A few weeks ago, I suddenly decided to look at my camera settings for the Panasonic DVX100B. When I got the camera, I just set the settings to whatever I thought would look good… Being completely ignorant of what I was doing.
So I did some research, and decided to use the settings to create a “digital negative” image as taught by Stu Maschwitz. I thought it might be helpful for any DVX users who read my blog to post the settings I’m using now. The following settings are located on the camera menu section one, “Scene File.”
• Detail Level: -7
• V Detail Level: -7
• Detail Coring: 0
• Chroma Level: 0
• Chroma Phase: 0
• Color Temp: 0
• Master Ped: -6
• A. Iris Level: 0
• Gamma: Cinelike D
• Knee: Auto
• Matrix: Normal
• Skin Tone DTL: Off
• V Detail Freq: Mid
• Progressive: 24p
The two detail settings at the top control how sharp the image is. Having it set lower allows the camera to capture more detail instead of capturing more pixel blockiness. Master Ped is the black level; -6 is what I found to be the right setting to get a reading of 0% light with both the lens cap and the marker on. The gamma settings flattens out the tone curves, allowing much more potential for post processing.
Here’s a comparison of the image I was getting both before and after the change. The before pic is approximate, because I don’t remember exactly what my settings were… Both pictures are unedited, straight from the camera.
BEFORE
AFTER
You’ll notice that the first image is more saturated and sharp. However, it also has a ton more color clipping (which equals a loss of color information and detail), as well video noise and pixel artifacting. The second image is flatter in tone and softer — but much more editable. A bit of raising the saturation and contrast brings it fairly close to the first image, but without the clipping and artifacting:
The theory behind the new settings isn’t just for the DVX — I’ve also reworked my still camera settings and am having much better results with it, as well.
This entry was posted by chadstembridge on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 7:00 am and is categorized under All, Photos and tagged as digital, DVX100B, image, negative, Panasonic, settings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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