Just a quick heads up from Panasonic in New Zealand. Finally a GH4 user had a well earned answer! The company is currently aiming for October for the long awaited V-LOG profile to come to the GH4.
V-LOG is important because it is the next best thing to raw. And certainly much lighter on storage space.
A LOG curve squeezes the full dynamic range of the sensor into a standard compressed 8bit image (H.264).
You can then apply a huge range of preset LUTs (look up tables of data transforming colour & contrast or essentially “looks”) to your image in post.
Panasonic have been taking a long while to implement what Sony were already offering in the form of S-LOG on their A7S and Canon on the 1D C & C100 plus others. I asked Panasonic to implement a LOG profile as soon as I saw the pre-production model lacking it. I wish they had listened sooner because that was one and a half years ago!!
October puts the GH4 in a precarious position as by then the A7R II will be out.
I fully expect V-LOG to improve the image from the GH4, especially if it works well over the 10bit HDMI output. Something Sony doesn’t have on their A7 series (it is only 8bit).
Colour should show a big improvement and we should gain at least 1 stop of dynamic range, maybe 2. Dynamic range should be close to what you can extract from a raw still on the GH4 and highlights will look much better – more natural in hue and with a smoother roll off.
Why the long lead-time on V-LOG? Could it be that the GH5 is around the corner and they are saving it for that before adding it to the GH4 for free? It is after all quite a big feature to give away for free, so maybe there has been some internal discussion holding it back. We can only speculate. If Panasonic had been as clear as their New Zealand division on Twitter right from the start, there would be far less frustration amongst GH4 enthusiasts in the meantime. I really do doubt that it takes 9 months to develop a LOG profile. Hope I am wrong and that there were no politics, only solid engineering going on…
