Hey! First off, I want to commend the creator of these film sims. They've really opened up a realm of possibilities with the Sony. We all know Sony cams have a lot of potential, but the time to get up to a working image is the price to pay.
I'm testing the digital sims out and a review is in the works. More people need to hear about this!
1) Ever since using the sims, I've been curious about whether or not to keep the gamma Assist on or on auto? What difference does that make? I noticed for example the files that look "correct" on the camera LCD with gamma asst on looks "flatter" when downloaded into Lightroom. I understand that the gamma asst doesn't transfer over and u need to do some post processing to pump up the contrast. I'm curious why can't the film sim be created in a way that the jpgs can be used straight out of the box (like the fuji ones sims)?
2) 2ndly, I note that the Portra 800 film sim is recommended to turn gamma assist off. Any reason why?
3) Lastly, is there an advantage to use Portra 800 over Portra 400? Does the 400 have a minimum ISO of 400?
Keep crushing it!
Jo
Hei thanks! Happy to hear you find them exciting, can't wait to see your review. To answer your questions: You want to Turn off gamma assist.
Gamma assist it's made for Log profiles like S-Log and HLG gammas. These gammas by default are very flat and desaturated with a wide color space, so gamma assist will give you a conversion to Rec709, which is a reproduction of how the image might look like after post processing, saturation and contrast wise.
Gamma assist will dramatically increase saturation and contrast, so for these ready to go profiles that will not be beneficial, because they are made to look good out of the box, with normal saturation and contrast.
With gamma assist turned on, you image will look overly saturated and contrasty, which is not how the jpegs will look like when imported onto your PC.
That is why your shots look flatter when imported into Lightroom. Also don't forget to shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW files don't contain the film simulation settings. When it comes to Portra 800 vs 400, first of all colors are different.
Portra 800 has more dynamic range, very nice color tones and soft gradations, but base iso starts at 800, and you need to overexpose by +1.7 stops, which can get noisy night time, and not recommended if you have a camera that's only capable of 8bit footage.
With Portra 400, Base ISO starts at 100, and even tho it's a Hybrid Log gamma doesn't necessarily need to be overexposed and will give you cleaner results than Portra 800 Nighttime with a more punchy Look. Portra 400 in combination with the color filter settings provided on the website, is meant for a more artistic look than Portra 800.
Hope this helps! :D
Send me a link when the review is done, can't wait to see your results
Have a nice day!