Photo/video settings

[DSheppard]

Hi All! Sorry if this has been asked and answered a million times already but what's the best settings for a flat look so I can edit in post production using Lightroom and Final Cut Pro X? Im sure I read somewhere before about video quality where parts of the footage was sharp and others were really soft and was resolved by having sharpness +1 or -1 (can't remember which?)

 

[halley]

Yes, it's been asked and answered a million times already. Spend a little time reading the existing posts. In short, it depends what you want to do.

A lot of people advise a "flat look" for grading, but I just can't see it in the numbers or results. Reducing your output levels will result in color or luminance quantization. This might be useful for strong dramatic LUT results but does not render a faithful scene well at all. Destroying color data to flatten it, then trying to achieve accurate color later, is not going to work. Reducing sharpness on the Mavic in particular will engage an anti-noise function and create overly compressed fuzzy trees.

My advice is 0 or +1 for sharpness, so as to avoid the noise-reduction and over-compression of the data; you need to keep the existing edge data if you want details in the final video. My advice for color grading is to find the built-in profile that most closely matches the look you want to achieve in the final, and then use a gentle hand if you edit colors in the video production.

 

[4wd]

If you have Lightroom use RAW for photos and for flat-looking video try the D-Log with style settings on default zero.
Lock the white balance either on preset sunny/cloudy or manually around 7000.
Changing white balance later is easy but not if it's shifting about due to being on Auto.
I find D-log now gives pretty nice results with modest increase in contrast and saturation.
D-Log isn't only to create odd-looking effects with LUTs.
It's a nice neutral start point if you prefer to make the video look how you want rather than a preset look DJI baked in.