Ben_B
Veteran
My Christmas gift to you all: Here is a somewhat rough test of several of the GH2's picture profiles when it comes to highlight clipping on a scene with some overexposed areas. Looks like Cinema is the winner for highlights, and, informally, nostalgic is the winner for shadows. I am going to pick cinema to shoot with as I think it will have the nicest looking skies, etc, and I don't like bringing up shadows too much because I think that's how you get the worst grain and artifacting. On GH1 nostalgic had the worst banding in low-light. (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?222669-Banding-band-aid-(semi-solution))
According to Barry Green's tests, the highlight warning on the GH2 is at 100 IRE, meaning you lose all detail in that area...meaning that if you see an area on one setting in white that is black on another it is not losing detail while the other setting is.
All settings were done with Contrast: -2, Sharpness: +1, Saturation: +/- 0, and NR -2. These are the settings I have typically used so I used them for this because this was originally a test for me, I just thought I'd share the results.
Exposure and focus were locked on GH2, real-time highlight warning was on, camera was in video mode not recording, and outputting via HDMI to Ikan monitor. Photo was taken by GH1 with 14-140mm lens. Both cameras and monitor were resting on a countertop to avoid movement between shots. I tried to avoid jostling GH2 while changing film mode settings, and preset all the film modes so I just had to toggle between them.
You can see, although I recommend downloading the photos and toggling between them to most clearly see it, that Nostalgic and Standard are very similar, with Standard clipping slightly less (better), and that Smooth and Dynamic are similar, with Dynamic clipping slightly less (better.) Cinema is in a class on its own.
I can do more tests like this with more settings if people want.
Cinema:
Nostalgic:
Dynamic (known to be high contrasty but oddly seems to have beaten the popular Smooth in the highlights):
Smooth:
Standard:
Hope this helps! After seeing this what are you guys picking. I realize this isn't a great dynamic range test as it doesn't show much of the darks, although you can clearly see nostalgic has the brightest shadows...though I was starting to see some ugly noise there (though I think it would improve had I hit record) but again, I prefer rolled back highlights to pumped up darks...that histogram scares the crap out of me because there must be false detail there...there is just no way it can bring shadows up like that without killing quality.
According to Barry Green's tests, the highlight warning on the GH2 is at 100 IRE, meaning you lose all detail in that area...meaning that if you see an area on one setting in white that is black on another it is not losing detail while the other setting is.
All settings were done with Contrast: -2, Sharpness: +1, Saturation: +/- 0, and NR -2. These are the settings I have typically used so I used them for this because this was originally a test for me, I just thought I'd share the results.
Exposure and focus were locked on GH2, real-time highlight warning was on, camera was in video mode not recording, and outputting via HDMI to Ikan monitor. Photo was taken by GH1 with 14-140mm lens. Both cameras and monitor were resting on a countertop to avoid movement between shots. I tried to avoid jostling GH2 while changing film mode settings, and preset all the film modes so I just had to toggle between them.
You can see, although I recommend downloading the photos and toggling between them to most clearly see it, that Nostalgic and Standard are very similar, with Standard clipping slightly less (better), and that Smooth and Dynamic are similar, with Dynamic clipping slightly less (better.) Cinema is in a class on its own.
I can do more tests like this with more settings if people want.
Cinema:
Nostalgic:
Dynamic (known to be high contrasty but oddly seems to have beaten the popular Smooth in the highlights):
Smooth:
Standard:
Hope this helps! After seeing this what are you guys picking. I realize this isn't a great dynamic range test as it doesn't show much of the darks, although you can clearly see nostalgic has the brightest shadows...though I was starting to see some ugly noise there (though I think it would improve had I hit record) but again, I prefer rolled back highlights to pumped up darks...that histogram scares the crap out of me because there must be false detail there...there is just no way it can bring shadows up like that without killing quality.
Last edited:
my 7D is getting nervous.