I have been out testing the FX1 in many lighting scenarios and over and under stopping. I have a lot of data but will just publish a summary of what I found.

The FX1 produces MAXIMUM dynamic range when at the camera is set to auto. (Does Sony use this easily measured data to choose its auto setting?)

The bottom blacks are never lower than 18. I could find no way to make the camera record a black below this level under any situation. 18-21 was the normal range for the bottom of the histogram.

Using cinegamma causes the highlights to fall off quicker and boosts the bottom end. It does not record blacks below 18 it just increases the abundance (histogram heights) at 18. To see this visually if we were to start with a scene that gave, in normal mode, a perfectly rectangular histogram with the right side being at the 255 mark and the left side at 18, with the cinegamma on the right vertical side would lean to the left and the left side would be taller. The top of the histogram then would not be horizontal but move to a negative slope. IE, sloping down from black to white.

So here still is my problem. I can not increase saturation and fade away unwanted shadow detail by stopping down )like Jay shoes in one of his videos). I can only do this in a NIL by dropping the gamma or, as I said in the post title, pulling the bottom of the "S" curve to the right.

It just does not seem right to me that I have to do this in EVERY clip I take!

Michael