GH13 GH1 "trick"?

rawfa

rawfa

Veteran
Hi guys,

99,99999% of my work is stills and for that I have a NEX-5N that I absolutely love. Lately I´ve been shooting some stuff on video so I decided to get a a GH1. I´ve hacked it with the blackout-powell hack and shot some indoors and outdoors shots that did not impress me at all out of the camera....which I find really weird, since I´ve seen a lot of out of the camera GH1 footage that looked way more filmic (even from non hacked GH1s). Is there something
I´m missing, some trick or setting? I just don´t get it...

Anyway, thoughts will be appreciated...even though the topic may sound kind of vague.

cheers

Rafa
 
I know the feeling, I was underwhelmed by GH1 at first also. As a still photographer you have been spoilt by vastly higher quality image, that does not move. For video there are so many more limitations, the color resolution even in hacked GH cameras is rather poor for video as is in all cameras of similar type. Shutter speed being practically fixed to 1/30s and above etc. The lighting has to be close to ideal for starters.

The trick, if there is one, is to expose for a bit more brighter image than the end result (within camera limits), and later lower exposure in post, increase contrast a bit and massage the colors and add unsharp mask for sharpness. There is little color information in the video, and this method masks the limitations a bit.
 
I have one image from this morning from GH1 video, where I have used nearly all of my tricks as a video and film guy.

blueLightOutdoorSmall.png


Aperture was f2.8, so the girl is not in focus. The resolution and latitude is still nowhere near a still photo, but at least the most obvious clues that the image is from a very cheap camera have been eliminated. This has required a lot of testing of the camera and lens settings, and later grading in post. The trick is to compress the contrast in the camera and push the image values higher in camera than the end result. This is because the video compression has more precision for brighter image than darker image. One could always lower exposure in post production, but not much increase without it becoming obvious.

I use a set of special filters in front of the lens to compress the contrast and push it higher than the final image for less mosaic and banding in the final video. I have a link to the fuller size version: http://www.fourseasonshd.com/blueLightOutdoor.png
 
Aki_Hartikainen said:
I know the feeling, I was underwhelmed by GH1 at first also. As a still photographer you have been spoilt by vastly higher quality image, that does not move. For video there are so many more limitations, the color resolution even in hacked GH cameras is rather poor for video as is in all cameras of similar type. Shutter speed being practically fixed to 1/30s and above etc. The lighting has to be close to ideal for starters.

The trick, if there is one, is to expose for a bit more brighter image than the end result (within camera limits), and later lower exposure in post, increase contrast a bit and massage the colors and add unsharp mask for sharpness. There is little color information in the video, and this method masks the limitations a bit.
Click to expand...

Very VERY true about being "spoiled" by shooting stills.

Since camcorders have inferior dynamic range I always thought that you should UNDERexpose, since you can later bring back the shadows but you cannot fix burnt highlights. But even though this is also true with stills, shooting RAW allows you light years more flexibility...which doesn´t happen with camcorders (you can only bring back so much shadow before the image falls apart).
As for settings I think I´ve set the preset to standard and then lowered all values to -2.
 
Standard and -2 is good. AVCHD does not capture shadows well, it cuts shadows entirely below a certain point. I noticed that using more ISO than what is needed pushes up the shadows and compresses contrast. If you protect your highlights, you could bring the contrast back to normal in post by lowering shadows. The noise and posterization resides near the shadows, so lowering them in post will mask noise. GH1 has wonderful histogram display, that is very much needed when trying to nail the exposure.
 
rawfa said:
Since camcorders have inferior dynamic range I always thought that you should UNDERexpose, since you can later bring back the shadows but you cannot fix burnt highlights.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't underexpose with the GH1.
If you do so the AVCHD codec reacts by dropping the bitrate quite dramatically.
If you're shooting something with a lot of black, a school play or similar, the bitrate could end up going into single figures for MBPS.
 
Richy Lacey said:
I wouldn't underexpose with the GH1.
If you do so the AVCHD codec reacts by dropping the bitrate quite dramatically.
If you're shooting something with a lot of black, a school play or similar, the bitrate could end up going into single figures for MBPS.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I had no idea.
 
One thing that puzzles me though is the fact that I could get more film like footage from an old Canon XHA I used to have. I mean, as I was shooting with it I could already see that it looked awesome. This has yet to happen with the GH1...which, again, is weird because I´ve seen a lot of out of the camera gh1 footage that looked awesome.
 
You've never mentioned which lenses you're shooting with.
If you're looking for "filmic" then the modern lenses aren't the best in that regard. The majority of my mine are older manual lenses, which tend to be less contrasty and more pleasing if you're after the film look.

Some of the nicest looking stuff I've shot was set to Nostalgic, everything -2.
 
I´ve tested the 14-140mm, the 14mm 2.5 and a ver low contrast c-mount 35mm 1.7. I´ve already tested the blackout-powell and the 100 max latitude hacks and so far I´m still more pleased with the NEX-5Ns´ image...the latitude is really something and the image is smoother. What sucks is the compression and the skin tones, which have a bit of a plastic look to them. The day somebody is able to implement a hack to the NEX system a very powerful film tool will be unleashed.
 
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