Like many other GH4 shooters, I’ve been debating the best picture profiles and settings to use when shooting with this camera. When I first got the GH4, I was constantly messing with my settings (master, shadows/highlights, etc.), but eventually realized that I would get better results if I didn’t put too much pressure on the camera. Therefore, I mainly use slightly modified Cine-D and Cine-V image profiles, as described in this fall blog post.
I would say I use Cine-D about 50% of the time and Cine-V the other 50% of the time. Both picture profiles create beautiful images, but Cine-D has slightly more dynamic range, so I try to use that whenever possible. That said, Cine-V has almost the same DR (I’d guess there’s maybe only 1/2 a stop difference between them), making it a great alternative to Cine-D when you need to nail down how it’s going to look in camera.
When grading Cine-V footage, I never use any kind of LUT in the pipeline because the image profile already has some degree of final look. However, with Cine-D, I always start my color correction with a custom LUT built around my preferred Cine-D settings. I’ve included a download link for the LUT below, but please read on to make sure your settings match mine so that the LUT works properly.
By the way, for anyone unfamiliar with LUTs (or lookup tables), they are essentially color conversion files that you can use in many different post-production applications to apply a new look to your footage. There are many reasons to use them, but usually it is to add contrast and saturation to a flat image. For example, if you’re shooting with an Arri Alexa in Log-C, you may want to use a LUT to give your Log-C footage a more contrasting Rec. Chapter 709 Take a look. Here are some examples of some recent Arri Amira shots I’ve shot, with or without Rec. 709 LUT Applications:
It’s worth noting that you don’t always need to use a LUT to grade flat footage, but it can definitely help speed up your process and keep it consistent throughout your sequence. That’s why I’m using a custom Cine-D LUT in Resolve, which has saved me a lot of time over the past few months when grading my footage.
As mentioned above, the LUT is based on my custom Cine-D setup:
Who-D
contrast: 0
Sharpness: -5
Noise reduction: -5
saturation: -5
tone: 0
This LUT will still work with many different Cine-D settings, but it is optimized for the settings listed above.
Here are before and after screenshots showing the functionality of the LUT:
UnratedCine-D
Cine-D and Noam Kroll LUT
A LUT is not a final grade, but rather creates the best starting point for image color correction. Operation sequence The way you perform color grading is just as important as the look you want to achieve, so be sure to apply this LUT before doing any further grading.
My goal with this LUT was to make my Cine-D images look as close to Cine-V as possible while retaining an extra 1/2 stop or so of dynamic range. As you can see from this Cine-V shot, it’s no different than Cine-D with my LUT:
The DR in the Cine-V example may look slightly more, but that’s only because it hasn’t been graded yet. In fact, it’s still possible to extract a small amount of extra detail from the shadows and highlights of Cine-D images.
So for those who want to download the .cube LUT archive, You can do so by clicking here.
If you’ve never installed a LUT on your system before, it’s actually pretty simple. Simply download the .cube file above and copy it into the LUT folder of DaVinci Resolve (or whatever platform you’re using). For Resolve you can follow the following archive path:
apple
/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/LUT/
personal computer
ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\LUT
If your system does not automatically decompress the .cube file, be sure to do so.
Thoughts on super pitch settings
Recently some GH4 users have been trying out the new “Supertone” setting. This was developed by my Michael Medgyesi. This setting is based on the Portrait picture profile and is designed to give you a gradient look straight out of the camera, with an emphasis on mid-tones.
The following are the specific settings:
portrait
contrast: + 3
Sharpness: +1
Noise reduction: 0
saturation: -5
tone: -2
Highlights/Shadows: -5/0
I decided to test these settings using the exact same settings as the Cine-D and Cine-V tests above. As I expected, I got a very high-contrast image straight out of the camera, almost with the look of a bleached bypass:
Understandably, the purpose of this image contour is to correct by increasing the saturation and maybe lifting the shadows a little. But even then, when I started color grading the footage, I wasn’t happy with the results.
To be fair, if I actually used this setup I would light the scene differently, but even with grading to compensate for the broken shadows, I’m not crazy about this look:
I think there is a time and place for settings like Super Tint, but for the type of shooting I like, it just doesn’t work. Supertone gives you a very specific look straight out of the camera that you kind of like in post, which makes me uncomfortable because I color grade almost all of my footage. Not to mention, creatively it’s very unique and in my opinion only works for certain types of projects.
I love seeing people push the boundaries of what GH4 is capable of, and have a lot of respect for Michael Medgyesi’s approach to GH4, but personally, I’ll stick with Cine-D (and my current LUT, or Cine-V). .
Update: I recently released 3 cinematic LUT packs that are carefully designed to help you achieve an organic cinematic look in post-production. They work well with any camera (including the GH4 of course) and I highly recommend them to filmmakers and cinematographers looking to achieve bold color effects while minimizing post-production time. Be sure to check them out here!
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