GH4 For discussion; nicely shot skin tones and discussion around how he obtained them.

sooooo, most of these tests look kinda washed out to me. I'll admit, I prefer colors to pop and seem bright and realistically represented on many different screen types, but mostly I see softer, flatter, and less real looking images. Are people not GRADING these videos? I guess it all depends on the directors desired end result. And I know tests are not "Movies", but I have never seen a real movie as flat and lifeles as things coming from us: the independant film makers with DSLRs. Honestly, it is a pet peeve of mine: the indie market trying to NOT be the commercial vibrant look.
Everyone striving to shoot for reality... but all one has to do is open the door, look outside and see much more color
 
I totaly agree with you, i don't understand the hype for this kind of picture style.
"It is very close to what an image looks like in reality".
Really ?
However, i think these settings are very good with a bit of grading.
 
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I was under the distinct impression that flat picture styles like that were specifically INTENDED for grading, as standalone they are certainly not much to look at.
 
R Hudson said:
I was under the distinct impression that flat picture styles like that were specifically INTENDED for grading, as standalone they are certainly not much to look at.
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Yes, I think the OP's settings were intended to be graded somewhat, although not as heavily as CineD, which is good when you're dealing with an 8-bit codec. In fiddling with a ColorChecker and DaVinci, I found the -2 Hue setting is slightly detrimental so I think it's better to keep it at zero. Unfortunately I found the Contrast at +3 totally throws the ColorChecker calibration out of whack. I just was not able to get a balanced look at any Davinci setting (r.709, sRGB, Gamma2.2). When I brought it down to zero it got pretty accurate. The footage looks balanced uncorrected by the colorchecker at Contrast +3, though, so I think it's just an issue where the ColorChecker needs a flatter image to get an accurate reading.
 
The same thing i noticed. I do like these settings and you can always bump up the saturation in post, rather then the other way around. I find these settings easier to achieve a look when grading, then using a very flat or raw film settings. So, if you want to grade it for a certain look, but don't want to spend much time grading, I like these settings. If you are shooting more of a a film or really want to dive into the grading process, I would shoot a flatter image.

Below is a small scene that I just added a LUT and curve and was done. I did not have to mess around with it much more then two minutes.

 
I really like this look--well done. I color grade directly in Premiere Pro with the 3-way color corrector...what would you recommend under these circumstances to get a look similar to this one? Thanks in advance.

Nick

Dstar said:
The same thing i noticed. I do like these settings and you can always bump up the saturation in post, rather then the other way around. I find these settings easier to achieve a look when grading, then using a very flat or raw film settings. So, if you want to grade it for a certain look, but don't want to spend much time grading, I like these settings. If you are shooting more of a a film or really want to dive into the grading process, I would shoot a flatter image.

Below is a small scene that I just added a LUT and curve and was done. I did not have to mess around with it much more then two minutes.

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Hey Nick, thank you!!

I have been away from Premiere for a while, but do believe that it would be a similar process as in FCP. I just graded this right within FCP.

I have to start by saying that you have to have a pretty good exposure and white balance setup before you shoot. More critical with a Dslr then like a Bmcc or something that shoots in raw. Then, I just added a LUT in FCP. I believe it was one of the Osiris LUT's. You should be able to do that in Premiere with a look up table plugin or something. I adjusted the rest with a 3-way corrector and I believe the saturation I adjusted also.

For me, if you have the look close to right in camera when shooting, the rest falls in line. If you forget to white balance and/or have exposure set improperly between takes or scenes, your in for a bigger headache then shooting raw or really flat. But, if you get the two above correct, the grading process is much more enjoyable.

Hope that helps a little!!
 
Agreed--getting it right in camera, especially with non-RAW files is crucial. Thanks!
 
I've been working with the footage that I posted earlier, and I think as someone else stated, it's just closer to a final look the Cine D, which is good with an 8 bit codec. There are things I'm going to tweak on these settings, but it gives a nice clean look out of the box, and with some room to play with it as well.
 
I am no color genius and I am also very mildly red-green color blind so having a setting that is good for "minor" grading is preferable to me. I'll have to do some experimentation. Great thread!
 
R Hudson said:
I am no color genius and I am also very mildly red-green color blind so having a setting that is good for "minor" grading is preferable to me. I'll have to do some experimentation. Great thread!
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Every one of the GH4 settings does that, is usable out of camera, *except* for D, IMHO. If you have no highlight blowouts then you can always adjust the color a bit, lift the shadows etc unless you have pushed the ISO too far. D is different, I believe, because you *must* grade it. The idea is it packs a bit more DR into the recorded image which means you then need to do some postprocessing, choose your zones of interest, to restore contrast.

My take on the GH4 is that it would be nice to have a mode that does real log with more bit depth, sacrifice the 4K for that and use all the bandwidth to get more DR in HD, ideally raw so one can in particular redo the wb in post.

I would guess that HD raw would be more useful in practice than 4K MP4, and that the 200Mbps this thing can write to card is more than enough for HD or possibly even 720p raw. The detail would suffer with such a mode, but as a documentary camera the flexibility would be unmatched.

Edmund
 
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Medgyesi said:
The difference between the film settings is mainly how bright/dark the mid-tones are relative to - especially - the high lights. Portrait has the brightest mid-tones. Since High Light / Shadow dial is the Mother-Dial - the one that controls High Light and Shadow no matter what else you do, there is no reason to use a flat Cine profile (High Light / Shadow makes all profiles equal in regards to how much you can lift your shadows or lower you high lights in-camera).
So by using the Cine-settings (especially the flattest one), all you do is underexpose the mid-tones (compared to Portrait). Which is counter productive in post, as lifting of the mid-tones will stretch the shadows (and its noise) into the mid-tones, and the same lifting of the mid-tones will lift the high lights for no reason.
The Portrait setting is the one that is born with the least amount of noise. By the way, the reason I have set Noise Reduction and Sharpness the way they are, is because I tend to use old lenses. They make nice soft skin-tones and need more sharpening than Hi-Fi lenses.
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Medgyesi,

Thanks for sharing your settings & joining the conversation.

Been busy & haven't had a chance to test your settings, but hope to soon.

I've used a similar setup for stills campaigns shot on 5D3s or GH4s. I like the look of pushing contrast & pulling saturation for some projects where the agency will be reviewing images directly off the camera's LCD but have always done it with Raws where the image can be moved around in post.

Best,
Bern
 
I like what Medgyesi settings do when shooting 0-255 and then using premiere's fast color corrector and ramping the levels to 16-235. it seems to breath new life ino the footage.
nature still looks a little blah to me and I have hard time making colors pop (greens and sky/ocean).
 
I'm going to give it a try. Cine-D flat settings are so hard to grade. Not that I'm an expert. But maybe that's the problem?
 
these settings are an absolute revelation for me. the skin tones and highlight roll off are better than i ever knew the gh4 could produce. i can't thank you enough Medgyesi
 
using HyColour 1.6 i was able to get a pretty good CC out of these settings on GH4
Screen%20Shot%202015-02-16%20at%2011.15.00%20AM.png
 
So this is my findings so far about the Portrait picture profile.
It's far to noicey for my liking, it has great skin-color for sure but tooooooo much noice!

I just stumbled on this tutorial at Vimeo and I think this guy is truly on to something, it's Cine D still but with a great correction for the orange/reedish look we like to hate https://vimeo.com/119985496 but With far less noice.

I have the Atomos Shogun and for me it's critical to tryst my recordings and the way I capture the scen, but I must address the most important part. It is to white your camera first!!!

Even if you use the kelvin numbers to dialin your set, the orange/reddish color will still be present , but NOT if you do a proper white balans!!!

This is most likely the cause why so many people are having problem with there skin tone with the GH4, get your self a proper white balance first then judge the outcome!

Ps I work everyday in the broadcast industry for a living and we always struggel with new equipment and color problems with different new cameras, but often it's a faulty white balans problem.
 
Getting really nice natural skin tones with these settings and a proper white balance. Beautiful with Voigtlanders. Thanks Medgyesi.
 
I like what I am getting for skin tones from a CineD variant (-5 sharpness and -3 saturation, highlights/shadows 0/0). I use White Balance Plugin 2 from FCPeffects, along with a little help from the color board. As white balanced in mixed lighting, the shot looks quite blah orange before the cc. I have played around with the Medgyesi look, but I'm pretty happy with this or CineV if I want a good look right off the card (reduced saturation and sharpness helps me in CineV).
SkinToneCineDvar.jpgSkinToneCineDcc.jpg
 
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