Hey guys. I have been using these settings for the past 3 weeks to film a large corporate video, and they have been phenomenal for me so far. I'm using the Portrait Setting -3, -2, -2, -4, -2. Highlight -3, Shadow +1. I can't show you any stills or footage yet because the project is a rebranding and has to stay under wraps for a while. For me these settings are perfect. Skins tones are beautiful when you have the right WB. To be fair, every scene was well lit with the Apurture LED lights.

@jopereira, I too find Cine-D with all other settings default (except possibly hue, and yes, contrast +/- 1 or 2 depending on your lens) to be perfectly usable. But I am also not opposed to using Cine-V with slightly more modifications, or Portrait with some heavy-handed shifting. I've used each of these successfully in various productions. So really my experience has been one is not better than the other, but that they are a trade-off on post time versus the extremity of the look you want. If you want a clean, solid, punchy look with minimal post time, the Portrait based stuff will give it, at the expense of being less pushable later, with the other end of the scale being Cine-D which lets you put a really different, strong stylized look on your footage with more post work being necessary. I shoot Cine-V or -D for music videos, quite often, and shoot Portrait more often for commercial-style and narrative work which requires a fast turnaround (such as doc projects, etc.).

@StudioDCCreative Funny you mention lenses, because until now I haven't realize why I put -2 in contrast. My lens is a Panasonic 14-140... What settings do you use in Portrait mode and what do you do in post with those?

@shian You know what you're doing and you get great results. Others are also achieving great results with different settings. I'm learning from you all. I'm a home video enthusiast and all I want is a good, real to life image but also a change to grade it to my taste if necessary (a flexible image). I don't care if I have to capture with settings that require a post work as, most of the time, once you get the look you want, all clips will receive the "same" treatment.

@StudioDCCreative

I'd forgotten, but is it "Dog Shidt Optiks" or "Dogg Shidt Optiks" ... and those lenses ... such amazing glass out there ... ;-)

Neil (loving the term ...)

@rNeil, it's http://dogschidtoptiks.co.uk so I'll let you draw your own conclusions. ;) And yes, fantastic lenses to start with, even better after the good Mr. Gale has had his mitts on them.

It looks like V-Log is on it's way in the next few weeks.

I'm shooting a short next weekend and will be using the GH4 on set. I will only receive the camera on the shooting day so I've been trying to research what settings should be best for this task.

The end product will be shown in cinemas here in Iceland, and the subjects will mostly be dancers lit up with spotlights and with backgrounds that fade from midtones to black. So aiming for good skintones and little banding in the background gradient is my main goal.

Here come the settings that I'm planning to use, based on various recommendations I've read on the web, and below are explanations on why I've decided on a certain setting. These settings were selected for maximum amount of information to work with and to eliminate banding. However I haven't seen any thoughts about skin tones and what settings would be best for good rendering of them.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone experienced with the camera would tell me if these settings are indeed what I should be using, or if there is some other settings I should go for.

Luminance: 16-235 I'm not quite sure if I should use 0-255 and just make sure my exposure is perfect on location (I would then have to completely trust the GH4 screen), or if I should use 16-235, which should leave me with some room if I accidentally blow out the highlights or want to pull in some shadows. I assume that shooting 0-255 would give me less banding issues, given that I've got the exposure right.

Master pedestial 0 I've heard that lifting this up (putting in higher numbers) will only lift up the shadows, resulting in information loss. So leaving at 0 is probably best.

Highlights and shadows +1 and +1 I've read allot of contradicting advices on the net. I guess it boils down to what you're looking for. The background gradient that I'm mostly afraid that will create banding issues, will go from black to little bit over the midpoint, if that makes any difference regarding how this setting should be.

Photo style: Natural or Portrait I have the option to use Cinelike D. According to the manual of the camera which describes this like so: "Gives priority to the dynamic range by using a gamma curve designed to create film-like images. Suited for editing.". Now that sounds really promising, but from what I've heard is that this profile can create problems with correct color rendition especially for skin tones, so I've been advised to use Natural or Portrait instead. Any thoughts?

Noise Reduction -5 Planning to do my own noise reduction in post. If the internal noise reduction is good though, then this might be unnecessary. Anyone have experience with that?

Then we come to contrast and saturation, which allot of people recommend setting to -5 and -5 for the flattest profile. I'm really not sure whether that's helpful or not, so any input on that would be great.

I'd be greatly thankful for any advice on how to get this right, since I'm in the uncomfortable situation of having little time to test the camera before shooting starts. So getting this right the first time is my only option :)

kind regards Frímann Kjerúlf

Went to Paris on vacation. Did some run and gun filming. Nothing fancy. I wish I could of brought my good lenses but they were too heavy. Shot with portrait setting. Mostly 96fps. 14-140mm and pancake 20mm.

Usually -3 for noise

Balance your needs ... specular highlights, which are bright reflections like off chrome or other polished surfaces, will normally go to pure white. No camera has an unlimited dynamic range ... so you always have to pick where the most needed range of tones are that your cam can handle, and expose for those. So ... you need to expose so highlights you NEED to have detail still have it, and the shadows have enough exposure so you can lift things a bit at need without TOO much noise. You will have a bit, but again, how much noise is (for you our your "clients") too much? You have to define that.

Takes practice and experimentation. And as noted up above, if you find yourself shooting say a v-log camera, you may need to "protect" your shadows by exposing them just a little higher as the cam will lower the contrast and record more into the highlights. If you're shooting most M4/3 cameras in their normal modes, you have to balance the shadows against the highlights pretty much by what's in the scene you're capturing. By knowing your camera, any monitor you're using, against what your recorded videos will bring up in your editing/grading programs.

Neil

Hey! Check out my newest video using the GH4.

Everything was shot on 96fps using Sigma 30mm 1.4 with Speed Booster. Color corrected using Filmconvert and Kodak Lutz.

I have to say, to my surprise, that I also feel the CineD results look almost what I want out of the camera. Perhaps a little contrast with Magic Bullet Looks to pop a little more, particular evident in color saturation. Do I have my monitor and home cinema projector with too much contrast? I don't really think so, but I could be wrong (I have contrast and brightness adjusted so I can see the full scale, no more, no less).