Smooth V Standard

R

ROne

Well-known member
I've had a bit of a play with the 'film modes' (bit of an odd name given it also relates to the stills.) and by no means conclusive but I was finding that Smooth appears to compress the bottom end a bit.

I shot the same scene locked off, same exposure and viewed on wave form, and Standard appeared to be slightly flatter across the board (opposite of what I was expecting.)

Standard did appear to let me see into the shadows a little more ...

Iris seemed to be half-stop down on Smooth for same waveform according to exposure metering in-camera.

I'm wondering if the film modes affect on the image is more to do with the primaries than the gamma response.

Turning contrast up +1,+2 definitely compresses the blacks though.

I would like to get to the bottom of sharpness and NR, as boosted sharpness looks fine on screens below 42" but when blown up on my 1080p projector some edges show aliasing.
 
I've been shooting:
Contrast -2
Detail +1
Noise Reduction -2
Saturation -1

This is for video. I like having sat and contrast turned down because it gives me more leeway to work on the video in post. I don't really like the look of this coming out of the camera but I have tested it a ton and it looks great with color correction. The decreased saturation really helps bring out detail in highlights and blacks which I can then either retain or lose by upping contrast, but on the computer I can control blacks and highlights somewhat independently, so that really helps.

For photos which I don't do a lot of post work on I usually go
+1 Contrast
+1 Detail
-2 NR
+1 Saturation
 
My Film 1 and My Film 2. I assume they're as close to neutral starting point as neutral can be...all things being arbitrary.

Anyone figured out what the point of the multifilm mode thing is? Does it average out the selected options? Seems strange.
 
Ben, what style do you use as the basis for your modifications? I started on Smooth and now use Nostalgic (Contrast -2, Detail -1, Noise Reduction -2, Saturation -1). I kind've ignored Standard straight away, but maybe I should look at it again. Now that I've started my project on Nostalgic, I feel I should stay with it for consistency...
 
I use My Film 1 and My Film 2. I assume they start with standard? It's been working pretty well.
 
Ben_B said:
I use My Film 1 and My Film 2. I assume they start with standard? It's been working pretty well.
Click to expand...

Your "My films" become customised presets of what you start with.

So you enter your film mode first (STANDARD, SMOOTH, DYNAMIC etc) and customise it then press the film mode button again and it allows you store your customised preset over "MY FILM 1" or "MY FILM 2".

You have to start with a preset.
 
From my tests I seem to like a customized Standard for darker shots and a customized Smooth or customized Standard for brighter shoots. I customize them by setting Contrast to -2 and Saturation to -2 (sometimes -1 depending on the scene). Those modes and settings seem more pleasing to me and also seem as though they'd allow the most room for color grading.

What I've shot so far looks absolutely fantastic for a $1500 camera. I still have more testing to do to determine if I want to turn NR down or adjust Sharpness, but that's where I am so far.
 
I've had a bit of a play with the 'film modes' (bit of an odd name given it also relates to the stills.)
Click to expand...
You're probably too young to remember, but once upon a time, both movies and stills were shot on something called "film". Different brands of film had different kinds of colour character. It was kind of photosensitive plastic stuff which was inserted into the camera in a roll, and moved through a section at a time so that each section could be exposed to light through the lens. But that was back in the good old days that only old timers like me remember.

Why, those were the days when.... [Nurse appears and wheels elderly gent back to his room for his afternoon nap]

:)
 
And you had to wait a day or two before you could see what you shot!
Click to expand...
But the girl at the drugstore / chemist / pharmacist / photo shop got to see what you shot first... gulp!
 
If you press the Film Mode button to bring up the selector, then press the Film Mode button again, you'll see the preset My Film 1 and My Film 2 have stored in them. Default is Standard.

I did a bunch more tests today. Tests included some shots with a lot of trees with clear blue sky above them. I noticed that Smooth seemed to rob the sky of a lot of its blue color, but not affect the greens of the trees very much. It seems to just decrease the saturation of blue colors or something. Anyone else notice anything like that?

So far I'm finding Standard with Contrast at -2, Sharpness at +1, Saturation at -2, and NR at 0 to be my ideal setting for both darker and brighter shots.
 
Ozpeter said:
You're probably too young to remember, but once upon a time, both movies and stills were shot on something called "film". Different brands of film had different kinds of colour character. It was kind of photosensitive plastic stuff which was inserted into the camera in a roll, and moved through a section at a time so that each section could be exposed to light through the lens. But that was back in the good old days that only old timers like me remember.

Why, those were the days when.... [Nurse appears and wheels elderly gent back to his room for his afternoon nap]

:)
Click to expand...

The GH1 is very versatile but wouldn't actually accept my old Ilford stock.

I don't miss processing photos one bit.
 
Mike@AF said:
If you press the Film Mode button to bring up the selector, then press the Film Mode button again, you'll see the preset My Film 1 and My Film 2 have stored in them. Default is Standard.

I did a bunch more tests today. Tests included some shots with a lot of trees with clear blue sky above them. I noticed that Smooth seemed to rob the sky of a lot of its blue color, but not affect the greens of the trees very much. It seems to just decrease the saturation of blue colors or something. Anyone else notice anything like that?

So far I'm finding Standard with Contrast at -2, Sharpness at +1, Saturation at -2, and NR at 0 to be my ideal setting for both darker and brighter shots.
Click to expand...

I've not been looking at colour just yet, but the shadows do seem to be darker on Standard.
 
Thanks for that, I couldn't remember where I saw it.

I wish it was a slightly bigger scale so I can see what is going off at the bottom.
 
Dear Mike@AF,

I also have noticed that the smooth film mode seems to rob the sky of the blue colours (contrast -2, sharpness -2, saturation -2, NR 0). In my first shots I thought that it's related to a wrong white balance (overall picture too yellowish), but I've noticed it in other instances as well. It can be counteracted by a slight Kelvin temperature adjustment (a very nice feature), but it's still there.

In general it seems my cam is adding a bit of a yellow tone (in auto WB as well as when the Kelvin temperature is set, e.g. to 5500K for bright daylight (which I actually prefer)) to the overall picture which diminishes the blue content. I also noticed it for Kholi's thrift store footage as well as the GH1 footage in the RED vs. Canon 5D vs. GH1 shootout mentioned elsewhere (on Vimeo).

I would be interested to know what others find. I prefer the smooth film mode so far for shooting.

best regards,

Gunther
 
I've been using Smooth up until now. I think with the realization of how much blue is taken from the sky that I won't use Smooth much anymore. If I adjust color temp to compensate it changes the rest of the colors and white is no longer really white. Standard seems to be the next closest and the colors stay what they should be.
 
I don't have the GH-1 (yet) but from what I have been seeing I agree with the OP. The standard mode seems to see in to the dark better than the smooth mode (which kind of crushes it).
 
Mike@AF said:
So far I'm finding Standard with Contrast at -2, Sharpness at +1, Saturation at -2, and NR at 0 to be my ideal setting for both darker and brighter shots.
Click to expand...

I tried out this setting and got a lot of posterization in the highs. At the time I noticed it on the LCD but let it slide as we were just shooting rehearsal. During transcode later I really saw how strong it was but by then it was too late to go back and test with smooth mode.

Is it just me or do you see this too?
 
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