White Balance and Colour
Anyone who already uses a Panasonic G-series camera will be familiar with the way the GH2 renders colours. In its default standard colour, or ‘film style’ as it is called, colours are realistic, but many will prefer their images with a little more impact. Thankfully, the GH2 is laden with different colour modes, and they are all genuinely useful.
Among the standard options are the vibrant and dynamic settings. Of these, the vibrant setting adjusts the saturation of the colours in the image, whereas the dynamic setting increases the level of contrast and in turn makes the colours look more saturated than in the standard film-style mode.
The smooth setting keeps the realistic colours of the standard setting, but increases the contrast to add a little more impact. The nostalgic setting, meanwhile, decreases saturation and contrast.
One option that will be of interest to videographers is the cinema setting. This appears to darken the image and prevent blown-out highlights while increasing the contrast a little and leaving the saturation looking fairly natural. There is also a choice of three different black & white settings.
Each of the film presets can be adjusted, and there is also the option to save two user-defined film styles. If you can’t decide on the style you wish to use, there is a multi-film mode that allows three different styles to be selected. These will be applied in succession each time you take an image. While multi-film is a useful mode, it would be even better if it required just one press of the shutter to take an image and save it three times with different styles.
The GH2’s AWB does a very good job in almost every condition I tested it under. When using it under household tungsten lighting it just took the edge off the colour cast, while the tungsten setting produced a neutral white balance. Which you prefer is down to individual taste, but if you demand absolute precision then there are also custom and manual settings available.
Image: At its native sensitivity of ISO 160, the GH2 captures a great deal of fine detail and is certainly on a par with similarly specified DSLRs with APS-C-size sensors
