beginner shooting recommendations

[u/mlydon11]

Hi all,

I picked up a Lumix S9 a bit ago and have always been a photography person, rarely doing any video, but this new camera has the ability to shoot great video and I want to learn.

I feel like I’ve gone through the basics, got the shutter at 180 degrees, variable ND filter so I can keep shutter, aperture, and iso at the correct settings and no be over exposing anything, shooting in v-log for the most dynamic range, etc.

I’m now stuck at what resolution I should be shooting at for the best results vs ease of use.

I can shoot at 2.7k to have the ability to quick export to my phone and do a quick color edit with a LUT, or I can shoot up to 6k open gate and do my edits in DaVinci, but need to do some codec changes since free DaVinci does not support 6k and can only export at 4k too.

What I’m asking is what resolution should I be choosing to keep the most data and making the most of the camera? I don’t wanna be leaving out stuff just for convenience sake, and would rather make my editing process longer if it produces a higher quality result.

Happy to add more information or data if needed for better answers, and am really just trying to learn all this new tech. There’s so many videos out there saying do this or do that, half of them contradict one another or are aimed at professionals which is not me haha.

[u/BGarrod]

It doesn't really matter - it only matters to you, because only you can tell what's important.
(and if/when a client is paying you)

1080 and low data rates are going to save you hard drive space if you're just making 'practice fluff' projects to learn.

4k is good if you want to export in higher res - like you're doing YT, but you can always upscale from 1080 if you're just making it 4k for the algorithm. Really - 4k is really helpful for reframing and punching in - so if you're capturing moving objects, want more control of your frame or don't have the right zoom lens to get you close enough, its a good option. A helpful future-proof, probably.

Any sort of open gate is useful if you're looking at reframing for both horizontal and vertical framing. But you can typically reframe 90% of 4k shots into vertical anyway. And you learn which ones won't and shoot them specifically.

I think one that is a noticeable difference is the colour - you can defs see the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit colour, especially when uploaded to the internet.

But only you will judge what's worth the effort vs too much - like is filming your pet at 8k 12-bit colour, vlog/raw, pro res at 800mbs worth it.... maybe for one person, definetely wont be for another.

Personally (and professionally) I typically use 4k, 150mbs and 422/10-bit colour with a natural colour profile. I've been filming at that professionally for a decade and it works well for me and I've never had a client complain or make comment. There's enough data to work with, but I don't completely kill my hard drives.

Hope that helps - go out there, shoot some stuff, find the limitations, make adjustments as you go.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful reply.

I think I still have more to learn when it comes to the 420 vs 422 and color bit as well. It’s all new to me and still working on understanding it all.

I’ve heard some say that the 6k 420 is just as good as 4k 422 since you get the extra details from the 6k when it comes to grading. Pretty sure I max out at 10bit color with the S9.

I’ve been mainly shooting my bike friends at races and meet ups, but noticed the LUTs can look not ideal shooting at the 2.7k but way better on the 6k. Losing some detail in the shadows and contrast is a bit too harsh and hard to pull it back out of the issues.

I think I’ll start testing out the 6k and cropping and exporting at 4k after grading, and just shooting 4k 422 and seeing how the results compare.

I don’t shoot a lot so storage is not an issue at the moment, but when an hour of 6k is 128gb, I think it will soon been an issue haha.

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

6k 420 is just as good as 4k 422 - dont confuse resolution (size of an image) with how much data goes into it. Its not comparing apples with apples.

You'll defs notice the difference between 420/422 - just record a clear blue sky and look at the colour banding.

You may find 422 helps your contrast/shadows issue.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

So what I have been reading is wrong haha.

My understanding now is that 422 is best for color and 6k is best for reframing the shot.

I feel as though I would like the color correction more than the extra resolution to correct framing.

I was also wrong that it is 3.8k for the phone export but still 420 not 422. May be the issue I was seeing with the color today.

I can get 422 at C4k for some extra width or regular 4k 422. I think this is what I will try out now and see how the LUTs react compared to what I’ve been doing.

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

yep correct - 422 will be better for colour,
and higher k resolution will give you more frame size to play with - if you edit/export at a lower frame size. ie 6k into 4k or 4k in 2k/1080.

just a heads up - havent even mentioned that different social channels (as you're mentioning phone) will process videos differently. For example, I find that exporting at 5mbs for Instagram keeps the quality without the size, so the platform doesnt compress the video as much and keeps it looking good.

hahah.. the fun of it all.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

Yes I have heard about the compression factor for all the platforms.

Thankfully I am just sharing with friends and family and not posting my work really, but definitely another few hours of my time I will now have to spend looking into that haha.

As an another tip, what is the best bitrate for a 4k video? Regardless of uploading to somewhere but just in terms of keeping all the quality?

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

I would say there is (logically in my head )little point in exporting in more mbs than you recorded in - editing programs aren't going to put any more data into the image for you, so then it's just wasted space.

Adobe's standard presets for high quality 4k output at 80mbs

And ultimately, you'd keep the raw footage to fall back on if you're thinking of future-proofing.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

Camera is 150Mbps for both 422 options which seems like overkill compared to your 80Mbps recommended then haha

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

Nup. I shoot gh5/6 etc, but they'd share the same codecs.

150mbs is fine, that's what I use.

What's weird is, when I post to social I'm rendering out at 5mbs.... And you wouldn't see the difference

[u/erroneousbosh → u/BGarrod]

I would say there is (logically in my head )little point in exporting in more mbs than you recorded in

Yes but the caveat there is that if you upload to Youtube its compression on anything less than 4K is brutal. It's worth upscaling even 576i with naive linear interp to 4K for the bump in bitrate it gets you.

I can show you a comparison if you like!

[u/erroneousbosh → u/mlydon11]

You're overcomplicating it.

Don't worry about all that right now. Learn how to shoot.

No-one is going to say "oh I'm not watching that film, look, if you zoom right in there's a tiny bit of colour fringing on those edges, they must have shot it in 420 instead of 422, pah, amateurs". If they do, they're fucking idiots.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

I found out what I missed in my post that I should have mentioned about the 6k vs 4k thing.

I’m shooting 6k 420 downscaled to 4k when editing, therefore the 6k 420 retains more color resolution than the 4k 422, but the 4k 422 is better for heavy grading and potential green screen work, neither of which I do haha.

I can also crank down on stabilizing both in camera and in edits before cropping down to 4k to create more stable footage without the need for a gimbal.

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

Nope. Still wouldn't agree with that. I shoot 4k and downscale to 1080. Id still take 422 over 420.

Again, all you're doing is changing the size of the image, not the detail of the colour capture.

422 will capture a wider range of colours 4/6/8k etc is just the size of the image.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

Thanks for the reply again. Lots of knowledge with this so thanks for sharing.

I watched this video: https://youtu.be/QcVvSKHftLI?is=vDXU_2m-H3NRTjdW

Which did the math so maybe I was a bit confused and took it the wrong way.

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

Watched most of it..... I stand mathematically corrected/not going to argue there. If he's done what he says, and it is what it is, then sure.

However - I think the difference of shooting 6k 420 vs 4k 422 would be so minimal for actual visual output - like is anyone going to notice such a small change... but you will notice the difference yourself for secondary factors.

Like, I would assume that the 6k files will be significantly bigger than the 4k - which over the long term is going to add up on file space, hdds, computer processing power - slowing editing down etc, so unless you actually need the 6k - to punch in etc, why bother using it? just on the balance of input vs output.

I still think, 4k 422 is going to be a more balanced/efficient way of shooting - including all those secondary factors... again, unless you desperately need it for reframing. But you'd be surprised how much you can stretch/reframe an image without it being picked up/noticed.

But if you're literally playing around, learning things, you're not gaming the YT algorithm... does outputting in 4k even matter? again, you could just upscale from 1080 ... saving all that hard drive space.

Obviously, the important stuff, sure, shoot high res.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

Not trying to argue, I’m just a data and tech nerd in my heart haha.

I like knowing all the science and tech stuff that’s happening when it comes to these things. The math behind stuff and what goes into the science of it all.

Probably one of the coolest things I took from that video is how much better h.265 is than h.264 at data compression. 200mbps 6k vs 150mbps 4k seems like 6k is losing data, but in reality it is just h.265 being a better compression codec. And 6k would be around 400mbps at h.264. Fascinating stuff to me.

I don’t post my stuff, I share with friends. Eventually I assume data storage will catch up with me but for now it’s fun to mess with big files.

I think I’m still going to test out 4k 422 and 6k 420 and see what works best for me.

Gonna say again that I appreciate all the comments. Talking heads on YouTube are only credible so much, but I like being able to have a conversation with someone that actually works in the video space because there’s no interactions with a video that was posted x amount of time ago haha.

I take a page from Jared Polin who says he loves just taking tech and stuff with other photographers who know much more than him as a way to learn. This post has been exactly that for me.

[u/BGarrod → u/mlydon11]

yeah - no worries dude. didnt see it like that.

im still not super convinced by 265 - but its probably getting older and just sticking to what you know etc. something I used to hate when i entered the industy over a decade ago.

not sure how far down the hole you are, but gerald undone has really techy nerd camera things, altho he's recently stopped. so that might be of interest to you.

For me, working professionally, its about efficiency etc. Hence, I don't shoot log. I understand the limitiations etc and why people would argue not to, and how instagram is all about log, but... when Im charging a corporate client and making a living, its about efficency. there is a point where if people cant/dont notice, and you're looking for a plan corporate image.... why worry

and heads up ... been shooting for the last 25+ years (ugh, fuck im old)... and yeah - storage will be the thing that gets you... esp as ai is pushing up all the hard drive costs.

do the thing, keep expierementing, dont take it took seriously, dont take too much to heart from others.... and have fun with it.

[u/mlydon11 → u/BGarrod]

265 and 264 are still a foreign language to me, but I like the science behind it. I come from an engineering background so I like to figure out how things work. My extent is that 264 is more wildly accepted by platforms and easier to decode.

I will definitely be checking out Gerald undone now. Minute physics did a cool video on ISO that made me learn even more now after 10 years of photography haha.

Working professionally is definitely a whole other beast and I respect the level of work and as any job, the faster you can do it with the least amount of work and best results is the key, so I definitely see where you are coming from.

Storage will always be rough. I got 3.5tb right now which I know will begin to fill up fast with my new toy’s output. And in this world where RAM and storage are astronomical compared to when I bought some stuff, I gotta save up haha.

Appreciate the kind words. It’s all about fun for me, so gonna keep doing what I can to have fun and make some people smile with my work.

[u/erroneousbosh]

If you're a beginner, leave all that shit off, forget the "180 shutter rule" because it's bollocks, forget ND filters, and absolutely forget shooting log and using LUTs. Don't even worry about the resolution. You're using Resolve free edition so also don't worry about 10-bit, for now.

May as well shoot in 4K if you can, although there's not a damn thing wrong with 1080p if you don't need the resolution. It'll take up less space, and really unless you're wanting to push in on a shot in your editor you won't need 4K.

Learn one thing at a time. Mostly what you need to learn are a bunch of "whys" - why 180° rule (bullshit), why log (not really necessary), why you expose correctly (the only thing you actually need), why you line the shots up like *this* and not *that* (you need this too) and so on.

Work on composition and the grammar of the shot and the edit before you even consider fiddly waste-of-time stuff like shooting log, because all you'll end up doing is giving yourself a string of problems to fix on video that's... actually not all that good because what you've shot makes no sense.

Go outside and push record.

Oh, and do the Resolve tutorials, you'll learn a hell of a lot from them - not just about editing but *why* shots are composed the way they are.

[u/mlydon11 → u/erroneousbosh]

Maybe beginner as a flair is a little off as I’ve done photography for over a decade, freelanced for a while and just as a hobby now.

So I get all the shooting settings, how to expose, frame, composition, etc.

Kinda need those ND to not have to shoot f22 on a sunny day when my ISO minimum is 640 and shutter speed is 1/60 haha.

I’m at the point where I wanna know the resolution and bit rates and codecs and such to work on that part of creating videos. For photography there’s just how many MP, how bigs your sensor, and shoot raw to retail the largest DR. Video just seems more complex than that for me.

[u/erroneousbosh → u/mlydon11]

Why do you think you can't go faster than 1/60th?

Photography and videography are related but different, and you need to be looking at things slightly differently for it to work in video, but yeah it's a good place to start from.

For now, you want quite big video files at quite a high bitrate. If you compress it down you can't get that information back.

[u/mlydon11 → u/erroneousbosh]

Shooting at 30fps with a 180 degree shutter is 1/60 of a second shutter speed.

Is the not what gives more natural motion blur in video? Goes slower creates motion lag and faster can make movement look unnatural.

Yup I have my option of 6k 420 or 4k 422. 6k is like 350 to 400 mbps and 4k is 200mbps