GH5 new firmware : GH5 GH5S G9 on MAY 30

Ron Evans said:
Yes I have tried Vlog on the GH5S do not have on the GH5 and want to shoot both UHD 60P so not possible in HLG as this is only available on HDMI for external recording. When I get one I will try of course. I think that HLG is a little better as I have tried this for HD recording. Would love to just adjust in camera and save a lot of adjusting after. I shoot theatre so have NO control over lighting that is often LED these days. The Sony's seem to manage this better for the reds than the GH5's and that may be some of the issue. In pure white light then I do get the red's that I want. When do I ever get white light !!! However the colour shifts with LED theatre lights seem to bias the reds more for the GH5 than the Sony's turning them more orange/yellow. WB is pointless as the WB changes by scene and even within a scene so I set all cameras to fixed indoor WB and always need to adjust afterwards. I was just pointing out the one characteristic of the GH5's that the reds always appear orangish. Tried playing with WB but find it easier to adjust the reds in post rather than mess up the whole image !!!
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Right there is part of your problem. The indoor presets are not the most accurate when it comes to color. They pick a typical average temp and go with that and very likely is no where accurate to what you need. While the Sony presets may get closer out of the box that doesn't mean they have better color. Just means the preset is more in line with your shooting environment. I only use the WB presets as an absolute last resort.

When it comes to a manual white balance for theater it is ok if different moments use different color lights. If a blue gel is used you want to capture that same blue. You white balance ahead of time for whatever would be the most neutral white light and then just let the different colors come in as they are. Honestly doing a white balance this way is not any worse than using the indoor preset because its pretty much what the preset is doing. By going manual however you may be able to start off with a more accurate base vs the indoor preset that is likely off from the start and never right during the entire performance.
 
Yeah, just have them set all their standard white lights on stage and white balance to that. Make it a preset with the Kelvin value. Like Thomas said, from there, the color shifts are desirable and part of the show. It may well be desirable to do some manual adjusting afterwards with the mixed lights but Panasonic color is generally considered better than Sony... like Thomas said, you probably just have a preference for whatever the sony's preset is setting the camera's kelvin value to.
 
An efficient AF can be a life saver in many "run and gun" situations. I think it's a good thing to have it on the camera. In this regard, this upgrade is very welcome for me.
 
Will be interesting to see if consensus builds on the AF improvements. I think it will. It feels like face/eye detection may now be the best AFC mode. Seems also like the back focusing on the clock on the wall is over. It also feels like it focuses in much darker conditions than before. I was expecting only the 179D hack baked in, but this feels like a more sweeping improvement on the AF.
 
filmguy123 said:
Yeah, just have them set all their standard white lights on stage and white balance to that. Make it a preset with the Kelvin value. Like Thomas said, from there, the color shifts are desirable and part of the show. It may well be desirable to do some manual adjusting afterwards with the mixed lights but Panasonic color is generally considered better than Sony... like Thomas said, you probably just have a preference for whatever the sony's preset is setting the camera's kelvin value to.
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I do not think you guys understand current theatre lights. It is now possible to have a daylight on one side of the stage and indoor on the other beacuse of the use of LED stage lights that can change their color temperature. . There is NO fixed WB for the whole show most of the time which would be the case with incandescent sources. There are a combination of gells and LED that can change the WB themselves. So whatever is set with whatever lights it will be wrong most of the time. Certainly scene to scene. A night scene followed by a beach scene for example no way to change 4 cameras to meet that need !!! ATW makes it even worse so presetting is the best choice. I have tried adjusting the WB manually and the bias is still there whatever the setting. Yes in the past I used to set with a white stage wash but now that does not work. Correcting in post is always necessary. The point I am making is it is only the red of the GH5 that needs the correction. Other colours are fine and match the Sony. A simple hue adjustment does not do the correction as the red needs to be isolated and changed from orange to red.
 
Ron Evans said:
I do not think you guys understand current theatre lights. It is now possible to have a daylight on one side of the stage and indoor on the other beacuse of the use of LED stage lights that can change their color temperature. . There is NO fixed WB for the whole show most of the time which would be the case with incandescent sources. There are a combination of gells and LED that can change the WB themselves. So whatever is set with whatever lights it will be wrong most of the time. Certainly scene to scene. A night scene followed by a beach scene for example no way to change 4 cameras to meet that need !!! ATW makes it even worse so presetting is the best choice. I have tried adjusting the WB manually and the bias is still there whatever the setting. Yes in the past I used to set with a white stage wash but now that does not work. Correcting in post is always necessary. The point I am making is it is only the red of the GH5 that needs the correction. Other colours are fine and match the Sony. A simple hue adjustment does not do the correction as the red needs to be isolated and changed from orange to red.
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Sounds like a sucky situation.
If Sony works better why not use it though. Unfortunately they have that 30 minute record time. You could always consider one of their actual video cameras.
 
Ron Evans said:
I do not think you guys understand current theatre lights. It is now possible to have a daylight on one side of the stage and indoor on the other beacuse of the use of LED stage lights that can change their color temperature. . There is NO fixed WB for the whole show most of the time which would be the case with incandescent sources. There are a combination of gells and LED that can change the WB themselves. So whatever is set with whatever lights it will be wrong most of the time. Certainly scene to scene. A night scene followed by a beach scene for example no way to change 4 cameras to meet that need !!! ATW makes it even worse so presetting is the best choice. I have tried adjusting the WB manually and the bias is still there whatever the setting. Yes in the past I used to set with a white stage wash but now that does not work. Correcting in post is always necessary. The point I am making is it is only the red of the GH5 that needs the correction. Other colours are fine and match the Sony. A simple hue adjustment does not do the correction as the red needs to be isolated and changed from orange to red.
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Ron

1. Have you tried using a corrective LUT such as Paul Leeming's as a simple one-step starting point? I don't know where Premiere stands at this point, but Resolve and FCPX both allow LUTs to be applied at the clip level at the time of import.

2. Did you experiment to find that the "indoor" preset gives you the best starting point? (I would define best as "least likely to prematurely clip any channel.") I ask because it's pretty biased, and not in the direction one would typically find from LED sources. My completely out of my butt guess would be that "cloudy" might be a better choice.
 
My setup for theatre recording is GH5, GH5S, Sony AX100 and Sony NX5U. So the Panasonics are the ones that are not camcorders and the new additions to get UHD 60P recording !!! Not new at this as I have been doing for 25 years !!! Not a big problem to correct but would be nice to adjust in camera just the reds.
 
joe12south said:
Ron

1. Have you tried using a corrective LUT such as Paul Leeming's as a simple one-step starting point? I don't know where Premiere stands at this point, but Resolve and FCPX both allow LUTs to be applied at the clip level at the time of import.

2. Did you experiment to find that the "indoor" preset gives you the best starting point? (I would define best as "least likely to prematurely clip any channel.") I ask because it's pretty biased, and not in the direction one would typically find from LED sources. My completely out of my butt guess would be that "cloudy" might be a better choice.
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My main editor is EDIUS 8.5WG and I do use Resolve too. EDIUS allows LUT to be applied at any time. I have played with creating a LUT in Resolve from shooting the Spyderchecker24 etc under different light and bringing into EDIUS and that does work as a quick starting point. Will play more this summer after the main theatre season is over and I have time to experiment. Most scenes are fine it is only when there is the deep red costume that the issue arises so not a show stopper. I will eventually get an ATOMOS V and record HLG from the HDMI at UHD60P for the main full stage and will spend some time getting this correct.
 
Ron Evans said:
I do not think you guys understand current theatre lights. It is now possible to have a daylight on one side of the stage and indoor on the other beacuse of the use of LED stage lights that can change their color temperature. . There is NO fixed WB for the whole show most of the time which would be the case with incandescent sources. There are a combination of gells and LED that can change the WB themselves. So whatever is set with whatever lights it will be wrong most of the time. Certainly scene to scene. A night scene followed by a beach scene for example no way to change 4 cameras to meet that need !!! ATW makes it even worse so presetting is the best choice. I have tried adjusting the WB manually and the bias is still there whatever the setting. Yes in the past I used to set with a white stage wash but now that does not work. Correcting in post is always necessary. The point I am making is it is only the red of the GH5 that needs the correction. Other colours are fine and match the Sony. A simple hue adjustment does not do the correction as the red needs to be isolated and changed from orange to red.
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Yeah I get that but if you use the indoor preset you are not any better off then setting a manual white balance. The indoor preset assumes around a 3200k temp which means any daylight temp lights are going to "dramatically" mess up the color. Setting a manual white balance for one temp based on a set of lights or using the indoor preset is about as accurate once those different lights come into play. Doing a manual white balance on 3200k lights will set the camera to 3200k. Using the indoor preset will also set the camera to 3200k. The advantage of the manual white balance is the more common light setup may be 3300k or 3100k or any other value.

You may want to invest in a good color meter to help in this situation to find the best average color temp and then dial in the camera to that color temp. Perhaps 90% of the time the mixed lighting is more like 4000k and then would give you better results that 90% of the time.
 
Ron Evans said:
I do not think you guys understand current theatre lights. It is now possible to have a daylight on one side of the stage and indoor on the other beacuse of the use of LED stage lights that can change their color temperature. . There is NO fixed WB for the whole show most of the time which would be the case with incandescent sources. There are a combination of gells and LED that can change the WB themselves. So whatever is set with whatever lights it will be wrong most of the time. Certainly scene to scene. A night scene followed by a beach scene for example no way to change 4 cameras to meet that need !!!
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In those situations you would want to shoot raw with a high exposure latitude camera, which brings you into Arri, Red and Venice territory.

I think it is critical for the video production and light production teams to make compromises when a show is video recorded. If the light production team gets full creative control the recorded results may not look very good.
 
I have quite a bit of experience with stage lighting (Nashville, y'all) and quick turnarounds of live events.

Colored lighting is supposed to look colored. That's the point. Not only would it be impossible to balance for every lighting change, you don't want to do so. (You've all seen some amazing live broadcasts in which the camera operators never changed their white balance.)

Most shows will have a primary light source that is meant to be seen as "natural" white light. Often a spotlight. That's what you should balance to. Set it. Once. Done. When a red light comes on, it should look red. When a blue light comes on, it should look blue. Stop worrying.

If there is not, or the lighting guy/gal is unwilling to give you 5 minutes ahead of time to shoot a grey card, then set your WB where it is least likely to clip a channel. As the OP has stated, LEDs are making strong moves into stage lighting, but there is also likely to be a franken-mix of warm tungsten, cool halogen and god knows what else up there in the rafters.

Because of this, I highly doubt that "indoor" or "incandescent" is going to be the best preset. Other lights are going to spike hard causing clipping you won't be able to fix. When I'm in a total rush, know that lighting will be changing, have to match different cameras, etc. (basically chaos) I generally use the cloudy setting, or set it to 4,000k (roughly in the middle.)
 
sorry for the offtopic

@Cary Knoop
I see you mention that vlog-l has v-gamut colorspace...
Any confirmation/information about this?
Thanks!
 
Aaaaanyway,... back on subject of this thread,

I’m probably among the very few who dont care about auto-focus on the new firmware update, we got live lut preview playback people!,.. and i’m loving the new Night mode, improved I.S, etc... I would pay for a video review of the new firmware that doesn’t talk about autofocus! I’m probably a different breed but since when filmmakers worry about autofocus?... videographers maybe but not filmmakers
 
Newman said:
Aaaaanyway,... back on subject of this thread,

I’m probably among the very few who dont care about auto-focus on the new firmware update, we got live lut preview playback people!,.. and i’m loving the new Night mode, improved I.S, etc... I would pay for a video review of the new firmware that doesn’t talk about autofocus! I’m probably a different breed but since when filmmakers worry about autofocus?... videographers maybe but not filmmakers
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Why don't you make the review yourself? Talk about the points that are important to you, and then mention the other upgrades in passing.
 
Newman said:
I’m probably a different breed but since when filmmakers worry about autofocus?... videographers maybe but not filmmakers
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Snobbery in the camera department
by Geoff Boyle

https://cinematography.net/CineRant/2018/05/02/snobbery-in-the-camera-department/

Is it possible to use autofocus for an entire movie?
by Geoff Boyle

https://www.gboyle.co.uk/cinematography/?p=210

Newman said:
...we got live lut preview playback people!,.. and i’m loving the new Night mode, improved I.S, etc...
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LUT support during Playback is my favorite new feature, but also greatly appreciate the battery meter now has four steps instead of three.
 
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Bern Caughey said:
LUT support during Playback is my favorite new feature, but also greatly appreciate the battery meter now has four steps instead of three.
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I haven't installed it yet, but that is amazing. Now I have to get it :-)

Well done Panasonic.
 
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