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EOSHD ProColor for Sony Cameras Guide by Andrew Reid
Version 2.0
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Introduction Sony cameras have a colour science which seems to take an engineering led approach. Canon’s colour has a green and blue channel optimised for landscapes and places, but a red channel optimised for skin and people. I find there is more separation in the greens and blues on a Canon camera, leading to more realistic green foliage and landscapes, along with vivid shades of blue in the sky - but less separation in the red channel. This is key. Too much separation of reds is bad for skin. You get to see every imperfection with a Sony camera, from dark reds to grey-yellows under the eyes. The Canon trick seems to be to take a more forgiving and flattering approach to faces and skin, delivering a pleasing flesh tone which remains realistic but far more flattering of talent in front of the camera. What this tells us is that Sony’s adherence to absolute numbers and figures in a technical calibration does not always give us the most pleasing image to look at! As well as the skintones and red channel issue, Sony’s JPEG Creative Styles, video Picture Profiles and Automatic White Balance system suffer other issues leading to a less crowd-pleasing colour rendering overall, as test after test reaction tells us. Many of us, myself included, prefer Canon’s JPEGs and white balance. My Sony camera used to give a crayon-like artificial hue to greens, clipped blues which can turn turquoise and a rough fall-off to highlights. So what can we do about the problem? As it happens, quite a lot. Sony’s Picture Profiles for advanced users and filmmakers aren’t very good looking on their default settings but unlike the more basic Creative Styles they offer a huge range of customisation. By carefully fine tuning every aspect of them in detail, one solves the issues and is able to shoot beautiful looking colour in 4K straight out of the camera. With my customised profile you get a beautiful Canon-like colour science rocking, no matter what the subject. White balance on Sony’s current cameras also needs tuning. The auto white balance setting fails to distinguish artistically between giving an absolute white hue and maintaining the ambience of a scene. This is massively important no matter what light you’re shooting in. Scenes and people shot under artificial light can have a lifeless cold look with automatic white balance. This is not how the human eye perceives
3 the temperature of colour in the room. Sometimes a dominant light source will simply take over the image, turning blues in the scene a muddy brown or even too green! EOSHD Pro Color changes the approach we take with white balance on Sony cameras. It will give 3 recommended custom temperatures to select depending on whether you’re shooting indoors or outdoors, day or night. This allows you to remove the green cast, avoid a clinical white balance and maintain the real ambience of the scene. These presets also prevent random colour shifts in the middle of a shot. This approach is inspired by the Canon 1D X Mark II which has a dual-white balance mode. One mode maintains the ambience of warm light and one does the ‘scientifically correct’ thing from an engineer’s point of view (maintaining white no matter what the colour temperature of your ambient lighting). Once white balance is tuned for ambience on your Sony camera, colour in general improves dramatically.
Advantages • • • • • •
Truer, deeper reds Greater separation of green hues for more natural looking foliage and landscapes Greater separation of blue hues for better skies and better cool tones under warm lights Skintones, faces and people given a more flattering treatment Smoother and more film-like roll off to highlights and shadows Reduced colour clipping (prevents a blue object turning turquoise or green in bright light)
Compatibility • • • • • • • •
Sony A7S II Sony A7R II Sony A7S Sony A7 II Sony A6300 / A6500 Sony RX10 II / III Sony RX100 IV / V Sony FS5
Not compatible with RX100 1 to 3, original RX10, original A7R, A7 and A6000
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The EOSHD Pro Color Settings Please keep the following information confidential.
PP1 - EOSHD Pro Color Setup For optimal straight out of camera colours.
SONY A7S II / A7R II / A7S / A7 II / RX100 IV / RX10 II / RX10 III Black level = -15 Gamma = Cine2 Black Gamma = Middle (0) Knee = Auto (100% Mid) Color Mode = S-Gamut3.Cine (if not available select S-Gamut) Saturation = +32 Color Phase = +4 Color Depth = R+4 / G+4 / B+4 / C+4 / M+4 / Y -5 Detail = -7 SONY A6300 / A6500 / A99 II / FS5 Black level = -15 Gamma = Cine4 Black Gamma = Wide (-7) Knee = Auto (100% Mid) Color Mode = Pro Saturation = +5 Color Phase = +2 Color Depth = R+5 / G+5 / B+5 / C-3 / M-3 / Y -5 Detail = -7
5 Picture Profiles Advice To apply the settings, dial exactly as stated above into the Picture Profiles menu under the PP1 preset. You may use a different slot (PP2, PP3, etc.) if PP1 is already occupied with a custom profile of your own. The settings are detailed in the guide as Sony does not allow colour settings to be loaded from a file. On the Sony Alpha and RX stills cameras the Picture Profiles are located in the Main Menu. On the Sony FS5, Picture Profiles are located in the CAMERA/PAINT menu. The Sony A6300 / A6500 / A99 II and FS5 do not allow Color Depth adjustments when an S-Gamut Color Mode is selected. Therefore the second group of settings are tuned specifically for the models in question. Please be sure to use the correct settings depending on your camera model. Different people perceive different amounts of reds and magenta in images due to differences in colour perception and eyesight. If the image looks too magenta, dial down Color Phase to 0 or below to suit.
Sample video Benefits of EOSHD Pro Color narrated by Andrew Reid http://www.eoshd.com/2016/11/eoshd-pro-color-samples-shot-sony-a7s-ii/
6 Custom White Balance settings (Sony FS5 users may skip this step) Assign C.Temp./Filter 1 = approx. 3600K Assign C.Temp./Filter 2 = approx. 4300k (for warmer ambiance at night or indoors) Assign C.Temp./Filter 3 = approx. 5600K (go higher for summer sun) Also make “White Balance Adjustment” as follows for Custom 1,2,3 A-B: B2 G-M: M2
7 White balance setup instructions (Sony FS5 users may skip this step) Step 1. Avoid auto mode and ignore the “Daylight”, “Shade”, etc. preset options. Step 2. Scroll down to Custom Setup. Step 3. Press “Set” whilst the camera is pointed at a tungsten lit indoor scene until you get 3600K and assign to Custom 1. Step 4. Repeat for Custom 2 (4300K). Repeat for Custom 3 (5600K). You may need to perform the colour temperature capture for Custom 2 and 3 in daylight.
White balance usage instructions (Sony FS5 users may skip this step) Select Custom 1 for indoor situations / tungsten light. Select Custom 2 for a warmer ambience indoors. Select Custom 3 for daylight exterior scenes. You may also select a Custom Temperature of your choice or dial the C.Temp./Filter (Kelvin) for a cooler shot indoors or a warmer shot outdoors. Custom 2 (4300K) can also be used in daylight if you want a cooler daylight tone than given by Custom 3. I also recommend assigning the white balance menu to a custom function key so you can quickly toggle between Custom 1 to 3 during a shoot.
8 Sony FS5 White Balance Notes The FS5 handles colour differently to the Alpha and RX range. Generally I find the automatic white balance on this camera good enough to trust. Also when shooting in S-LOG, white balance is baked into the S Gamut mode used (3200K / 4300K / 5500K) and overrides the camera’s usual white balance system. Therefore Sony FS5 users may skip the custom white balance settings in this guide.
White balance notes (Sony FS5 users may skip this step) White can be produced under any temperature of light by a compensation made in-camera called white balance. For example with a white tea cup under the orange tungsten light of a room at night, the camera can dial out the cast and restore the white tea cup to its actual colour. However filmmakers use different kinds of light to give different moods, styles and feels to a scene. We usually want to maintain the colour cast these lights and gels give to objects and people in the scene. What the Sony engineers don’t seem to appreciate is that although a white balance system is working technically correctly when it gives us white tea cups under tungsten light, the poor cinematographer has just spent hours rigging up certain temperatures of light for a certain mood to match the page of the script he is shooting. On the Sony cameras there is no Ambience Priority white balance mode, which Canon cameras have been using for years. So auto-white balance is not recommended and neither are the factory-preset white balances. They are tone-death to ambience and nearly always either too cold or too warm. That is why in the guide I detail my recommended custom colour temperatures (3600k, 4300k and 5600k). A custom white balance is not just important for shooting indoors under light you can control. When shooting in natural light during the day, you might encounter multiple different temperatures and colour
9 tones from the same light source - the sun - on a single day of shooting. None of it is up to you. The time of day, the season, the atmospheric conditions and even the part of the world you’re shooting in are all a factor. If for any reason the 5600k setting gives a tint which is too cool outdoors, dial in a higher number via the C.Temp./Filter (Kelvin) setting. Whichever one you end up using a lot, that should be the one you assign to one of the Custom slots. Different lighting falls roughly into three categories. There’s indoor tungsten or LED light at giving a yellow/ orange cast. Approximately 3200K helps balance this and stops things looking too hot. When we set the camera’s white balance system to 3200K we are making the image cooler to compensate for the orange cast. Since it is important to maintain the ambience of this light, I prefer to use 3600K, giving a look that is truer to how the human eye sees the scene. Believe it or not, even our own eyes and mind have a built in white balance system and you can sometimes feel it working when taking off sun glasses - the sun’s glare feels cooler and whiter before our eyes adjust and do an automatic white balance of their own. 3600K is also the setting I use for shooting night scenes out in the city, under whatever electric light is available. However, to maintain the integrity of blues I shift the white balance tuning setting (shown on the in-camera colour chart) towards A-B (amber-blue) by 2 places towards blue. Also to remove the typical green-cast of the Sony default white balance I move the G-M (green magenta) position towards magenta 2 places (see settings). I do this on all my custom preset white balances (see settings). If I want a warmer ambience at night or indoors I use 4300k. Daylight is balanced at approx. 5200K but varies depending on shade, cloud-cover and other factors. 4300k is usable outdoors for a cooler tint - depending on whether the script calls for it (like a winter scene), but generally I use 5600k for almost all outdoor shoots in natural light. It may be necessary to increase from 5600k to 7000k or even 8000k if you want very warm sunlit footage or are heavily shaded areas on a summer’s day. The Sony cameras store up to 3 custom white balance temperatures. Unfortunately rather than dialling in the numbers you have to point the camera at the scene to set the white balance temperature. The camera will automatically gauge the white balance depending on what light is in the shot. Try pointing the camera at a range of light temperatures indoors before you get to the magic 3600k. It doesn’t have to be exact to the 100’s. 3500k will do. Remember you can make corrections to colour tint and temperature in post as long as they are quite minor.
10 To get the 4300k and 5600k figures for custom white balance preset 2 and 3, set the custom white balance outside during the day. You can also set any figure you like manually on the Kelvin option. I find it fastest to just flip between the custom presets. The manual Kelvin option saves whatever it is you entered so you can use that as a 4th preset. Assign white balance to a custom key for quick access during a shoot. Remember to do the fine tuning adjustment (A-B 2… G-M 2) for each preset including the custom Kelvin option or any preset you intend to use. If you do still want to rely on automatic white balance and don’t bother doing the fine tuning be prepared for a more green look to skin and for warm light indoors to have a cooler yellow-green bias rather than warm orange.
Other recommended camera settings (Sony FS5 users may skip this step) File format Soft Skin Effect High ISO NR Gamma Disp. Assist Monitor Brightness
XAVC S 4K (24p or 25p 100M) OFF ON (Low) OFF Manual 0
Mode dial recommendations: in both Movie mode and P/S/A/M stills mode, video is recorded identically however live view is handled differently. When the dial is set to Movie you get a more responsive record button and no gamma shift between live view and recording. BUT when the mode dial is set to M you get several more advantages including: Sharper magnified focus assist Faster AF for setting up a shot Faster screen and EVF refresh rate Ability to reel off photos on the main shutter button To ensure the correct aspect ratio is displayed for video in P/S/A/M mode select 16:9 in the main menu for Aspect Ratio (stills).
