lordbiggus
Member
Well, as you might expect with a beginner shooter like myself, the problems I experienced with grainy images were due to my lack of understanding about how this camera works.
In a nut shell, I didn't fully understand two things.
1. Why the camera had two levels of zebra.
2. What DRS was.
Straight out of the box I was using the default scene 1 file, which I think had a DRS level of 3.
While exposing for a shot, I got confused about why the zebra patterns kept reappearing while irising down. I didn't realise you could set two levels of zebra. Consequently, I underexposed every shot, and the DRS compensated for this under exposure by pumping electronic gain back into the image, therefore making the shot incredibly grainy in dark and mid-tone areas. This occured even though my gain level was set to -3db.
Since then I have completed the firmware update, and downloaded some great scene files for the camera - all of which I have made sure have a DRS level of 1.
I went out and re-tested things today with my kids and the images came back picture perfect - after exposing correctly and understanding how the two-leveled zebra system can work, and reducing the DRS level to 1 and gain set at -3db.
As I understand it, Panasonic NZ are also conducting some replication tests of this problem, and will probably post an official solution sometime soon. What I have said above worked for me and may give some of you out there something to try in the meantime.
In a nut shell, I didn't fully understand two things.
1. Why the camera had two levels of zebra.
2. What DRS was.
Straight out of the box I was using the default scene 1 file, which I think had a DRS level of 3.
While exposing for a shot, I got confused about why the zebra patterns kept reappearing while irising down. I didn't realise you could set two levels of zebra. Consequently, I underexposed every shot, and the DRS compensated for this under exposure by pumping electronic gain back into the image, therefore making the shot incredibly grainy in dark and mid-tone areas. This occured even though my gain level was set to -3db.
Since then I have completed the firmware update, and downloaded some great scene files for the camera - all of which I have made sure have a DRS level of 1.
I went out and re-tested things today with my kids and the images came back picture perfect - after exposing correctly and understanding how the two-leveled zebra system can work, and reducing the DRS level to 1 and gain set at -3db.
As I understand it, Panasonic NZ are also conducting some replication tests of this problem, and will probably post an official solution sometime soon. What I have said above worked for me and may give some of you out there something to try in the meantime.
