The natural seems to have richer colors out of the camera but I see what you’re saying about using HLG with color correction. Very informative….your channel in general is extremely valuable in GH5 information
It might be worth noticing for those afraid of blown out skies : a polarizing filter can help to get beautiful dark blue skies. Do not forget to compensate exposure 1 to 1 1/2 stops though, or you'll introduce noise. Noise is not introduced by the filter, but by incorrect exposure.
Great video! HLG is for using it like it is, filming, editing and exporting in HLG for viewing it on a HDR monitor. I personally prefer and use the natural profile on my GH5 M2 for all my projects.
For nature I prefer Natural profile because you have the true colors. With HLG you never achieve the true color of a sky or a flower. I have compared both profiles. Maybe on artificial places HLG can be interesting. Or for fiction films. For documentaries I prefer Natural profile.
HLG is the best, most versatile profile I've used. You can really stretch the image. Even in extreme lighting situations where I need to underexpose the shadows to keep from blowing out the background, HLG can retain all the detail with minimal noise issues.
Have you experimented capturing HLG and vLog colour profiles and then colour correcting with the free version of Davinci Resolve 16 or 17? If you use Resolve's own colour space environment then you get to use the whole dynamic range of both log profiles. The software maps the colour space of your footage to the dynamic range of your monitor. No colour information is discarded giving you even more room to play when pushing the shadows and highlights. Then when it comes time to render your project, you select the REC709 colour space throwing away the colour information that is no longer required. Using a Utility LUT right at the beginning of the colour correcting process will make your HLG and vLog footage look great straight away. That's it's job to change a high dynamic range Log curve, by discarding colours that a REC709 standard range colour profile environment, such as your monitor, can not see. From the very moment you use a Utility LUT, you are throwing away subtle colour information, in the highlights and shadows, captured by a Log profile of HLG or vLog. You never get this information back when colour grading. The closest analogy, would be thinking in photography terms. A Natural colour profile would be a JPEG while HLG and vLog would be a photo camera's RAW image. If you took a photo in RAW would you convert it direct to JPEG before editing your photo, or would you edit the RAW photo, using all the range RAW had to offer before exporting your image as a JPEG for printing or showing on the internet? You are doing the same process by converting HLG or vLog with a Utility LUT, such as one by Leeming. Nothing wrong because the image looks good. Sadly you have thrown important colour information away, in the highlights and shadows, while grading that you can never use. You may as well have shot the footage in the Natural Colour profile to begin with. There is nothing wrong with that, as the results are superb for quick editing turn-around. But you are choosing a log profile and converting to a similar Natural Colour profile immediately. You are working with a video version of a JPEG doing this. Think of DaVinvi Resolve as Adobe Lightroom for photos. Resolve's MASSIVE colour space allows you to work with HLG and vLog direct by mapping the log range of captured colour to your standard REC709 monitor. You can't see that information on screen, but when you grade the footage, the hidden information can be pulled out and used. And when it comes time to render your project, then you select the colour space of your choice such as REC709 for TH-cam.
Thank you for this information! Very insightful! I’m glad I read this before making the mistake of throwing away any important data information in the image that I might want to tweak. The raw/jpeg/Lightroom analogy was perfect for me to grasp what you were talking about!
I've been wanting to play with the HLG profile on the GH5, so thanks for doing some testing on it. Now I can see the value of using the HLG color profile. Great information, and thanks for sharing.
Hi Caleb. Love your channel. I prefer to color grade HLG in a rec 2020 project. Much easier than converting to 709. Then I export as HEVC 10 bit to TH-cam. Looks fabulous on an HDR monitor and great on a non HDR monitor. I tried the Leeming LUT workflow in 709 but found my results and color grading far easier and better grading in rec 2020. It’s as easy as color grading 8 bit footage in rec 709. Also, I expose using the waveform monitor as high as possible without passing the white clipping point. HLG looks as good as Natural profile in non HDR BUT boy wow does it look amazing when viewing in HDR. Final Cut Pro X.
Caleb, love this video, super useful as a comparison to VLOG we usually shoot in... (sometimes Natural Profile too) but we've been super curious about the HLG colour profile. Can safely say we'll be experimenting soon with it! Thanks.
Hi Caleb, I think I'll stick with natural profile. Love this profile and use it the past 2 years... I just put the saturation to -5 and play in post. I'm using cinema grade for grading. Thanks again :)
Personally, I got the GH5 Alexa LUT for my GH5s. Sadly, it’s just a nightmare to properly configure the 4 different layers with all the different variables with each shot. There’s a daylight LUT, tungsten and middle of the road LUT. Then there’s the different stops of shadow lifts you can do, and configuring the camera for cine D is pretty inconvenient. Not knocking the work that the dude has done, because with all the right variables in a controlled environment, you can get quite a filmic look, but MAN it is finicky to put together. If it was a plug-in for premiere, it would be much more worth it to use. The Leeming LUT workflow is much more simple after doing some front end configuring.
After using the GHAlex Lut I fell in love with it. Been using it for a while and needs a bit of a workflow to get the end result. I am no pro but it's working for me. Have a look at this video. Everything is shot in CineD th-cam.com/video/12C81H9P_Z0/w-d-xo.html
Love all your videos and reference them often. From my perspective, all of the hlg footage seems to have a "whitish" tint. A brightness to the image that doesn't belong. As if a filter or effect was applied. It's kind of like its "foggy outside" that type of "whiteness" . Like the viewer is looking through a cloud or something? I can see the shadow areas of the hlg footage better than the natural profile but maybe the hlg needs some sort of correction. I am no expert on any of this and my comment is typically what the average joe sees.
I hadn't watched your other hlg videos before this one. The "fog" that I speak of is only seen on a couple of clips in this video even after the leming lut is applied. The fog pretty much disappears on "those" images when graded. The hlg video clips on your other youtube posts all look great to me and if I were to choose one for you I would go with the hlg capture..given the final product looks great but more importantly it seems that so much more "imagery" is being captured before processing...especially in lower light situations. Not sure if that's because of the difference in exposure settings but the final hlg product to me, still appears to capture more of the image overall...vs the natural profile settings.
Hey Caleb! Beautiful video as always! I haven't tested HLG profile thoroughly but after your video i will. My question is, you are using Leeming Lut to convert it to Rec709, what if i don't have leeming lut to convert it? I mean would i lose any quality? Maybe you can shoot a tutorial video for it? Thanks!
at some point you'll need to get it to rec709 cuz hlg is technically a broadcast format at, i think, rec2020, that's where the LUT comes in and gets it in the right color space.
Your HLG has more potential, but you're either afraid of underexposing it or you're not saturating the image enough. I liked the Natural almost every time mainly because it has more saturation and contrast. Color grading is much more work for everyday peeps.
Well. My advice to you would be to work out on your subject matter for reviews and maybe look more for something which can look more appealing in cinematic and pictursque forms, or try to make profile reviews under studio conditions. This would definitely provide more informations for those looking for pro advice and additional technical values would be beneficial. Unfortunately some sceneries, places, and light/time of the day could be difficult to picture properly/interesting even with RED camera. Good luck.
Which cam would you recommend for a beginner filmmaker? Who wants to make commercial like daniel and travel films Sony A6000 G7 G80 X-T200 Which has good cheap lenses and future proof for when i go FF
I just noticed that when I switched to HLG on my GH5, I somehow lost two whole stops of light according to the waveform! Why is that? And that should be a dealbreaker, right?
Hi Caleb, any idea why I cannot select HLG? I can select anything from STD to VLOG-L, just HLG is "gray" and cannot be selected. Do I have to purchase that like VLOG?
Caleb, good video. I shoot wedding films with two S1's, GH5 and GH5s. I typically use the natural setting also. And I think based upon your experiment it kind of shows the issue I run into most of the time, and that problem is my shadows and blacks are getting crushed unless I overexpose to the right and everytime I do this I blow out the sky. The S1's are better but in post it's hard to get them to look the same because the s1's, while they save the highlights and handle shadows better they still crush blacks. I can bring up blacks on the s1's, but on the gh5's I typically cannot save the shadows and blacks enough to match. I have included a clip to look at if you have time. In my case HLG may be the perfect fit. Thanks again for your content! The second shot and the walking shot is the GH5. th-cam.com/video/M4_ppOyb8XU/w-d-xo.html
yeah i hear ya on blowing out the sky. i think that hlg would be great for weddings. it's not as temperamental as v log l and i think much more forgiving. i actually just shot my first full client project with hlg and i was really happy with it. it's very impressive with evening setting sun type stuff.
The natural seems to have richer colors out of the camera but I see what you’re saying about using HLG with color correction. Very informative….your channel in general is extremely valuable in GH5 information
It might be worth noticing for those afraid of blown out skies : a polarizing filter can help to get beautiful dark blue skies.
Do not forget to compensate exposure 1 to 1 1/2 stops though, or you'll introduce noise. Noise is not introduced by the filter, but by incorrect exposure.
Great video! HLG is for using it like it is, filming, editing and exporting in HLG for viewing it on a HDR monitor. I personally prefer and use the natural profile on my GH5 M2 for all my projects.
whats your natural profile settings for the gh5m2? same as the gh5?
Contrast -5, Sharpness -5, Saturation -1 and Highlight -1. But I’m back to HLG, is more work to do in post but I prefer the look that HLG gives me.
For nature I prefer Natural profile because you have the true colors. With HLG you never achieve the true color of a sky or a flower. I have compared both profiles. Maybe on artificial places HLG can be interesting. Or for fiction films. For documentaries I prefer Natural profile.
I overexpose by 1 to 2 stops when using hlg and it really brings up the shadows and it is easy to fix the overexposed highlights in post.
yeah that's what i like about the flexibility of hlg. i feel like it's easy to make some of those easy adjustments
HLG is the best, most versatile profile I've used. You can really stretch the image. Even in extreme lighting situations where I need to underexpose the shadows to keep from blowing out the background, HLG can retain all the detail with minimal noise issues.
Have you experimented capturing HLG and vLog colour profiles and then colour correcting with the free version of Davinci Resolve 16 or 17?
If you use Resolve's own colour space environment then you get to use the whole dynamic range of both log profiles. The software maps the colour space of your footage to the dynamic range of your monitor. No colour information is discarded giving you even more room to play when pushing the shadows and highlights.
Then when it comes time to render your project, you select the REC709 colour space throwing away the colour information that is no longer required.
Using a Utility LUT right at the beginning of the colour correcting process will make your HLG and vLog footage look great straight away. That's it's job to change a high dynamic range Log curve, by discarding colours that a REC709 standard range colour profile environment, such as your monitor, can not see.
From the very moment you use a Utility LUT, you are throwing away subtle colour information, in the highlights and shadows, captured by a Log profile of HLG or vLog. You never get this information back when colour grading.
The closest analogy, would be thinking in photography terms. A Natural colour profile would be a JPEG while HLG and vLog would be a photo camera's RAW image.
If you took a photo in RAW would you convert it direct to JPEG before editing your photo, or would you edit the RAW photo, using all the range RAW had to offer before exporting your image as a JPEG for printing or showing on the internet?
You are doing the same process by converting HLG or vLog with a Utility LUT, such as one by Leeming. Nothing wrong because the image looks good. Sadly you have thrown important colour information away, in the highlights and shadows, while grading that you can never use.
You may as well have shot the footage in the Natural Colour profile to begin with. There is nothing wrong with that, as the results are superb for quick editing turn-around. But you are choosing a log profile and converting to a similar Natural Colour profile immediately. You are working with a video version of a JPEG doing this.
Think of DaVinvi Resolve as Adobe Lightroom for photos. Resolve's MASSIVE colour space allows you to work with HLG and vLog direct by mapping the log range of captured colour to your standard REC709 monitor. You can't see that information on screen, but when you grade the footage, the hidden information can be pulled out and used.
And when it comes time to render your project, then you select the colour space of your choice such as REC709 for TH-cam.
Thank you for this information! Very insightful! I’m glad I read this before making the mistake of throwing away any important data information in the image that I might want to tweak. The raw/jpeg/Lightroom analogy was perfect for me to grasp what you were talking about!
The only concern is that the free version of Davinci doesn't edit GH5 10bit if I recall correctly. But this is a great information
@@LuisJRodriguezR This was the reason I bought a Studio version for my GH5. 😀
@@frankinblackpool Nice! I’m still on the fence about it. But I’m heavily leaning towards it
@@LuisJRodriguezR The Noise Reduction feature alone is worth the one off fee for Resolve.
The next reason is free upgrades for ever.
I've been wanting to play with the HLG profile on the GH5, so thanks for doing some testing on it. Now I can see the value of using the HLG color profile. Great information, and thanks for sharing.
Hi Caleb. Love your channel. I prefer to color grade HLG in a rec 2020 project. Much easier than converting to 709. Then I export as HEVC 10 bit to TH-cam. Looks fabulous on an HDR monitor and great on a non HDR monitor. I tried the Leeming LUT workflow in 709 but found my results and color grading far easier and better grading in rec 2020. It’s as easy as color grading 8 bit footage in rec 709. Also, I expose using the waveform monitor as high as possible without passing the white clipping point. HLG looks as good as Natural profile in non HDR BUT boy wow does it look amazing when viewing in HDR. Final Cut Pro X.
Overall HLG looks great, maybe in some situations Natural will fit better as well.
i totally agree. i think that's the conclusion i came to is that for quick stuff i'll stick with natural.
Caleb, love this video, super useful as a comparison to VLOG we usually shoot in... (sometimes Natural Profile too) but we've been super curious about the HLG colour profile. Can safely say we'll be experimenting soon with it! Thanks.
yeah definitely give it a shot. i don't know why it took me so long to use. i like it so much more than v log l.
Hi Caleb, I think I'll stick with natural profile. Love this profile and use it the past 2 years... I just put the saturation to -5 and play in post. I'm using cinema grade for grading. Thanks again :)
love it! yeah i've been using natural for almost the whole time i've been using the gh5 and gh4 before that and it's been so great.
Natural to me looks better and I know it’s easier. Thanks for showing the difference.
Great channel, you got a new subscriber from Norway🇧🇻. I just bought the Panasonic g9👍
Awesome! Thank you!
HLG is WAY BETTER, it has more information in dark and light areas.
Both look great, but the HLG footage has smoother highlights.
the hlg looks more dynamic range on high light compare the nature.
Natural looked better to me in every shot - Except the sunset shot, where the HLG seemed to have a lot more dynamic range.
So HLG really IS capable of pulling out the detail out of shadows huh... gotta use it myself for sure.
i've been really impressed how it's been doing that.
Great test Caleb, have you tried the GHAelx LUT? as curious to see how cinematic that woudl look with HLG?
Personally, I got the GH5 Alexa LUT for my GH5s. Sadly, it’s just a nightmare to properly configure the 4 different layers with all the different variables with each shot. There’s a daylight LUT, tungsten and middle of the road LUT. Then there’s the different stops of shadow lifts you can do, and configuring the camera for cine D is pretty inconvenient. Not knocking the work that the dude has done, because with all the right variables in a controlled environment, you can get quite a filmic look, but MAN it is finicky to put together. If it was a plug-in for premiere, it would be much more worth it to use. The Leeming LUT workflow is much more simple after doing some front end configuring.
i haven't used it but i've seen it for other color profiles like v log l which i think is what it's primarily made for.
After using the GHAlex Lut I fell in love with it. Been using it for a while and needs a bit of a workflow to get the end result. I am no pro but it's working for me. Have a look at this video. Everything is shot in CineD th-cam.com/video/12C81H9P_Z0/w-d-xo.html
Love all your videos and reference them often. From my perspective, all of the hlg footage seems to have a "whitish" tint. A brightness to the image that doesn't belong. As if a filter or effect was applied. It's kind of like its "foggy outside" that type of "whiteness" . Like the viewer is looking through a cloud or something? I can see the shadow areas of the hlg footage better than the natural profile but maybe the hlg needs some sort of correction. I am no expert on any of this and my comment is typically what the average joe sees.
I hadn't watched your other hlg videos before this one. The "fog" that I speak of is only seen on a couple of clips in this video even after the leming lut is applied. The fog pretty much disappears on "those" images when graded. The hlg video clips on your other youtube posts all look great to me and if I were to choose one for you I would go with the hlg capture..given the final product looks great but more importantly it seems that so much more "imagery" is being captured before processing...especially in lower light situations. Not sure if that's because of the difference in exposure settings but the final hlg product to me, still appears to capture more of the image overall...vs the natural profile settings.
Natural looks more... natural lol. Every shot. Damn. Nice comparison!
Hey Caleb! Beautiful video as always! I haven't tested HLG profile thoroughly but after your video i will. My question is, you are using Leeming Lut to convert it to Rec709, what if i don't have leeming lut to convert it? I mean would i lose any quality? Maybe you can shoot a tutorial video for it? Thanks!
at some point you'll need to get it to rec709 cuz hlg is technically a broadcast format at, i think, rec2020, that's where the LUT comes in and gets it in the right color space.
HLG means its HDR ready right?
Your HLG has more potential, but you're either afraid of underexposing it or you're not saturating the image enough. I liked the Natural almost every time mainly because it has more saturation and contrast. Color grading is much more work for everyday peeps.
Well. My advice to you would be to work out on your subject matter for reviews and maybe look more for something which can look more appealing in cinematic and pictursque forms, or try to make profile reviews under studio conditions. This would definitely provide more informations for those looking for pro advice and additional technical values would be beneficial. Unfortunately some sceneries, places, and light/time of the day could be difficult to picture properly/interesting even with RED camera. Good luck.
Which cam would you recommend for a beginner filmmaker? Who wants to make commercial like daniel and travel films
Sony A6000
G7
G80
X-T200
Which has good cheap lenses and future proof for when i go FF
I like the hlg profile, definitely need more practice grading it though.
me too!!
Cool video!
Thanks for the visit
I just noticed that when I switched to HLG on my GH5, I somehow lost two whole stops of light according to the waveform! Why is that? And that should be a dealbreaker, right?
How do you set your ISO if you, for example, walk on a street with light changing all the time? Auto with a upper limit?
Hi Caleb, any idea why I cannot select HLG? I can select anything from STD to VLOG-L, just HLG is "gray" and cannot be selected. Do I have to purchase that like VLOG?
You can only use it when the recording format is in a 10bit format i think
Play with your recording formats. 10bit options open the option up, like Colm said.
yeah i echo what the others have said
Caleb, good video. I shoot wedding films with two S1's, GH5 and GH5s. I typically use the natural setting also. And I think based upon your experiment it kind of shows the issue I run into most of the time, and that problem is my shadows and blacks are getting crushed unless I overexpose to the right and everytime I do this I blow out the sky. The S1's are better but in post it's hard to get them to look the same because the s1's, while they save the highlights and handle shadows better they still crush blacks. I can bring up blacks on the s1's, but on the gh5's I typically cannot save the shadows and blacks enough to match. I have included a clip to look at if you have time. In my case HLG may be the perfect fit. Thanks again for your content! The second shot and the walking shot is the GH5. th-cam.com/video/M4_ppOyb8XU/w-d-xo.html
yeah i hear ya on blowing out the sky. i think that hlg would be great for weddings. it's not as temperamental as v log l and i think much more forgiving. i actually just shot my first full client project with hlg and i was really happy with it. it's very impressive with evening setting sun type stuff.
Natural look better for me
i use natural most of the time but it's been fun shooting hlg lately
Whats a good ND filter for the sigma 18-35
I use ND filters from Breakthrough Filters.
They are spendy, but most importantly there is zero colour cast when filming.
I have H&Y Variable ND and it's great. Saying that I haven't use any other ones
LIKE 230
Honestly, why took you so long?
😂 great question!