kidzrevil

Here's a example of a classic film look as used to set the time period of the story. Taken from the movie "Man From Uncle".

Is not beauty in the eye of the beholder? In any case, I don't recall watching The Martian and thinking, "oh boy, I would really like to have that look in my productions". IMO, The Martian had a look reminiscent of Aliens ( I'm going by memory). It wasn't bad, but nothing I would feel compelled to achieve. And btw, lets not confuse in camera color from a $1k camera with the finished work from a $108 million dollar budget Hollywood blockbuster, with experts in cinematography, colorist, special effects, lighting, makeup, props and talent etc... In any case, I think many here would be curious to see what looks you have created with the NX1... and please share the settings. Who knows, you might have a winner?
 
FYI: Here is a little peak inside "The Martian"
 

I don't know, I think the majority of this community likes the clean look you are referring to. If you like YOUR videos to look like The Martian, by all means go rent an Arri, and have at it.
I, personally, like the look of vintage film and/or video with character, but I, unlike you, can respect people's individual tastes.

Yeah, I think 0 contrast is the way to go. I have been using -4 saturation, with good results... As is, it looks fairly good out of camera, but I also have a little leeway to adjust. I have not messed with the hue or colors at all. I remember reading some comments on a post a few months ago where a guy was shooting calm and then bumping up his colors. I never tried it, but maybe. Btw, retro and landscape look interesting too, but without a doubt, vivid is best out of box profile. Good find!!!

Yeah, sorry I was actually referring to the test video... Should have written that before the b&w comment. Anyway, according to the description, he shot the NX1Test video with negative 10 contrast.  I messed with it a little and found it a tad frail, but definitely grade able... Unsure if you really get anything more out of it though. But it does seem like the color is uniform. I'll post some before and after grabs later. 

Also guys keep in mind even if you leave the contrast a 0 in vivid you can still raise the black level to keep shadow detail.

Loving these looks, will def. try them !

Thank you Yeah, if we protect the highlights from getting crushed, it always looks quite amazing.
Heres a few others, but the OOC settings are always the same.




 
Just like Andrew said, the goal is to have enough so that you can make artistic choices later on in post...This is actually one of my favourite parts of any project, to grade the footage in a lot of ways and see how it ends up looking.

Imagine if they could hack the camera and achieve a more "raw" video quality. We could get a similar quality at 6400 like you did instead of that 1600 usable limit.

It's more about the codec actually.
H.265 effectively doubles your bitrate due to 2x greater efficiancy.
70 = 140Mbit/s
The NX1's codec is able to hold onto more detail, where H.264 on the a7R II goes a bit muddy due to compression.
The RX10 II's codec is muddier still, probably due to a cheaper processor.
So in short... definitely more 'real' detail on the NX1 compared to the A7R II and A7S II.

The one linked. It only works on G lenses of course. I use it with the Tokina 11-16.

a camera <maybe> "failing" in this market (which there's a thread here devoted to being pissed about it) means that it was a bad product? better cameras have been discontinued.

Yes, and I hear that Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus and Panasonic collectively sighed,  in huge relief.   :-)    So if you use a NX1 suddenly your work becomes "imaginary"?  lol

Looks really nice, keep experimenting.
For better Vimeo uploading/playback, a good trick is to upload in ProRes Proxy & 2k. If you upload in 1080 & H264, Vimeo just re-transcodes your your already compressed footage evenmore & that's why you get a worse picture than you started out with.
Don't ever bother adding grain on Vimeo as it just doesn't work - if you do add grain then really over do it. For Film Convert, for example, you need to set the grain level above 150% for it to show up on Vimeo.
But as everyone says, if you want a clean picture then Neat Video is the way to go - its also has the best sharpening tool out there.

GH4 has much lower detail than the NX1.
I agree with you though, the Canon colors are great, but I find the NX1 very very versatile, its easy to grade and look great, however, you need decent lenses...most of the footage I see are shot with the kit lens, this is probably due to the bad marketing, and with the kit lens, it makes the camera look close to what an Iphone @ 4k looks like. Pair it with decent lenses, and you have an amazing camera, that can look filmic or not, depending on what your needs are.

FF tests are not Moot for me because it is the main feature that would attract me to the Sony for Video.  I was aware it was going to be not as good.  but it still surprised me by how bad it was.  So along comes the A7SII...woot woot...   except as a still photographer they leave out Phase detect AF?    It's called Sonyfication, the things that make your scratch your head about Sony :-)  So good and then the deal breaker.
Yes Ricardo,  I wanted it to be close,  but if you have owned the Samsung and you see the Jaw dropping shots in Andrew Reid's video that look like "moving stills" it's hard to go backwards.  

The Nx1 is an incredible piece of tech, an incredible camera (I keep telling this to everyone), its the most underated piece of gear in ages. I did think the a7rII would come close to it though, surprised to see its so far behind, this just confirms my opinion, the NX1 is the best 4k (and video) camera around up until the tens of thousands in price, and even then, it compares quite close.
 
Great test btw !

Lenses are listed in the post.  Samsung 16-50 F2  and Canon L 24-70 on the Sony,  Zero sharpening in post and minimum in camera on both.  First pair is NX1 vs FF Sony,  Second and Third image are NX1 versus Sony S35 and the forth image  is  NX1 versus Sony FF.  S35 is better but even in S35  grabs from the Sony, in resolving detail, the NX1 eats it.     Re Log exposure, no did not expose 1 stop over, so will retest for noise.  Sharpening is one thing but detail resolved is still significantly less.  For SUCH a high tech camera in S35 mode, I think Sony need to spend some time in Korea. :-) and learn how to get all the data of the chip and into the file.  If I didn't own the NX1 maybe I would be very happy with the Sony, but the NX1 has spoilt it's owners for 4K resolution.  IMHO

Before you go stylized, just try to get a natural look. You need that strong starting point; THEN get creative with your grade later. 

Try this. Set the camera on a tripod in front of a wide scene. You want a variety of colors, textures, and light. Then, record 30 seconds of that scene with each picture profile. Default settings, everything at 0. Then go through again with contrast lowered. Then go again with saturation lowered. Then go again with contrast and saturation lowered. Write the order down in a notebook or label each with a voiceover as you're recording. Then go home, sit down in front of your monitor, and really look at what each profile and setting change is doing to your image. Mess around with raising shadows, recovering highlights, messing with saturation, manipulating colors, etc. 
Do that, and you'll figure out what's what real quick. Thorough hands-on testing is the only way to get a definitive answer on what settings work best for you. 

I suggest distinguishing more between the gamma profile and the color gamut which can be choosen seperately in the PP-settings of Sony A7S / A7RII / A7SII. My personal recommendation is to use the "Movie" color setting together with cine gamma 2 oder cine gamma 4. Red is not purple anymore and green isn't dominating anymore.
Even though S-Gamma may preserve some more of the sensor's dynamic range, in a 8 bit corset you get banding too quickly after stretching in post processing. When recording to memory card inside the camera, it is even more compressed (using only values between 16 and 235). Grading from the HDMI output (full using of the values from 0-255 and 4:2:2 subsampling e.g. by recording with Atomos Shogun) may help a little bit.

I'm talking about color science in general, not the A7S II specifically. 

My work is mainly creative features, docs, shorts, and music videos, where I have don't have lightning-fast deadlines to meet. In those conditions, I've gotten much nicer results from beefier color spaces like Blackmagic's than Canon's very saccharine, Crayola look. Even with weddings, you generally have a couple months to deliver, and between Filmconvert, Speedlooks, and Magic Bullet, finding a decent look is within anyone's reach. If not, I doubt the camera is the problem. 

I think the zeiss milvus are probably better than the sigma art, but for the money, the sigma's are great lenses. Some have said that the 18-35mm is one of the best zoom lenses ever made. My friend just bought the 30mm 1.4 and I shot a couple clips with it yesterday, and it looked good. I think Kendy Ty shoots only with that lens... But the older version. Look into the xeen lenses too, supposed to be very nice. There's also a member here, Rich, who is the owner of Dog Schidt Optics and he has some beautiful lenses he has repurposed for reasonable prices. 

Looks great. The NX500 is the same way. I have done extensive testing and contrast at default 0 is the best. Tweaking contrast too much messes up the colors... At least to my eye.  I tick saturation down to -4 and sharpness dialed all the way. 
Have you tried EditReady? I think it does a pretty good job. Of course I convert to 1080p prores. I think it gives the footage a little more weight. 
Black pro must is a good idea... Hmm.
Anyway, your shots look wicked. You should make a video showing your coloring workflow. 

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of good, adaptable, APS-C-specific glass out there. Your best option is just to get good full frame glass and smile knowing that you don't have to worry about vignetting or corner performance.

If you just want solid lenses without breaking the bank, I'd look at Minolta Rokkors and Contax Zeiss. Here's a couple links to get you started. 

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?92246-Minolta-Rokkor-Survival-Guide
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?92044-Contax-Zeiss-Survival-Guide

The Zeiss look very clean and "honest", whereas the Rokkors have a warmer, more "vintage cinema" look. Look at some samples and see what you like.

Resolution: how much actual detail is in the image

Sharpness: how prominent or emphasized the details are in an image

Soft: can refer to a lack of either Resolution or Sharpness. 

What we need are separate words for resolution-soft and sharpness-soft. Actually...resolution-soft and sharpness-soft might do it.