GH5 Weird white balance issues today

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filmguy123

Veteran
Shot all over before in bright sunlight with GH4/GH5, and even my GH5 just a few weeks ago.

For some reason had a lot of trouble with WB on an outdoor sunny day shoot today. Always seemed off - tinted and yellow/green/orange-y.

This might just be user error, weird though because I haven't experience WB trouble much I am usually pretty good. Maybe it was too bright? White balanced on whites that were slightly off kilter? Or possible sensor damage or camera problem?
 
If you white balance at an exposure that clips the sensor it can cause color shifts. R,G,B pixels clip at different maximum values on most sensors.
 
Razz16mm said:
If you white balance at an exposure that clips the sensor it can cause color shifts. R,G,B pixels clip at different maximum values on most sensors.
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Ahhh... I am almost certain this is what could have happen... it was super bright and shooting live I would white balance white on someone's shirt, but sometimes it would be a red color on the edges or something, and everything was very bright...

Cary, yes I could just short on bandwidth today could possibly later this weekend though!

The other thing is, I was displeased with a lot of my results in VLOG.

I did ETTR, however, I tried to preserve more specular highlights (ie a bright spot on a white t-shirt on someone with dark skin) and sky. Everything was within range on the histogram - within the 12 stops of vlog - however, dark skin was more muddy than I would have liked. I am guessing it was exposed too low, and the overall majority image wasn't in the "sweet spot" or to the right enough...

... perhaps I should have let more highlights blow out in order to make the mean "meat" of the image, and all skin tones, further right and brighter?

That with the color shifts and hue shifts limited the number of shots I am super pleased with (luckily I only need 1-2 shots from the whole event) - but a bit of a learning experience for me so I do not make this mistake again!

I also feel that everything from the shoot just does not have the usual POP I have seen from my GH5, even when I have shot in very hot/bright environments before. Slightly soft or muddied look to it. I also felt my IBIS on my Lumix 12-35 was not performing as well as before even though I am positive Dual IS was on, it seemed to give a lot of bumps/struggles.

All of it made me wonder if the camera incurred some sort of damage from being in car in heat or something (only 80-85 degrees), but I find that unlikely.
 
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In my opinion, I feel the GH4/5 needs to be reset periodically because I have experienced something similar with my GH4 probably on 1 or 2 occasions, but not with my GH5 as of yet. The experience happened over a two year span.
 
interesting... I do not want to take any chances. perhaps I will reset it.

Or maybe its just a black balance?

And if I do reset, can I import my custom user menus again or would that bring back in the old unwanted settings?
 
Also, it's weird because now that you bring that up I remember - I rented a GH4 last year from lensrentals to match my own GH4 at the time on a camera. I believe it was reset to factory defaults and I can't remember if I reset it again myself manually or not. All I know is the footage did NOT match at the same exact scene settings. The rented camera had a similar sort of weird/overly soft washed out look to it. I had sent back the camera so I never could verify if maybe something else like a contrast curved was changed... but I thought it was all at default...

makes me wonder if something similar somehow happen to me? And if so, what could cause it? IE a hard crash? (I had one of those the other day).
 
Though probably completely unrelated, took a GH4 to shoot a bit of footage of a festival last Saturday...just before the festival started, I noticed that the shutter degree setting was absent from the LCD screen and switching to SS and back did nothing...and when checking the display menu for camera settings, absent there too...and then I had to start shooting...luckily, whatever happened to the display, the camera appeared to roll on a 180d shutter angle....performed a reset on Sunday evening and re-entered my settings...perhaps the answer with the GH5, maybe performing a reset at the beginning of any shooting day and then importing your custom settings off an SD card after the reset...not unlike a black balance every morning on a shoot day....I still have four hacks on SD cards that I keep just for shooting on a GH2 in a small Pelican card case. Once I'm happy with configuring my GH5 I'll carry an SD card with my settings for exactly this purpose.
 
filmguy123 said:
... perhaps I should have let more highlights blow out in order to make the mean "meat" of the image, and all skin tones, further right and brighter?
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This. You can't blindly follow the ETTR acolytes. If you have people in your shots, people become the reference for which your viewer frames their perception. i.e. that's what's important cause that's what we can't ignore.

As a more general philosophy, I would argue that a LOG profile is best served when you expose for a nice FAT middle and let LOG do what is meant to do – capture as much DR on either side as is possible.
 
Don't think I've ever Custom White Balanced any camera when working with natural light. Was there a color cast from foliage, or similar, that you were trying to neutralize?

When I do set a custom WB I often use a ExpoDisc. Works in most scenarios, but occasionally is off, & I resort to dialing it in manually. Haven't tested custom WB on the GH5, but when using an ExpoDisc on the GH4 the camera will report an errror if the exposure is too bright.
 
Yeah I realized after I should have just used the "sunny" preset. Just in such a habit of manually white balancing.

What causes the GH cameras to need a reset? How likely is it there could be something off with my camera?
 
Hi

Just as an aside, it might be called white balance, but that doesn't mean you should use white to do it :-)

Ideally you should use a mid grey card specifically designed for the task (search the usual online shops for white balance card) and fill the frame and let it expose for that. A persons shirt may look white, but I doubt it is reflecting even amounts of red/green/blue. Often white clothing is more blue due to washing detergents delibrately containing UV and blue dyes, which is what the marketing people call "Whiter than white", i.e. it is on the cold side of white.

Regards

Phil
 
Phil_D said:
Hi

Just as an aside, it might be called white balance, but that doesn't mean you should use white to do it :-)

Ideally you should use a mid grey card specifically designed for the task (search the usual online shops for white balance card)

Phil
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Yes, I have a 6x8" CamWhite white balance card I quit using because it was so glossy/bright white anytime I used it in sunlight it threw the color response way off. One of those inexpensive grey folding fabric deals on a folding metal frame does the job reliably for me if I don't trust the presets (which seem to work for me most of the time).
 
This happen again on another bright, sunny, outdoor shoot. Nothing terrible, but I noticed on this shoot the camera looked great indoors and also in shaded areas.

But the bright, high dynamic range scenes are rough. I am wondering if the GH5 simply doesn't do well in vlog if the main content areas are exposed at the midpoint? They simply do not look sharp and clear. If I blast out the highlights and thus bring the main points of interest up into the higher IRE values, than all looks well again, but doesn't this sort of defeat the point of the vlog profile and extra DR?

Also, some color casting as well. I am thinking this might be my Tiffen Variable ND? It only seems to happen in very bright, sunny days, which may be stretching the limits of the VND? I have assured it is not past the "max" setting where color casts can occur, but it is near the top of the range quite often.

Luckily I am able to adjust for this in post and all is fine, but it makes the shots less than "demo-reel worthy" IMO. What gives? Should I just over expose the skies and highlights to stop any skin tones and main subjects from dipping too low in vlog? (They aren't sitting at the bottom - just near ~midpoint, which seemed reasonable enough...)
 
Have you tried dialing in the white balance manually in Kelvin ? ( this is what I do most of the time, but then I own a C500 color meter, but I can usually guess pretty close to the meter's reading )
 
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