Whatʼs the difference between HD, FILMLIKE, VIDEO-REC and FILMREC?
It is helpful to think of the various GAMMA MODES in the camera as film stocks. If you
were going to shoot a project on film, you could assemble a variety of film stocks from
several manufacturers, study their characteristic curves (usually printed right on the
box) and determine which one would record with higher contrast, and which one would
lead to a slightly lower contrast look. These determinations are made by looking at how
the stock responds to varying degrees of exposure to light. The same holds true for
GAMMA Modes. GAMMA Modes are basically instruction sets, telling the camera what
kind of a signal output to generate for every level of light input, from 0% to 100%. This
instruction set can be plotted out as a graphic to allow the user to see how the camera
will respond to light at each level.
Figure 1 represents the Characteristic Response of a camera, plotting out all of the GAMMA options available to the user. Which GAMMA options you have available to you will depend on
the camera you own. For example, the AJ-HPX2000, will not provide you with a “FILM-REC” or “VIDEO-REC” option, while the new P2 VariCams (AJ-HPX2700 and AJ-HPX3700) offer the full set of GAMMA options plotted in Figure 1.
