sir_danish

Here's a low budget music video I made with the GX85 and a cheap toy 25mm 1.7 cctv lens. The look is meant to be dirty but what was great was that the GX85, with it's great IBIS, enabled me to get the movement I was wanting. We tried with a Canon C100 and it just wasn't the same. It's an incredibly versatile little camera.

Regardless of using Procolor, I DID notice a serious problem with contrast at -5 in really flat, softbox light. It gave me and my daughter a strange skin condition that I don't have. I've decided to go to with contrast at 0 since it doesn't really impact the final image negatively... at least I can't see it. Anyway, it fixed the problem.

The replacement is on the way. Maybe it will rattle too, maybe not.

Wise. You have the opportunity now to get the new one, do it. What happens if the next one does it, I don't know? Please let us know what/if Panasonic responds... we need to keep them in check.

Good idea! I wrote an email to Panasonic, but they will probably tell me that everything is ok. I can live with the fan noise, but I don't want the rattling noise to be recorded. I should try and get a new one.

When I make the motion you talk about with it on or off, I don't hear anything. To hear the IBIS rattle, I need to shake it when it's off. However, I cannot say that it's never done that. I seem to recall it did it a few times. My guess is that it's ok. I don't know the return policy for Amazon in Austria, but I imagine it's 30 days like in France- when sold by Amazon. When in doubt, I'd get another one rather than trying to deal with Panasonic... it'll be too long without a camera. You could call them though just to double check. It's a lot of money to only have it break and be out of a camera for months while they repair it. Hope that helps.

Good luck! I hope you enjoy it. Get a MFT Sigma lens and you'll be amazed how many "clacks" a camera can make- borderline maraca! This is not my worry though with the mechanism. I more worried about the wiring behind the sensor... wouldn't it break after all the bending around? Time will tell. Let's hope that Panasonic did their due diligence in their design.

Ok... But that "clack" when I tilt the camera forwards doesn't inspire my confidence.  It's hard to believe that this internal movement helps stabilize the image, rather than make it jittery. Not to mention the clack sounds being recorded by the internal microphone. Well, let's see... I need to charge the battery and start capturing some footage.

Yeah, I didn't find a massive difference between -5 and 0 and I couldn't say that one was THAT much better than the other. However upon increasing the midtones, I saw a little more noise (in terms of frequency) in the shadows. Unfortunately, you cannot see it much on the youtube video mentioned about due noise suppression. I'm now coming to the belief that the best profile settings (for edit in post) on a 4:2:0 codec would be to match a jpeg to an unaltered raw photo (no post-processing), but that needs to be confirmed.

Yes. It's normal. Actually, I wonder if the G80/G85 does the same since they have slightly different mechanisms.

Yey! I got my GX80 today. I've never had a camera with IBIS, so I wonder if it's normal that there's always some sort of wobble going on inside the camera body. It feels like a rather big component has come loose... :D

Yey! I got my GX80 today. I've never had a camera with IBIS, so I wonder if it's normal that there's always some sort of wobble going on inside the camera body. It feels like a rather big component has come loose... :D

The GX85 is 4:2:0. The result is an image with values of 0-255 in RGB. The problem with Standard (0,0,0,0) in 4k is that the image looks like bad 1080p, the major culprit is NR, followed by too much sharpening. IMO if you're after a more "filmic" image, they should be dialed down. In all, there are 7 picture profiles and 18 different filter modes I think. All of them treat the image differently with a number of settings for each. One of these modes/settings is going to be a little or significantly better than other ones. This is what many of us are after.

Wow, thanks for the test! This will help me a lot...

So, I spent about 3 hours trying to figure out exactly what the best contrast setting would be for specular highlights. The goal was to avoid any high-contrast lines between blown-out portions which is often a tell-tale of poor video quality.
Methodology
I placed a shiny rounded object on a surface and had a light source in the distance. I adjusted camera settings so that focus was sharp, on a tripod, fixed aperture (F1.7), shutter at 1/50, ISO 200, fixed WB. With Zebras set at 105 IRE, I made sure part of the shiny object was overexposed then recorded 4k video in Natural profile (sharpness= -5, NR = -5, saturation = 0). Contrast was first set at +5, then went down from there to -5 with a total of 11 videos takes.
I made these observations:
Panasonic does a great job at keeping a subtle degradation from blown-out areas to areas with detail. Contrast settings seem to simply shift midtones up or down, there was only a small shift in the shadow floor, if any. I found it difficult to match 2 shots with different contrast settings; so, something else might be happening with the curve. Increased midtones in post yielded superior results (noise & artifacts) when contrast was at “-5”. Conclusions
There’s no real benefit for specular highlights in terms of them looking more “video-like” when contrast was set at any of the 11 settings. However, if you plan on increasing midtones in post, you’ll have superior results with contrast set at -5. Otherwise, you’ll need to live with no visible detail in the dark parts of the image.
 

That would be awesome!

One could argue that the GX80 is wrong camera for this as it doesn't shoot log or 10bit, but the fact is it gets "close enough" that, for the majority of us (pro and amateur videographers), it offers "enough" headroom in post... significantly better quality and creative options than smartphones, inexpensive enough to be accessible. I'll be sharing some tests tomorrow concerning specular highlights and optimal contrast settings.

Thanks again for the information. I'm not fully convinced of this... more testing on my part... seeing is believing and so far I've shot a low-contrast scene and jacked the contrast in both directions to see more about what's going on. I do notice the mids having less height, but when I pull them down I'll be damned to see any better quality either way. What concerns me the most is highlight roll-off- not DR... I'll need to test that on some speculars. They are the dead give-away of bad video that my camcorder has.
I guess that's why I couldn't see a difference at 600%. Funny.
[10 minutes later]...
Found the denoise version. It DID take some of the macro blocking without harming the other parts of the image... nice.

Settings were Natural -1, -1, -4, 0 with iDynamic.
As any filter I believe it should be used in moderation, no filter can make massive improvements without harming other things.  But a stronger DeBlock setting is certainly possible.
-5 on the contrast will not give you a higher dynamic range, it will simply compress the luminance values.
Obviously it was simply a shot demonstrating DeBlock, and in fact you are right I could have made the shot with a higher exposure without clipping.  As you can see from the scope we have enough room for a higher exposure.  And of course values need to be brought into legal range.
 
 
 

Seems like I should try every single picture profile, and then decide which one suits my needs best. Until now, I just had to grab my BMPCC and hit the record button. No need to think twice about the settings. The GX80 will finally give me 4K, but it will also take me back to the time when I got my GH2 and had to mess around with the settings. Back then, Andrew released the very helpful GH2 guide, which finally stopped me from messing around with the settings, as he already did it for me. 
Anyway, as there is obviously no consensus on which GX80 picture profile is well-balanced and gradable to some degree, I will have to find the time to experiment on my own. Some say that iDynamic is useful, others say it will just make the noise more obvious. Some say that contrast and saturation set to -5 will "tame" the image, others say it will do nothing but reduce color information. 
It would be great if you experienced GX80 users could share your settings, so that we can compare them and see what they might have in common.   Just a short overview of the settings you rely on. That would be very helpful. Thanks everyone!

Seems like I should try every single picture profile, and then decide which one suits my needs best. Until now, I just had to grab my BMPCC and hit the record button. No need to think twice about the settings. The GX80 will finally give me 4K, but it will also take me back to the time when I got my GH2 and had to mess around with the settings. Back then, Andrew released the very helpful GH2 guide, which finally stopped me from messing around with the settings, as he already did it for me. 
Anyway, as there is obviously no consensus on which GX80 picture profile is well-balanced and gradable to some degree, I will have to find the time to experiment on my own. Some say that iDynamic is useful, others say it will just make the noise more obvious. Some say that contrast and saturation set to -5 will "tame" the image, others say it will do nothing but reduce color information. 
It would be great if you experienced GX80 users could share your settings, so that we can compare them and see what they might have in common.   Just a short overview of the settings you rely on. That would be very helpful. Thanks everyone!

I'm enjoying this thread more than ever. Maybe by rubbing some neurons together we'll be able to spark GX80/85 settings that look as "filmic" as possible. This is fairly subjective; so, let's try to identify what we're after. This is what I'm after in order of importance:
minimize macro blocking artifacts in the red, green, and blue channels induced by the codec processing maximize DR maximize color information in the red, green, and blue channels minimize noise in the red, green, and blue channels maximize detail Some of these are related, but do you have other ideas, or in terms of what order? The goal for me is a 4k image that looks organic and that I can tweak. I KNOW that what Panasonic gave us as default settings look like bad 1080p, especially noise reduction. I realize that 4:2:0 is best dealt with in-camera; however, I don't always want to decide on the final look AS I'M FILMING- that simply asks too much of us amateur filmmakers.

Everyone has their own tastes and it's best to do plenty of tests by yourself to figure out what you like most. 
Personally when I had the GX80 I liked using -2 Contrast/Saturation on the Standard profile. These two at 0 or -5 baked in the values a little too much so I found a middle-ground. 
Sharpening is always very obvious to my eyes and I hate the look of it. Noise reduction makes the image look mushy, especially skin. So those two I turn to -5. 
The resulting is image is quite nice but I have found that using the Canon C100 Mark II setting on FilmConvert gives really, really nice results.


I'm seriously considering getting the G80 atm... 

Well think about it, the contrast setting changes the luminance values only, it does not change the actual dynamic range. So what you effectively do is compress the number of possible luminance values.  That information is lost it cannot be uncompressed in post.  Similarly for saturation you compress the UV vector.  So what would be the point?
I really do not see the point in lowering sharpness, I cannot spot any edge enhancement effects on the GX85, -1 seems harmless so I put it on -1 but I do notice resolution loss when sharpness goes down. 
With respect to noise I do set it to -3 (and -4 with high ISO).  The noise reduction of the GX85 seems to be dynamic as it really kicks in at higher ISOs and I find this noise reduction unpalatable, to me the results almost looks like a water color painting, I prefer being stuck with a noisier picture.  However noise and the ability to compress effectively is of course a trade off for we only get 100Mb/s.
The GX85 codec does provide illegal highlights so it is very important in post to bring them at legal values first otherwise you run the risk of clipping your highlights.
I like the Natural profile and use iDynamic at the Standard level.
 

Please show us what you're getting... for you to have such a knee-jerk reaction, it must be good! Seriously, we could all benefit from what others think the best way to use the GX80 is rather than making it a echo chamber.