GH4 your thoughts on color grading gh4 footage?

R

robfilms

Veteran
your thoughts on color grading gh4 footage?

i like my sony fs100 but at 28mps and 420/8 bit, one of its weak spots is pushing the avhcd footage in post.

as i continue to explore a possible gh4 transition, i need to ask:

since the gh4 footage is also 420/8 bit, what has been your experience color grading gh4 footage?

how far can the gh4 footage be pushed before it starts to "break-up" due to noise and/or micro blocking?

any thoughts, links or footage is appreciated.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
 
I have to say that the GH4 is incredibly flexible in post considering its 'only' a 4.2.0 8bit codec. I've taken pretty flat looking Cinelike D footage and turned it into very cinematic colourful footage. The KEY thing is getting White balance correct in camera and not under-exposing. If you get either of these steps wrong the footage can be basically garbage. If you get it right the footage is as good as most anything I've seen and graded.
 
nobbystylus said:
I have to say that the GH4 is incredibly flexible in post considering its 'only' a 4.2.0 8bit codec. I've taken pretty flat looking Cinelike D footage and turned it into very cinematic colourful footage. The KEY thing is getting White balance correct in camera and not under-exposing. If you get either of these steps wrong the footage can be basically garbage. If you get it right the footage is as good as most anything I've seen and graded.
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nobbystylus-

thank you for your thoughts.

what do you use to nail the white balance?

is the histogram and a black/gray/white target helpful?

thanks in advance.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
 
I believe the footage grades quite well when capturing as UHD and then placing it into a 1080p sequence. Detail improves and noise is much less apparent. Someone else's comment about getting white balance correct and ETTR are important steps in the process. The footage works well in PP CC and eDaVinci Resolve though personally feel Resolve is easier and faster to do basic grading. I have no experience with secondary grading.
 
I agree with the White Balance instructions. I almost always carry around a grey card to get a custom white balance. The only time I usually will use kelvin is if we're doing multi-cam shoots and they all need to match perfectly.

As far as color grading.... Treat your footage well. It will take a while to dial in the settings that make it sing. Once you figure out what works well with the camera's color response you can get some pretty cinematic images. Just be weary of too much saturation or too much contrast, those can make your image start to fall apart the fastest.

I find that pushing shadows towards a deep purple, highlights towards yellow/orange, and mid-tones ever so slightly blue can render some great looking footage:

Orignal vs Graded
 
My suggestion is to shoot for your final image in cam, then only slight adjustments in post. 4K 8bt 4.2.0 at 100mpbs is way thin and letting the cam do the work with full sensor data before compression is always better in my testing than anything you can do in post. All these crazy pushes and LUT's people have been using look horrible to my eye. The trend toward cyan/orange many folks are using with the GH4 is hideous to me. Obviously YMMV, but the fact remains that internal Panasonic processing with full sensor data is far superior to what 8bit 4.2.0 compression after the fact will allow you to move around in post, IMHO.

Cheers,
Pete
 
I generally dial in the kelvins when I'm running around shooting fast. My experience is that the GH4 tends to be slightly warmer than other cameras so I tend to go for approx depending on lighting (5600k daylight etc) then tweak down a step or two till the whites look close. If i'm shooting narrative stuff I'll use a greycard and do a custom white balance. It makes such a radical difference to get White balance 'bang on' and makes cinelike D footage a great starting place for grading.
 
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c3hammer said:
The trend toward cyan/orange many folks are using with the GH4 is hideous to me.
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Me too. "Oompa Loompa's at twilight" is just a very weird look for full daylight scenes. (Well, any scenes really that aren't actually supposed to be Ommpa Loompas frollicking about just before dusk.)
 
I've seen some stunning results with the GH4, but yes - ensure white balance and exposure are sorted from the start or you'll quickly run into problems. Some of the graded aerials i've seen recently have blown my socks off though.
 
wwjd said:
Hollywood banks billions off the Oompa Loompas. They might be on to something there...
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Hollywood does it FAR better and more subtly (and certainly not on everything).

If Hollywood is L’Oréal, then GH4 owners seem to be more like clowns. :happy:
 
wwjd said:
Hollywood banks billions off the Oompa Loompas. They might be on to something there...
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Hmmm... billions are made primarily by scriptwriters, stars, producers, directors and the marketing/distribution people ... and only to a small extend by the grading-Oooma Loompas. And certain looks are just a fad, they are "en vogue" and will change with time.

Working with any dslr'ish camera like working with reversal in the old days should be the way to go. Treat your material careful, get as near to what you want as possible in-camera, don't "over-grade" your stuff and beware of the at times grainy plains of "Flatlandia" .... and you get great, at times stunning results from a really small and affordable camera. Else - work with Blackmagic if you really have the time and disc-space .... or rent an Alexa or Epic... ;-)
 

Once I realized that with these settings [CineD (-5, -2,-5,-5,0) Contrast curve #2 (S+2, H-2)] the GH4 behaved exactly like my old Nikon 35mm film camera, life got a whole lot more fun. I could ignore the LCD and trust my handheld meter and my experience. [No external recorder. This is with the internal SD Card and panasonic 4K codec in 4k 100M 24p mov mode and 1080 96fps overcrank mode.]
In all of these shots I only used a single bounce or a single bounce along with a 1K tungsten fresnel, or the 1K by itself. Essentially no more than 2 lights. Or in the case of the Buddha in the first shot... no lights. [Shot primarily with vintage Nikon manual glass using a Metabones speedbooster to compensate for the crop the GH4 has at 4K - except the wide desert shot which was the Panasonic Pancake 20mm with a canon .7 wide angle adapter attached.]
Obviously the overcranked stuff was shot at 1080 96fps but it cuts nicely with the 4K, you just don't get the same killer image exactly when you are trying to grade. yet the CU at the end still grades very nicely.
The graded footage has lost 2 generations by this point in the ProRes file, and 3 on the Mp4 having been exported out of resolve as individual clips and then exported from FCPX to a master file which was imported back into FCPX and edited together with the raw images for this clip, then exported again and then compressed to MP4.
Those who say the GH4 doesn't produce film like images and/or doesn't grade well... Are either trying to sell you on another product that they are endorsed by, or they don't know what they are talking about... Or in the case of Shane Hurlbut... both.
Download the ProRes from dropbox here [2.3GB] dropbox.com/s/ji2ki7lcwi632lc/GH4%204K%20Footage.mov?dl=0
 
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