Hey all! Just wanted to see whats everyones favourite simulation to use as a point and shoot!
Sometimes I just don't want to fiddle with the temperature and color filter settings and let the camera decide for me. Like when I'm with clients (I work recording music), family or friends.
My two favourites so far are Ektar 100 and Portra 800! They give me nice colors and skin tones out of the box with AWB. The issue I've had with regular sony profiles is that warmer skin tones, specially here in latin america, look way too toasty lol.
Whats your go-to simulation in AWB?
Portra 800 on a ZV-E10
Ektar 100 on a ZV-E10
Hei Jerry, welcome to the forum!
Short answer, Choose any film simulations with Color Phase above -1. Dismiss anything bellow.
There are some situations where AWB it's just a faster and a more convenient choice when using film simulations, true that, but it won't work with all film simulations and definitely won't render the same colors as intended, but what I suggest is choosing profiles that have the Color Phase at a minimum of -1, nothing bellow that, unless you want green-yellow skintones and magenta skies.
Let's me explain a couple important details about sony film simulations, so we understand how these recipes work at the base.
There are 2 main tools that will affect your color, and those are the Kelvin & Color filter used in combination with the picture profile settings. Both used to shift and adjust color in different ways.
The temperature and the color filter settings have the power of shifting, balancing and pushing colors in different directions of the color spectrum.
The Color Phase is an global Hue shifter
By lowering the value you are shifting colors counter clock wise, meaning reds & skin tones become orange-yellow, yellow becomes green, greens become teal, blues become magenta and pinks become red. Everything is shifting counter clockwise.
You can use the Color Phase to shift the colors in different direction and correct colors, but it's best if used in combination with the temperature and the color filter settings.
For example if a film simulation has the Color Phase at -4, that means yellows will heavily shift towards green and that might affect skintones as well, but, we have the given kelvin and color filter settings which was carefully chosen to calibrate the colors and balance out the yucky green skin tones.
When using these film simulations only with AWB without the given kelvin and color filter settings, we are not balancing back the colors anymore, so we might get green yellow skintones, and that's not what we want.
So I suggest going only with the recipes that have atleast 0 on the color phase, and that is because they will aways render nice skintones even without balancing the colors with the help of the temperature settings.
From there you can also play around with the AWB color filter adjustments, to shift the overall color of the image by pushing it towards A-M-B-G and see what result are best for your style of shooing.
What I want to remind is that film simulation picture profiles have been designed in combination with the temperature settings, they work hand in hand together to render the color intended. Shifting or eliminating one all together from the cecuations will instantly change the results you will get, and you might not get the best results.
Hope this helps and share some more of your shots on the forum :D