mercer

Yeah, this piece looks great. The DR is amazing. You could put this on your demo reel.

Here's a lens test I did with my Minolta MC 35mm f/1.8 Although I really like this lens, I got a good deal on the MD 28mm f2, which makes more sense with my NX500, so I decided to sell this one. I am going to list it on the gear page later and also on eBay, if there's any interest.

What I like about this video has little to do with the look... Even though both versions look cool. I like the mood... It almost feels like you are going to turn a corner and find a dead body in one of those alleyways.

If you have LUT Utility or Color Finale, you can use LUTS with FCPX. You can get a Cineon LUT from VisionColor through their Impulz Collection, but I think you have to get the Ultimate Package. There probably is a solo Cineon LUT floating around the super highway but I couldn't find one after 10 pages of Google search. Ed David had a whole post on Cineon last week.

Thanks, 59 bucks isn't bad at all for a quick run and gun or scratch track. I don't do wedding videos but I would imagine, it would be perfect for those as well.

Looks great, any word on price?

Not a fan of 0 saturation in this camera. Even in a custom profile, it has a plastic look. But yeah, I have to run some more tests... I'm gonna go back and try the settings another poster used with his music video mix of nx1 and nx500. His results looked pretty good.

Sekhar, I think you may be right and it is the lenses. I don't think my Canon FD lenses play well with this camera. In fact, I thought the above shots were with the Minolta lens, but I went back and looked at my notes, and I think I used an FD lens. I was just looking at more footage I shot a couple weeks ago, and I think it looks pretty good. So maybe the entire issue is lens related... which is weird because I never had such a problem with Canon cameras regarding lenses affecting the color palette so drastically. Here are some shots using the Zeiss Jena 50mm f/2.8 lens. Sorry about the shakiness, just grabbed some quick handheld shots to test the lens.The first few shots I dialed down the saturation all the way to mess around with in camera black and white. The last few shots the saturation is at -2, sharpness at -10 and contrast at -5. I did tweak the highs, mids and lows in color finale using the waveform as my guideline and just bringing the highs and lows to the upper and lower lines, or just below. Also, I imported 4K prores version into Final Cut, instead of downsizing it to 1080p when I converted it to prores. It was delivered as 1080p to Vimeo.

Sekhar, I appreciate your help, I really do, I need any help I can get, but my early tests were at 0 saturation and you said the colors looked strange? With this camera at 0 saturation, nothing looks true to life. It's not that every color is over saturated, the blues and reds are bad, yellow and orange are okay, green is in the middle. That's what doesn't make sense to me. Also, when I desaturate in camera, why wouldn't they evenly desaturate? One click down and yellow and orange dissipate substantially and blue and red is still really vibrant with a sheen. Go down to -2 and yellow and orange is flat, but blue and red are still vibrant. At -3 it starts to level out, but not until -4, -5 does it really start to look more uniform, as far as flat vs sheen. I figured it was better to have everything flat than a hodgepodge of some flat colors and some shiny colors. Do you tweak the hue levels? Also I don't have the option of changing the color space of the 0-255 in my NX500, do you? With that being said, your corrections look good and I will try that workflow. Thanks.

At this point, I am not really going for any specific look. All of my tests with this camera have been a learning experiment. As I have said before, prior to this camera, I was using an eos-m set with prolost neutral. The majority of the time, there was little grading needed to make it look a little cinematic. With the NX500, it's an entirely different beast. In this test, I had a custom profile with Saturation at -5 Sharpness at -10 and Contrast at -5. In Color Finale, I used a waveform to bring the highs and lows right to the line, leaving a little head room for the highs. I am pushing the mids a little though. I then brought the saturation up a couple ticks. With the vector tool, I played with the reds and yellow for skin tone and then tweaked the greens to counterbalance the yellow. For that test, I was trying to have a really flat starting point. The saturation levels in this camera are strange... At 0 saturation, I find everything is very plastic looking and over saturated. At -2 saturation, it's a little better, but not much. At -3 blues and reds are still vibrant but yellow is flat and green is in the middle. So, at the time, I was messing with -5 saturation because that was the notch where everything was flattened. This footage was from a couple months ago, and the only footage I had to mess with skin tones.

I'm the one mumbling behind the camera. And yes, it's a touch too contrasty and I pushed the greens a little too much. I was so worried about skin tone, I didn't even pay attention to the white shirt... Duh. Do you think I can do another layer with a mask to bring down the white shirt, or is it too burnt?

Yeah, I just bought the basic package, because this is all pretty new to me and I don't have a camera that shoots log. But I will look into their other stuff. Thanks.

Looks amazing!!! You used the same workflow for this as described above? I'll have to look into this cineon LUT. Do you know if you can purchase individual LUTs from vision- color, or do you have to purchase the packages? I just bought the basic package the other day when I bought Color Finale.

Good call, thanks.

Here's another one of my tests. I bought Color Finale the other day and was messing around with it today, trying to grade some flat footage I shot. I am a complete newbie at color correcting and grading, so I wanted to see how I could do with skin tones. Any pointers would be appreciated. Btw, this was shot with a Minolta MD 24-35mm f/3.5 zoom, wide open with a fader ND, in a custom profile with Saturation at -5, Sharpness at -10, and Contrast at -5. I converted the footage to 1080p prores LT with EditReady. And then I used Color Finale in Final Cut Pro X.

Not sure h.265 will handle editing and grading too well.

Lomo Color Implosion Impulz LUT looks great with flat Sony a5100 footage.

I'm a newbie too, and yes they do seem to overlap. I don't have a camera that shoots log, so I just bought the basic Impulz pack. A whole lot of options. But color finale comes with LUT utility built in and comes with about a dozen LUTs. But I think they're products are Mac based.

Just thought I'd pass this on. Color Grading Central, the makers of LUT Utility, Color Finale, et al are holding a one day only, 25% off any of their products, Labor Day sale. I just picked up Color Finale and Impulz LUTs. The code is laborday15

Well done. It's interesting to see that even your narrative work has that cinema verite feel to it. Are there any plans on directing your own narrative?

I know you do more industrial, commercial and documentary work, but I would really like to see your style and skills implemented into a narrative.

Ok, good I wouldn't want to steer somebody in the wrong direction, of course with Amazon's return policy, almost anything is worth of shot. Were you the poster that found the Minolta lenses real cheap at an antique store? If so, did you sell them yet?

I know I'm a little too late to the party, but I have been using a fader nd filter from Ritz Camera, under the brand name Ritz Gear. You can get them from Amazon, with their 30 day return policy for less than $40... Depending on the size. The reason I took a chance with them is because they use Schott Glass in this filter, which is the same optical company B+W use. I was using cheapo Fotga variable NDs prior to that, which really aren't that bad for 10 bucks. Of course, as Zak proved, I probably should save up for that SLR Magic filter. But now that I think about it, were you the person I recommended the Ritz Gear filter to a couple months ago? If so, did you find a color cast with it?

I really like this. The story is compelling. It's like a little docu commercial for this fighter. I really like the 2.35 ratio, especially with the slow mo, close up shots of her weaving and bobbing. I am not familiar with this camera though, is it an interchangeable lens, if so, what lens(es) did you use? And were the flares in camera or done in post. Does it shoot in log, or is it just a flat profile you graded? I ask because I really love the 70s, gritty Serpico look of it. I assume it's clean, high bitrate 1080p?

Yeah, I guess it's dropped some but it's been holding steady, around $800, for the past 6 months. I figured it would be close to 5 now. Do Panasonic manufacture refurbs come on the market?