GH4 Concert Shooting w/ GH4

S

scotteh

Active member
I recently shot a Steve Aoki concert with my GH4. This was the first time I've used my GH4 to record a concert, so I was interested to see how it would do. I shot it all handheld with a Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 and I was really struggling with the low light in certain parts. I realize micro 4/3 isn't ideal for shooting in low light, but I would still like to make the best of it next time I film something like this.


Majority of the time I would say I shot wide open @ 2.8 with 1/100. I used Cinelike V, contrast 0, sharpness -5, noise reduction -5, saturation -2, hue -2. Resolution @ 4k 24p. Master pedestal 0, luminance level 0-255. I was hesitant to bump up the iso too much. Highest I went was 1600 iso. Mostly staying on 800 or 1600. I know having a dimmable LED panel on top the camera would have helped a lot for crowd shots, so that's something I'll use next time.

Any feedback and/or tips would be much appreciated.
 
Jaime Valles said:
Were you shooting at 1/100 shutter speed on purpose? Or did I misread that?
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I'm a newbie. I thought shutter speed is suppose to be at least double what your frame rate is? Not really sure why I put it at 100 honestly. I'm sure I was fiddling with it while I shot so it might not have been that the whole time.
 
scotteh said:
I'm a newbie. I thought shutter speed is suppose to be at least double what your frame rate is? Not really sure why I put it at 100 honestly. I'm sure I was fiddling with it while I shot so it might not have been that the whole time.
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No worries, man. It's the kind of thing you only learn by doing, so keep at it. When shooting video at 24p, you'd normally want to set the shutter to either 1/40 or 1/50 (in film mode at 180 degrees) to simulate the motion blur of shooting on film. The advantage to this is that you would get a brighter image vs shooting at 1/100 shutter speed. This would have given you more light for the dark crowd scenes. The faster the shutter, the darker the image.

However, a high shutter speed can be used for stylistic effect by reducing motion blur and giving the footage a more strobe-y appearance (think Saving Private Ryan battle scenes). In the case of this concert, I actually thought the shutter speed worked well, especially when you see the guy on stage and the crowd all jumping simultaneously (at 3:21). The confetti also looks great with a high shutter speed. That's why I asked if it was on purpose.

Loved the cake launch in slo mo!
 
Jaime Valles said:
No worries, man. It's the kind of thing you only learn by doing, so keep at it. When shooting video at 24p, you'd normally want to set the shutter to either 1/40 or 1/50 (in film mode at 180 degrees) to simulate the motion blur of shooting on film. The advantage to this is that you would get a brighter image vs shooting at 1/100 shutter speed. This would have given you more light for the dark crowd scenes. The faster the shutter, the darker the image.

However, a high shutter speed can be used for stylistic effect by reducing motion blur and giving the footage a more strobe-y appearance (think Saving Private Ryan battle scenes). In the case of this concert, I actually thought the shutter speed worked well, especially when you see the guy on stage and the crowd all jumping simultaneously (at 3:21). The confetti also looks great with a high shutter speed. That's why I asked if it was on purpose.

Loved the cake launch in slo mo!
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Ah ok that makes sense now. Thanks for clearing that up. I think the only reason I really adjusted the shutter speed was to try and get more light into the camera if I saw it was super dark. I knew in my head if I dropped too low it would get stuttery, which I did not want.

Do you think for a concert like this it would have been better to shoot at 29.97? I guess it really depends on the look I'm going for. I know that would be more video'ish.
 
If you're thinking of getting a LED light be sure to test a few if you can. The GH4/GH3 can be picky with LED lighting, several that I tried would cause vertical banding no matter what shutter speed I was on. I think the cheaper ones are more problematic but I finally found a cheap one that had both 3200K LED's and 5600K LED's and it seamed the banding was nonexistent when using 5600K and really bad when using 3200K. It can be quite a shock to show up to a shoot and the banding issue pops up so I highly recommend trying before buying.
 
homerc67 said:
If you're thinking of getting a LED light be sure to test a few if you can. The GH4/GH3 can be picky with LED lighting, several that I tried would cause vertical banding no matter what shutter speed I was on. I think the cheaper ones are more problematic but I finally found a cheap one that had both 3200K LED's and 5600K LED's and it seamed the banding was nonexistent when using 5600K and really bad when using 3200K. It can be quite a shock to show up to a shoot and the banding issue pops up so I highly recommend trying before buying.
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Good to know. I believe the one my work has is this one: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/784071-REG/Vidpro_Z_96K_Professional_Photo_Video.html
I'll definitely test it out. Thanks.
 
Good work for your first time out with the camera.

As for lighting, I love my F&V R-300 ring light (bright, even, dimmable light with no banding). And you might need a faster lens (the Voigtlander 42.5mm f0.95 is about the same price as your 12-35).

Cheers,

Bill
 
scotteh said:
Do you think for a concert like this it would have been better to shoot at 29.97? I guess it really depends on the look I'm going for. I know that would be more video'ish.
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Yeah, that's entirely subjective. Personally, I always prefer the look of 24p because it just feels cinematic and higher quality, but it depends on the look you're after. For something more like the news, sports or reality TV you may want to shoot at 30p or 60p.

Here's a video I shot entirely with the GH4 (Full HD in AVCHD 24p at 1/40 shutter speed) that has footage from a concert, as well as lots of running around doing other things:
https://vimeo.com/94114832

For something like this with tons of footage I opted to shoot in HD instead of 4K just because of the file sizes. And, yes, a fast lens is crucial for concert shooting. Most of the concert footage in my video above was shot with a Navitar 50mm f/0.95 which helped immensely in low light.

Anyway, hope this helps.
Jaime
 
scotteh said:
Majority of the time I would say I shot wide open @ 2.8 with 1/100. I used Cinelike V, contrast 0, sharpness -5, noise reduction -5, saturation -2, hue -2. Resolution @ 4k 24p. Master pedestal 0, luminance level 0-255. I was hesitant to bump up the iso too much. Highest I went was 1600 iso. Mostly staying on 800 or 1600. I know having a dimmable LED panel on top the camera would have helped a lot for crowd shots, so that's something I'll use next time.
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I doubt an on-camera light will help with anything more than ten feet away, and it would likely give you an undesireable light fall-off.

The main challenges in performance videos are in maintaining wide enough DOF and balancing shadow detail with blown highlights. On Panasonics like the GH4, I think it's safest to go no lower than f2.8 or higher than ISO 1600, and always 1/60 sec (to avoid light flicker in USA). In your footage, highlights look good, but shadow detail suffers from low exposure. I'd recommend pushing up the GH4 shadow control to compensate. Pulling down the highlight control may help with stage-lit skin tones, but don't expect it to fix any blown highlights, those are just par for the course.

I'd also recommend shooting concert footage at 30p rather than 24p. This will give you faster motion tracking and synch better with 60p monitor frame rates. With live action video rather than cinema, 24p is just an encumbrance.

Here's an ungraded example of the kind of exposure I aim for in concert footage. The vocalist's face is sometimes a bit hot due to an excessively close spotlight hung from the low ceiling. This was shot with a Nikon D5100 at f2.8 1/60 sec, but a Panasonic can also perform well in these conditions.

 
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Hmm I did have it set to +2 highlights and -4 shadows. Probably shouldn't have had the shadows that low. I like to use zebras at 80% and I did notice at times, with very bright light on the subject, it looked blown out. How do you suggest I compensate for this? Lower the ISO or adjust shutter speed? The again I could always just let it pass since stage lighting was constantly changing in this particular instance.

I did experiment with gamma correction in Premiere to try and brighten it up, but I didn't like the end result so I left it as is.
 
scotteh said:
Hmm I did have it set to +2 highlights and -4 shadows.
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That's why your shadows are muddy brown, I'd try -2 highlights and +4 shadows. Zebras at 80% is for studio lightning, you will rarely have that much control at a live stage event. What I do is ask the lighting guy to pull all the faders up and set center mic exposure just short of blown out with no direct lights in the frame. In my earlier clip, I didn't anticipate the vocalist leaning forward into the audience and into the glare of that low-hanging spotlight, which sucked, but was still less of a problem than dropping the ISO and dealing with chronically noisy shadows in post. (The proper fix would've been angling the spot up to bounce off the ceiling.) During a concert, it is usually OK to have direct blown-out lights in frame, so long as they don't flare all over the performers more than briefly.

With concert footage I always use gamma correction in post, but first you need to push the shadow exposure as high as you can in-camera. Rather than using Premiere, I'd recommend preprocessing your footage in After Effects with Color Finesse. Reason being, you can adjust gamma, black point, and gain individually for shadows, mids, and highlights, plus secondaries for skin tones. I edit with the original footage in Premiere for smooth performance, then Dynamic Link the graded After Effects project into a separate track. For the final render, I synchronize and Copy Attributes from the original track to the AE track, turn off the orig track, and let AME crank out the render through the AE project.
 
I'll definitely need to change that next time I anticipate being in a dark environment. This was an outdoor show starting right around sun down. Hard to tell since the whole back of the stage is wrapped in sound blankets to dampen the noise. No spotlights on this show besides the lighting rig on stage, although other shows I've worked there's been 2-4 full size spots on the talent. We were shooting for IMAG on Panasonic HMC80s so we would have to adjust the iris. That's really where I've become so accustom to zebras since the HMC80 has a tiny little screen and we didn't have external displays. Easy way to tell if it's blown out or not.

I don't have much experience using After Effects, but I'll have to look into that more. Thanks for the info.
 
When you shoot at 96fps which I'm assuming you did the camera locks to 1/100 shutter speed to maintain 180 degree shutter angle.
 
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