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24P Still Images
Tested during the Winter of 2002, the Sony and Panasonic 24P camera stills available on this site were intended to demonstrate camera capabilities in areas such as color saturation, color desaturation, deep blacks, compressed blacks and expanded highlights. Like film production, recorded High Definition images should be optimized to provide post-production the most pristine image possible.
Click here to go to Sony or Panasonic still images.
"The 50% Rule"
Recently a Director of Photography requested a very saturated in-camera set-up for a female character signifying her "Cinderella" experience at a school prom. I manipulated the look in-camera but found that the image contained noise due to the extreme levels of saturation. We compromised and integrated the "50% Rule." By going to 50% of the look, the DP has a feel for how lighting effects his/her envisioned final saturated images but keeps options open should he/she want to back out to a more normalized image in post. Additionally, a 50% in-camera manipulation benefits post-production because the image was captured without noise and needs to be pushed only 50% more in post. Post-production tools such as a DiVinci are much more capable then in-camera tools thus minimizing the introduction of noise in post.
Click here to go to Sony or Panasonic still images.
On-Set Camera Manipulation
On-set menu driven camera manipulation falls in line with the philosophy of optimizing images for Post. The most common types of manipulations involve "blacks" and highlight areas.
Black level manipulation most often occurs on exterior locations. After powering up a camera an operator may find that his/her baseline HD level to be at 30IRE on a waveform monitor. For the less than technical reader, this means that out of a scale from 0 to 100, the image recorded ranges from 30 to 100 or 70% of what is possible. Experience tells me that the level of "30" can be lowered to approximately "15" without introducing noise into a picture. Thus, an 85% image is being recorded instead of a 70% one. One may ask, why not lower the image to zero and get a 100% image and the simple answer is that such a dramatic manipulation would likely introduce noise into the picture and could "stretch" the blacks to distortion levels.
In High Definition Video, highlight level menus are often referred to as the "knee." The knee on 24P cameras can be manipulated for "film-like" responses or to provide a very short highlight curve resulting in compressed highlights. Like black levels, knee is most commonly manipulated on exterior settings but interiors will often benefit from such optimization.
Click here to go to Sony or Panasonic still images.