To preset or not?

[mraaron895]

Hello everyone. I have a question regarding the use of presets. As many may well know the upcoming movie Crank 2 was filmed with the XHA1. After reading a few reviews i found that no preset was used. It was basically filmed flat with the exception of an increase in sharpness, to give it a more edgy feel. When i read that no preset was used, and that it was all color corrected in post, it made me wonder... My previous thoughts were that it is smarter to use a preset for a desired look, and not use post color correction because it may decrease the quality. Is this true? Its hard for me to believe that now because of how good the Crank 2 movie quality looks.

So in short.... Does post production color correction degrade the quality of a clip shot on the XHA1? And is it smarter to use a preset to maintain the up most quality ?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

-Aaron

 

[Casalen]

No it doesn't. A lot of people believe getting a clean image is the goal, with post grading covering everything else. I'm usually in that thought for the most part. I certainly never do non-white color balance during production. The only time you'd see a quality difference is if you need to raise blacks or drop whites, both of which suffer in the compressed footage.