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S5II Excessive Image processing with Standard Profiles

A

AZ1

New Member
I currently do not own the S5II, but I do have the S5IIX on preorder. I also own the S5. I have seen a couple users mention the S5II standard type profiles (not Vlog) have excessive image processing for NR and lose fine details that the original S5 did not suffer. Here's an example from one user. Please check out his other YouTube posts displaying this issue too. Thoughts? I'd like to see Lumix Engineers offer us control of these picture profiles and allow us to lessen the NR and sharpening effects. Based on what I'm hearing (and seeing in examples) they do seem to have too much NR even at it's lowest setting. We are losing too much much detail in these "standard type" picture profiles. I did hear this is not so much a Vlog issue, but standard profiles.

 
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As I understand the video, both NR and Sharpness are -5 in the Natural style for both cameras. The S5II definitely looks over sharpened. Anything I've shot is with V-Log, plus one series with HLG. I'll take a look at detail with a "standard" profile with the S5II. I sold my S5 so I can't compare, but that much over sharpening should jump out
 
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I wonder how this presents when shooting stills in RAW? I use Lightroom matched camera profiles when processing images. So it brings the RAW file into what I assume should be the look the JPEG would have, but with all that extra data for further processing.

I also wonder why the change? If this is due to input from Leica? Or some sort of technical compromise of the new sensor?
 
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I’d like to see Panasonic address this issue with a firmware upgrade. Having said that, there are some videos that look incredible with standard type profiles. This video comes to mind. He posted in the comments his settings were standard profile with contrast set to -3, and saturation set to-2.

 
CharlesH said:
As I understand the video, both NR and Sharpness are -5 in the Natural style for both cameras. The S5II definitely looks over sharpened. Anything I've shot is with V-Log, plus one series with HLG. I'll take a look at detail with a "standard" profile with the S5II. I sold my S5 so I can't compare, but that much over sharpening should jump out
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I set up the S5II with some white on red print, similar to your first post. I set the "Natural" style, in room light at ISO 1600, and then again with added white light at ISO 100. I shot with three conditions, Sharpness and NR both at -5, Sharpness and NR both at zero, and Sharpness and NR both at +5. I viewed at 300%. I did not see anything as dramatic as your posted video. All detail was good. At Sharpness +5 you can start to see boarders around some of the letters, as expected with that much over sharpening. In short, all the images were as one would expect. If I were to shoot a "standard" profile I would probably shoot 0,0 (the default). If I had poor light I'd be shooting V-Log anyway.

I don't know why that video poster had such poor results. A guess might be the light was poor and he cranked up the ISO.
 
JohnnyMauser said:
Acording to these tests v-log is not the best profile for lowlight:
(Cannot post links as a new user)
https: // youtu . be/ bl8Y7S3Sj1k
https: // youtu . be/ t8ww4iNtyhU
Click to expand...

This tester has some misunderstandings, somewhat less in his second video, but nevertheless still misguided.

The camera sensor has the same noise, no matter the profile. For the standard video profiles the camera applies built in noise reduction. For V-Log, camera noise reduction is not applied by default. Experienced log users generally prefer this so they can control the post processing tradeoffs between noise and detail, including noise reduction, gamma, dynamic range, and sharpening. V-Log is always graded, and it is the best overall choice for low light shooting, especially if dynamic range is a consideration.
 
CharlesH said:
This tester has some misunderstandings, somewhat less in his second video, but nevertheless still misguided.

The camera sensor has the same noise, no matter the profile. For the standard video profiles the camera applies built in noise reduction. For V-Log, camera noise reduction is not applied by default. Experienced log users generally prefer this so they can control the post processing tradeoffs between noise and detail, including noise reduction, gamma, dynamic range, and sharpening. V-Log is always graded, and it is the best overall choice for low light shooting, especially if dynamic range is a consideration.
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I dont think there is a misguidance. He tested v-log against the other profiles including different in camera NR settings and against NR applied in post. His conclusion is: vlog is noisier.
Where do you think this done wrong? I also have the S5ii and could repeat the tests, i just thought it is not necessary since i can observe the results right there. You think it should be retested? How?
 
JohnnyMauser said:
I dont think there is a misguidance. He tested v-log against the other profiles including different in camera NR settings and against NR applied in post. His conclusion is: vlog is noisier.
Where do you think this done wrong? I also have the S5ii and could repeat the tests, i just thought it is not necessary since i can observe the results right there. You think it should be retested? How?
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I think the point is more that, yes vlog shows more noise but you can use advanced noise suppression algorithms on a powerful PC to clean that up while maintaining detail. The alternative is to use a picture profile with non-defeatable real-time noise suppression running off a battery powered chip which in addition to suppressing noise will also remove some detail. If you want to go the extra mile, vlog can give better results but if you don't want to bother with all that you might as well use the built-in features you already paid for.
What might also be relevant here is that vlog was developed for a varicam using high bitrate, low compression codecs which can easily store the extra data that comes with all that noise. If you try to squeeze a noisy signal through a low-bitrate encoder, some damage to the signal may be expected. However I must say that the encoders used by Panasonic are very good, so I've not had any issues with that.
 
More bitrate = better for noisier pics, very interesting point, i never thought about that. Finally one argument more to switch to s5iix once it is there. I shoot more documentary style work, and for me it seems reasonable to trade in flexibility of post for noise performance when i shoot extreme low light.
 
A lot of misunderstanding there, so to clarify things a bit :

-Noise reduction is usually not an issue when shooting stills in RAW because there is no noise reduction in the RAW files. I have not yet tested RAW stills on my S5II but I will be surprised if Panasonic added baked in noise reduction inside them.

The real issue is with video and most profiles. Compared to the first S5 and the S1, there is a big difference, the more you crop the more you can see the difference. On this video a 200% crop has been applied :



You can see how much the S5II smooths details compared to the S5 in low light. Contrary to what CharlesH said, the difference is pretty obvious, the S5II standard profiles uses more or less the same amount of noise reduction than Sony cameras, even more at low ISO.

-On the video posted above (with the girl reading a book) in 6K 25P, it looks good because there is no crop and the video has been shot in 6K (and maybe the ISO are not so high too).
Again the more you crop and/or bump your ISO, the more you can see the difference in fine details compared to previous S cameras. Also 6K has more details than 4K so it helps a bit to retains fine details when the video is downsampled to 4K even with the massive noise reduction. However, from my test between the S5II and S1, the S1 also looks better in low light with the standard profiles in 6K, much less noise reduction and more details.

-V-Log profile has not the same amount of noise reduction of the standard profiles. It looks pretty much the same than the S5 and S1, it's a good news. However if you set the sharpening at +10, it will not sharpen the footage in the same way than the S5 and S1, certainly because of the use of 2D/3D sharpening and noise reduction.



Some people can see banding in V-Log compared to the S5 and S1, I haven't seen banding yet but I saw some exemples of the issue.
However the grain structure is not quite the same, the S5II has more colored noise (chroma noise) compared to the S5.

-V-Log is noisier than the standard profiles because it uses the more DR coming from the sensor as possible, it uses a different kind of exposure control to achieve a wide dynamic range. In order to achieve this wide dynamic range, the camera controls the exposure differently than when recording with standard profiles. This makes the minimum available ISO sensitivity of the camera higher (in the case of V-Log : ISO 640, as opposed to standard profiles : ISO 100). So noise will be more visible on V-Log.
And again, contrary to CharlesH said, this is not because of noise reduction, it is because of the different exposure and ISO used by the V-Log profile. On the S5, there is almost zero noise reduction on the standard profiles and yet there is less noise than V-Log, I can't see any noise reduction on the S5 standard profiles compared to V-LOG on the two video I've posted. This is not true anymore on the S5II because the standard profiles use a lot of noise reduction, the images speak from themselve.
Sure, by exemple, you can apply a S curve to your footage to help to reduce noise, but V-Log will still be noisier than the standard profiles.

The only way to get a V-Log footage almost as clean as the standard profiles is to overexpose by two stops, but doing this you need more light, so it is not the best profile for low light if you want very low noise and the best details as possible (at least on the S5, because the S5II has now too much NR with most profiles and some fine details are destroyed), it is the best profile if you want the best dynamic range.
 
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There is a fundamental misunderstanding about noise and VLOG.
By definition, dynamic range is the amount of "stops" (i.e. difference of light) between bottom noise floor and overexposed clipping- how much information does the sensor actually capture.
This means that if VLOG has the highest DR, it has the lowest noise (at least measured in the shadows).
However, people may find it noisier because they expose lower than needs be. If noise is your concern, use your waveforms and expose to the right. I typically expose +1 or even +2.
People say VLOG is worse for low-light, but in reality VLOG achieves highest DR (=lowest noise floor) at ISO 640, vs. at ISO 100 for standard profiles; so no.
All of this, however, has many qualifiers.
First, noise happens not only at the lowest bottom, so perception will play a role here. The gamma curve is after all that, a curve.
Second, ETTR is not always easy to work with, as it may require more post-processing to make scenes match.
Third, we do not know the recipes for noise reduction for each profile, and how they are affected by the parameter "noise reduction" in the camera, and how that parameter setting affects further noise reduction in post.
As for my experience, at ISO640 and VLOG, I see no noise anywhere in the picture where it matters (REC709 nicest). I am if anything a fan of crushing the lowest gray into black anyway, but I do not see that noise even before doing so.
YMMV but I get this feeling that some people are trying to use some fringe results in specific scenarios to push a narrative. Reality is that DR and noise for all current generation 24Mpix cameras are very similar, as it should be.
Having said that, it only took me 1 month of using the camera to have the first picture where I saw the PDAF grid of dots as I had to raise exposure on a pic that was already at high ISO. So PDAF IQ loss is real (in some extreme scenarios). BTW I could not replicate in video.
 
Based on the videos above I would agree that the S5 image, using the standard profile looks better with more detail than the S5ii image, which was the original point of this thread. There is not much between the vlog profiles of the two cameras.
The discussion about whether a non-vlog profile is better for low light than a vlog profile is another discussion best left for another thread.
 
CharlesH said:
I set up the S5II with some white on red print, similar to your first post. I set the "Natural" style, in room light at ISO 1600, and then again with added white light at ISO 100. I shot with three conditions, Sharpness and NR both at -5, Sharpness and NR both at zero, and Sharpness and NR both at +5. I viewed at 300%. I did not see anything as dramatic as your posted video. All detail was good. At Sharpness +5 you can start to see boarders around some of the letters, as expected with that much over sharpening. In short, all the images were as one would expect. If I were to shoot a "standard" profile I would probably shoot 0,0 (the default). If I had poor light I'd be shooting V-Log anyway.

I don't know why that video poster had such poor results. A guess might be the light was poor and he cranked up the ISO.
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Charles,
Very interesting. Thanks for looking into this. I'd like to see more comparisons for these standard profiles and also VLog. I'm not sure why that test sample video shows the fine detail (basically the surface paper texture) appears to have some smoothing from possibly NR going on. I do have an S5IIX on preorder. When that comes in, I'll post some comparisons myself between the S5 and S5IIX shooting really fine detail. I have a feeling this camera is better than most anticipated. There are some sample videos out there that are just damn good. Here's one of them:

 
I had the S5IIx on pre-order, but decided to get the S5II to learn and use the camera. I expect to transition to the S5IIx at some point, mainly for the All-I codecs. Another hope is that the RAW can output to the Blackmagic Video Assist for BRAW, for direct editing in Davinci Resolve. The S1H, S1 and the S5 have this, and I really liked it on the S5. BUT there hasn't been an announcement what recorders the S5IIx will support.
 
There is a lot of talk about S5II videos. I am mainly taking stills. Your experts; what settings should I use to make the best results? I shoot both raw and jpeg.
 
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