I made a 9 1/2 minute Blu Ray disk of various clips I shot in different film modes, and watched it on the large Sony TV. These are a few of the clips in the Blu Ray,
I watched it three times and made notes the last time.
But first, before the notes on the film modes, I have a question. I was amazed at the detail I was seeing in the rocks. I remember being disappointed at previous shots with the EX1R, This was also true for the video of this area I made when I tried a Canon 5D,
. I then watched a Blu Ray I shot in the fall with the EX1R,
http://www.youtube.com/user/billh96007#p/u/11/ew5DsDOivGc and there is lots of detail in the people (at 3:28) and Blue Heron (4:25). The rocks are in this EX1R video,
at 2:05, and while the I see impressive detail in the GH2 video, the same rocks look almost smeary here in the EX1R video. The birds are great though. What is the difference? Is it something about the larger sensor in the GH2? I would love to understand why the GH2 is so good here, and the Canon 5D and Sony EX1R comparatively so bad in this one area.
Notes on film modes I made while watching the Blu Ray:
Cinema: Darks too dark, no detail. Water highlights good, retained lots of detail. Darker area, (zone 3 - 4 ) flat and dull.
Standard: Like Cinema, Blacks have no detail. Cinema may look a bit better in the dark areas.
Dynamic: Maybe a bit better detail in the blacks? Overall I like Cinema best of these three.
Nature: Blacks crunched here too, but held some detail in the blacks.
Vibrant, no detail in blacks, whites holds detail.
Nostalgic: I hate the yellow. I left it in for the short examples I posted on Vimeo, but removed most of it for the Blu ray clips. On the Blu Ray I can see I could have tweaked it a bit more in the whites, but on the computer monitor, if I removed any more yellow from the mid tones, some of the rocks became an unnatural steel blue. I think this is the most interesting of the modes. I used these clips,
as the opening clip in each of the modes in the Blu Ray. My notes say, “best by far in the opening blacks, good detail in middle tones, whites OK. My wife commented on the beautiful colors in the rocks in some of the clips. They did look natural and appealing, and held a lot of detail, but I am not sure they are really representative of what you would see if you were there looking at them. I’ll have to check that.
These notes were written while watching a Blu Ray. I output a ProRes HQ copy and watched it on the computer monitor, and it is pretty much what you see in the Vimeo clips.
My Blu Ray notes say Nostalgic and Smooth are best, probably Nostalgic no. 1 and Smooth no. 2, but get all of the yellow out of the Nostalgic clips. I wonder if I can do this in the WB menu?