Panasonic G7 Video Help for Work!

Hi

I recently also had to go from zero to decent video result.  I learned a lot from YouTube and even went through a couple of books.

Here are some things to help accelerate you getting started quickly.  You can likely do YouTube searches on the topics to learn more and confirm things.

• I recommend that once you figure out your settings save it into one or two of your custom settings so you can just select it and be ready to go.  To more than one so you have a kind of backup in case you decide to tweak settings a bit and save them you can return your initial known settings
• Set your Photo style to Standard with the following settings
  • C = -2, S = -2, NR = -5
    • Got these from a short course I paid for and have seen it repeated in several videos
• Rec format = MP3
• Metering = Multi-mode
• Focus = Face detection
• Dial Mode M
• AFS/AFC = AFC
  • So the camera will continue to re-focus while recording to track for example leaning forward and back
• Shoot in 4K even though you will likely deliver HD
  • It allows you to zoom in or crop or stabilize if needed in Post Production
  • It presumably will be better HD image than shooting in HD 
• Very different opinions on if 24 P or 30 P is better.   24 is traditional film 30 is more Computer.  You can read a lot and get different opinions but I was not convinced one way or the other.    I use 30 P
• KEY INFO:  
  • Select your frame rate, 24 or 30
  • Your shutter speed needs to be 2 x the fps
    • for 24P choose 1/50th.
    • for 30P choose 1/60th
  • You pick your Aperture for DOF.   If you shoot wide with an F 1.7 then your DOF will likely be enough to not have the people partially out of focus.  If you are cropped in tight then you will likely need to stop down the lens.
  • Here's the tricky part:  
    • Your Shutter speed is selected and can't be changed
    • Your Aperture is selected based on need and can't be changed
    • If you don't have enough light all you can do is either up your ISO or add more light.
      • Lighting is lot like for a good photo so try to make skure they are lit like you would for a photo.  If your not bringing any light then select the right spot under the existing lights, etc.
      • Ideally you want to select the ISO and forget about it for the shoot.  if you leave it on auto if lighting changes at all for any reason you will get inconsistent results which will detract from the video
• At the time of the shoot once everything else is set up, do one of the following:
  • Set your custom White Balance where the subject will be
    • OR 
  • Take a photo of a color checker card or a few seconds of video of it where the subject will be

My first shoot was under difficult lighting because they wanted the "mood" of the place.  I did multi-camera because it was one person interviewing another.  It was difficult to get the colors and overall image to be looking the same.  For my second shoot I had read up and decided to learn about and create a LUT for the shooting conditions.

Given you are indoors and will likely have reasonable lighting and you did not mention multi-people and thus Multi-camera you can skip this LUT stuff for now.

Short course and easy path to use LUTs:

• Get 3D LUT creator.
  • I use it to simply create  LUT and can do none of the many other things it can do.
  • Get a color Checker card if you don't already have one
    • 3D LUT creatore support a range of cards but you can still have it work even if it is not one built in.
    • I use my photo color checker card, no need to get a Video one which can cost a lot more.
  • IT work GREAT !

If you are NOT doing multi-camera work you can use Premiere Elements for post processing

If  you are doing Multi-camera work Premiere Pro is a must, don't even think about using Premiere element unless time is no object.

You can learn both from YouTube

These are the key items I think you need to know to get started.

Practice at home.  I recommend you create a set-up check list for the shoot so that you don't forget one setting or thing to do else you may have big problems when the shoot is done.

Mark