The Panasonic HVX200 offers a high degree of tweakability. It has fixed gamma presets for News, HD Norm, Low, SD Norm, High, Black Press, Cinelike D, and Cinelike V. Four color matrices-Normal, Enhanced, Fluorescent, and Cine-Like-complement the usual saturation, hue, and color temperature settings. Most gammas let you set low, mid, high, or auto knees, and you can dial in detail from -7 to +7.

In the "Texas Shoot-Out" (Sept. '06 DV, online at www.dv.com/features/ features_item.jhtml?category=Archive&articleId=192501232), we shot the Panasonic HVX200 using the Normal color matrix, detail at -7, and Cinelike D gamma. Although we loved the neutral, natural color of the resulting picture, we found the highlight handling and apparent sharpness disappointing compared with some of the other cameras. I vowed to explore the HVX200's settings in more detail to see if I could get better looking pix out of it-so here we are.

The IR remote is your friend

I set up a scene containing shadow detail, highlights, and everything in between. A 1,000-watt Tota-light in a Chimera small-video softbank located 60 degrees off-axis to the left of the scene provided a soft key; I used a bare 500-watt Tota nearly 90 degrees to the right for a raking sidelight. Three 75-watt PAR floods in overhead cans and a large picture window behind camera right offered some fill. I opened the door to get some bright 5600K exterior into the scene.

Click To Enlarge Ready for my closeup..er..medium wide shot.

With the camera in 1080i60 mode, I exposed the middle gray in the chart at 50 percent and measured various scene values with a Spectra Pro meter. Incident readings outdoors in shade were 2 stops higher; full sunlight was 4 stops up, referenced to incident readings at my seated position indoors. Incident light on the grayscale in the cabinet was -2 stops, reflected readings from shadowed areas in the cabinet were -3.5 to -4 stops, and the dark area on the HVX200's lens barrel was -4 stops. Skin tone read about +1 stop, the wall area was +2, and the splash of light from the small halogen light topped out at +4 stops.

Lacking anyone foolish enough to model for me during the three hours I spent running through the camera's settings, I wound up shooting myself, using the HVX's infrared remote to navigate the menus and to trigger recording-a great time-saver. I only had to get up to reposition a tripod to block a specular highlight from sunlight bouncing off a car window, which caused excessive flare.

I ran through the camera's eight different gamma curves, including News gamma (which is available only in 60p and 30i frame rates). I left detail at 0 and knee at auto, but also tried other knees in the HD Norm and High gamma settings. I tried all four color matrices in HD Norm, High, Cinelike D, and Cinelike V gammas. I ran through detail settings from -7 to +7 with HD Norm gamma, low knee, Normal matrix, and also ran 15 combinations of color level and color temperature settings. Sample frames from all these tests are posted at the end of the article.

I photographed a Stouffer Industries TLF4110, a 41-step transmission grayscale with 1/3 stop steps (www.stouffer.net). I shot this scale with all eight gammas, using low knee when possible (the Cinelike gammas don't allow knee selection) because I'm interested in maximizing usable dynamic range. I looped the clips on a CRT monitor, both as-is and after applying a black-stretching gamma adjustment in Final Cut Pro 5, and counted the number of distinguishable steps in the image to determine each gamma setting's latitude. I recorded the output of a Magni MM400 rasterizing waveform monitor WFM to make the composite gamma chart shown here.

Click To Enlarge Three different gamma settings, and superimposed grayscale curve.

Finally, I spent half a day looking at skin tone, glass, sunlit and shadowed foliage, polished metal, hummingbirds, and other varied subjects on a Panasonic BT-LH1700W HD LCD, while playing with gamma, knee, and detail settings on the HVX200.

Detail and sharpness

The HVX200 has 960 x 540 CCDs, so its limiting resolution is low; adding detail enhancement improves the apparent sharpness of the image. In Texas, we used -7 (detail off) and the image suffered for it. Set detail to +7, and everything picks up harsh edges. I usually use -2, which crispens the picture without adding too many objectionable outlines and halos, but others (for example, DP Chris Oben; see www.chrisoben.com/hvx200article.htm) opt for higher settings like +2. Why so different?

While repeatedly going back and forth between settings, I discovered that the Cinelike gammas have roughly half as much enhancement applied for any given detail setting as non-Cinelike gammas do. A detail setting of 0 in Cinelike gammas is roughly the same as -3 in other gammas; +2 in Cine gammas is like -2 otherwise (hence Chris Oben's +2 in Cinelike D is about as "sharp" as my -2 in HD Norm); +7 Cine roughly matches 0 non-Cine. I've owned the flippin' camera for several months and never noticed this until now... is my face red!

In general, I found that -2 (on the non-Cine scale) is a good compromise between sufficient sharpness and excess edging for many subjects and for my taste, but the ideal setting is very scene dependent. Contrasty glass and metal that have specular highlights often looked better between -4 and -6; brightly sunlit scenes improved with a setting of -3 or -4, whereas similar scenes in the shade might warrant a setting of 0 to +2; +7 gives you an exaggerated "TV news" look.

Unfortunately, the camera's LCD and EVF aren't useful in picking detail settings; higher-resolution HD (or SD) monitors are a necessity to see these subtleties of the signal.

Highlight handling

The HVX's Texas overexposure test, shot in Cinelike D gamma and Normal color, showed an unpleasant yellow hue in overexposed skin tones. I used the same method as in the Texas test (neutral gray at 50 percent in Normal gamma, fix exposure, set shooting gamma, shoot, open 2 stops, shoot again), varying only the gamma. As luck would have it, Cinelike D is the worst gamma curve for this case; the non-Cine gammas are all nicer, and Cinelike V is the best of the bunch, comparable to the JVC HD100's excellent performance.

Click To Enlarge Normal exposure and +2 stops in Cinelike D and Cinelike V gammas.

The HVX's gamma curves offer different looks, but largely capture the same dynamic range, at least with Low knee. I measured 8 stops for SD Norm, Low, Black Press, and Cinelike V gamma, and 8-1/3 stops for News, HD Norm, High, and Cinelike D gamma. With some fairly drastic black stretching in Final Cut Pro, I could eke out 9-1/3 stops in all gammas, albeit with some fairly severe noise in the shadows.

Setting a higher knee on gammas that allow it caused the loss of as much as 1/3 to 1/2 stop in the highlights, but left the highlights less compressed.

Fortunately, gamma setting changes and highlight handling are visible in the camera's LCD and EVF, though a properly calibrated monitor still does a better job of showing you what you've got.

Lessons learned

We always say you should shoot tests to learn how a camera works. I proved that here: I should have shot these tests before the Texas Shoot-Out. Had I done so, the Panasonic HVX200 would have turned in a noticeably nicer performance. Its pictures would have appeared sharper, and its highlight handling would have been more pleasing.

This exercise demonstrated the importance of a good monitor. Successfully tweaking the HVX200's detail setting required it, and the monitor more clearly showed the effects of other settings than did the camera's LCD and EVF.

Finally, I learned that there are secrets beyond what the manual holds, and beyond what one might reasonably expect. Even though I've been shooting with the HVX200 for some time, it still surprised me with the differing detail levels between cine and non-cine gammas.

You may find that spending a day or two just playing with your camera may yield similar insights, allowing you to paint more elegant pictures with your chosen tools.

The different gamma settings of the HVX200

News	HD Norm	Low	SD Norm
High	B . Press	Cinelike D	Cinelike V

Low

Mid

High

Auto

	Norm Matrix	Enriched Matrix	Fluo Matrix	Cine-like Matrix
HD Norm Gamma
High Gamma
Cinelike D Gamma
Cinelike V Gamma

	Chroma Level -7	Chroma Level 0	Chroma Level +7
Color Temp -7
Color Temp -4
Color Temp 0
Color Temp +4
Color Temp +7