Cinema vs. Smooth

[Joshua Csehak]

My conclusion so far: Nostalgic is the king of both color accuracy (pending further tests) and dynamic range. Normalized to a white at 100%, it has a stop more of information in the blacks. But since cinema applies a curve to everything, the lights end up with more color information. It just might be worth shooting cinema and bringing up your gamma +1.33 in post, since the noise gain so far seems to be negligible. The lights, which includes people with light skin tone, will look richer. But I need to do a lot more real-world testing before I'm sure of that.

Here's the key question: what if you shoot a scene with cinema, and again with nostalgic, but underexposed so that they're normalized to the darks, not the lights. Will the values at 70-95 look the same? Will it be basically the same, except with more headroom? That's my next experiment.

[Sara]

Interesting.  Ill examine your files and run some tests of my own later tonight.  No doubt smooth gives more DR "before" an edit...but what happens to the files after ie noise, false color etc.

Sad that GH2 users don't have access to cinemagamma and flat type settings like what the Canon 5D has.  Something I hope the GH3 gets.

[Sara]

I went through similar tests but was struggling to find a difference...and the change in color from smooth to cinema (punchy colors) almost makes it not worth it unless someone would "want" that color shift.  Frustrating that we have to deal with these gamma/color profiles and don't have acesss to something more neutral.  Sorry I couldn't find more of a difference.  Maybe someone else?

[Francisco Ríos]

I found these.
Maybe can helps.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?233022-Heads-explode-GH2-film-mode-test-charts

Saludos!

[Joshua Csehak]

I went through similar tests but was struggling to find a difference...and the change in color from smooth to cinema (punchy colors) almost makes it not worth it unless someone would "want" that color shift.  Frustrating that we have to deal with these gamma/color profiles and don't have acesss to something more neutral.  Sorry I couldn't find more of a difference.  Maybe someone else?

Not following you. You mean you're struggling to find a difference between smooth and cinema?

Agree that the cinema colors are a bit too punchy, even at -2 saturation...

I found these.
Maybe can helps.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?233022-Heads-explode-GH2-film-mode-test-charts

Saludos!

Thanks Francisco! Those are pretty useful for color comparisons, but not so much for dynamic range. A piece of paper can transmit only 5 or 6 stops of brightness, which just about any camera can handle. That's why I rigged the ND gel DR tester.

Still messing around with these settings... It may be that all three (cinema, nostalgic, and smooth) have their place...