GH2 has the most inflexible color engine of all DSLR's

M

Makrofag

Member
I have just finished shooting a commercial for a non-profit org - an indoor shoot with magic hour sunlight comming in an lighting up a very nice old apartment. And I have to say I have never ever been so mad at a piece of equipment in my entire life.

I tried every different WB and color shift setting there was and I couldn't even get close to the nice sharp saturated colors I was used to getting on the Nikons, Canons or even Sonys. (we own 60D,5D,7D,A580 .. pretty much all the good stuff now). Out of pure misery I remembered that I have an old Canon PowerShot A580 in my backpack so I whipped it out, clik click click in the settings, took a 5s footage and ran with the card to my laptop to see the result.

What I saw was that that cheap little thingy got me a much much closer result to what I was used to then a 1000$ Panasonic DSLR!!!

The best part - now in AE i'm noticing that footage from the GH2 resists any kind of sensible color correction (colorista, color curves, level curves etc etc). I edit videos for at least 12 years now and grading the colors to get the correct mood and visual pleasure is definitely my favorite thing to do. But simply not with GH2. I just can't get it to be as visualy pleasing as ungraded footage from other DSLR's.

Don't get me wrong. I clearly see GH2 has the best detail quality of all the DSLR's out there and even at 720p the image has much more detail than a (old..lol) 5D Mark II at 1080p. Not to mention virtually no moire. But the weirdness, "bland tinty-ness" of the colors .. oh how I wish I'd took the 7D with me today instead of the GH2. I definitely always had a bad feeling in my stomach every time I saw a GH footage which involved indoor lights or any kind of scene that required some real color and not just a dull overcast tone.

I don't really know what to do with the GH2 now. I have used it for shooting some stuff during overcast and the footage was great.. no complains there. I was pretty happy that I could shift it a bit and get exactly what I wanted there. Color grading on the fly you can say.

Also I hope nobody starts slamming me because of my "subjective" taste for colors. The title says inflexible. If I could get a almost desired result with few clicks on a mega cheap compact and not with a 1000$ dslr with many many options then I say something stinks.
 
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I like all colors! But seriously, the colors on the gh2 are really great (subjectively). Not sure how you would see such a huge difference compared to other cameras?

There are very limited image adjustments in the gh2 menus- which is annoying. Are you cranking up the saturation on all the other cameras?

Why dont you do some side by side tests with the said cameras and post the results.
 
Hunter Richards : I crank or decrank according to what I want. With GH2 I just couldn't get what I want.. not even close.

edit+:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/7jayS5woOK0

This video is just a glimpse of the color difference between GH2 and other DSLR'S. Those are relatively boring scenes and while one can say "well the D7000 is just more saturated" it's a far deeper and complicated story. I could see how the GH2 lacks in alot of aspects of this game during today's shooting. I never really thought it could be that bad.

rigs: That was my second impression that maybe there's something going on in the lense. I've used stock 14-42, Canon 50mm 1.4, Zuiko 50mm 1.4 ... absolutely no color change.
 
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hunter richards said:
But seriously, the colors on the gh2 are really great (subjectively).
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Completely agree.
If you are a colorist or have a good colorist, the gh2 is the most flexible, for it gives the colors of reality. (other cameras have the grading built in)
 
You DID try using the different film modes, right? Smooth and especially nostalgic give paler colors than other modes. I can't imagine anyone saying modes like vibrant aren't rich enough for them
 
richtrav said:
You DID try using the different film modes, right? Smooth and especially nostalgic give paler colors than other modes. I can't imagine anyone saying modes like vibrant aren't rich enough for them
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All of them.. even the mixed one I do not understand at all :)
 
Sage said:
Completely agree.
If you are a colorist or have a good colorist, the gh2 is the most flexible, for it gives the colors of reality. (other cameras have the grading built in)
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Look at this video and look and how the blue light from the top right corner creates this weird blue neon mess on both of the dancers at 0:27. If you see the color intensities and colors this way then I have probably something wrong with my own eyes because I have never seen an ordinary light do this. Even today.. I couldn't get with the GH2 what I was seeing with my eyes so there goes your reality thing.
 
I think that OP was just stating his frustrations and hoping that someone would chime in with a way to get more of the look that he wants.
 
hunter richards said:
No one is making you keep your gh2, if you dont like it, use something else. Simple as that.
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You've ended the debate quite prematurely. Starting threads like these might be beneficial for a person who doesn't have a big budget is planning to buy a DSLR for movie making and is used to the color engines of different brands. I'm not mad that I own a GH2.. I'm just sad that it was the only cam I brought with me on the set.
 
Makrofag said:
Also I hope nobody starts slamming me because of my "subjective" taste for colors. The title says inflexible. If I could get a almost desired result with few clicks on a mega cheap compact and not with a 1000$ dslr with many many options then I say something stinks.
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Well, yeah... Canon digitals have always had a 'yellowish' cast to me. Nikon a 'bluish'. The only camera that to me had a 'good color' out of the box, was the Fuji S2,3,5. But Fuji vacated the market...

The other day I did some stills with the Fuji and the GH-1 and there was a color difference. I'm going to have to look into whether they can be 'conformed' or not. It doesn't matter as I shot identical setups with both cameras
so I'll just use the 'color' renditions that look the best.
 
Makrofag said:
Hunter Richards : I crank or decrank according to what I want. With GH2 I just couldn't get what I want.. not even close.

edit+:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/7jayS5woOK0

This video is just a glimpse of the color difference between GH2 and other DSLR'S. Those are relatively boring scenes and while one can say "well the D7000 is just more saturated" it's a far deeper and complicated story. I could see how the GH2 lacks in alot of aspects of this game during today's shooting. I never really thought it could be that bad.

rigs: That was my second impression that maybe there's something going on in the lense. I've used stock 14-42, Canon 50mm 1.4, Zuiko 50mm 1.4 ... absolutely no color change.
Click to expand...


For me, the many of the D7000 shots had more of a bluish twinge, which I noted in my original response. The GH-1 had less 'bluish', and to me may be more 'neutral' than the D7000. The shot of the book is a little strange, because because the D7000 shows more of a 'redish' cast than the GH-1.

I've not shot anything on a Nikon digital since the D1, so things could have changed in the intervening years...

The focus on the GH-1 looks a bit 'soft' as well.
 
Having your first post with a definitive statement like "GH2 has the most inflexible color engine of all DSLR's" along with making a long negative post, not showing any examples to back up your claims and not asking for any advice to fix the "problem"- isnt the best way to get involved in the dvxuser community.

It could just be a shooting in a challenging lighting environment, not using any lights- or bounce using a low contrast profile- not adjusting the image correctly in post- so many variables.
I haven't seen any video dslr that was not capable of nice colors or making a good image- more notably shooting the canons (I have a t2i+ 5dmark2) next to my gh2- the colors and dynamic range are very similar.

So without seeing your personal examples of the scene- there is no way to know exactly what your talking about. Nor have any grounds for debate.

Attached is a shot from gh2 (smooth setting, -2 on contrast, 0 sharpness and 0 NR) You get a lower contrast image but then you just add a bit of contrast in post to get a "pop" you might find on other cameras. Same thing if you were trying to get punchy sunset colors, you need to first expose correctly- then you might still have a flatter image in camera, but you pull down the mids to increase the density of the image in post to get the color you want.
 

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j1clark : check this video


While the 5D looks maybe a bit too vibrant the GH2 looks too dull and has a weird grey-super slightly yellow "mist" to the whole picture. From my experience it's always better to decrease the vibrance and saturation than to increase it. Cranking up the information the color information that just isn't there is futile.
 
Makrofag said:

Look at this video and look and how the blue light from the top right corner creates this weird blue neon mess on both of the dancers at 0:27. If you see the color intensities and colors this way then I have probably something wrong with my own eyes because I have never seen an ordinary light do this. Even today.. I couldn't get with the GH2 what I was seeing with my eyes so there goes your reality thing.
Click to expand...

Since I was not at this event... I can't really say what the 'real' colors were or were not. But yes, all cameras map various colors in to some unfortunate places in some cases. All cameras are some sort of compromise. For me, the dancer's skin tone and presumably the peach dresses are 'approximately' correct. For me the momentary blue 'flair' was almost unnoticeable. As an additional note, having shot wedding receptions under such events with still film... one gets any number of 'weirdnesses'.

I do know that the GH-1 tended to 'bloom' with saturated reds, and noticeable when there was a contrasting color adjacent to the red area. For what I wanted to do, I was able to knock down the red saturation, to minimize the effect...
 
Try increasing the saturation of darker colours. I've found it to almost emulate Canon's colour science. Also, change the hue to slightly under a full revolution (just before it gets to being exactly the same as before).

I personally find the "Canon look" really horrible with its pastel-coloured skin tones. Not nice. But then, that's just my opinion.
 
Look, it literally took ONE minute to match the skin tones, and they look pretty darn close to me...


Original:orig.jpg Matched:grade.jpg

Spending more time would obviously yield better results, but these don't point toward the GH2 being inflexible for grading... if anything, the flatter image is BETTER for grading than a punchy one from the offset.
 
Makrofag: Were you using a high ISO when you attempted to do this shot?

Also, that dancing video... it looks like high ISO material.

The color's fine until you start rising above 640 or 800 ISO. Between 200 and 400 it's all good.
 
The odd thing is it looks like the GH2 is purposely blurred in this video.... I have GH2 footage and it's insanely over sharp... what happened here?

Also that's a weird way of opening youtube videos... is that a new feature? Adding a /embed/ in-between the youtube url and the video code? Odd.. it opened up it's own full window and said HD but it didn't look HD and it was window re-sizable so I have now idea what size it should be at for native resolution... so maybe that's why it looked soft and blurry to me...
 
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