@SuperSet Once I get my second Ikan monitor back from them with the updated firmware, then I can see what's going on with both cameras live. Hopefully in a couple weeks!

@SuperSet No. Much of these are observations and need to be tested. My knowledge of resolve is minimal and my tests have just begun to scratch the surface. Right now, I'm just trying to find the best overall look for skin.

In a test I just performed with both cameras using the same lens, both set to all 0's, the GH2 looked far more yellow on the skin tones even after balancing. The GH3 had a rosier, more magenta cast.

Wish I really knew a lot more than I do. So a lot is trial and error.

I can confirm that Vibrant -4, 0, -2, 0 is the most accurate of the settings based on my tests.

Ok, I was having too much fun. LUT Utility works great. Wow. Here was a test under different lighting conditions (top light fluorescents, around 5600K, I think). Cameras were balanced off the same gray card. They were very different beforehand. LUT applied to each clip and then a slight hue change added to the GH3 clip.

@yak the key is to make sure both or either (if just shooting one) the gh2 and 3 have been white balanced on the same source gray card. If you can, test it outdoors during the day or in tungsten light. If white balanced beforehand, you won't see much of a difference on the gh3 as it is just straightening out the primary and secondary hues.

My current feeling on this is that skin tones look good but the color hits all the yellow spectrum. So anything yellow goes toward orange. When I get back, I want to see if I can thin it out to just skin tones, which might be difficult to achieve on a global setting.

Also, I'm sure different lenses will provide different results. My hope is that a global hue change can compensate for that. If shooting a person, after applying the lut just try to line up the skin tones around the skin line.

shot with gh3 'scenery' all dialed down to -5 before and after color correction in Filmconvert.

This is the first thing I have filmed with the GH3. Lens is Oly 12mm f2. Filmed at 50Mbps IPB, 60p, with Natural -5's after grading I'm pretty happy with the look but it still feels like it could be sharper, and I have seen a few videos where vivid looks pretty good. Can anyone offer insight as to what the best straight out of camera profile is? Is natural with -5 across the board the best setting for grading this type of scene? Does this footage look sharp for the GH3? My GH2 seems a bit sharper.

Thank you!

gh3pilot First off, nice footage! As far as "best straight out of camera profile" it's hard to say simply because the answer is subjective. That comes down to personal preference IMHO. The one thing I can attest to is the -5 settings across the board. I've found that this is an accepted truth to shooting and grading regardless of what camera you use. Personally I shoot with Natural with all at -5. I use natural because (before setting all to -5) I point the camera at a scene and quickly run though all the presets. Natural has the least amount of contrast and saturation than any of the other settings. Then I take everything to -5 to flatten out the contrast and saturation even more. This gives me the most dynamic range to work with in post. The flatter the footage the more I'm able to really push and pull the color and contrast in post. See attached.... This footage was shot in my studio where the walls are warm yellow and I'm using tungsten lights (adding even more warmth). Makes getting a good white balance tough. As you can see the footage straight from the camera is still way Red/Yellow even with the white balance set to 3700K and saturation at -5. But because the footage is shot so flat (-5 -5 -5 0) I had much more "wiggle room" to get the graded/color corrected image below it. The good news to me is that the GH3 can capture the information. The blues are there... just need a little TLC and they'll reveal themselves.

Regardless of all -5 the GH3 shoots really red as @starios has indicated before. It's always been really frustrating with skin tones. It became even MORE apparent when I did a multi cam interview using my GH2 as the close up B cam. Getting the two camera's footage corrected so the tone and color is the same when cutting from one to the other in the interview is proving to be.... challenging. Notice how far off the GH3 is before CC compared to the GH2. (Same white balance, both cams shooting 1080p 24fps, Same White Balance, SS and ISO, GH2 - Moon T5 @ 148Mb/s, GH3 - 50Mb/s IPB.

Here's where I am on the intro of a documentary I'm producing. 85% of the footage is GH3. It's a rough at this point and the link is private but I thought I'd go ahead and share it with this group. (FYI: The quick interview shots here are purposefully desaturated and blown out a bid for mood and visual tone. The actual interviews will be color corrected and true as apposed to graded for a stylistic look.)

Shot Natural -5 -5 -5 0. Edited and Graded in Premiere Pro CC. Music bed composed in Logic Pro X.

@maddog15 - I tested all this out with my Ikan D5W monitors which have built-in scopes. I used only 5600k lights (which, I discovered were actually closer to 5200k). Besides that messy little detail, I set the cameras to 5200k while shooting a gray card and also my face. I noticed that the colors were a bit off and flat. So I went into the color settings on the GH3 and added some magenta or red or whatever and got the vectorscope closest to the center when shooting gray. I re-shot the test and it looked much better.

But then I thought, hey, this is a LOT of work! I might as well just get a BMCC and shoot raw. And THEN I thought, uh, DER I could just balance this thing on a white card. Well, after lots of testing I determined that skin tones looked better when the cameras were both auto-balanced to a gray card.

I'm finding that the uncorrected GH3 image is more magenta than red. Skin tones are better reproduced. But they are still flatter out of the box than the GH2.

Also, the GH2 has a much sharper image, so I found that it looks better in closeup - my personal taste. Others may differ.

Four Roses Ultimate Egg Nog Recipe. Shot with GH3 for a Maxim Magazine web video. Standard -5 -5 -5 -5. Edited and graded in Premiere Pro CC. All sound design done in Logic Pro X.

@5thwall Thanks man! (FWIW: Been meaning to respond to your last few posts. Sorry.... slammed with work and holidays. Great findings in your posts to say the least.)