GH3 GH3 night test video and an LCD question

R

ras815

Active member
It was a chilly night last night in DC but I decided to take my new GH3 (arrived from Amazon this week) for a spin in the low-light and see how it fared. Overall, I was generally impressed - especially in its ability to render shadows in comparison to my GH2.

This was shot mostly at 60P (for slow-mo) and 24P, ISO 800 and 1600, at f/1.8 (it was, for the most part, very very dark). Obviously there are some underexposed shots in there, but I didn't intend for this to be anything more than a basic test. No color correction of de-noising applied.

One issue I had while shooting - the LCD appeared to have these random brightness/gamma shifts while shooting (I was in M mode, and these shifts did not appear in the actual footage). Is this a feature I can disable?

So far I am loving this camera. For $1300, it's a hell of a bargain.

 
ras815 said:
One issue I had while shooting - the LCD appeared to have these random brightness/gamma shifts while shooting (I was in M mode, and these shifts did not appear in the actual footage). Is this a feature I can disable?
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You can disable this behavior. Dig into the menu & adjust "Monitor Luminance".
 
Thanks! - I figured it was buried in there somewhere, but I didn't feel like digging through the 300-page manual to find it (especially when you aren't sure what the feature is even called!).
 
looks great to me! I'm all for it looking like it actually did, so if its a bit dark as long as you can see something I think it recreates the ambiance for the viewer better.
 
Looks good. Did you try any 1080P @ 30 FPS? I'm just thinking those shots should work even better in low light because the shutter can be open longer. But I'm not a hundred 100% sure if that's true? Can anyone confirm?
 
Lowlypawn said:
Looks good. Did you try any 1080P @ 30 FPS? I'm just thinking those shots should work even better in low light because the shutter can be open longer. But I'm not a hundred 100% sure if that's true? Can anyone confirm?
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Hmmm...I would think that, given you follow the 180 degree shutter rule, 30FPS would require a faster shutter speed (i.e. 1/60 vs ~1/48 for 24FPS). It was also one of the reasons I switched from 60FPS to 24FPS during the shoot, because the 1/125 shutter speed was forcing me to bump up ISO to 1600.

That being said, I could be wrong about this.
 
What I encountered is a color shift when tilting the LCD, it goes to green if not looking straight at it. Annoying I have to say, even though the LCD is just a reference when it comes to color of course.
Maybe it´s the same problem...?
 
Good grief! It's absolutely gorgeous!
I love the blacks and the darks. The candle-lit scenes are wonderful.
I always tell people, when lighting and shooting "Don't be afraid of the dark!" (although I know you grabbed your shots with existing light).
Great job.
I gots ta git me one a dem tings.
 
cyclone said:
Good grief! It's absolutely gorgeous!
I love the blacks and the darks. The candle-lit scenes are wonderful.
I always tell people, when lighting and shooting "Don't be afraid of the dark!" (although I know you grabbed your shots with existing light).
Great job.
I gots ta git me one a dem tings.
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Thanks! I appreciate it.

I agree to "not be afraid of the dark" - but with the GH2, I had a lot of trouble capturing deep blacks and shadows without gobs of ugly noise. The GH3 is a welcome improvement in this respect. I think those candle shots were at ISO 400 or 800.

The last shots (after the candles) with the monument set against the brown-tinged clouds was shot at ISO 1600. Haunting in its own way and arguably more "accurate", but it also completely altering the mood.
 
I just bought my GH3 (NTSC) and I'm in Asia shooting night and low light video. I'm getting a lot of noise in my black skies at night. Your video looks so clean. Can you please tell me about your settings used to shoot this and how you were able to control the noise in the blacks?
 
Great footage! Did you try 3200 ISO? I actually feel 3200 is very usuable in a lot of circumstances, but I would stop there. What did you think of 3200 (or did you not try it)?
 
I just tried ISO 200 and the noise was unnacceptable. Am I better off with higher ISO or lower for these dark areas?
 
Try it and see. Noise shows up primarily in underexposed areas. Shooting at night using ISO 200 you are going to have A LOT of underexposed image tones. With the GH3, initial tests I ran at night with fast lenses showed ISO 6400 to be quite usable. Be sure your monitor is not oversharpening or you will see noise on most everything.

Most monitors come out of the box with Sharpening, Contrast, and Brightness set quite a bit too high. Find the controls on the monitor and pull those three down to midrange then "tweak" from there.
 
Ianscreations said:
Great footage! Did you try 3200 ISO? I actually feel 3200 is very usuable in a lot of circumstances, but I would stop there. What did you think of 3200 (or did you not try it)?
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I actually don't think I used 3200 for this shoot - didn't need it. Again, on some of the shots, I erred on the side of underexposing to avoid the visible noise. I'm sure 3200 would have been uglier, although I trust that in a pinch it could work (with some de-noising, for sure).
 
Paul B said:
I just bought my GH3 (NTSC) and I'm in Asia shooting night and low light video. I'm getting a lot of noise in my black skies at night. Your video looks so clean. Can you please tell me about your settings used to shoot this and how you were able to control the noise in the blacks?
Click to expand...

One possibility is that some of it has to do with simple sensory tricks - the brighter images in the frame (e.g. the capitol, monument, etc) are so well-lit that it draws your eye away from the areas that do exhibit a fair amount of noise (the snow, shadows, etc). Particularly in shots like at :50, there's a fair amount of noise in the snow, but it isn't where your eyes are focused.

That being said, I do think the GH3 does a much better job of isolating the well-light regions from the poorly lit shadows, in terms of overall noise (vs. the GH2).
 
I ran some quick low light comparisons with a 5Dii, and the GH3 was about 1 stop noisier (1600 on the GH3 showed about the same noise as 3200 on the 5Dii). Considering all the other clear improvements over the 5Dii, I agree this camera is a winner, especially at $1300.
 
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