GH2 Cinema Mode is the GH2's best kept secret

M

mpgxsvcd

Veteran
Footage from the "RISE UP" ABS 13 Bouldering comp in Lynchburg VA. Shot with a hacked GH2 in 1080p @ 24 FPS mode with the "No Adverse Affects" settings.

All of the color scenes were shot in the Cinema color mode. Contrary to popular belief it actually offers the lowest noise because it is the least boosted of the color modes. However, it does require that you push the video up about 2/3s of a stop in post because it under exposes.

The smooth mode actually has the most noise of all of the color modes because it underexposes the RAW image by 1/3 of a stop and then boosts both the shadows and the highlights. This causes additional noise in the shadows and can blow out highlights. My opinion is that it is much better to record the compressed video as close to the RAW image as possible and then only boost the levels of the shadows in post instead of letting the camera boost everything automatically.

I have hopes that one day VK can create a hack that will let us boost only the shadow detail of the Cinema mode and leave the highlights untouched. Currently only the I.dynamic mode can boost the shadows and leave the highlights untouched in camera. However, the I.dynamic mode only triggers if the video is severely underexposed with blown out highlights as well. That situation is nearly impossible to replicate indoors without any sunlight.


No adverse Affects hack settings.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/...ault-most-popular-patches-in-one-place#Item_5

The B&W shots were done in B&W standard mode because it has the least amount of contrast added to it(Technically subtracted from it). The B&W smooth mode actually overexposes the image and then adds in excessive contrast. This is not ideal for low light indoor scenes.

All of the shots with extreme noise were at ISO 12,800. The light did not require that much exposure gain. However, I figured I would try it out.

Everything was shot at 1/50th of a second for 1080p and 1/120 for 720p. The slow motion shots were the only 720p shots.
 
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Thanks for this--I just did a whole weekend of footage with the GH13 and the GH2 and was definitely ready to sell the GH2 at the end. I'll give it another try on your suggested settings to see if it helps with the noise. I have only used smooth and standard.
 
Totally agree with this. I've been shooting in Cinema mode exclusively for a while now.The little exposure push needed in post is worth it to get the low levels of noise.
 
mpgxsvcd said:
All of the color scenes were shot in the Cinema color mode. Contrary to popular belief it actually offers the lowest noise because it is the least boosted of the color modes. However, it does require that you push the video up about 2/3s of a stop in post because it under exposes.
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The lower your midtones and blacks, the less you'll notice noise. So if Cinema color mode is keeping them low, it will appear to have less noise than other color modes that use curves with higher mids and blacks. However, if you then push the mids and blacks higher in post, you are ending up at exactly the same place as if you had simply shot that way in-camera with a different curve. Or, depending on how much compression is going on, you've simply compressed the noise in the blacks out of existence, as the encoder compresses the crap out of everything below a certain level as it expects the blacks to contain unimportant data. So, if anything, all you're doing is letting the compressor run rampant on the blacks as a sort of quick and dirty noise reduction, that would probably be better done in post with something like Neat Video.
 
strangways said:
The lower your midtones and blacks, the less you'll notice noise. So if Cinema color mode is keeping them low, it will appear to have less noise than other color modes that use curves with higher mids and blacks. However, if you then push the mids and blacks higher in post, you are ending up at exactly the same place as if you had simply shot that way in-camera with a different curve. Or, depending on how much compression is going on, you've simply compressed the noise in the blacks out of existence, as the encoder compresses the crap out of everything below a certain level as it expects the blacks to contain unimportant data. So, if anything, all you're doing is letting the compressor run rampant on the blacks as a sort of quick and dirty noise reduction, that would probably be better done in post with something like Neat Video.
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This is a great point. You are absolutely correct. The problem is that neither setting is better for every situation.

The smooth and nostalgic settings will both push the shadow levels up. However, they will both clip highlights. However, if the highlights are not important to you then this may be ideal.

The Cinema mode will retain highlights but it could clip the shadows. That is where I use the I.dynamic settings. That is the only settings that can adjust the shadow detail independently from the highlights. If you get this mode to trigger with Cinema you can end up with properly exposed shadows and no need to do the 2/3 of a stop underexposure compensation.

Remember these differences are not HUGE differences. We are talking about 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop of exposure difference here. That may or may not be significant to you.

The only setting I never use is the Nostalgic setting. It simply blows out all highlights with no hope of recovering them. You also have to correct the severe Yellow white balance bias. The WB can be corrected in camera. However, it is not worth it.
 
To be fair there is bit of a yellow bias especialy in greens in all modes,i agree nostalics yellow bias is worst.
 
My only beef with the Cinema mode is that if you DO clip highlights, it looks really yellow and ugly, much like the highlight clipping on the AF100. Under controlled contrast/lighting situations, it looks really good and cinematic, but if there's ANYTHING that overexposes, it looks very harsh and ugly. SMOOTH on the other hand, rolls off highlights in a much more pleasing way, and since the midtones are already pumped up, I can usually iris down 1/3/ or 2/3 of a stop and get the highlights under control. Adding contrast to the final result shot in SMOOTH lowers noise and the whole thing looks just fine to me. SMOOTH has always been the most useful setting to me. Occasionally, NATURE actually looks kind of interesting if you want very saturated skin tones.
 
dvbrother said:
My only beef with the Cinema mode is that if you DO clip highlights, it looks really yellow and ugly, much like the highlight clipping on the AF100. Under controlled contrast/lighting situations, it looks really good and cinematic, but if there's ANYTHING that overexposes, it looks very harsh and ugly. SMOOTH on the other hand, rolls off highlights in a much more pleasing way, and since the midtones are already pumped up, I can usually iris down 1/3/ or 2/3 of a stop and get the highlights under control. Adding contrast to the final result shot in SMOOTH lowers noise and the whole thing looks just fine to me. SMOOTH has always been the most useful setting to me. Occasionally, NATURE actually looks kind of interesting if you want very saturated skin tones.
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Smooth and Nature actually are the two closest looking settings to each other. Nature has slightly more contrast and saturation. However, both are very similar save one big difference.

Smooth meters the RAW file 1/3 of a stop darker than Nature. Therefore, it is pumping the exposure up an extra 1/3 of a stop over Nature. That increases noise. Not drastically because it is only 1/3 of a stop. However, it does increase it.

If I am shooting video without the intent to edit I always use Nature. I also use it for all jpg pictures.

I have examples from each color mode that show how the Auto white balance varies for each color mode. I will go back and check it. However, I don’t believe Cinema meters the White balance any differently from Smooth or Natural.
 
mpgxsvcd said:
The only setting I never use is the Nostalgic setting. It simply blows out all highlights with no hope of recovering them. You also have to correct the severe Yellow white balance bias. The WB can be corrected in camera...
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I use Nostalgic quite often, but only for nighttime shots in incandescent light. As you point out, the White Balance needs adjustment - I set it to 2700K, with M-5 to suppress the GH2's greenish tint. (I find the GH1 needs M-5 in all WB settings to match the GH2's color balance.)

As strangways explained, the amount of noise seen in the different Film Modes is simply a matter of how much video gain you want to apply to the shadows. The actual signal/noise ratio at the dark end of the scale is predominately determined by the amount of light focused by the lens onto the image sensor. The random noise produced by the GH2's sensor varies by less than 2/3-stop across the standard video ISO range from 160-3200:

http://www.sensorgen.info/PanasonicDMC_GH2.html

As with all DSLR's, the GH2's dynamic range at the bright end of the scale decreases proportional to ISO setting. This means that if you don't want to blow out the highlights at high ISO's, you'll have to crush some of the shadow detail into black. In some cases, such as with intense stage lighting, I prefer to blow the lights in favor of capturing the shadows. This is where I've gotten dramatic results with Nostalgic.
 
lpowell said:
As with all DSLR's, the GH2's dynamic range at the bright end of the scale decreases proportional to ISO setting. This means that if you don't want to blow out the highlights at high ISO's, you'll have to crush some of the shadow detail into black. In some cases, such as with intense stage lighting, I prefer to blow the lights in favor of capturing the shadows. This is where I've gotten dramatic results with Nostalgic.
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Couldn't you do the same by using the I.Dynamic mode? You can let Cinema properly expose the highlights and I.Dynamic will bring up the shadows.
 
mpgxsvcd said:
Couldn't you do the same by using the I.Dynamic mode? You can let Cinema properly expose the highlights and I.Dynamic will bring up the shadows.
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Possibly, but I.Dynamic was designed for still photography and it seems like its use in video is still experimental. Since I don't understand exactly how it's triggered, I'd be concerned that it might produce visibly fluctuating shadow detail during a video take. If we can figure out how to obtain reliably predictable results with I.Dynamic, it could become a good tool for compressing the dynamic range of a shot.
 
I guess the real point I wanted to make is that Cinema doesn't push the shadows or the highlights at all. It allows you to choose what gets pushed and when it gets pushed. There are some circumstances where pushing the shadows isn't necessary. In that case smooth will under-expose the RAW file and push the shadows and highlights as much as it possibly can.

Contrary to popular belief Panasonic was not trying to make the color mode with the most dynamic range with the Cinema mode. They were trying to make the most grade-able color mode possible and they did exactly that.

Smooth mode might the best color mode for dynamic range straight out of the camera. However, it is not necessarily the best choice when you know you are going to edit the footage.
 
Again, in circumstances where you know some highlights in your shot are going to clip, Cinema has an ugly color shift on blown highlights, much like the AF100. I think this is because one of the color channels clips prematurely, causing a tinting of the blown highlights. I wish I had an example to show, but one I commonly run into in my shooting is a case of an interior where you want the sunlit windows to blow out. On purpose. That hot blown out window look. On Cinema, those windows tend to look yellow, and the clipping seems very hard and digital. Smooth clips the color channels evenly so the blown out window will look white, and there may be some kind of knee kicking in because the blown highlights look softer and more pleasing. That's why I use Smooth.
 
this post has made me question my goto choice of Nostalgia for low light situations, actually just plugging my camera into my 42" TV tells quite a bit of the story when your looking at the difference between the settings noise wise. When it comes to Black & White I actually like the Smooth setting better than Standard ... it looks less harsh, but then again if you mean to grade the footage in post it might very well be better to shooting in Standard Mode.
 
mpgxsvcd said:
Couldn't you do the same by using the I.Dynamic mode? You can let Cinema properly expose the highlights and I.Dynamic will bring up the shadows.
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mpgxsvcd you talked that you had a good idea how idynamic is working on personal-view care to share it with us here or there. Until now I cannot get it to work. It would be nice if we could get it hacked.
 
I had planned to post a demonstration of how I.dynamic works last night. However, my son got extremely sick last night so I had to shelve those plans. If he is doing better tonight I can try to post it tomorrow morning.

The problem is that words are really not enough to demonstrate what I want to show. It really takes video to show what it does. I have already shot the videos I need. I just need to write and speak the narration.
 
mpgxsvcd said:
I had planned to post a demonstration of how I.dynamic works last night. However, my son got extremely sick last night so I had to shelve those plans. If he is doing better tonight I can try to post it tomorrow morning.

The problem is that words are really not enough to demonstrate what I want to show. It really takes video to show what it does. I have already shot the videos I need. I just need to write and speak the narration.
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You should make it it's own topic when you post it, so it doesn't get lost in another thread. I'd really like to know where I should be using this technique.
 
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