Daniel Grey

I thought I would share my settings for shooting Video on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2. I start off by putting the dial on top of the camera on the video mode. Then I make sure the video exposure is on the manual setting.

Put the GH2′s creative mode on 24P for the highest quality video setting.

Record Quality on 24H

Now put your shutter on 1/50 for the most natural looking footage when filming motion. 1/50th has a slight blur to motion that looks more filmic. You can use a faster shutter 1/100+ but it will look less like film and more like video. Try and keep your ISO as low as possible just like when taking photos and you should also only use the native ISO’s (160 320 and 640). You can go higher of course but it really degrades the picture quality. In the Motion Picture menu choose Film Mode for the different picture profiles. My first picture profile is Vibrant with saturation +2. This is for when I’m feeling lazy and I’m not going to any color grading in post. You have to be very careful with the white balance. I usually do a custom white balance based on what I see in the LCD. It’s also the setting I use for still images.

If I am going to do color grading in post I put the Film Mode on smooth. I leave noise reduction on 0 and everything else on -2. It’s a big commitment because now I have to do a color grade in post. So I would only do this if I’m shooting a narrative piece or trying to get the most out of the image for artistic reasons. If I’m shooting casually or an event I leave it on my “lazy” vibrant setting.

With this setting you leave a lot of information in the shadows of the picture and you can do the most with the color grade in post. Something else I have found very handy is setting EX. TELE CONV. to one of the Fn buttons. You can do this in the Custom menu by going to the Fn Button set and assigning it to one of the buttons. It basically gives you a digital zoom in video with no loss of resolution. It does this by just using the middle of the chip, giving you a 2.7x zoom in 1080p and a 3.1x zoom in 720p. I used it in this video to make my Voigtlander 25mm f.95 into a wonderful 77.5mm macro lens.

Also in this video making a 300mm Nikkon lens into a 1860mm lens

A very helpful button!

One last tip find Shoot Without Lens setting in the menu and turn it on and leave it on. It lets you use lenses other than Panasonic lenses while still being able to use the Panasonic ones.