Questions as I transition EM5 --> GH4

[jordanwander]

So I am a traveler who has enjoyed a couple years of great performacne from an EM5 with a pancake 20 who has moved to the GH4 and the 2.8 zooms in order to have a more hybrid setup and to deepen my photography skills. Overall I like the GH4 especially the handling, focusing, and video capabilities.

In fact, i think the switch is improving my photography by making me be a more thoughtful shooter, but I am having some problems and I'm hoping I can learn from this community how to best resolve them. Obviously I deeply miss IBIS as prime lenses without it are just much less exciting to me. I am a candid shooter and only rarely use a tripod. My low light photography capabilities feel a lot less with the GH4 because I have to choose between low light lenses and stabilization. Huge bummer but overall a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

More concerning is that I'm struggling a lot with my exposure. I understand that by turning on Constant Preview the montor and evf would show me the real exposure, but often it just doesn't. The photo I get looks markedly different from what I saw before pressing the release. Any tips to help with this would be appreciated especially because I find I'm less able to rely on auto exposure (and to a lesser degree auto white balance) with this camera. Again, I'm OK with that as it allows me to grow, but I could use some tips for dealing with exposure on this camera.

Ok, the next one has to do with purple showing up in photos especially when I lower the highlights later on in lightroom. I think this is "CA" or "purple finging" although sometimes it's really offensive. Here is a particularly bad examples.

http://adobe.ly/1nI2GLa

The I guess these are blown highlights but why do they come in in this color? Note it's not just edges but actual areas of the image. Lightroom's CA tools don't seem to be able to fully correct this quite often. I never saw these issues with my EM5. Perhaps it's worth noting that simply lowering the exposure also creates purple in these cases. Any insight on this would be appreciated.

A couple other quick things:

-iDynamic and iResolution for stills. Do they do anything if you shoot in raw? If not why do I still get the choice in raw only?
-What about highlight shadow, does it do anything for RAW?

Well let's start with this. I think the screen not matching final exposure and the purple are the biggeest issues I have right now. Otherwise loving the camera. If you want to see some of the more successful pictures I've taken here are a few:

http://adobe.ly/1A7luMp

Thanks!

Jordan

 

[bg2b]

(Assuming the GH4 is like the GH3, then...) constant preview has an effect only in manual mode. Otherwise you can use the DoF preview followed by shutter speed simulation.

The purple thing is just weird. It's obviously not a real lens effect (i.e., what most people would call CA or purple fringing); most likely it's some issue with the RAW conversion. If it's showing up in the camera JPEGs, then it's got to be a camera fault.

 

[jordanwander]

Oh that's scary about the camera so this caused me to investigate more deeply. It turns out every time I'd seen this issue i had used a preset. It's actually a go to preset so I hadn't noticed. Remove that edit and the problem resolves. But I wonder what the cause is in the preset because I used it on EM5 raw files without this problem and it is something I use a lot.

EDIT: It's the vignette in the preset! I went and recreated everything I knew the preset did and the vignette was the issue. That's very strange no? It makes me thing the issue may indeed be the camera again

EDIT 2: So it's not vignette per se it's anything which brings down the exposure of blown highlights which could be the highlight tool, vignette, or exposure tool etc... Seems like I need to contact panasonic no?

As for the preview technique, I'm going to play with that now thank you!

 

[lightmonkey]

LCD and EVF should both have brightness and boost and other display controls. those should be calibrated. (as should your monitor!).

the color shifting thing i would have guessed is due to mix-max of color spaces... but only appears in that spectrum...very strange

 

[jordanwander]

Lightmonkey, I'm not clear on how calibration factors in since it's the photo I'm viewing in the monitor that doesn't match the preview in the same monitor. Calibration seems like a seperate issue but please correct me if I'm mistaken. As for color shifting mix-max of color spaces, I'm not sure what you mean but I use sRGB.

 

[jordanwander]

So, I updated lightroom (I had already downloaded the GH4 supporting one but there seemed to be an update). I'm going to run tests and see if it fixed the issue. I did a quick indoor test and blew some highlights and didn't see the issue when I then lowered the exposure. Hopefully that's that!

 

[LowTEC]

I just upgraded from EM5 to GH4 couples days ago, I noticed the lightroom doesn't provide Camera Profile for GH4 ( dunno about other Panny's) like they did for Olympus (waited for and year), Sony, Nikon and Canon. The Adobe Standard profile color is horrible and washed out, just like it did for Oly, clipping magenta/red EVERYWHERE, sometimes purple and blue as well. The subject look fake, with nothing like real color nor like the GH4 improved jpeg. Out of frustration I bit the bullet and spent the dough on Colorchecker, problem solved, now I have Color checker calibrated profiles on both my EM5 and GH4, 2 cameras have identical true color, and I can create 1 preset for both cameras or any other camera for that matter. It is pricy for a checker board but it works wonderfully. Hope that helps

 

[hazwing]

If it makes you feel any better, I have an EM5... I have also noticed purple in area's where my highlights are blown/nearly blown, and when I try pull they slider to recover them. Mainly in areas of high contrast; e.g. tree branches against and bright sky. I always thought this was and issue with the sensor on the EM5

 

[finerflower]

In fact, i think the switch is improving my photography by making me be a more thoughtful shooter, but I am having some problems and I'm hoping I can learn from this community how to best resolve them. Obviously I deeply miss IBIS as prime lenses without it are just much less exciting to me. I am a candid shooter and only rarely use a tripod. My low light photography capabilities feel a lot less with the GH4 because I have to choose between low light lenses and stabilization. Huge bummer but overall a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

Wow I didn't realize that the g4 doesn't have ibis like the gx7. Is there something else that compensates? (Other than a tripod)?

 

[lightmonkey]

Lightmonkey, I'm not clear on how calibration factors in since it's the photo I'm viewing in the monitor that doesn't match the preview in the same monitor. Calibration seems like a seperate issue but please correct me if I'm mistaken. As for color shifting mix-max of color spaces, I'm not sure what you mean but I use sRGB.

on my sony system with matching sony evf, what looks like correct apparent exposure shows up on the computer as -2 or -1 ev underexposed (compared to intended view, not metering system). this was with default settings. i had to tone down brightness and other evf related controls to get accurate evf

 

[T N Args]

Wow I didn't realize that the g4 doesn't have ibis like the gx7. Is there something else that compensates? (Other than a tripod)?

Lens.

 

[T N Args]

The Adobe Standard profile color is horrible and washed out, just like it did for Oly, clipping magenta/red EVERYWHERE, sometimes purple and blue as well. The subject look fake, with nothing like real color nor like the GH4 improved jpeg. Out of frustration I bit the bullet and spent the dough on Colorchecker, problem solved, now I have Color checker calibrated profiles on both my EM5 and GH4, 2 cameras have identical true color, and I can create 1 preset for both cameras or any other camera for that matter. It is pricy for a checker board but it works wonderfully.

If you have to create a camera profile to get decent colour, you are in trouble. 'Problem solved' NOT, unless you shoot always in the same studio and lighting.

 

[jordanwander]

The lightroom update seems to have done the trick. I noticed the update was also for the RAW Convertor. So what it seems to be now is that my old DNG files are still messed up, but new ones I'm making today where I'm overexposing on purpose and then reducing in LR seem to work just fine. I'll have to keep shooting though to see for sure. I will say now I'm seeing some impressive ability to reduce exposure and keep a usable photo.

 

[Bif]

RE: Stabilization.

I shot for decades without any other than "bracing" body position if not on a tripod.

In m4/3 for the 25mm and shorter there is no need for OIS or IBIS, you should be able to hold steady enough with a bit of practice.

I am starting to use IS with longer lenses. The OIS on my Lumix 45-200 works well enough with care on my GH4. Turning OIS off for use on my E-M5 works fantastic with the built in 5 axis IBIS.

Be careful if you start "monkeying" with the EVF brightness (LCD also). What you see in the EVF can be very much affected by ambient brightness (or lack thereof) and if you make changes to EVF/LCD brightness remember to change back when moving into a different lighting environment.

 

[jordanwander]

Thanks Bif. Yeah I'm learning that I don't need OIS, especially with fast lenses. But it is still wonderful to have. But where I really DO need it is with handheld video work. Actually, this is a huge problem I ran into this week as I bought a 35-100 and the OIS video looks terrible with major jitter issues. Really hope Panasonic will do the right thing and replace or fix the lens. It unusable for video with OIS on.