Adjusting the over-crisp and video look of sony cameras

[Graham Bernard]

Rick, are you prepared to post the 3 examples so I could gauge what I’d do to adjust.

Interesting,,,,

G

Video Content Creator and Potter
PC 7 64-bit 16gb * Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core 3.40GHz * 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti
Cameras: Canon XF300 + PowerShot SX50HS Bridge

[Rick Wise]

Graham, I don’t have examples at hand. You can see the Sony look in this demo of the NX30, which appears to be a fantastic video camera for only $1,750: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McFi_ii1ZWI

I’m guessing that one could copy the video and paste directly above the original on the time line. Convert the copy to b&w, increase contrast substantially, add a bit of blur, and then increase transparency (reduce the level to maybe 10%) of the top layer to taste. Possibly add a touch of sepia to the top layer too.

Rick Wise
Cinematographer
San Francisco Bay Area
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

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[Colin Morris]

Hi Rick,
I own a few different Sony prosumer cameras (NEX)and have not noticed an over crisp look compared to my JVC’s etc. When I bought my last cam I took an SD card to a dealer and shot a test chart, outside in parking lot, under tungsten etc with 5 different cameras. I then loaded all footage in SVP and checked on a calibrated monitor, then rendered to different delivery codecs. We found a few surprises that would have really given us headaches down the road. Hope this helps.

Colin Mendez Morris
ArsMusica
http://www.arsmusica.ca

[Rick Wise]

I suspect the JVC look would be very close to Sony’s. So no surprise there. What were the surprises you found?

Rick Wise
Cinematographer
San Francisco Bay Area
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

[Colin Morris]

The biggest surprise was that workflow was a much bigger issue then we first anticipated. SVP was great because it can take almost any camera footage without an intermediate codec. When we first looked 5 years ago, we really looked hard different cams. After using a JVC HD7 we realized that it suited our workflow perfectly. We shoot 80% live concerts and 20% music videos so the 5 hour recording time, and that each native JVC file of 17 mins could be archived on a single data DVD worked for us. When we looked at something for low light with interchangeable lenses, we looked hard at DSLRs and the Black Magic CC. After doing a rough survey we realized that Black Magic Cinema Cam users in our area were not using RAW at all. We were seriously looking at the BMCC for its latitude, RAW etc, but realized the pain of a RAW workflow with short SSD recording capacity was not worth it. Most of our client work was going to Vimeo or Youtube . We didn’t have a week to grade each project. The recording time limitations of the DSLRs and the form factor also did not work well for us. We went with Sony NEX-VG10/20 and an NEX-5 as a B cam. We bought an adapter and a whack of old Minolta lenses on EBAY, so we have the ability to do some low light shallow DOF shots with long recording times. In the long run, taking the test footage through the workflow in detail really put things into perspective. Even simple things like render times for a cameras codec can make you thing differently if cam X takes 40% longer.

Colin Mendez Morris
ArsMusica
http://www.arsmusica.ca