Mozim Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 Hey, I currently shoot with a Canon 600D and a Panasonic GH3 and some issues matching and grading the footage. Generally speaking the footage from both cameras matches just fine but the Panasonic GH3 seems to reproduce neon colors, especially neon yellow, in a very weird way. Basically neon yellow turns into a darkish yellow and the color does not "pop" anymore. Same goes for neon orange, although this isn't affected as strongly - still, it is quite noticeable, especially compared to the 600D. This is a fairly big issue for me because I shoot a lot of sports events (downhill mountainbiking) and I can basically throw away all the footage of riders on neon-colored bikes or in neon-colored clothing shot with the GH3. I know that in general neon colors in pictures or videos don't come across as bright as they are in reality, but it's a huge difference between the GH3 and the 600D. The camera settings are: - White Balance set to 5200K (sunny) on both cameras - ISO around 400 - GH3: Natural picture style, Contrast -4, Sharpness -5, Saturation -4, Noise Reduction -5 - 600D: Standard picture style, Sharpness 2, Contrast -2, Saturation -2 - Aperture and shutter speed doesn't have any effect Setting the White Balance to 5200K improved things a bit compared to setting the WB to cloudy or shady but the issue still is very apparant. As I said, in general the footage matches, it's just these neon colors that are giving me a very hard time. Basically the only thing I can do right now is selectively adjust these specific colors, push them around a bit and increase the saturation of these colors - but this doesn't always work and looks fairly fake. Has anyone experienced the same? Any solutions or suggestions what I could do? Thanks a ton! -Moritz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inazuma Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 You got pictures? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mozim Posted June 18, 2014 Author Share Posted June 18, 2014 I hope this helps explaining the issue I have. Both shots were taken at the exact same time and as stated earlier, the settings are fairly similar, too. I know that the second image is out of focus but it highlights the color of the bike. Both pictures are straight out of the camera, no color correction or grading applied. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inazuma Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Looks like the cameras are handling greens a little differently. Do you use Adobe software? I recently started using Speedgrade and by applying a "Secondary" look layer, you can specify the exact range of colour you want to edit and then change all sorts of values, like hue, saturation, tone, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mozim Posted June 18, 2014 Author Share Posted June 18, 2014 I'm using Final Cut Pro X as my NLE. So far what I usually do is do some basic colour corrections if the shots aren't exposed correctly, then I shift the shadows towards blue, highlights towards orange, increase the saturation a bit, usually increase the brightness of the highlights a bit (this gives the images a bit more pop) and then it gets tricky... By this point the images from both cameras look "similar enough", unless there's very bright neon colors. I can selectively shift the greens of the Panasonic footage towards yellow and increase the brightness. But this will mess up the way the leaves and grass look. Unfortunately I can't adjust the hue in the camera - I can do this on my 600D but not with the Panasonic. Any other solutions? Is there any way to adjust this using Davinci Resolve? As stupid as it sounds, this is the main reason why haven't bought a GH4 yet. The quality image of the GH3 looks fantastic compared to the 600D but the greens are way off... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonpais Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 I'm no expert, but I've played around with DaVinci a bit (I mostly use FCPX), and it's much easier to select a particular hue, saturation and luminance, mask it, and track it. Have you downloaded DaVinci yet? Here are some great tutorials to get you started if you haven't. And perhaps raise the saturation in the GH3 up a bit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leeys Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 And perhaps raise the saturation in the GH3 up a bit? Do this first. Panasonic's colour processing by default is very neutral, especially at Natural. Canon, especially for their consumer grade cameras, tend to jack up the contrast levels and mid-tone saturation levels by quite a bit. I still remember the time I had with a 6D... I didn't know my home was *that* colourful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mozim Posted June 24, 2014 Author Share Posted June 24, 2014 Quick update, just got home from another video project. I switched the picture style from Natural to Scenery. According to Canon, it changes the way greens and blues are processed. I'm not sure if this is true for Panasonic as well but the footage looks much better and neon colors do finally pop. The saturation is quite a bit higher than when shooting in Natural picture style (both were set to Saturation -4) but it still is very gradable, so I'm very happy with the results. Thanks for the advice, it was really helpful! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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