GH4 Leica Q Review Shot With V-LOG L

Erik Naso

Erik Naso

Veteran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye9TrMw_nHI&feature=youtu.be

The review is for the new Leica Q but it was shot with the GH4 in V-LOG L. Looks pretty good. I do see a little more DR squeezed out and on a couple shots some noise on Chris's black t-shirt. Could be Youtube compression but over all I like it.

Jordan is working on a review of using V-LOG L with the GH4 and will be released soon. Looking forward to what he has to say. These guys do a good job on camera reviews.

The video is 4K so defiantly watch it on Youtube.
 
Interesting !!!

I am seeing the very things that log capture will do to 100mbps 4.2.0 8bit footage. Look at the loss of detail in the mid tones. The white box behind him and the under lit portions of his skin tones. It's horrible in those areas. Awesome in others areas with a pretty nice look overall. I just hate to see how muddy those slightly under lit mid tones become with this type of setup.

It is simply impossible to feed every thing in the scene with log capture at these low bit rates and color depth. By adding to the highlights and the shadows you rob the main portion of the image you really want.

I know others find it to be useful because there seems to be great color and detail in the shadows and the highlights, but the middle is way worse than just shooting cineV or natural. Cinestyle did this to canon 4.2.0 8bit images as well and it ruined a lot of footage for me as I was trying to make it work.

Interested to see what others have to say about this. Those guys definitely do some great reviews. Thanks for sharing Erik !!!

Cheers,
Pete
 
You can download this video in 4k with 4K video downloader, all you do is copy and paste the youtube URL into it. Here is the link.... https://www.4kdownload.com/products/...ideodownloader
This video is 1.9 gig in size, I tested it with Media Info and the bit rate is 19.7 Mbps...as opposed to the in cam bitrate of 96-100 mbps, so its dramatically reduced from even the in camera compression bit rate.

I have used the GH4 a lot myself for nearly a year now and I am very familiar with the Cine profiles as well as Portrait, Natural etc..
There was mention of problems in the mid tone details of the white box behind him based on the youtube viewing (its actually cream with a light green hue...there are two more further away to his right) they look perfectly fine to me, definitely not horrible or anything close to that, I guess its hard to judge on youtube, But I have a downloaded version and a really good 2560 x 1440 monitor, and I cant see anything that really bothers me, even at the crappy 19.7 Mbps ...apart from the obvious youtube compression blocking in hi contrast areas.

I have been sceptical about V-Log to be honest, especially about Panasonics sluggish delivery and poor communication on the subject, but after seeing this, I have to say it has exceeded my expectations, and I see it as being a big plus for the GH4,
the mid tones are also present in the high-lited tree bark, leaves and some shadows to the right, and to me...there is a ton of detail there, with a lovely balance from hi-light to the dark areas of the image (incl mid tones)..and this is also present elsewhere.

Going thru the entire video and closely looking at the shots. I can honestly say that this is some of the best footage I have seen from the GH4 in terms of nicely balanced contrast and its clean without being sterile, and the skin tones are miles better than Cine-D to my eyes, so I can only imagine what a good film maker can do with this...considering that Jordan probably only had days....not weeks or months to get a grip on this profile.
I guess we may arrive at a slightly different conclusion when its finally delivered, one thing is for sure tho, the 8 bit in cam image wont be worse.... it will be a lot better than the 19.7 Mbps that this youtube vid is...and the 10 bit probably evena lot better still....So right now based on the downloaded 4K version of this vid...I really love the look, its exceeded what I had hoped for, cant wait!!
 
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I can't tell too much from the highly compressed YouTube video, but I did notice that many of the medium close-up shots looked a bit low contrast and flat compared to the wider shots. This was shot with Veydra primes, so I'm wondering if this contrast difference was camera settings or perhaps one of their lenses is not on par with the others.
 
Here's what I'm capturing when viewing 4K youtube on my 2.5k monitor. It's exactly the same thing I used to get with cinestyle on flat mid tones.

Here's direct links to see the originals of those 4x samples in case the attached ones get resized here.
www.verts.com/camera-store-vlog-sample.jpg
www.verts.com/camera-store-vlog-box.jpg

Compare those samples to anything you can find in my CineV 4K sample on youtube - http://youtu.be/8A5chlSqu7Q

I just don't ever get that with my workflow through youtube. It's only flat settings and or log profiles that cause this in this tier of cameras IMHO.

Cheers,
Pete
 

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Well the entire images are heavily pixelated for a start, nothing looks any good, everything looks really low in quality like a bad jpeg and also magnified or zoomed in..I really dont think its any judgement on wether the V-Log holds mid tones detail,
my downloaded version looks a lot better than this even at 19.7 Mbps.
Also its entirely possible the youtube 19.7 Mbps added compression could be acting strongly on those midtones because overall there is more detail in the image than the uploaded versions of say Cine-D for example,
plus variable compression acts differently from file to file depending where the most detail is.
But at the end of day lets wait and see what its really like....hopefully it wont be too far away.
 
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Looks flat and lacking in three dimensionality to my eyes but, we'll see how things look when people really learn how to light for and grade it.
 
8 bit 4:2:0 AVC compression flattens tonal values anyway, not to be confused with normal vs log contrast. There is no data depth for fine discrimination of color and tonal values as there would be with 10 bit 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. hence very little grading room without producing significant artifacts when you shoot log.
 
astromann said:
Going thru the entire video and closely looking at the shots. I can honestly say that this is some of the best footage I have seen from the GH4 in terms of nicely balanced contrast and its clean without being sterile, and the skin tones are miles better than Cine-D to my eyes, so I can only imagine what a good film maker can do with this...considering that Jordan probably only had days....not weeks or months to get a grip on this profile.
I guess we may arrive at a slightly different conclusion when its finally delivered, one thing is for sure tho, the 8 bit in cam image wont be worse.... it will be a lot better than the 19.7 Mbps that this youtube vid is...and the 10 bit probably evena lot better still....So right now based on the downloaded 4K version of this vid...I really love the look, its exceeded what I had hoped for, cant wait!!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your kind words! I've been loving V-Log L and I'm looking forward to shooting some 10 bit footage for comparison soon.
 
TCSJordan said:
Thanks for your kind words! I've been loving V-Log L and I'm looking forward to shooting some 10 bit footage for comparison soon.
Click to expand...

No problems, I seriously thought it looked great...you did a great job really nice looking images to me, even considering the youtube compression and all that...the even spread of the image is what blew me away...and I am pretty critical,
(3d artist by trade)
I can only imagine what you will be able to do with this after a few more weeks playing around with it.I cant wait to see some 10 bit footage and hear your views on how it works for you.
Great Stuff
Cheers
 
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TCSJordan said:
I've been loving V-Log L and I'm looking forward to shooting some 10 bit footage for comparison soon.
Click to expand...

Will you have access to multiple recorders? Either way, keep up the good work and many of us are eagerly awaiting your results.

As an aside, I'm assuming you have access to V-Log as testers. Any thoughts on how far the process has come?
 
TCSJordan said:
Thanks for your kind words! I've been loving V-Log L and I'm looking forward to shooting some 10 bit footage for comparison soon.
Click to expand...

Don't be bashful. Here's the video --- (the GH4 discussion starts at ~ 13.49)

 
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TCSJordan said:
Thanks for your kind words! I've been loving V-Log L and I'm looking forward to shooting some 10 bit footage for comparison soon.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing your observations!

Guessing you used the GH4 without an external monitor & have some questions.

How did you determine exposure? White Card & Zebras? Histrogram & ETTR? Incident meter?

Did Panasonic provide, or did you determine, the IRE for 18% Grey, or 90% White?

How hard was hitting focus? Is it possible to record V-Log L while monitoring Rec. 709?

Best regards,
Bern
 
I'll do some recording on a Shogun and Odyssey 7Q+. It's been tough to get motivated, since we use the smaller cameras for more discreet shoots where we don't want to haul the FS7 around. Using the GH4 with an external recorder draws as much attention as the big sucker. I will get to it this week though.

We only saw the initial V-Log firmware for a few days to shoot anamorphic footage for the NAB announcement, and I wasn't even on set that day (just had a kid!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A3Y2l1Ou6U
The grading process was extremely similar, but the camera histogram displayed plenty of highlight room where nothing was being captured. This has been address with V-Log L. Panasonic says the L stands for 'Lumix', which makes sense as the extra highlight latitude is only available in the Varicam. I do not see a difference in actual dynamic range or skin tones between the VLog beta and newer VLog-L. However, the statements I made in the firmware TCSTV episode are not hyperbole, the GH4 has just become a much, much more attractive camera for me. We usually shoot available light with no crew, so dynamic range, usability, and skin tones are my top priority. V-Log L has helped the GH4 bump the A7S out of the way as my favourite '2nd shooter' next to the FS7.
 
Bern Caughey said:
Thanks for sharing your observations!

Guessing you used the GH4 without an external monitor & have some questions.

How did you determine exposure? White Card & Zebras? Histrogram & ETTR? Incident meter?

Did Panasonic provide, or did you determine, the IRE for 18% Grey, or 90% White?

How hard was hitting focus? Is it possible to record V-Log L while monitoring Rec. 709?

Best regards,
Bern
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Hi Bern,

I shot some quick samples with a grey card and skin tones at a variety of exposures. I found that overexposing and putting skin tones at around 70 IRE gave the best results. I use a light meter, but meter at 160 ISO if dynamic range isn't a major concern.

Panasonic has given me no information on optimal settings. It's been a process of learning as we go. I do feel that the process has been much less painful than with S-Log.

Hitting focus is still quite easy due to the 4K capture. I find nailing focus with 1080P cameras shooting Log (i.e. A7S or FS700 without a recorder) much more difficult. There is no way on the camera to monitor in 709.
 
TCSJordan said:
The statements I made in the firmware TCSTV episode are not hyperbole, the GH4 has just become a much, much more attractive camera for me. We usually shoot available light with no crew, so dynamic range, usability, and skin tones are my top priority. V-Log L has helped the GH4 bump the A7S out of the way as my favourite '2nd shooter' next to the FS7.
Click to expand...

Wow that is very interesting indeed.
As I said earlier the footage you shot...with so little time to learn the V-Log...I thought...was really good, in another class!!
 
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