thanks for the information!
 
Not sure if you know about the white balance you can dial in within the picture profiles menus ..

In the picture profiles section... Look for the button on the back of the camera above where the snap on Sony battery would go. Navigate through the menus go to SET, then go to WHITE and then you will see the color temp setting there. You can dial in color temp in 100 degree Kelvin increments. Only works with non RGB Slog gamma curve issued in firmware version 1.4.
 
You can adjust white balance with the Abel slog picture profile.

I'd read up on the 5600 button near the front of the camera before I pushed it. It has a very specific application (which I can't recall) but can mess things up easily as it does not simply shift your white balance to 5600 as you might think (thanks, Sony). Check out Nebraska - shot on Alexa, matched in the camera to Kodak 5222, and added a grain layer from that stock in post. Nice looking B&W.
 
I wasn't aware that Abel Cine had posted s-log PP's .
Does anyone know where they are described on the website?
I went on the Abel Cine site and was able to download the PP's but didn't see any description of what they are suppsoed to do. i assume they are variations on the standard s-log PP from Sony
 
Andrew: yes, I knew about the PP White mode. But this option is not available in the in-camera s-log mode. Toggling the 5600CC button--when in s-log mode--moves the camera back and forth from 3200 to 5600. If memory serves, hitting the 5600CC button in about any other scenario mostly adds 5600 degrees of warmness to whatever the camera is already set at. I also have both Abel Cine s-log PP on the camera, and they are quite nice, and adjustable from the PP menu. In the limited amount of time I had before shooting this week, though, I found the AB s-log profiles to be a bit muddier during post production to B&W, compared to the Sony in-camera s-log.

We did the shoot this week. It will be interesting to see how it works out. I used a middle grey card at 38% for the main exposure...tried to keep faces around 50% and top highlights at or below below 70%, using the F3 video level bracket. Shot entirely outside, and looked where I could for the maximum contrast spread in the image. The sun going behind the clouds regularly was not helpful.

Fingers crossed for post production success. Fortunately, this was a pilot/demo shoot for a new project, and I did it pro bono...so if it is an abject failure, its not the end of the world. Always good to do something new outside your comfort zone.
 
Lenilenapi said:
I wasn't aware that Abel Cine had posted s-log PP's .
Does anyone know where they are described on the website?
I went on the Abel Cine site and was able to download the PP's but didn't see any description of what they are suppsoed to do. i assume they are variations on the standard s-log PP from Sony
Click to expand...

One set of Abelcine PPs does a lot to match the Panasonic look and 5D look amoung other things. I think there is another set of PPs is a similar adaptation for S-Log.

http://blog.abelcine.com/2011/05/23/f3-scene-files-from-abelcine/
 
I found it best to just use the s-log gamma setting and pretty much leave everything else alone. I did see a small benefit in crushing "black" in the settings one number (-1). This seemed to hide a little noise in the shadows that s-log produces, which is not usable anyway in the CC, and might give you a better idea of what you have in the monitor. I noticed this when hooked up to a huge calibrated Panasonic monitor and messed with all the settings.

Along with that test, I almost was going to use the HD Detail enhancing feature after noticing a nice bump in perceived resolution on that big monitor but went back to "setting off" after noticing a very slight oversharpening effect on some contrasty edges.

Just to help clear it up, white balance, when set with the pre-set switch, goes from 3200 to 5600 with the push of the 5600 button. The 5600 button is made just for that- 5600, and doesn't screw up anything unless it is used when you are setting white balance with either A or B switch position balance settings.
 
The important thing to be aware of with the 5600 button is that it effectively adds a daylight 85 correction to 3200. If the PP Preset menu is not set to 3200, say to 4500 then the 5600 button will add a full 85 color correction to that creating an extremely warm picture. IMHO it would have been way better simply as a 3200 - 5600 toggle.

Duke - Re the Abel-Cine S-Log PP settings. Your link was for the Pre- SLog setting which I have seen before and downloaded. I'd like to see a description of what their S-Log adjusted settings do.

lenny
 
Well, that took forever to be released. The project I was shooting in F3 s-log was a pro bono pilot for a new "100 Words" film festival in Charlotte this fall. The trick is that the film can be as long or short as you want, but it has to have exactly 100 words of dialog in it, with a countdown bug. The director for this short wanted it to be in black and white, with some fairly high contrast where possible. We shot this in one day in January, in the freezing highlands of west Virginia. We recorded straight to SxS cards, in camera, 5600 WB, using the Jensen Warm Cards middle grey at 36% or so, with whites maxing out at 70% or below. Post did not do that much CC...just a a little contrast boost from time to time they said.

 
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