Olympus OM-D E-M1 II – Artistic Picture Profiles for Video

The quality of the cinema 4K video from the E-M1 II is amazing, it is just such a shame that the camera does not have a log profile or even a nice flat non-log profile to shoot with.

I was playing about with some of the more artistic profiles on the E-M1 II recently and seeing what they look like for video as opposed to JPEG stills. Here is an example, a cool moody and grainy monochrome effect which I really like:

Novation Peak | Chilled from Tim Shoebridge on Vimeo.

The grain really can play havoc with many video players and editors, there is a huge assumption in terms of technology design that much of a regular video image does not change from one frame to the next so can be compressed and not require transmission. However the unique grain structure which the E-M1 II etches into the image is constantly changing frame by frame making most compression algorithms ineffective.

The lens used in the video shoot was the Zhongyi Mitakon Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95 which I must say is my go-to lens these days for any video work on an MFT camera.