These are in my opinion, the best Scene File settings for the Sony FS7 and FS7mk2 cameras for broadcast and ENG shooting. They offer a Broadcast ready look and ability to go straight to air from the camera. I have found them to be great FS7 Scene File settings for News shooting, Documentary and Lifestyle.
The main reason I decided to purchase an FS7mk2 was the versatility that the camera offered. At 30 years old I am still quite early on in my career as a DOP/Lighting Cameraman so I need a versatile camera as my work ranges from Commercials and Corporate to Documentary and Broadcast television. What this means for me is in one week, I could be shooting all 4 of these, and i don’t want to be changing between camera systems. And ideally I would ideally like to leave my kit rigged to save time between shoots.
The versatility that I love of the Sony FS7 system lies not only in the ergonomics and ability to build up or strip down the FS7 kit, but also in the shooting “Modes” you can select within the camera. In the camera you can choose 2 shooting modes, Custom Mode, or Cine EI. For Narrative and Low Budget TVC work (stuff that you know will be handled by a Colourist), the FS7 can be set to Cine EI mode, giving you filmic highlight rolloff and an astounding 14 stops of Dynamic Range. For Broadcast and Documentary, Custom Mode can be utilised and you can “Customize” your own Scene Files (DSLR users read: picture profiles) and create a look, with a number of different Gamma and Colour options to best suit your shoot and finalising needs.
Recently I had a shoot for Foxtel’s Country Music Channel, covering their Red Carpet at the CMC Music awards here in Australia. The brief was pretty simple, a series of interviews with the talent, and cutaways of them interacting with the punters. However, this would have to be a quick turnaround on the edit, and the client wanted a baked, broadcast ready look. Something I had never felt I really “nailed” with the FS7. So I had to do a bunch of experimenting in the days leading up.
After setting up a whole heap of different gamma settings and profiles, comparing them against each other, what I settled on was actually based on a very popular Scene File setting. I am referring to Doug Jensens “PXW-FS7 Scene File designed to match Sony’s “LC-709typeA” Look Profile” which I would really recommend you checkout. Chances are if you own an FS7, you know who Doug Jensen is already, I would call him the FS7 Guru, and he seems like a fantastic bloke.
I like Dougs LC-709typeA “Scene File” and use it for quite a few quick and dirty corporates that I may be handing directly off to a production company. In my opinion, it doesn’t suit my needs for a broadcast ready Scene File purely because it doesn’t look saturated enough to me. Basically the only thing I changed from Doug’s profile setting to make it Broadcast Ready, was changing the Gamma from “Slog2” to HG3 (Hypergamma 3) this gave me what I feel are more “Broadcast Ready” Colours at the sacrifice of dynamic range. The skintones seem more “correct” to me than the Slog2 option (they don’t need post work done to them) and the saturation is what I would consider to be appropriate for TV News and ENG operation. This is of course an unscientific opinion, and I would not argue this with you if you held a gun to my head… or anything for that matter 😛
I decided to bump the white clip up to 109% as I knew that there would be some post work done on the footage, and I wanted to be safe just incase I overexposed, (the client will make it broadcast safe prior to going to air) but if you are doing a live cross with these settings, or going straight to air, make sure you set the White Clip to a broadcast safe level of 100%.
Checkout some screenshots of the shoot, I purely did a print screen on my mac, so these are not high resolution images by any means, but you will get the idea. As the night went on and the CTB Gelled 10K tungstens started to play, you can see the skin tones of the Stars starting to become a tiny bit more “Orange”, blame that on me not changing my white balance, whoops 😉
FS7 Hardware, Colour Temp and ISO:
FS7Mk2
Sigma 24-105 (using apertures ranging from f5.6 to f8)
Vello Speedbooster
White Balance: 5600k
ISO: 800-1600
Scene File Settings (Paint):
BLACK ON
-12
0
0
GAMMA ON
HG3
BLACK GAMMA OFF
KNEE OFF
WHITE CLIP On
109%
DETAIL OFF
SKIN DETAIL OFF
APERTURE ON
0
MATRIX ON
ADAPTIVE MATRIX ON
PRESET MATRIX ON
PRESET SELECT F55 709
USER MATRIX ON
LEVEL -23
PHASE -1
USER MATRIX R-G -14
USER MATRIX R-B -3
USER MATRIX G-R +12
USER MATRIX G-B +6
USER MATRIX B-R -1
USER MATRIX B-G -12
MULTI MATRIX ON
AXIS B
HUE +6
SATURATION +99
CAMERA > NOISE SUPPRESSION > ON
HIGH
What Scene File do you use for your FS7? Let me know!
