I agree with most of the points made here about the Gh4 settings. Actually I use Natural or Standard a fair amount of the time, and minimal settings on the Contrast, Noise, Hue settings etc.. I personally find CineD with the contrast wound right down to be almost unusable, I know people are trying to get a flatter than flat image, but to me that defeats the purpose of the camera and the image it produces are washed out flimsy looking and generally not very pleasing.

As far as iDynamic goes, I have had great results with it in high contrast scenes (I have done countless tests) where there is a lot of light and dark shadows under trees and so on. What it does do is lift the darkness of the shadows a bit so you can see more detail. Does it introduce noise in this circumstance? None that I can see even on higher ISO's.

But where there is very low light then iDynamic definitely introduces noise, so its very useful in certain scenes, I live in Australia and the sun is very bright and iDynamic has enables me to really get some great footage that would be very difficult to get with a lot of cameras.

What about curves in the highlights and shadows, I use those too, but in moderation like -2 for highlights and +2 for shadows, this works for me...noise? I cant see any. At the end of the day you have to make your own decisions on these things, others opinions can be a help, but you have to find out yourself what works for you.

I also use -5 noise reduction as Eno does...but not always, it depends on the scene, sometimes -2 is good too or even 0.

When I first got the GH4 I was a little underwhelmed...mainly cause I did not know how to set it up, but recently (especially using the 4K photo mode) I have been blown away by some of the footage I have gotten from this amazing little camera, the level of detail (detail...not sharpness) is incredible.

As far as ISO goes...yep I also find it usable up to about 3200 as well, many say its unusable above 800, I havent found that to be the case at all.

As far as the 4k detail goes I put up a separate topic in case there is any kind of lengthy discussion on this, its here http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/11558/gh4-4k-image-analysis-is-it-really-4k Cheers

@Eno : Thanks a lot for the explanation. I had no idea about these results, and find it extremely informative! Thanks for sharing that with me. I totally agree with you on the "as flat as need" -> I have already done multiple tests to find that cine D with contrast 0 is as "flat" as you can go with this camera (IMHO). Anything else (MP, curves) turns this very nice camera into a noise machine.

@JFighiera :thanks also :)

I'm back on shooting some more corporate stuff tomorrow, so I'll be checking other settings in my gh4, but so far I am not that impressed with it. Its good, but I still find that most of the reviews treat this camera as a good to go for full hd - by using the internal 4k - and don't really care about the 4k output...

I shot this on the GH4 for an actor friend, as her pitch to the producers of the Fargo TV series. What I loved most about shooting at 4K was the leeway it gave me to recompose shots during editing. Nods (and apologies?) to the Coen Brothers.

@neosushi Agree with Eno

To achieve true 4K resolution, say 2160 true lines (vertical resolution) you need much higher than 4K source downscaled to 4K.

FYI, same goes for Full HD: It has been shown via various resolution charts tests that typical DSLR camera can resolve only 650 to 750 lines (vertical resolution) when filming in Full HD instead of true 1080 lines (vertica resolution).

GH4 can achieve 800 lines (vertical resolution) in Full HD. GH4 filming in 4K and downscaling to FHD can resolve true Full HD 1080 lines (vertical resolution) and even more 1100 lines exactly.

@Eno Interesting that you would mention the GH4 basically having a 3k resolution. How do you feel the Samsung NX1 will compare to the GH4 in that regard? It supposedly has the processing power to render an image as high as 7k.

Also, since you recommend not selecting too flat of an image, are you basically shooting in Natural with minimal changes to the profile other than Noise Reduction?

@Eno

I find very interesting your comment (about 3k). I think it would be interesting to know how many of us who edit in 4k, actually own a 4k monitor. I believe 99% of us shoot 4K with our GH4, and export in 1080p.

As I am going to start producing a 20min. movie in C4K (broadcasted in theater 4k conditions). I'll have to test the GH4 with a real 4K screen, and I must say I am anxious at the result... especially regarding the noise...

An observation.. a lot of dudes that use Adobe AE to grade are really good at it. Especially that dude!

http://studiocanoe.com/expeditions/

@Vitaliy_Kiselev , it is an user opinion and a simple test, but if people want to dig into it more, a new topic can be created. I have no problem with the camera what so ever, just stating a fact I discovered, which I doubt is surprising.

@itrofnoc take a 4K UHD clip with a lot of detail on a wide lens and f/5,6-8 aperture, extract an image out of it, resize it at 3000x 1700+ or whatever the 3K resolution is, then up-sample again to 3840x2160 and compare the two of them, for me they contain about the same detail. If you are not convinced than film a ISO test chart for resolution and you will discover the same thing.

You can achieve true 4K only if you film at a higher resolution 6K or grater, than down-sample to 4K.

@Eno > GH4 is a 3K camera regarding resolution

Could you please kindly elaborate on that?