John Matthews

That leaves just us! Seriously, I doubt 0-255 is a big deal.

I believe it's 0-255 in 4k photo rather than 16-235 in normal video mode.

Interesting results. I think the two main ingredients for better noise performance in photos are bigger sensor and more megapixels. Also, they shouldn't be compared at 100% unless they are the same number of megapixels. At 100% on a screen, the Sony looks worse; yet, the Sony probably would perform better on paper since it has a slightly bigger sensor and 8 more megapixels. Still, DXO got the GX7 wrong, especially compared to other MFT cameras. Also, how is it possible that the GX7 has better DR and Color depth than the GX80 according to them. I call BS. In my tests, it also has the trade-off of more moiré. You do get some camera-setting advantages and multiple aspect ratios which is interesting but not for me if it means more moiré.

That's because DXO is full of horsepoo... and always has been. I can't help thinking that there's someone's eccentric uncle spitting out random numbers atop of a building paid for by camera manufacturers. They've got a serious racket going!

This is consistent with my results. Midtones are brought down as you increase the contrast. But be careful in flat light as I found some weird skin color tonality that was uncorrectable. I now believe contrast should be set to "0" in very flat light. Did you also note the higher noise frequency in the dark parts of the image?

Wow! In effect, would that give the GX80 a crop factor of 1.29 in FF terms? For the IBIS, would you still dial in the focal length written on the lens? Are Canon APS-C lenses big enough? Doesn't is worry you that they say: "Do not attempt to mount- physical damage may occur." Could be bad.

I've always preferred a more "organic" feel. Not this begs the question: why not "-5"? Doesn't the 4k offer enough headroom in terms of detail? Do you find it's doing something weird? I've come back on my contrast settings. I've found that when in flat light, skin colors will do strange things (weird orange color shifts) with contrast at "-5" and I couldn't make it look right. I bumped it back up to "0" in flat light. Also, after my previous findings, there isn't any reasons for protecting highlights with it set at "-5". I only found slight noise differences in the shadows when bumping up the midtones.

Thank you Axel, I tried it, but I think there might be a learning curve for this plugin. I'll try some more today and tell you what I think.

Has anyone been using the effect marked "Hue/Saturation" in Final Cut Pro X for correcting skin tones? I'm having better results than using the color correction tool. I'm just wondering if others have done this and experience major drawbacks....

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.

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.

Hmm... I don't have any audible sounds when mine is turned on, even when I shake it. Did you buy it in Europe? Make sure the IBIS is 100% functional. What lens are you using? Wait. Are you talking about your GX80 or G80?

It's not that loud, but you can hear and feel it move around. Shake it when it's off. It's just the IBIS moving around. Turn it on and it will stop.

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.

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

In FCPX, there's nothing to do. It handles it automatically if I'm not mistaken... that's probably why I forgot. It just knows how to handle it by default.

Yes @Cary, my mistake. I think we settled this 50 or so pages back in this thread. I completely forgot. However, at least when you bring into FCPX, it spreads it out and you'd never know.

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.

What happens when you don't know what you want the final image to look like? What settings should you use? That's the question I would like an answer to. My reference to "unaltered raw photo" was in terms of contrast, sharpness, NR, and saturation matching the look of a rw2 file opened WITHOUT any extra processing. My theory is that Panasonic engineers might have optimized their processing to the output of a rw2 file- the resulting jpeg or mp4 matching that look would have the least amount of macro blocking and artifacts. I could be very wrong though... Do you have any information on that?

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for sharing. This helps many of us to understand what you're talking about. It's a nice image. For the original, what were your settings? I'm guessing your sharpening was higher than -5 as there was a slight halo around all high-contrast elements (building roof and foliage). Also, I'm not seeing a massive improvement in the blocking produced by the codec... maybe it's just me though. Could you be more specific about what area you see the most improvement? Finally, I'd say this would be a good scene to be using -5 on the contrast as you have almost no detail in the foreground... I'm sure that was intentional, but in your opinion, would it have been better to allow some more of that foreground detail to pass through and bring it down a little in post? Just an idea... were you worried about banding issues?

Can you please show us a still you have with GX80/85 footage? ... not much online. What is your logic for removing macro blocking AFTER shooting if there's a setting of removal BEFORE shooting? Given you're using iDynamic, macro blocking & artifacts are not your priority. What is then?