Re: Ultimate "film look" for EX-3

When working to high broadcast standards (eg. BBC) then it is vital to get exposure very accurate and no clipping of whites or blacks. When recording in 8-bit codecs like the EX1 onboard recorder is there is very little latitude to adjust it later in post without creating noise. The picture profile, particularly the gamma curve, can help with this enormously. For instance with the old 8-bit Varicam we generally used up to 3 picture profiles all the time on a sequence - different profiles for high, medium and low contrast lighting/scenes - in order to use the full range of the recording codec as much as possible. With the new Varicam it is a 10-bit codec so now we generally can use only one profile for nearly all scenes. This is a very dull boring-looking picture but maximises the camera's dynamic range.

Like Rafael recommends - be very careful about making a strong look in the camera. It depends on the assigment of course but for all my shoots over the last 20 years (mostly wildlife TV series) I would have been fired for deliberately producing any type of 'look' in camera.