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Drum roll please.... I've finally got around to creating and releasing a LUT that gives accurate colour on the S5II and S5IIx. Big thanks to @Andrew Reid for allowing me to post about this. It's available here: https://lumasweet.com/shop/p/lumasweetlifelikes5ii I'll get around to doing a write up on it at some stage. In the meantime, here's a YT video (don't laugh!) that I made about it. This might also be of interest to anyone who's interested in camera colour science in general, even if you don't have this camera.

"Tascam has announced the DR-10L Pro, this is the newest addition to the DR-10L family. While the Pro version maintains a similar form factor and functionality, it adds the ability to record in 32-Bit Float and offers Atomos Wireless Time-Code-Sync Support." https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/07/06/tascam-dr-10l-pro-with-32-bit-float-recording-timecode-support/ Battery life has gone up from 10.5hrs to 24.5hrs (based on two AAA lithium batteries) Has a high-visibility OLED display, with lots of physical menu buttons for navigation. Has a headphone output so you can monitor the audio before/during/after recordings. Has an app for Android and iOS phones, you can add metadata (including project name, scene name, and take number) to the audio file. The app also gives you visual confirmation of the input audio with a waveform display over time. You can name each DR10L Pro via the app, for easy identification. The DR10L can now take MicroSD cards sizes up to a massive 512GB. (previous limit was 32GB) Comes with a free copy of iZotope RX Elements. Available now to preorder: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1773575-REG/tascam_dr_10l_pro_personal_recorder.html

Its not simple as that. There are a lot of object color-background light combinations that affects depth perception. If someone really want to spend time on that, he or she better do it at the scene with LEDs and carefully selected objects in the background, instead of specific color grading in post.

The problem is that there is only one conversion, the V35 to V709, but it's not accurate for all cameras because there are different sensors in them. I don't know if it was even accurate for the V35! Ideally, Panasonic would either calibrate the V-Log colour for each model so that it matches the input that the LUT expects (there is an internal transform from RAW to V-Log), or else create a custom conversion that's specific to each model. If you want an accurate as possible conversion for the S5II or S5IIx then LumaSweet Lifelike will do that job. From what I've seen of other cameras (GH5 and GH6) they're all significantly different from each other, and there's no real pattern to it, other than they all share bright, desaturated blues (though not to the same extent). Reds are all over the place between the three models. People complained about magenta skintones on the GH5. The GH6 has much brighter skintones (which looks nicer) but it's too far towards orange to be accurate. The hue of S5II skin is fairly accurate but it's so dark as to cause blotchiness. The only scope Panasonic has for calibrating colour across models under their current system is in the internal RAW to V-Log conversion for each camera. They're stuck with the problem of varying sensors (or colour filter arrays, IR filter, or whatever other hardware is causing the colour variations). They're stuck with a single conversion LUT. I guess the only thing they can tweak is the matrix that converts RAW colour to V-gamut. This is just a grid of numbers and is a very general kind of correction. Its effect on colour can be a bit like herding cats. And I would guess that this is why the colour varies so much between models. I'd love to know if it's the same problem with Canon and Sony, or whether their implementations of log are a bit more consistent.

Agree. There have been a lot of boring and conventional focal length lenses in recent years, the; 24/35/50/85, 24-70, 70-200 in full frame. Yawn 🥱 Back in the 70’s and 80’s we had far more interesting stuff like; 30-70, 40-80, 28-85 (albeit that one being variable aperture yuck) and recently from Tamron; 20-40, 35-150, 70-180 plus those interesting APSC Sigma 18-35, 50-100 f1.8’s. I’d happily sacrifice a bit of aperture speed for size & weight, even focal range, especially with something like Tamron’s 35-150 f2/2.8, so something like 40-120 constant f2.8 because who cares about f2 for a couple of mm?! For me it’s been the one weakness of L Mount, boring as f**k focal lengths and/or lenses that are too big and heavy. I look at Sony e Mount and Nikon Z with envy. I need an R2D2 projected Princess Leia moment with a message to Sigma about being my only hope…

Absolutely fine, I use MF about 90% of the time for the exact opposite reasons which is I don’t trust anywhere near as much AF. Or at least didn’t with the S5 and previous Fuji cameras such as the XT3. With focus peaking, it’s just a reliable way to work most of the time. For anything that requires tracking however, such as; entrances, exits, couple walking shots, AF, principally because I will be shooting stills at the same time so the unit shooting video will be on sticks. There is also a certain purity and ‘craft’ about shooting anything and everything as manually as possible which for me = almost everything video and just auto ISO and AF stills. MF just removes uncertainty for peace of mind when working so actually removes a layer of thought process and that is an overall ethos I am always working on which is removing as much ‘stuff’ that gets in the way as possible. My current ‘dilemma’ is the gimbal. I only use it for one thing which is tracking couple shots which I can do on the S5ii it’s IBIS being so good. Not as good, but close/good enough so it begs the question why charge up, transport, set up, carry, use…something if so little value, or is that tiny bit of value sufficient to warrant it’s place. Still debating that one with my alter ego, Mr Kit…

IMO, the biggest difference between the GH6 and other Lumix cameras is the colors, almost from any profile. Record a human in a scene and the difference is genuinely eye-popping. I've also seen side-by-sides of other FF Lumix cameras and I still prefer the GH6 colors. Maybe it's because of the bit-depth or processing, but it's definitely there. Granted, you can probably match them.

I have the GH5 and GX85 but not the GH6, but I absolutely agree that although the GX85 is a great 4K 8-bit camera, the 1080p on the GH5 is in another league entirely. Prior to the GH5 I was using the XC10 and shooting C-Log, which in theory is a better colour science and a better codec, but the XC10 is only 8-bit and is way noisier, and you can absolutely tell the difference in post. Watching colour grading tutorials with ARRI footage they seem to be able to push and pull it anywhere in basically any direction and it just goes there flawlessly - the GH5 feels like that in post. I've (finally) worked out colour management in Resolve and graded a bunch of clips from different cameras and the files from the GH5 were the easiest to grade by a large margin. The fact the GH6 has more modes / frame-rates / codec options would just be better again than the GH5. I have heard it is noisier though.

Was this color graded? Yes, heavily (and no LUTs) like all of my videos, to create the "illusion of reality." Think National Geographic video of meerkats - no film-like color tints or distortions; rather see the habitat and watch the activities of its inhabitants as if you were there. But with humans, unlike with animals and birds, one cannot hide or wear a disguise or shoot with an enormous lens. Some good stills too:

Correct. You need to find a mic that can handle that high SPL. Or think more about your mic placement, that would be the easiest/best fix. This is also true for wireless, you distort that, there is no way to recover it.