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Visited Jikjisa Temple yesterday, which was founded in the year 418, and looks straight out of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Everywhere you turn there are compositions that make you gasp. The main challenge with full sun like this is the high contrast scenes, and then grading them so they don't look faded and also don't have half the image almost while or half of it pitch black. This one has slightly more contrast than I'm happy with, but it gives you a sense of the look things start to drift into. When I'm grading them for real, I think I'll likely use large power-windows and pull things down or up using those. As a reference, here's the kind of shot I'm talking about where the contrast ratios are just overwhelming. The information is all in the files, so I'm capturing it all, I just have to pull it out.

Thanks! I've literally used the same saved powergrade for each set, adjusting it a little perhaps but not by much. I think I backed off the halation on that set, but I can't remember making any other change. They do look nicer though, so maybe it's just the exposure levels, or maybe it's just the subject matter? Sunset and blue hour always has a certain magic to it.

Just had a look at some stills from it, and yes, much darker than my other references. I looked through all the John Wick franchise, as well as some other action series too, and one way they can make these things all look dark is just have them all set in night-exteriors or interiors without visible daylight. I think there's lots of tricks like this. For example, I read an article on how movies often look "larger than life" which has many factors, but one was that there were almost three times the number of shots that were taken below eye-level as those at or above eye-level, so most of the movie was literally looking up at the characters.

Last nights adventures. This time I graded with MBP monitor set to middle brightness and referred to some references. I swapped from the 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 + vND combo to the 12-35mm f2.8 lens without vND once the sun went down, as it's easier to shoot with the constant aperture when zooming. The stalls and restaurant areas were too bright for F2.8 and base ISO 500, so had to stop down on some shots. The massive lanterns in the parade were also a challenge too, bring so much brighter than the ambient levels, and I didn't want to smash them into the highlight rolloff of the emulation. I tried walking with it at 12mm but it was IBIS-wobbles galore, so next time when walking I'll probably use my iPhone. I compared my iPhone 12 mini cameras to my GH5 and the normal iPhone camera was equivalent ISO noise to GH5 with F2.8 and the iPhone wide was equivalent to GH5 at F8. @MrSMW can tell me if these are still too dark 🙂 I based the FLC grade on the 35mm preset, but I'm thinking that it's a bit too low-end, and the 64mm preset is a bit clean, so I might create my own 50mm preset for something in between.

Edited and uploaded the stabilisation test video. Test of how well the GH7 and 14-140mm combination is able to stabilise hand-held footage. GH7 was using the Boost IS mode, which is a more stable version of IBIS (but it doesn't do electronic IS, that's a different mode, so this mode has no crop). My hands were more shaky than normal when filming this, and the first shot was standing up without leaning on anything, and the second shot of the hotel was sitting down. Results aren't perfect, but they're good enough for my purposes.

I don't mind at all, I mentioned it partly to raise the topic as I'm not sure about it. What I need to do is to get a bunch of references and study how they distribute the DR of the images into the final grade, so I can get a sense of things. A bit like how cinematographers get an understanding of levels and ratios, using false colour or a light meter. I pulled a few reference stills from the movie Perfect Days which is set in Seoul to compare: and some from Kill Bill vol 2, as it's a bit more contrasty: and The Matrix, because it's got that feeling of the matrix not being a real place, which gets to the idea that Seoul is like a world unto itself: or The Killer has quite a dark grade to things: There's something about the rich dark areas, and having rich dark colours that I'm chasing, but obviously I'm yet to work out what it is and how to get it. Works in progress though!

A few more from today, in Hongdae. Even less grading than yesterday, but trying to lean into the contrast and deep shadows more.

First day out shooting in Seoul. Here are some images. These are all frame-grabs, were ETTR, had a look put over them with Resolve FLC plugin, and I adjusted exposure on each (and contrast on the odd one or two) and that's it. I'm sure I will finesse them once I start editing for real, but this is essentially just looking at my dailies. Setup is incredibly easy to use thanks to the huge DR, AF is super-snappy, the 14-140mm zoom gives so much flexibility and I'm finding I'm using the long end a lot more than I thought I would. I'll post some video footage of it later, but I'm also finding that I can hand-hold at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) and with the OIS + IBIS working together get almost no movement in the frame at all, and with a slight crop in post I'd get locked-off images. At anything below 80mm or 100mm the frame is locked and won't need any stabilisation in post. Incredible results.

Yeah, every time I think about how you might be composing for both horizontal and vertical I just imagine you turn into Wes Anderson and frame everything centred. There are probably other ways to go about it, but I'm glad it's not something I have to work through!

In all seriousness though, now that everything is devices and standards don't matter anymore, it's worth taking a few images and cropping them to different aspect ratios and seeing how the images feel. I've become very fond of 2:1 lately. Wider than 16:9 or 17:9, but not so wide that normal-sized screens force the subjects in the frame to be too small, as can happen with 2:35:1

The only video one needs on aspect ratios:

You'd be mad not to wait for the 17K version. I mean, is 12K enough? Really?

The low-contrast look has been fashionable for a long time, since people started shooting in LOG and then editing in it and getting used to how it looks. Colourists talk about this problem like it's been around for many years and simply never went away. This caused a feedback loop where directors fought the colourist to keep things bland, which made films get released with bland grades, and then this became the reference for future directors and also all the amateurs. Also, it's quite hard to add contrast in post because it requires a clarity of thinking that many do not possess. When you look at your image and see it's captured all this information in the shadows and highlights and then apply a healthy level of contrast you immediately miss the details that are now crushed in the rolloffs. This leads to the question of what parts of the scene can be obscured. The only way to be able to answer this question is to understand what the shot is about, and therefore what is relevant. This is a level of maturity not yet attained by many. I didn't really do a systematic comparison with the G9ii, but in general terms, why would I pay several thousand dollars for a new camera that isn't the leading offering, when the flagship is only a few hundred more? Certainly, if internal Prores and cooling fans were absent on the G9ii then either of those would probably have been an instant disqualification. The size comparison is pretty moot as well, for street work I'd consider both to be full-sized bodies.

Yes, that's the one. K&F Concept 58mm True Color Variable ND2-32 (1-5 Stops) ND Lens Filter, Adjustable Neutral Density Filter with 28 Multi-Layer Coatings for Camera Lens The key phrases are "True Color" and "ND2-32 (1-5 Stops)". They sell ones that have a wider range, but aren't as high quality and will have greater colour shifts over the operating range. Having hard stops is the key to preventing you pushing it too far and getting into the range where the performance is poor (which I think is inevitable of this design, so the hard stops just stop you before you get there).

Thanks.. To be honest I just find it baffling that everyone is throwing the word "cinematic" around and yet all the colour grades look like they haven't been converted from LOG to 709. It's one of the easiest changes you can make in post to take your footage from video to cinema, and yet hardly anyone does it. Pushing as much contrast and saturation as you can was the best film-making advice I ever got.