Panasonic G9 Mark II. I was wrong

[FHDcrew]

Just now, Snowfun said:

Would it be worth quoting Genesis 1:3 as this would solve the high ISO need…

(with apologies)

[FHDcrew]

Just now, FHDcrew said:

1 minute ago, Snowfun said:

Would it be worth quoting Genesis 1:3 as this would solve the high ISO need…

(with apologies)

I’m dead 🤣🤣

[kye]

20 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

Some first impressions of the G9II; finally starting to shoot with it but will have my first very demanding shoot this weekend.  I did some filming at a worship conference early this week.

Image is thick and grades well.  Lowlight is clean up to 3200 ISO and gets very noisy very fast.  So far I shot on the super efficient mp4 4k 72mbps.  When really pushing ISO at 6400 and 12,800 image seems to soften.  This might not happen once I try the all-i codecs that have substantially higher bitrates.

One thing I noticed, this camera has hybrid PDAF and Contrast-detect AF.  At high ISOs the PDAF seems to turn off or become severely reduced...i start to get autofocus pulsing and it is not as responsive.  It is not HORRIBLE and is still likely better than a gh5, but its not the snappy reliable PDAF that this camera normally operates at.  I need to do more extensive testing, btu it seems up to around ISO 2500 or 3200 you can expect good AF performance, but seems to worsen from there.

I will be shooting a big concert-style christian event this weekened and the venue has lots of contrasty DMX lighting which looks beautiful but is def a lower light scenereo.  I am toying with shooting in CineD V2 in lowlight.  What seems to happen is when I shoot in a flat 709 PP, I can lower my ISO and get a comparable exposure.  I know that LOG needs a higher ISO in lowlight bc its capturing a much wider dynamic range...and once you grade LOG if its exposed well the noise differences vanish.  But with CINEd V2 i can lower my ISO probably 1 to 1 1/2 stops and get a good exposure.  Im thinking in terms of how the sensor behaves, it would allow me to more frequently keep the ISO at below 3200 which in tern means keeping good autofocus performance since it seems to again worsen above 3200 ISO.  I am also thinking that since the picture profile will be more contrasty, if i need to crank my ISO ever the autofocus would be better because it is analyzing a more contrasty image.  I think it will still grade well; it is still going to be 10 bit and i suppose the extra V-LOG DR is not terribly necessary in low light.  Plus, the codec is still 10 bit so colors should manage well; i would run the footage through the same node tree i used for Nikon Z6 Flat 8 bit, which basically is modified CSTs in/out of Davinci Wide gamut with modifications to artificlaly smooth highlight rolloff.

Just a note to say that it would probably be worth doing some tests ahead of the event.

Situations like this involve many variables and most often people don't consider all of them because they don't do any methodical tests.  You are assuming that the AF will work differently between different picture profiles, but I would suggest the AF would be operating on the image before the picture profile is applied, so it shouldn't matter...  but, once again, you should test this to confirm.

Another thing to consider is if you can push the shutter angle to 270 degrees or even 360 degrees.  If it's a worship setting then making the footage seem a bit more surreal might be appropriate, and you can get another half or full-stop of exposure this way.

You should also test NR in post - it's not ideal but it might give a better result overall considering none of your scenarios are operating in the cameras ideal operating range.  I've done a lot of shooting with cameras at/beyond their capabilities and when you're pushing things you're trading off the drawbacks of each strategy.

[kye]

I'm not sure how this would translate, but my GH7 does far better when I raise the ISO to get a proper exposure in-camera vs shooting under exposed and raising the exposure in post.  For some reason the shadows are quite noisy, even at native ISOs.  This is shooting in C4K Prores so it's not a codec issue.

[FHDcrew]

10 hours ago, kye said:

Just a note to say that it would probably be worth doing some tests ahead of the event.

Certainly agree I took a bit of time to test some stuff out yesterday evening. I do switch my picture profile from VLOG to FLAT I can lower my ISO from 5,000 to 1,000. Gotta do further test though on my ultimate thoughts on the autofocus.