The second of the five songs recorded that day and shot with FM:

@peternap

The Tiffen "ENHANCING Filter" is a combination of rare earth elements in glass. It completely removes a portion of the spectrum in the orange region.

Orange is detected by the sensor as a combination of red and green components. In daylight conditions with a high natural color temperature, this filter may tone down the red and green channels a bit, leaving you with a hot blue channel. In that case, the camera may be prone to over-saturate the blue channel, which can turn blown highlights yellowish. In addition to taking care with highlight exposure, you might want to examine the RGB channels in post, and try adjusting just the blue channel gain to get the color balance you like.

@david_d how do YOU define "cinematic". IMHO 24P is cinematic, the rest is what you do with it... Thanks for reporting which cards worked ....BTW

@david_d Cinematic is more in the method than the settings david. If you're looking for slow or dream like movement, you can do it in post. The GH2 does have an 80% mode that works perfectly well in FM2.2 I think.

A shallow DOF is considered cinematic but that's in the lens, not the setting. Film grain, lighting, color grading, Etc. all go into it.

Instead of trying to get settings, you'd be way ahead to get ColorGhears and watch the tutorials that come with it.

People spend their entire lives becoming good cinematographers, you can't just change a few settings and be there....and no, I'm light years from a cinematographer.

I use Standard -2 for nearly everything just because It works the best in post for me. Sorry, ColorGHears is only for AE right now but I understand he's working on Final Cut. I keep forgetting the world doesn't revolve around Adobe.

@LPowell - KUDOS and Question on BIG SCREEN theatrical treatment:

Hi Lee.

I haven't been on this site for a while - I have mixed feelings about the jousting between you and Nick Driftwood, but I also understand that while collaboration can create excellence, so can individualism and competition! My hunch is that the specific scene that is to be shot in a given situation might determine which hack/patch/setting between you two (who I suspect may be the best or certainly of the best developers) is the "best". One thing I'll say in your favour Lee is that despite one comment I read that you complicate explanations, I find the exact opposite - you have actually bothered to communicate and literally illustrate the relevant (and not always "easy") concepts and have done so wonderfully, and you stick to a well-organized presentation instead of a perplexing clutter both in terms of what you communicate and what patches you release to the public. You've addressed the moire/aliasing/banding checklist that so many of us GH2 users (and 8-bit HD video camera users in general) are concerned about beyond whether an extra pixel of detail will be seen or not (when its absence most surely would not be noticed). All that just makes me trust you and your approach more. So my kudos to you, but also your sparring partner, for what you've both done, and of course so many others here too, including Chris Brandin for inspiring so much of your work and Nick's, and of course that wonderful Russian man we all know who started it all.

So to the question: I have a friend who wants to try using a hacked GH2 to shoot a commercial for the BIG SCREEN - "Digital Cinema Package" is what we're talking about. It's a car commercial with the gradient homogenous/monochromatic colors of the cars often filling the screen with similar shots of the sky behind - in other words, an invitation to challenges that come with both motion and potential banding at least on a non-hacked GH2. The odd thing is that the "pro" camera he used with I-Frames and 10-bit color latitude gave "too soft" results for the DCP people, and the GH2's sharpness by contrast seems be superior - NON-hacked. Also there is the creative approach of using not just video, but stills (sometimes taken in burst mode) as well that I would suspect allow 12-bit color depth that more completely fulfill the potential of what DCP can handle. But what do you think about the theory I'm hearing that the image should NOT be "cinema soft" but instead take advantage of Panny's sharpness (with my Panny lenses) so that it would better scale up to a large multiplex screen? We can't afford a RED that easily, and the new "less expensive" cameras that go beyond 8-bit color are rumored to not pass that checklist I mentioned - maybe not even the GH3 as of yet.

It seems your Flow Motion patch would accommodate the sharpness and of course smooth motion we seek (if we film 24fps VERY carefully of course), and I think it would offer deterrents against banding (that would otherwise have occurred due to both 8-bit constraints and I think other factors even more so). My hope is that any noise will look like a fine film-like grain and perhaps assist in reducing banding. In all honesty I might take my second GH2 to shoot simultaneously using dare I say the AN Nebula settings since this seems to be a good compromise for a "sharp" setting as well, and then take the best of both worlds. But honestly I am just getting into taking the plunge for "hacks" - never have before. Two GH2's for HD Youtube productions are one thing after all (not in my opinion needing a hack), but now I have a chance to truly "experiment"! Exciting and scary - someone get a 10-bit (or 12-bit available?) monitor!

Thanks for your consideration, and making me understand that I-Frames-only are not the be-all or end-all necessarily.

-- Stacy.

Der @Mirrorkisser : what does "span" mean ? I'm sorry but I don't understand well this notion. Thank you!

@david_d ...meaning that if your recording needs to go beyond 4 GBs on the SD card and the speed of the card is not fast enough to span (close the current file and start a new one, while continuously recording) your recoding will stop. Just stop all by itself.

If you are not staring at the screen you may miss it. If the camera is unmanned, you will miss it, and when you return to the camera you will wonder (after thinking oh, Sh*t!) "did I forget to turn the camera on?" No, your camera/lens/card/settings combo failed to span and it might screw you over for your project. There is a lot of discussion about spanning and card on the threads for each different setting. Then you want to test it like crazy for yourself before taking it on a paying job.

It is often said that spanning is no problem on the most expensive Sandisk 64GB card, but, as 64GB cards and up are SDXC cards, they introduce a new, pretty bad problem, if you don't know what you are doing or are in a rush and turn the camera off directly after a spanned recording, the camera when turned back on will no longer be able to record to the card. I know what I am doing and sometimes am in a rush so I refuse to buy another SDXC card and try not to chose a setting that requires them for spanning!

The more you ask from your camera (via the hack) the more it will ask from you (and your time!).

Dear @CFreak !

Thank u a million for your details. That helps me so much. To be honest, i never got "spanning" issues with FlowMotion, but I always got some with AN even with SDXC Sandisk 32GB card.

I mean, it always fails after 4 or 5 minutes.

Thank you again!

@LPowell, @Mirrorkisser, @CFreak

Thank you Gents for those explanations and considerations - contemplatively received!

I remember reading the warnings about spanning and thought I understood it, but I haven't yet "lived" it - as CFreak did! I have two of those particular Sandisk cards which I bought quite some time ago - NOTHING else since has ever been mentioned as much for usually reliable GH2 high bitrate spanning, I've noticed. But yeah - under a tight timeline we might have to consider the greater reliability over a slight experimental quality increase even on the big screen. Frankly I'm not sure either which of the two competing philosophies on color resolution of both hacks in question would make a great and noticeable difference in quality even on the big screen, but I wish we could test that even beyond pixel-peeping!

Do you realize that if it were possible to make the GH2 do a continual photographic burst mode of say 24fps beyond 1080p res for more than a second (my pocketable LX7 does 60fps! but for a maximum one second), we could assemble DCP movies beyond 8-bit gradation that would blow even the DCP people away! I got that impression talking to someone today who is connected to some of them who were checking out GH2 stills.

But maybe we can blow them away with hacked video that is 8-bit (per color channel) - just VERY GOOD 8-bit! Unfortunately I can't find a field monitor with the size and latitude of the multiplex screen (LOL)! I'm not sure if a multiplex would allow us to test there. I'd still like to test if "sharp" translates to "cinematically soft" when things are scaled up so huge - some of the new screens look like IMAX to me! Or if a smaller art-house screen would benefit from a softer matrix. I'm guessing that GOP 3 Flow Motion or GOP 1 AN with a softer matrix makes for more fluid motion at least than the sharpest GOP 1 hacks - Inter having at least a few advantages over Intra. And, a least by staying in the 8-bit realm, we can more closely see what we're getting with standard 8-bit display devices. But I think I may be preaching to the choir - sorry.

I appreciate any more thoughts on this.

A re-shoot might be delayed until December but I'll keep you posted one way or another - probably can't say too much until after the shoot though.

-- Stacy.

hi. I flashed my SD card/GH2 with Flowmotion V2.2, just wondering are there some go to settings i should use for outdoor shooting at night time (video work) in a built up city area? and what about outside for stills/photo shooting wildlife in the day time? Thanks people.

Flow Motion 25p and 50p

can we expect anything new from "flowmotion" or is it all you want it to be? I was thinking maybe something with a higher bit rate or constant. If doing those puts the current quality of FM in jeopardy I understand.