Sony and IMAGO Technical Committee join forces to offer sharpness control

Sony and the IMAGO Technical Committee have announced that, following several meetings at IBC exhibitions, one of the requests from cinematographers, DITs and colourists gathered by the Technical Committee (ITC) in its latest survey, has been fulfilled by Sony’s Japanese engineers.

Analysis of the Request to Manufacturers survey launched nearly two years ago by the ITC, showed that access to texture and especially sharpness parameters was required by professionals to allow them to master the artistic process.

As a result control of sharpness for X-OCN and RAW materials is now available in the new version 3.5 of the Sony RAW viewer. This can be downloaded here.

RAW Viewer is application software that allows you to view RAW/X-OCN/XAVC/SStP files recorded using the F65/PMW-F55/PMW-F5/NEX-FS700/MPC-3610 (VENICE/CineAltaV) unit or a combination of the unit and the SR-R4/AXS-R5 /AXS-R7 portable memory recorder.

The sharpness range is -300 to 500, and the default value is 0. For all cinematographers who want to use the F65, F55, F5 and VENICE cameras with high contrast lenses but avoid a clinical or overly sharp appearance, as well as for colourists or post-production supervisors, access to this setting is a great improvement for dramaturgy and the ease of special effects.

The ITC would like to thank all the Japanese engineers involved in this research and its correspondents Sebastian Leske, European Product Manager News & Cinematography; Fabien Pisano, Sales Head South Europe; and Richard Lewis, Chief Engineer Cinematography & 4K Application Specialist for their valuable assistance during the discussions with the Japanese Sony representatives.

Some test projects at Pinewood had been postponed due to the pandemic. IMAGO hopes they will be able to take place soon to give the community access to samples and images to easily choose their settings.

The ITC would also like to highlight a new tool from Sony to enhance the creativity on Set: the new .ART file system. LUTs are important for displaying the creative intent but with a generally very limited quality used on set in today’s cameras. The .ART (Advanced Rendering Transform) file system offers a serious optimisation to overcome these situations during on set monitoring. You can find out more here.