An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds

[jase]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

Does the mount look bent?

Camera side. 

What do you mean by that? The mount lock on camera side is fine, once i put the lens on, it makes the usual click and everything is tight.

[mercer]

5 minutes ago, jase said:

What do you mean by that? The mount lock on camera side is fine, once i put the lens on, it makes the usual click and everything is tight.

Okay, I thought maybe the aluminum on the camera side may be tweaked a little. So it doesn't work with the Sigma 18-35mm and speedbooster either?

[jase]

Just now, mercer said:

Okay, I thought maybe the aluminum on the camera side may be tweaked a little. So it doesn't work with the Sigma 18-35mm and speedbooster either?

Correct. I first thought it is the speedbooster, but on my Panasonic 20mm the behaviour is exactly the same I also removed the battery now for one hour, not helping at all. I am afraid there might be something wrong with the body.

[John Matthews]

24 minutes ago, jase said:

Correct. I first thought it is the speedbooster, but on my Panasonic 20mm the behaviour is exactly the same I also removed the battery now for one hour, not helping at all. I am afraid there might be something wrong with the body.

Try putting it back to factory settings. But you'll need to re-enter all your custom profiles.

[mercer]

26 minutes ago, jase said:

Correct. I first thought it is the speedbooster, but on my Panasonic 20mm the behaviour is exactly the same I also removed the battery now for one hour, not helping at all. I am afraid there might be something wrong with the body.

Doubt it would work, but did you try a camera reset?

[jase]

Just now, John Matthews said:

Try putting it back to factory settings. But you'll need to re-enter all your custom profiles.

 

Just now, mercer said:

Doubt it would work, but did you try a camera reset?

Did that already, didnt help

[John Matthews]

I would try putting it into that service mode that was floating around some time ago... see if that works. The key is to identify software or hardware error. Software you can usually fix, but hardware would be a trip to Panasonic or MacGyver- that would suck...

I should note that about one month ago I had an issue with some of the images mine was writing to the card... green bars covered half of the still frames. I formatted the card and it seemed to fix the anomaly- never had another problem.

[jase]

Ok now it gets super weird: if i go into the movie mode with Aperture priority, it works again - but not in the normal A or M mode for photo...

[John Matthews]

7 minutes ago, jase said:

Ok now it gets super weird: if i go into the movie mode with Aperture priority, it works again - but not in the normal A or M mode for photo...

I'm going to say this is software problem... something went haywire. Try removing lens, SB, and all that stuff. Reconnect. If it persists, it should be possible to reinstall firmware and reformat your card. If that doesn't fix it, I don't know what would.

[jase]

1 minute ago, John Matthews said:

I'm going to say this is software problem... something went haywire. Try removing lens, SB, and all that stuff. Reconnect. If it persists, it should be possible to reinstall firmware and reformat your card. If that doesn't fix it, I don't know what would.

I did all that. Did the reset numerous times and according to the Panasonic website, you cant update the firmware again if the version already matches.

[John Matthews]

Did you try removing the battery while the camera is on? Not sure if it might do something, but worth a try if nothing else works... it might send the camera into some other sort of reset. It worked on an old Pentax of mine.

[jase]

2 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Did you try removing the battery while the camera is on? Not sure if it might do something, but worth a try if nothing else works... it might send the camera into some other sort of reset. It worked on an old Pentax of mine.

Wont work. Guess I have to call support tomorrow.

[John Matthews]

49 minutes ago, jase said:

Wont work. Guess I have to call support tomorrow.

That's probably your only option at this point. One other question, in 4k photo mode, can you choose your aperture?

[Vesku]

6 hours ago, jase said:

Ok now it gets super weird: if i go into the movie mode with Aperture priority, it works again - but not in the normal A or M mode for photo...

The aperture is not moving in photo mode until you take the final image. It stays fully open for focusing. If you use manual photo mode (M) and "Constant preview" from custom menu the aperture changes when composing an image. The "Constant preview" is always ON in video mode.

Can this be your issue?

Can I ask is there aperture auto exposure stepping with Pana lenses when using video mode S in GX85?

[jonpais]

12 hours ago, jase said:

Some more tests, this time without the Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter.

Std 0/-5/-5/-5

Std -5/-5/-5/-5

Both shots have just some small exposure adjustments so that highlights wont clip and shadows are not crushed.

I am torn between both. Colors are in general very accurate on both. When I compare what I see on my screen with what is next to me on the table, both match it pretty well. The first shot with contrast set to 0 is even better, for example when i compare the blue from the cup. However, when contrast is set to -5, there are more details in the shadow (see above the orange. I yet have to see how much different both have on skin.

From tests with the G85, I found that with contrast dialed all the way down, midtones became washed out, textures and details were lost. However, when I tried matching both the -5 and 0 clips with the basic luminance controls in FCP, I was able to get them pretty close, so if you were an expert colorist working with curves, you might be able to get them to match perfectly in post. So I wouldn't claim that lowering contrast all the way 'destroys' midtones, it's just going to take some fiddling around to recover them. In the video I made, if the subjects had been lit properly to begin with, no adjustment to contrast would have been necessary at all. A simple reflector or flash fill would have opened up the lost shadow detail. I am actually beginning to like vivid colors ?, so for my own work, I would no longer lower saturation in camera. That can always be tinkered with in post. On the other hand, and I confess to knowing nothing about this, but I believe some users reported that Panasonic cameras had a habit of clipping the red channel and that lowering saturation a touch was helpful. I'm pretty certain that the G85 and GX85 don't have this problem, I've never seen it on my scopes anyhow.

[kidzrevil]

On 1/3/2017 at 10:51 AM, sanveer said:

Do you think the results would be better with everything at 0/0/0/0 perhaps? 

standard looks amazing with only noise reduction and sharpening turned down

[jonpais]

7 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

standard looks amazing with only noise reduction and sharpening turned down

Dan Watson has been encouraging me to give CineLike a try, so I might do another test later this week; but I would only use it where you wanted to do some grading, adding LUTs and so on; and I've already proven to myself after 4 years that I pretty much suck as a colorist.

[kidzrevil]

lol how about you give cinelike v a try ? seems to be a good alternative to standard ! I keep reading that cinelike d gives a more usable dynamic range than v-log so that has been my focus @jonpais

[mercer]

14 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Dan Watson has been encouraging me to give CineLike a try, so I might do another test later this week; but I would only use it where you wanted to do some grading, adding LUTs and so on; and I've already proven to myself after 4 years that I pretty much suck as a colorist.

You can't be any worse than I am and it doesn't stop me from using CineLikeD.

I think Andrew made an interesting point the other night in the GH5 download thread about coloring log and that it takes people thousands of hours to be any good at it...

Damn...

I don't have thousands of hours and I don't want to be a colorist. I respect the craft and I want to get nice images but in the simplest way possible by utilizing the most DR I can.

So with that realization, I started wondering why I am trying to understand nodes and telecine wheels and curves when I can instead use simple slider tools from a program like Mojo II and get better color results in 3 minutes with what used to take me 10-30 minutes.

I still have to get better with the program and calibrate my monitor, or get an X-Rite chart, but for someone like me, I think it makes more sense.

[jonpais]

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

lol how about you give cinelike v a try ? seems to be a good alternative to standard ! I keep reading that cinelike d gives a more usable dynamic range than v-log so that has been my focus @jonpais

Yeah, later on this week I'll be sure to try it out. 

1 hour ago, mercer said:

You can't be any worse than I am and it doesn't stop me from using CineLikeD.

I think Andrew made an interesting point the other night in the GH5 download thread about coloring log and that it takes people thousands of hours to be any good at it...

Damn...

I don't have thousands of hours and I don't want to be a colorist. I respect the craft and I want to get nice images but in the simplest way possible by utilizing the most DR I can.

So with that realization, I started wondering why I am trying to understand nodes and telecine wheels and curves when I can instead use simple slider tools from a program like Mojo II and get better color results in 3 minutes with what used to take me 10-30 minutes.

I still have to get better with the program and calibrate my monitor, or get an X-Rite chart, but for someone like me, I think it makes more sense.

I work in FCP, what do you think of color finale? wolf33d seems to like it.