Best Picture Profile?

Brandon Rice said:
Any thoughts on this?
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Personal taste.

For most stuff I used the Cine profile with contrast and brightness set at zero (most were setting these at -2) because for my tastes the Cine profile was a tad "flat". A bit of contrast and brightness "kicked some life" into it.

I no longer have any GH2's (sold all three), converted to a pair of GH3's when they came out and you might look into getting one of those. I thought about keeping one GH2 but having to keep up with the configuration differences was something I didn't want to deal with.

As it is, the GH3 seems to have the benefits of some of the GH2 "hacks" built in, colors are better, and it is a tad simpler to use.
 
Bruce Foreman said:
Personal taste.

For most stuff I used the Cine profile with contrast and brightness set at zero (most were setting these at -2) because for my tastes the Cine profile was a tad "flat". A bit of contrast and brightness "kicked some life" into it.

I no longer have any GH2's (sold all three), converted to a pair of GH3's when they came out and you might look into getting one of those. I thought about keeping one GH2 but having to keep up with the configuration differences was something I didn't want to deal with.

As it is, the GH3 seems to have the benefits of some of the GH2 "hacks" built in, colors are better, and it is a tad simpler to use.
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The GH2 was my choice due to the hack availability, and the more organic look to the footage I saw (based on research). Also, it was definitely a price issue for me as well :)

Thanks for the information!
 
Best profile for what? What do you want it to do? There is no such thing as the best profile. It is all about the look you want. The best profile for me will not be the best one for you. That is like asking which is better Coke or Pepsi. Even if you did get a lot of responses they wouldn't really mean much because nobody can tell you what look you will like.

I wish I could give you a solid answer but that is impossible. Just like any form of art it requires experimenting to find the method, look and style that works best for you.
 
Basically I'm looking for two things.

1. A contrasty "portrait" look that matches the portrait mode of the 60D and 5D.

2. A more flat look for narrative stuff, where I can have more options in grading.
 
It's been over a year since I had a GH2 in my hands so I might not remember exactly what all the profiles were like.

"Contrasty" portrait look? I'm a retired portrait photographer so I ignored the "portrait mode" of my 60D. As I remember the 60D's "Portrait" color profile did have reduced contrast, slightly muted color, and I'd call it ANYTHING but "contrasty".

I looked at what others were doing with the "nostalgia" profile on the GH2 and others and I just couldn't get anywhere with those. The GH2 just didn't give enough adjustment with only 2 steps in either direction on the adjustment parameters. But Cinema profile, while basically too flat and "meh.." (to my eyes) did give me your #1 and #2 items.

Most others pulled all the parameters down to -2 which looked somewhat "lifeless" to me, but when contrast and brightness were left at 0 (midscale) or +1, saturation at either 0 or -1, and noise reduction at 0 I got a bit of muted "cinema" look that if I wanted to adjust density, gamma, brighness, black levels and more in post I could.

Whatever "portrait" look I wanted...Well, I've been handling that with lighting for decades. If I want a "contrasty" look in a character's face (lines, wrinkles, weatherbeaten, "war trails", or anything like that, I use lighting for contrast (sunlight is excellent for that).

You're not going to get any "baked in" look that is perfect, and going "flat" like has been popular lately can be a pathway to disaster. So find a profile you can work with a bit but realize that most impact on what you get will come from what you do with lighting, exposure, composition, and the setting you have to work in.
 
I am shooting live events, and cannot light for them. However, I want the look to match well in post, so that a lot of color grading isn't required to "match" cameras.

I know the best way is to hold them side by side...

Thanks for all the info.
 
Ahh...

Are you wanting to shoot an event with two cameras, like the GH2 and 60D? And have them "match"?

Not impossible but it could be a VERY tall order as the two cameras have quite different image characteristics. Canon color tends to be quite "warm", that's why quite a few folks prefer the way their colors look. Plus the APS-C sensor models also tend to have a "softer" image to them.

Panasonic GH2 colors tend to be a bit "cooler" and the image definition is decidedly sharper (that's why I sold off Canon gear and initially converted to GH2's and native m4/3 optics). To compensate the colors a bit I set the WB adjust one "tick" towards amber and 2 "ticks" towards magenta causing the color to shift a tad "warmer" and away from the slight greenish cast the GH2 was wont to show.

Just a suggestion, if matching between 2 cameras is what you need to do, you may be better off to make it two GH2's. On the used market GH2's are not commanding the high prices everyone thought they would at this point. I've seen two recently priced at about the $400-$425 level over on mu-43.com. The downward price pressure on used GH2's is likely do to the GH4 coming to market.
 
Thanks for the advice! Problem is that the folks I work with have the Canons. I'll use your advice on the WB though and I always tend to shoot a little "Warm" anyway :)
 
Matching Canons is tough without some elbow grease. I feel like nostalgic would probably be the closest as Canon footage has that soft warm nostalgic feel to it. In general, my go to modes on the GH2 have been the smooth and vivid profiles. Honestly vivid, when brought back a little bit on the contrast, to me looked the best. I would sometimes desaturate it just a tad, but that image popped and with less contrast baked in than people thought, IMO. I feel like it just had richer color information, however color correcting could sometimes be an issue with color changing. It always feels like you're fighting to get that perfect profile with the GH2. Most of them look good, but sometimes I'd feel like smooth and color correcting was the answer and most other times I'd go with vivid.
 
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