How can I shoot a flat image with EX1-R?

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Frank,
The Picture is really flat as it comes from the factory.
Just low the Blacks a bit. They come too high from factory.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Alister Chapman]

It depends on what you mean by “flat”. The EX standard gammas have a basically flat linear response that gives a good approximation of real life, however this linear response has a restricted dynamic range or latitude (about 8 stops). To overcome the limited latitude a knee is used to compress the pictures highlights, giving around 10 stops of latitude. The problem with the knee is that the gamma curve is essentially linear until it reaches the knee, then it suddenly becomes compressed, this makes grading problematic. As well as the standard gammas the EX’s have 4 cinegammas. These behave differently to the standard gammas. Instead of suddenly compressing highlights the cinegammas gradually bend the gamma curve slowly increasing the amount by which the highlights are compressed. They allow a dynamic range of 460% (10.5 stops) captured by the sensors to be squeezed into the recorded 108% or 100% signal.
So the Cinegammas capture a broad dynamic range without sudden highlight compression or crushing the shadows and when viewed on a monitor the image looks flat. If you are having to deal with hard to control lighting or high contrast scenes the cinegammas are probably going to work best for grading as it easier to deal with the soft compression onset than a hard knee. However if you can control your contrast range and keep it to within 8 stops you would be better off using a standard gamma but without the knee as your data is more evenly distributed across the image.

Alister Chapman
http://www.xdcam-user.com

[Brian Moore]

perfect for what you’re talking about

https://reels.creativecow.net//film/xdcam-ex-gamma-curves-and-knee