Cinelike-D and profiles tips and techniques wanted

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

Posted it first in another thread, but (correctly) was suggested that I asked it in a new thread.

I have a incoming trip - London, Barcelona and some Portugal cities in september / october), and I wish to make some travel videos with a little bit better quality. Since I will go with my girlfriend, time consuming setups are out - my idea is to buy a Crane-M in London (than I could bypass a tripod / slider for panning and slider-like shots), and use the 12-32mm or the 14-42mm with a VariND for daylight shots, and the 14mm 2.5 and the 20mm 1.7 for indoor shots. Probably will use the GX85 for stills too, planning to get Xume magnetic adapters to fast removal of the variND filter.

My questions are somewhat overlapping with the @meanwhile ones, but I will ask them again (pardon for the repeats):

- White balance: since we don't have raw, I guess that it is good advice to set the wb manually. The best practice is set the camera in the profile that you will use and set the wb with a gray card, and set again if the lighting changes? Any other procedure needed?

- Profiles: liked the Cinelike-D in the GX85 (best hack ever), but it is the best profile for every situation? I guess that I will have 5 scenarios in this trip: daylight landscapes, daylight city streets, indoors (churches, castles, etc), night landscapes and night citty streets.
      a) I suppose that Cinelike-D is good for the daylight ones, the additional DR is useful to balance the skies and the scenery (mostly buildings). But I saw lots of complaints with it in other cameras reagrding two aspects: noise in the shadows and skin tones - how are your experiences with it? And I'm not versed in grading techniques - no problem in learn that, but I don't know wht is the learning curve...
     b) For the indoors and night scenes, Cinelike-D is adequate, or the shadow noise becomes a problem?
     c) If Cinelike-D is not recommended for me (because of use cases / noobism  / complicated post processing), which profile and settings do you recommend?
     d) For Cinelike-D and / or other profiles, how is the base ISO and exposure recommended method? ISO 200 and ETTR?
     e) Shot a color card (X-Rite or something) is each lighting situation is useful?

- Slow motion: would like to make some shots in 1080p60 for slowmo; I know that the GX85's 1080p is somewhat bad, but it is usable? If not, someone tried 4k downscaled + Twixtor or something similar)? And if I put this 1080p60 in a 24fps timeline, will there be some cadence problems? 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Deadcode]

I think you should use EosHD Pro Color.

AWB is fine on Panasonic cameras. Much better than leaving at 5600K at indoors by mistake...

With non-LOG profiles just simply protect your highlights. Usually 0EV or -0,33EV with auto exposure is fine.

In europe use 25p for 4K and 50P for 1080. Yes you lose some frames in slomo, but you can save a lot of work in post. 60p > 24p is ok but far from perfect

4K 25/30p + twixtor introduce lot of artefacts if you really want to slow things down.

And the most important thing: live for the moment on the trip and not through the lens. You are collecting memories with your girlfriend and not test footage for facebook/youtube.

[jonpais]

@Márcio Kabke Pinheiro cinelike d is fine in all situations with the GX85. Camera settings: sharpening -5, noise reduction -5, saturation -2. Use a white balance target wherever possible and WB using the camera's built-in custom white balance feature. Get yourself the Leeming LUT. There is no complicated post processing. Just drop the LUT on your footage and tweak. 

[Thpriest]

My experience with Cinelike D is that if you nail exposure (I like to have it a little underexposed) it looks great straight out of the camera...but....if the lighting is mixed, exposure is off a bit then it can go orange!

I used the Eoshd Canon Lut and whilst i liked the result I'm trying to get the best straight out of camera look. Today I'm going to test the Portrait Profile and see how it goes.

[jonpais]

While I respect THpriest's opinion, I've read this a few times already in the forums, which is why I had to test it for myself - shooting in daylight, in the shade, under tungsten and fluorescent lighting - and sometimes all the above - and I never had anything go orange, unless my white balance was off to begin with. A little underexposure is no big deal, as THpriest says. Anyhow, you'll want to use the same profile for all your shots to avoid a nightmare of color correction. I've shot up to ISO 800 with good results. Be sure to set sharpening at -5, or it will only aggravate noise problems at higher ISOs. And absolutely no need to shoot a color card.

[Thpriest]

I've found mixed lighting to be the biggest problem with CineD. Which is the same as having white balance problems I suppose. Imagine natural light from a window and some overhead leds, some warm and some cold. I've found with CineD you can have one person with nice skintones and another appearing orange in the same shot depending on where they are standing. This is my experience in uncontrollable environments like someones house on a wedding shoot.

With other profiles this doesn't seem to such a big problem. 

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

On 28/07/2017 at 4:07 PM, Deadcode said:

I think you should use EosHD Pro Color.

AWB is fine on Panasonic cameras. Much better than leaving at 5600K at indoors by mistake...

With non-LOG profiles just simply protect your highlights. Usually 0EV or -0,33EV with auto exposure is fine.

In europe use 25p for 4K and 50P for 1080. Yes you lose some frames in slomo, but you can save a lot of work in post. 60p > 24p is ok but far from perfect

4K 25/30p + twixtor introduce lot of artefacts if you really want to slow things down.

And the most important thing: live for the moment on the trip and not through the lens. You are collecting memories with your girlfriend and not test footage for facebook/youtube.

Did not liked the kind of colors of EosHD Pro Color (only taste, I think is a great work from Andrew), at least in first sight.
In general, yes, Panny's AWB is very good, but I think that use manual WB is feasible at least in daylight - set it in the street with the sunlight, and set it again if go indoors. At night, yeah, probably use autoWB could be a good idea.
I generally protect the highlights - only way to recover it, shadows are more flexible, albeit noisier. 
My GX85 is an american model, don't remember if it has 25p/50p framerates...hope so, because of the light flickering.
Did you tested Twixtor in 4k, or is an info that you have?

And the last point - already a priority.  In fact, will (I hope) do a lot of preparation just to avoid to mount a tripod, change lenses between stills / video...the trip have priority.

On 28/07/2017 at 7:49 PM, jonpais said:

@Márcio Kabke Pinheiro cinelike d is fine in all situations with the GX85. Camera settings: sharpening -5, noise reduction -5, saturation -2. Use a white balance target wherever possible and WB using the camera's built-in custom white balance feature. Get yourself the Leeming LUT. There is no complicated post processing. Just drop the LUT on your footage and tweak. 

Thanks, @jonpais. Will take a look.

On 29/07/2017 at 10:13 AM, jonpais said:

While I respect THpriest's opinion, I've read this a few times already in the forums, which is why I had to test it for myself - shooting in daylight, in the shade, under tungsten and fluorescent lighting - and sometimes all the above - and I never had anything go orange, unless my white balance was off to begin with. A little underexposure is no big deal, as THpriest says. Anyhow, you'll want to use the same profile for all your shots to avoid a nightmare of color correction. I've shot up to ISO 800 with good results. Be sure to set sharpening at -5, or it will only aggravate noise problems at higher ISOs. And absolutely no need to shoot a color card.

Since i will probably render the final output in 1080, I guess that I could get some gains in noise. What do you use if you need some noise reduction (Neat Video or similar)? Have you ever tried to use Cinelike-D at ISO 1600? (I will use the primes at night to try to avoid it).

The question about the color card is exactly for the hipotesis of having to use another profile - it could be used for some kind of color matching? I know that for stills you have tools to help it.
 

[jonpais]

1 hour ago, Márcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

Did not liked the kind of colors of EosHD Pro Color (only taste, I think is a great work from Andrew), at least in first sight.
In general, yes, Panny's AWB is very good, but I think that use manual WB is feasible at least in daylight - set it in the street with the sunlight, and set it again if go indoors. At night, yeah, probably use autoWB could be a good idea.
I generally protect the highlights - only way to recover it, shadows are more flexible, albeit noisier. 
My GX85 is an american model, don't remember if it has 25p/50p framerates...hope so, because of the light flickering.
Did you tested Twixtor in 4k, or is an info that you have?

And the last point - already a priority.  In fact, will (I hope) do a lot of preparation just to avoid to mount a tripod, change lenses between stills / video...the trip have priority.

Thanks, @jonpais. Will take a look.

Since i will probably render the final output in 1080, I guess that I could get some gains in noise. What do you use if you need some noise reduction (Neat Video or similar)? Have you ever tried to use Cinelike-D at ISO 1600? (I will use the primes at night to try to avoid it).

The question about the color card is exactly for the hipotesis of having to use another profile - it could be used for some kind of color matching? I know that for stills you have tools to help it.
 

People say if you drop the 4K footage on a 1080p timeline, it helps make noise less noticeable. I seldom if ever shoot at ISO 1600, so not sure about how Cinelike D looks at high ISOs. Neat Video works well for me, but since I mostly shoot between ISO 200-400, I don't end up using any noise reduction in post much. I suppose it couldn't hurt to shoot the color card if you've got time. I use the X/Rite Colorchecker, and I tried getting a quick balance using the color match feature in Color Finale a few times - I didn't care for the results much, and most of my work now is white balanced close enough that I can get there on my own.

[DPC]

www.leeminglutone.com/ Just follow Paul Leeming's advice.

 

[jonpais]

1 hour ago, DPC said:

www.leeminglutone.com/ Just follow Paul Leeming's advice.

 

Incidentally, his LUT works equally well on footage that has not been exposed to the right. ?

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

Saw some samples of the Leeming LUT, but (at least in the ones that I saw), skin tones are not well balance (too white in some shots, too orange in others). And for which camera do you use (since there is not one specific for the GX85)?

[jonpais]

I shoot with the G85

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

6 minutes ago, jonpais said:

I shoot with the G85

My bad, I did not saw that there is one for the G85 (which is very similar to the GX85).

[Thpriest]

Just an update, I have tried the Portrait profile on a wedding shoot. For a straight out of camera with no need to grade look, I think it has great skin tones, which is what I'm looking for mostly. It doesn't have quite the same dynamic range as CinelikeD or the 'thickness' of image (someone described colour as such) but skin colours look spot on.

 

[Fritz Pierre]

Leemings LUT in either CineD or Vlog is spot on...forget about what people post...everyone makes mistakes...it also comes with a settings manual....used it happily on the GH4....in Vlog to external recorder, and now on GH5....CineD when I have to shoot high ISO and Vlog when wider DR is needed...also his response to questions is very fast....something rare in the world of online purchases.

[Thpriest]

I've heard it's good but for wedding work I've been looking for a straight out of camera look. Portrait seems to fit the bill for me. I might try Leemings on my next music video though.

[jonpais]

i posted this already in the lenses thread, but it shows just how good Cinelike D is, even in mixed lighting situations. These clips are straight out of the camera, no color correction. 

 

[kidzrevil]

cinelike d is great ! Great DR & flexibility in post with the right LUT. I haven't had much luck grading it without a LUT especially under mixed lighting

[mercer]

38 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

cinelike d is great ! Great DR & flexibility in post with the right LUT. I haven't had much luck grading it without a LUT especially under mixed lighting

Some of the nicest, lowlight G85 footage I've seen. Nice job. 

[kidzrevil]

@mercer thx bro