Camera settings for color grading and postproduction

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I wonder what are the best cam settings for color grading in post? As far I have noticed that p3 footage is much better then Gopro raw for color grading. You can grade much more before the artifacts appear. Have anybody any experience in this field?
 
I wonder what are the best cam settings for color grading in post? As far I have noticed that p3 footage is much better then Gopro raw for color grading. You can grade much more before the artifacts appear. Have anybody any experience in this field?

Just got my P3 so haven't had a lot of experience in doing postwork on the footage yet, but here's a link to a Jim Hare tutorial that's very comprehensive in terms of settings to use in the Pilot app, and doing color grading. He uses an Inspire 1, but the cameras and pilot app are pretty much the same as the P3.

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He's also got some other vids on using LUT's here:

http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=14853&page=1#pid125047

Go to the top of the page to find them.
 
I shoot Log color profile, picture style is -1 sharpness, -2 contrast, -1 Saturation and here are some Before and After results. I've noticed when shooting architecture and have -1, -3, -3 there is a lot of moire.
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This is the settings provided above color graded
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Just got my P3 so haven't had a lot of experience in doing postwork on the footage yet, but here's a link to a Jim Hare tutorial that's very comprehensive in terms of settings to use in the Pilot app, and doing color grading. He uses an Inspire 1, but the cameras and pilot app are pretty much the same as the P3.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

He's also got some other vids on using LUT's here:

http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=14853&page=1#pid125047

Go to the top of the page to find them.
Thanks for this tutorial. It was really helpfull. I also use Davinci, and I must say that p3 footage has big potentenial.
 
I shoot Log color profile, picture style is -1 sharpness, -2 contrast, -1 Saturation and here are some Before and After results. I've noticed when shooting architecture and have -1, -3, -3 there is a lot of moire.
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This is the settings provided above color graded
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The road shoot looks epic :)
Lowering sharpnes should reduce moire but reduces sharpness also :)
 
The road shoot looks epic :)
Lowering sharpnes should reduce moire but reduces sharpness also :)
I like to sharpen in post so it's a win win lol. I'm glad you like the shot it should mix well with all of the other 4k footage I have on my Sony a7S
 
The Log setting with adjustments left alone works pretty well most of the time, in particular I don't see need to change saturation because that's the easiest to tweak either way later.
Certainly worth trying sharpness and contrast down by one point.
There aren't many problems introduced all on zero except maybe roof tiles or structures like a bridge with many fine details like crossing struts.
 
I like to sharpen in post so it's a win win lol. I'm glad you like the shot it should mix well with all of the other 4k footage I have on my Sony a7S
I also use Sony A7s as a A cam, I have Panasonic gh4 too, but since I got sony it's collecting dust :) . Sony feels so cinematic to me. Do you use Atomos Shogun for 4k rec?
 
The Log setting with adjustments left alone works pretty well most of the time, in particular I don't see need to change saturation because that's the easiest to tweak either way later.
Certainly worth trying sharpness and contrast down by one point.
There aren't many problems introduced all on zero except maybe roof tiles or structures like a bridge with many fine details like crossing struts.
I Will definitely try to find best settings form my grading. Will post results here.
 
What????? Color settings of JPG for color correction? Good luck with that. Use BM Micro, shoot in RAW, master DaVinci and have a great budget to work with it.
 
It's for video, if you record in the preset modes it's harder to tweak things to create your preferred 'look'.
The presets are actually pretty good though if you want to just quickly crop and go later.
Art and Classic are rather nice or just the default.

Colour balance is worth looking at, it tends to record a bit blue on auto.
Curiously sunny often looks warmer than auto, cloudy can be too yellowish.
I rather like a custom setting around 5900.
 
In my experience with go pro, the WB should be always fixed. That prevents color shifting during the flight.
 
I recommend shooting log and leaving color and contrast at 0. You cannot bring back color if it's not recorded in the first place, but you can always desaturate color after the fact.

In the past reducing contrast was more of a stop gap to help protect highlights and preserve shadow detail in cameras that did not offer a log profile. It doesn't really make sense to reduce contrast in a log file as the file has already been structured to compress the maximum amount of dynamic range into the 8 bit codec for protection of highlights and shadows. It's even possible the footage could become more susceptible to banding when contrast is pushed back into the image.

As far as sharpness is concerned, I don't shoot above -1, too much aliasing becomes evident there. If you use NDs most of the aliasing is washed away at -1 with motion blur. If no ND filters are used and shutter speed is higher than 1/125 I would strongly consider going with -2 sharpness, you will lose some detail but also most of the moire along with it.

I manually adjust WB to 5600K.
 
I also use Sony A7s as a A cam, I have Panasonic gh4 too, but since I got sony it's collecting dust :) . Sony feels so cinematic to me. Do you use Atomos Shogun for 4k rec?
Yes I recently started using the Atomos Shogun for 4k record because I finally sold my C100.
 

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