FX6: The Sony ILME-FX6V Owners Club

[Andy9]

"Have you tried putting whites up around 90 IRE where broadcast clients expect them to land?"

I haven't tried this, I've been exposing S-Cinetone just like I did the cinegammas on the FS5 (good riddance) ie. whites at about 80 IRE and it looks pretty great to me for a WYSIWYG look. Then again, I'm coming from the FS5.

Genuine question: Do lots of broadcasters still insist on whites at 90 IRE? Outside of news, hasn't exposure been gradually drifting downwards for a while? Isn't S-Cinetone a part of the same 'cinematic' trend?

 

[Doug Jensen]

I posted this before (possibly in this very thread?) but the first part of this video is S-Cinetone straight out of camera, no grading:

First of all, I give you full credit for actually posting some footage and narrating what is going on. Thank you.
I saw the beagle footage when you posted it the first time and I still think it is severely underexposed. Yeah, it has a certain look to it (I really like the first of the dog in the car) that I'm sure would be acceptable for certain uses, but personally I could never hand that footage over to any of the clients I work for and present it as WYSIWYG footage that wouldn't need some serious grading. It would never be accepted as stock footage either without grading. It is way too dark by conventional broadcast standards, and what's worse, the shots don't match at all. For instance, look at the final cut at 1:50 and notice how those shots look totally different. You say several times in the video that it could be made better with some work in post, and I agree. But if you're going to have to grade anyway then S-LOG3 would have been the better choice in the first place. Why hobble the camera with a REC709 look that is going to have to be graded anyway? S-Cinetone is supposed to produce a WYSIWYG look -- and it didn't do that here, which you admit in the video.

My contention is that S-Cinetone very rarely produces a WYSIWYG look outside of the studio and under very controlled conditions. That is all I'm saying. I'm not telling anyone they shouldn't use S-Cinetone if they like it. I'm saying it does not work for me or the clients I work for.

 

[ahalpert]

I don't have an FX6, but when I need to WYSIWYG on my A7SIII, I have 5 different profiles built, none of which is S-Cinetone. 4 are saturated profiles with varying degrees of contrast built in. For very low contrast situations, I use the highest contrast profile. For very high contrast situations, I use the lowest contrast profile. Most of the time, I'm using the 2nd-lowest contrast profile. My 5th profile is the 2nd-lowest contrast profile but desaturated for situations where my color channels are getting blown.

I don't personally see how you can WYSIWYG with a single profile for all situations because you're essentially grading in-camera and the best grade depends on what the scene looks like to begin with.

 

[Doug Jensen]

I don't have an FX6, but when I need to WYSIWYG on my A7SIII, I have 5 different profiles built, none of which is S-Cinetone. 4 are saturated profiles with varying degrees of contrast built in. For very low contrast situations, I use the highest contrast profile. For very high contrast situations, I use the lowest contrast profile. Most of the time, I'm using the 2nd-lowest contrast profile. My 5th profile is the 2nd-lowest contrast profile but desaturated for situations where my color channels are getting blown.

I don't personally see how you can WYSIWYG with a single profile for all situations because you're essentially grading in-camera and the best grade depends on what the scene looks like to begin with.

I don't have a A7SIII so I can't address that camera, but I agree with that multiple WYSIWYG scene files are usually needed for Sony cameras in order to fit different shooting situations and styles. I refer to that as grading onboard the camera rather than in post. I always have 2-4 WYSIWYG scene files for my other cameras (F55, FS7, Z280, Z750, S1H, etc.) saved onboard so that I can call them up in a matter of seconds. I set them up in a studio with charts and scopes and then fine-tune them with real-world shooting. But I can't do that with the FX6 because the camera does not have the necessary paint menus to create those "looks". The FX9 has almost three times more paint menus as the FX6. And my Sony Z750 has nearly five times more paint menus than the FX6. And the menus that the FX6 does offer, basically allow to make it look worse, not better. I would wager than your A7SIII gives you more control than we are given on the FX6. It is clear that Sony wants people to shoot with S-LOG or use S-Cinetone. Period. They don't want to bewilder FX6 buyers with paint menus or else the camera will get a bad rap from the Youtubers. Like it or not, it is the dumbing down of the camera to appeal to a certain type of shooter. And I wouldn't argue with that if the camera still had some "advanced" controls buried a little deeper for those of use who wanted them. I'd shut up and drop the whole thing if someone could provide just one really nice WYSIWYG scene file or LUT that looks great outdoors in bright sunny light with broadcast level exposures. If someone thinks they have such a scene file or LUT then let's see it in action. This has never been an issue with other Sony cameras, but the FX6 ends all that.

 

[Doug Jensen]

Just one more thought. Real-world testing of LUTs and Scene Files is critically important. There were several times last winter when I was working on my FX6 master class that I really thought I'd found the answer to a nice WYSIWYG look. And when I'd go out to test it in the real world some of the footage would look acceptable, but the more I tested the more the shortcomings would become evident. And even the stuff i thought look acceptable t first could be significantly improved with some work in post, thus making them a poor choice for WYSIWYG. I gave up. But I'm open to someone else proving me wrong with some specific settings and real footage to back it up. It all comes down to testing. Certain people that promote LUTs that are supposed to emulate Hypergammas or other paint settings clearly have never tested what they are feeding to other people or they'd have some footage to show. And that footage would not be impressive. Ive done the testing.

 

[drboffa]

But if you're going to have to grade anyway then S-LOG3 would have been the better choice in the first place. Why hobble the camera with a REC709 look that is going to have to be graded anyway? S-Cinetone is supposed to produce a WYSIWYG look -- and it didn't do that here, which you admit in the video.

I would tend to agree completely, and I much prefer shooting in Cine EI mode in most situations. But for the sake of conversation here are a couple instances where I've found S-Cinetone useful:

1) at the sporting event a couple weeks ago I could transfer proxies from my FX6 to my phone and upload them straight to social media—and they looked fine without grading for quick IG posts. I could do this with slog3 but I'm not sure I have the same confidence in slog3 proxies that have only a LUT applied and no other grading.

2) the majority of editing for my day to day work is in FCPX, which is great for editing but not great for color grading (although it's perfectly competent). Most of our footage is not super high contrast: i.e., indoor sports events. For this type of footage—where S-Cinetone can work well—the grading process is generally much easier compared to working with slog3. I lift highlights a bit, pull down mids a tiny bit and maybe shadows, and then adjust saturation. Done. Properly exposed slog3 footage might not always need that much more work, but saving even a few steps can mean big savings in time across dozens of clips. (Although if it were entirely up to me—which it isn't—I'd still probably prefer we shoot in slog3.)

 

[Doug Jensen]

I can see the logic in all of those decisions. We are close to being on the same page, I just wish the FX6 would bend more to my will.

 

[drboffa]

I can see the logic in all of those decisions. We are close to being on the same page, I just wish the FX6 would bend more to my will.

Yeah I don't think I'd disagree with anything you're saying about S-Cinetone—and I'm always in favor of more control being provided to the user. To say I could hand over any of my footage SOOC is inaccurate (which is what is claimed for S-Cinetone). It's just that the grading is so minimal compared to when I used to wrestle with Fs5 or A6400 footage to get it to look good (in Rec709 profiles) that in my head it feels like I'm not even grading it. But of course I *am* grading it...

As an aside, I am fascinated by the art and skill involved in crafting a WYSIWYG look in camera, and I will admit up front that I do not possess this skill. I only got into video around 2015, at which point log profiles were already quite common (and Resolve was freely available, which is what I learned to edit on). But I enjoy reading articles about camera operators—especially in the early days of HD video—trying to squeeze as much performance as possible out of their cameras via dialing in very specific settings, testing, and then refining. My guess is this is becoming a disappearing skill set, as everyone just expects to grade in post.

 

[Doug Jensen]

If you enjoy grading (like I do) then you'd probably also enjoy creating custom scene files for a camera. I like to get into the menus and find out what kind of performance I can get out of a new camera. it does help that I have the right charts and real waveform/vectorscope but those are not completely necessary. A lot of it is just done by eye, and then by real-world testing out in the field. There are usually only 4-6 menus that really make a huge visible difference and the rest don't matter so much. In fact, there are some menus where you can go to +99 or -99 and you can't see any difference at all. A lot of people get into trouble when they go too far in a direction with one menu and then they have to compensate with another to make up for it. Shortly after the EX1 came out Sony sent me to Japan to provide feedback to the engineers and I brought with me a spreadsheet with all the settings of about a dozen scene files that were being shared online at that time. The engineers got a good chuckle out of a few of them because there were many settings that were cancelling out others. But I kinda put the blame back on them and pointed out that the company barely provides any documentation, so who is really to blame? It was a good trip and I learned a lot. One thing I tell people is that you can't just start farting around the the menus to see how much you can change the picture. You need to start by looking at the picture -- decide what would make it look better in your eyes - and then find the menu setting that will change that aspect of the picture. And that's basically the same approach I use in Resolve. Decide what will make it look better, and then find that setting. And a lot of it is subjective anyway because you can't expect everyone to like the same "look" any more than you'd expect everyone to like the same flavor of ice cream.

 

[ahalpert]

One last thought - the A7SIII (and, I believe, the FX6 as well) has a "dynamic range-optimizer" setting available if you're using the "Standard" color preset instead of a picture profile. My understanding is that the DRO adjusts contrast on the fly in response to the contrast of the scene. It's the sort of thing I swore I'd never use, but I do these 20- to 30-minute "as Live" gimbal exhibition tours for a client. I had been shooting them with my preferred WYSIWYG profile and then applying a global color grade based on the most contrasty scene in the whole shoot. But last time I got notes from the client about boosting the contrast on a low-contrast object that was shown under even lighting.

So, the next similar shoot I did for them, I used the DRO set to auto in an attempt to grade contrast during recording. I was pretty pleased with the results.

On the other hand, I stopped using auto white-balance this time. AWB is obviously a s*%tty last-ditch resort anyway. But aside from the fact that the color was never accurate, I could see the color shift mid-shot. I was surprised that the client never complained about it since they're usually very anal about artwork color. But this time, I shot the whole thing with a tungsten balance and then shot colorchecker passport reference frames afterwards in front of various paintings so I could balance color in post. (The bulbs are slightly different colors in different galleries and some of the galleries have windows, so the color varies throughout the tour.)

Of course, there are better ways to go about all of this. But I'm only given about 4 hours to edit a 30-minute video because they want to launch them the same day we shoot. I can zip through and balance large chunks to the chip charts, but I don't really have time to review the whole video and grade it manually based on how it looks to me.

Here was the SOOC tungsten-balance:



And balanced to the chip chart:



And here's the reference archival image produced by their photo department (which there would be no time to consult during the edit on the dozens of artworks shown in the tour, but I'm looking at now to judge the whole process):



I'm sure I could have gotten away without balancing the color in post, too. If anything, their reference frame has noticeably less contrast than I delivered. But the lighting is very different as well. It had more apparent contrast in real life. And since they want a bright, punchy image for people to look at on their phones, too much contrast is probably preferable to too little as long as nothing is blown out. Maybe I'll dial down the contrast a little in the picture settings next time, but I thought some of the other artworks still looked a little low-contrast this time around.

Perhaps I should also add that these are no-rehearsal one-take shoots because we only have about an hour of time with all the experts who will be on-camera. But trying to produce a good video under the circumstances is a fun challenge

 

[Doug Jensen]

One last thought - the A7SIII (and, I believe, the FX6 as well) has a "dynamic range-optimizer" setting

Well, you're mistaken because the FX6 has no such setting and it would probably be a bad idea to use a variable control like that even if it did.

On the other hand, I stopped using auto white-balance this time.

Good for you. Personally, I've never used AWB in my entire life for the reasons you mention. It is good you have finally seen the evils of AWB.

 

[ahalpert]

Good for you. Personally, I've never used AWB in my entire life for the reasons you mention. It is good you have finally seen the evils of AWB.

Haha "finally seen the evils". The issue at hand is shooting a continuous shot through varied-colored lighting that won't be properly color-corrected. Any single white balance setting will be off at various times. I have the capability to manually dial in the color temperature in the Imaging Edge Mobile app on my smartphone which I'm using for touch focus control so that I don't have to touch the camera while it's on the gimbal. But that poses other challenges and isn't a perfect solution. Anyway, I have never used AWB outside of this scenario

 

[Doug Jensen]

Obviously only you know the situation and have to decide what is the best way to shoot it, but just in the interest of having a little debate, let me play devil's advocate for a second. In a situation such as you describe I probably wouldn't vary the white balance during the shot, or during a sequence of shots. I would set it and leave it. Too many people want to dial out all the color temperature variations and make things neutral all the time. If the ambient color of the lightiing changes during the shot, it is not always necessary to cancel it out by changing the camera's white balance. Let it go. Those natural lighting changes are often part of what gives the shot its character and mood. Variations in color temperature can look natural and play an important part of the scene. I'm not saying that is the case all of the time, or even in the case you have described, but it's something that I have learned over the years and I find myself white balancing the camera far less often than I used to. Set it let it go.

 

[ahalpert]

Obviously only you know the situation and have to decide what is the best way to shoot it, but just in the interest of having a little debate, let me play devil's advocate for a second. In a situation such as you describe I probably wouldn't vary the white balance during the shot, or during a sequence of shots. I would set it and leave it. Too many people want to dial out all the color temperature variations and make things neutral all the time. If the ambient color of the lightiing changes during the shot, it is not always necessary to cancel it out by changing the camera's white balance. Let it go. Those natural lighting changes are often part of what gives the shot its character and mood. Variations in color temperature can look natural and play an important part of the scene. I'm not saying that is the case all of the time, or even in the case you have described, but it's something that I have learned over the years and I find myself white balancing the camera far less often than I used to. Set it let it go.

Sure... but not in this case. The situation is that these artworks are being auctioned, and my client wants the potential buyers to get as accurate a view of the merchandise as possible. The variation in color temperature is not a stylistic consideration. All the bulbs in the galleries should match, but they don't. Then there are the windows in some rooms but not others. I know from the experience of working with this client that they want footage to match their reference photos as closely as possible regardless of the lighting conditions of the shoot.

But I completely agree with you in general about not needing to neutralize color casts constantly. For example, I used to balance wedding reception footage for a client based on how the scene looked to my eye. So, a lot of banquets are bathed in warm light (like 2500K) and I would balance it on camera to look as it did in real life (warm). But the client complained that they had to neutralize the cast in post (supposedly because their clients complained?) So now I cool it down for them each time so it loses the warm glow that the event planners designed. It's tragic

 

[stewhem]

My dealer told me to expect to wait 6 weeks at best but it could be between 8 to 12. Have gigs booked so will have to rent till it arrives. At the rate Sony is releasing cameras we'll be on to the FX6 mk2 by then!

A little bird just told me CVP (in the UK) have over 150 pre-ordered "and they're coming through in ones and twos." Looks like Sony got this one right.

 

[did]

Today I got my Samyang 24/1.8. This little lens works well with the FX6 specially when used on the Ronin RS2. The total weight is 1.6 kg (FX6 with the Samy, the standard battery, without handles).
Since the weight towards front is low, the camera is shifted at quasi maximum towards front. It gives a large rear clearance, so it seems possible to balance the camera with the top handle or with a bigger battery. This lens costs 500 €.

 

[Teddy_Dem]

Davinci Resolve 17.2 was released today:

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=141034

https://www.cined.com/davinci-resolve-17-2-released-faster-startup-live-save-on-by-default/

From the what's new in Davinci Resolve 17.2 list there was an interesting item that caught my eye:

- Support for reading gyroscopic metadata on Sony Venice clips

Maybe this means that the Sony A7S3, Alpha 1, FX3, FX6 & FX9 will eventually soon be able to use their gyroscopic metadata for stabilization of clips within Davinci Resolve and bypass having to use Sony's Catalyst software.

 

[J.Brown]

This would be sweet and especially if this comes to PP also.

 

[LennyLevy]

haha - Re AWB: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" .
Every situation is different . I've used it on industrial shoots and for some things it was without question the right choice . Saved tons of time when that mattered more than perfection.

 

[Ben Scott]

Finally did my first proper job with the FX6 as work picks up.

Alongside 2 x FS7s it is very clearly a better quality image. Deals with saturated colours far better too.

With a Ninja V on the back for monitoring it was a great asset to the production and its quirks were minimised.