Camera Gamma Curves

MH_Stevens wrote on 6/7/2006, 10:49 AM
When I first got my FX1 I used the presets for sharpness, saturation, gamma etc. After becoming more familiar and playing with it I changed the gamma to the film-like gamma Sony calls cinematone. I immediately noticed this cine-style gave a greatly improved picture - not just more film-like but much improved video. It goes most of the way to doing what I'm sure most of us do in post during color correction. So I ask "Why do video cameras stick with these video style gammas (that make the picture look like video that nobody wants) when better Gama curves are available?

Michael

Comments

GlennChan wrote on 6/7/2006, 11:50 AM
The video style gammas relate to engineering standards like ITU-R BT.601 or BT.709, which define standard gamma curves (well it's more like a transfer function, but you can call it a curve... which is sort of correct).

The higher-end cameras do have functions that can deviate from those curves... the most common being video knee. They also have things like black stretch, gamma, black gamma, etc. etc. Some of these settings can also be found on middle and lower-end cameras.

As to why cameras do that... I suppose it's because it's what the engineers think the end user wants. I suspect you'll see more cameras that head towards higher dynamic range and/or better looking transfer functions (i.e. s-shaped transfer functions like film increases contrast).