Cleanest film settings

T

tonpole

Carbonite Member
I set contrast and noise reduction at-2 because they seem to be a form of preprocessing, not so sure about sharpness and saturation. What settings are likely to be truest to the sensor output?
 
I'm interested in this... I just received my GH1 and I'm doing comparison tests on STANDARD at first.

I tried SMOOTH and NOSTALGIC and those seemed like a look to me, not really neutral.

Here are the stills:

-2


-1


0


+1


+2


What I can conclude right off the bat is that NR eats a lot of resolution, not good. You can turn your image into mud just using this setting.

Also, not the best test in the world. I'm working mostly underexposed but that's ok for me.

No clear skies around here, waiting for the rain to clear up before shooting exteriors.

:thumbsup:
 
Pietro Impagliazzo said:
I tried SMOOTH and NOSTALGIC and those seemed like a look to me, not really neutral.
Click to expand...
If you check the GretagMacbeth ColorChecker here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicdmcgh1/page18.asp
you'll find, like me, that setting 'Nature' is by far the best GH1 option for most situations. And I found that it most closely matches the 'better known' color-defaults of Canon and Nikon cameras too.

Recently I tried Smooth and Nostalgic for a while, as adviced by Mark, but it clearly destroys my white-balance and other preferences in color-range. You could use the Smooth setting if you're certain you'll add and change colors in post-production, but I found that to be a hassle rather than useful. The Panasonic GH1 already delivers pretty low-contrast (both in b&w levels as well as in color-saturation) when using the Nature setting. I.m.o. it's just less work when your colors are better to start with, but this is up to you and your application of the recording(s) you do. I did not find any real-life usage for the Smooth and Nostalgic settings. As far as color-correction is required in post for the Nature setting the base is not destructive for your colors or black-values, so it doesn't really prove to be of much value, in my experience.

I'd stick with the 'Nature' setting. All the others give too cold a hue in the red and yellow areas.
 
If I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to do and color post production, what setting would be the best?
 
i've only shot with the nature film mode in the fields and trees, i might give it a try in a less greenish environment.

i've always stuck to smooth and nostalgic as i rather like the muted out colour but i think i find it boring now.

2mro = nature
 
After reviewing pietro's pics on my color accurate monitor, it appears that:

Dynamic - High contrast, high saturation, red shifted.
Vibrant - High contrast, high satuation, blue shifted.
Standard - Mid contrast, mid saturation, red shifted.
Nature - Mid contrast, mid saturation, blue shifted.
Smooth - Low contrast, mid saturation, red shifted.
Nostalgic - Low contrast, low saturation, yellow shifted.


Nostalgic really stands on its own in how it picks up greens and makes them uniform. I tried grading some other types to look like nostalgic but the variations in color intensity always shone through, destroying the effect.

I managed to grade a low contrast into a high contrast and vice versa, and it seems both to be fairly doable, thought the risks are that going from high to low crushes shadows and going low to high raises blacks creating a haze. From my own tests NR can destroy an image and should be set at -2, and sharpness is a processing filter and should be disabled as well. Contrast and saturation seem to be a matter of taste. Ill probably follow up on this after i do my own tests to determine which setting is truest to life.
 
Ton, thank you for your valuable input!

I'd like to ask a few things to you:

First, what worries me about the low contrast Nostalgic is how it handles micro-contrast in areas of the same color.

For example, the floor of the pool. It has little color and tonal separation between them. Or the parking lot's floor tiles... Could you bring the contrast and saturation up and get similar results to Standard?

What really worries me about the Nostalgic setting is the tint, seems like a bit too much.
 
Check out my YouTube video here ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdfdSoFNC5I ... which shows each of the film styles with a static shot at a local boating marina. I use the Nature setting now for everything (Stills & Vids) and a half black promist if shooting video. The "worst setting" seems to me to be the Nostalgic one as it totally de-saturates the image and slightly over-exposes it. I would use Black and White before I would go to Nostalgic again! :grin:
 
You guys are white balancing after you change the settings right?

I get NO tints on the different settings because I white balance every time I change picture settings.
 
Svart said:
You guys are white balancing after you change the settings right?

I get NO tints on the different settings because I white balance every time I change picture settings.
Click to expand...

White balancing after changing setups sounds like a bit counter-intuitive to me.

I mantained a neutral WB (6000K for overcast sky) to see what each film mode did.

I'll repeat this test with a white card and will manually balance after I use each film mode. Not sure how this would change things, since the main light source wouldn't change its color temperature...

UNLESS the camera accounts the film mode characteristics when it WB, but that would be too weird and wouldn't really make sense to me.
 
For example, the floor of the pool. It has little color and tonal separation between them. Or the parking lot's floor tiles... Could you bring the contrast and saturation up and get similar results to Standard?
Click to expand...

I could, but then the rest of the image would suffer. Nostalgic really is a baked in setting, i dont see any way to make it look more modern and still maintain image quality, but there's really no reason to do that anyways.

You guys are white balancing after you change the settings right?
Click to expand...

These are basically various LUT's built in, so it changes the way the sensor interprets its input. Changing the WB would in a way negate the overall "tint" of it, but the character of the image would still be different.
 
rundavids said:
If I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to do and color post production, what setting would be the best?
Click to expand...
Use Nature, and AdobeRGB. They'll give you the absolute best option for the GH1 color-spectrum.
You will see even better when you use, for example, Panny's 20mm f1.7 pancake lens.
 
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