Micro Color Panel Review (as a colorist) | DaVinci Resolve

but there's one thing one issue that I'm furious about where the heck is the lock button hey guys I'm Danny and in this video let's talk about the new micro color panel by Blackmagic design and I have it right here so I didn't want to release an initial review because I think that this is one of the tools that you have to really get used to in order to properly use it so when it's right fresh out the box I don't think that I can drop a review on all the buttons and everything maybe physically can but for the Practical use case I can't really say much about that but after using it for almost 1 month I think that I'm ready to drop my review on this as a professional colorist so to give you a bit of context before this I was using the older micro panel and because it was smaller and I wasn't ready to upgrade to a mini panel yet but since I'm in the process of upgrading to the mini panel this new micro panel has been released so I thought why not I can just keep the same small profile with the additional functions in this new micro panel all right let's start off by talking about the physical appearance of the new micro panel so I'm going to unplug this and you can see that from the front to the back everything is made out of plastic instead of the on the old panel it's everything everything is metal so it's definitely a lot lighter and a lot plasti than the older models so I what I have here is actually a basis laptop stand in order to prop up the panel a bit so that it's not too flat on my table and I don't have to use a external laptop stand so this is very useful if you want the panel to be sitting a little bit upright when you're doing your work on top of the micro panel you will also see an iPad stand and you can put the iPad here if you want a second display or you can also put your stylus here as I've seen some other colorist has been using it like this and this iPad slot also signals to us the targeted users for this new panel which are people that want to edit on the go on an iPad and bring it around so that it has to be light enough instead of the heavy metal finishing on the previous panels so it also has Bluetooth function which you can connect very easily I don't have to show you that and but what I'm doing here is actually connecting it to a wire so I've done both types of connection and they seem to be fine even the Bluetooth you won't experience any lag at all so the another thing that I want to talk about is the battery life on this micro panel because this panel unlike the other panels actually has a battery built into it so that you don't have to plug it into an iPad if you want to use it that way but the issue comes that I don't have a battery life indicator to know how long this uh panel can actually last so I'm not sure how black magic design intended for us to check on the battery life of this panel okay moving on to the wheels the color wheels right so comparing it with the older panel right here the wheels are a lot smaller and a lot lighter although the middle Rings the ball track balls are actually more or less the same but the wheels are the biggest difference because if you see the profile on these new Wheels it's actually lower than the balls the track balls okay and this is something that I don't really like because it's very easy when I'm moving the wheels to accidentally move the track balls which is quite annoying actually I do prefer if the wheels are actually higher a bit and more metallic on the older panel all right but something similar about this new panel is that this wheels are also magnetic so they are removable in case you want to clean your track ball okay and after using the wheels for a month or so I realized that because they are so light so it's very easy to exaggerate your adjustment that's why you have to be super sensitive with them super delicate in order to slowly slowly adjust and and push the colors and they don't really spin around so they comparing it to the previous panel which you can spin the wheel and it does have some inertia some uh Force to it but in this new Wheels they actually stick and so this is definitely a different feeling from the previous panel but I'm not sure I do still prefer the previous panel in terms of these uh wheels and also the track balls so moving on to the top of the panel we have new knobs which are a lot shorter but the feeling of it is much tighter than the previous panel and they also click same like the previous panel to reset and you can drag this like this so the fact that they are shorter means that you have to reach for it more so s to say so you're are touching a smaller uh smaller knob compared to the long knob which you can just put your hand on the side here so like same like the real I think that the smaller knob gives you a smaller profile but then it's a lot harder a lot less comfortable in to make the adjustments to use them physically now let's talk about the buttons so if you notice it's a different orientation from the previous panel where we have our disable and bypass on the right side instead of the left and also the loop button which is move around and your offset button is also move from the middle to the top over here so I guess they did this in order to standardize the number of buttons on each side which is more pleasing but then for users who are more familiar with the previous panels you have to get used to the disable and the bypass on the other side instead of here even undo and redo everything they move it to that side so over here we you have two buttons instead of three buttons in the older panels all right to show you why I don't actually like that these buttons are located here instead of here in the old panels everything all the buttons are located more or less on the right side but now we have some like the bypass and disable or the undo and redo which I use a lot on the left side so if I'm using a stylist usually I will have my other hand on my keyboard here so my left hand doesn't have to leave the keyboard at all I can do all my uh shortcuts and everything over here while my right hand holding stylus will be moving around the buttons on the right so now that I have new buttons on my left side I actually have to move my left hand in order to reach for the buttons or my right hand is going to go over to the other side which is very non-intuitive last time I can just click on over here move up and down up and down now my right hand have to go all the way to the left in order to click on the buttons or I have to use two hands and move up and down which is uh maybe something I have to get used to but it's definitely a lot more intuitive in the older panels where only only my right hand moves up and down so before we move on actually another thing that I forgot to talk about for the knobs is that instead of a three three Tre Tre orientation for the knobs now they came with a four four for orientation so if you're used to having the saturation on the right side the first knob on the right side now instead you will see that it's replaced by the Highlight which is the first one on this right hand side uh configuration so that happened to me quite a lot if I want to reach for the saturation knob which is the first knob on the right side instead I reach for the highlights knob so I had to get used to it a little bit all right back to the buttons so for each button in this new panel we actually have clickable Keys clickable buttons instead of the rubbery buttons on our on the older panels so I do in fact prefer these clickable buttons because they are very tacky and it's very clear when you click them instead on the older buttons where you only have a very rubbery kind of press so you're not quite sure if you click on them or not so this one it's l lot better on the Feld itself so Blackmagic design has also added a few new buttons to this panel which are something like the cursor the select add node add window and add key frame and the most important of all is the shift up and shift down button so with each button you actually get two to three functions with the shift up or the shift down but the additional functions or the hidden functions are not stated on each button itself so you have to go through this manual in order to find out what the hidden functions are the reason behind why they didn't want to label the additional functions on the buttons itself is so that it won't get over clouded and too complicated for anyone to use so I find this additional functions actually quite useful but you have to get used to them you have to know what is behind each button what is the shift up function for each button and what is the shift down function for each button in order to fully maximize the use for it if not you're only going to be using it for the buttons that it is labeled for so this requires you to spend time with it and really get used to this panel in order to maximize everything and besides that we also have a user button over here which you can map to your own function or any key that you want and there is also shift up for user and also shift down for user so you have three custom functions that you can map to this button so I'm quite happy with the Improvement on the buttons itself and I'm not too sure about the orientation of the new buttons because I'm still getting used to it but there's one thing one issue that I'm very very Furious about which is where the heck is the lock button don't you guys use lock don't you guys use the Shadow midtones and highlights Blackmagic design has decided to remove the lock button which was present on the older panel so you can see that we have a lock button over here so I use I do use the shadow function quite a lot and this lock button is very important to me because sometimes I just want to kill the blacks in the shadows so they actually located it in the shift up and offset so this is how you can access the lock wheels and even if you're in the primaries lock wheel which I am in right now is as you can see on my screen it doesn't show you that I'm in lock wheels last time if there is a loog button if I press on it it actually lights up so I know that I'm in Long wheels so right now it doesn't indicate to me at all so I'm not sure whether I'm I'm in my long wheels or I'm in my color wheels which controls the LIF gamma again so this is very annoying and they didn't write the last time so I'm not sure why they can't do the same thing on this panel instead of a lock wheel we actually got a auto color wheel which does anyone even use that right so this auto color can actually be switched out for lock wheel so now that there is no lock button whenever I want to go into my lock wheels I do have to shift up and offset in order to enter that so these two keys are set so far apart they are literally the most bottom and the most top keys so sometimes I might press on the wrong key you user offset which doesn't bring me into the lock wheels so I'm not sure why they are doing this and it's very very annoying in order to switch into the lock wheels so in addition to having to use my left hand in order to access this buttons If I don't want to reach over now there's also another thing which is very annoying this damn lock WS all right let's move on so as you can see for each button for each key there will be a back light to it and if you get the panel right off the bat right out of the box the key lights might be set to 99% and you can go into your DCI resolve preferences and actually dim down the light in my user control panels key backl so I have it set to 15% right now so before this at 99% it's going to be super bright which I don't really want because I'm working in a dark room so I have it set to 15% in in order to minimize on the brightness for it so I'm very excited about the fact that you can control your power windows on the new panel using the shift up tool but there are a few issues that I've experienced using it so let's say for this one I'm going to fully use the micro panel without using my stylus or my mouse all right so I'm going to create a window for this please select a power window add windows so you can create different windows for now I'm going to create a circular window so I just have to click on the add window button and by shift up I can move this window around with my right track ball I can also resize it with the wheels and the reaction is a bit slow as you can see I have to do multiple turns in order to increase it to the size of my frame right so that's a bit annoying also why not I just use my stylist and I can just very quickly drag it to whatever size I one so instead I have to turn it a few times on this uh wheel and also track Bo that's uh an annoying thing about this but you can also control the rotation and the aspect of it with the middle wheel and lastly you can control the softness with the left wheel all right okay you can actually reset that which is another annoying thing why can't I just reset set this to zero right there's no button for that so you have to move it back something like this I don't know right something like this in order to move it back in position and let's position this over her face so in order to track for this window I can shift down and click on ADD window then I can track for her face without having to move into this tracker page I can track her face very quickly so in previous panels you don't actually have a shift up button in order to move the window around but this backs the question would it be faster if I just use a stylus in order to draw a window that is uh debatable question right because using the wheels here everything moves very slow so I'm not too happy about how it reacts like this and another thing that I find a little Annoying about this new feature that it doesn't include is that if I'm in a split screen mode I don't actually get to see the outline of the window so the window here actually closes the outline I have to switch it back to power window and it moves me out of the split screen mode in order to just see the outline I'm not sure why they can't include the outline in this split screen so that I don't have to jump back and forth if I want to do comparison between uh two images or I want to match a reference so so although I can still control it but I can't really see the outline of it so if the effect is very minor something like this I can't see what it's doing at all if I close my gallery still can't see where it's moving right so you can see actually it's over here so it's slightly annoying but I hope that there's a good reason behind why is this uh happening why do I have to always switch back to a full screen mode in order to see the outline of my power window so I think Blackmagic design missed the mark on some of the features that they can actually add to this micro color panel in order to improve it even further even more practical even more functional and one of it is that I still can control my heue versus Hue heel versus saturation and Hue versus luminance curves on this micro panel so I still would have to get a mini panel in order to make those adjustments without having to use a mouse or a stylus so what I'm thinking at the moment is to pair this new microl panel with a loop deck CT so I'm going to get a test unit and try to configure it to match to complement this microc color panel for something things like the lock button I do need that a lot and also maybe the Hue versus Curves in order to use them both without having to upgrade to a mini panel which takes up a lot of desk space as you can see with this top down view I don't have much desk space at the moment even if I upgrade to a bigger desk it will still be a bit limited if I have the mini panel in front of my keyboard and I have to have a little bit of space here for my race to rest so for the moment comparing the microc color panel itself with the mini panel I would much rather get the mini panel for professional works because you get really heavy and nice to use wheels and also a very nice build with a lot more functionality if you're doing professional work and if you already have the old micro panel I don't think you need to upgrade to this one for its functionality because you can do a lot of it with a good stylus but if you need portability then that's the only reason to get this new microc color panel but if you don't have a panel at all this microc color panel is a very good choice to start to get used to how to grade with a panel so that's it for this video These are most of my opinions and my thoughts on the new microc color panel if I do have additional thoughts I will drop them down in the comments and yeah this is once in a blue moon event which where uh Blackmagic design released a new panel for the color page so I do hope that they do release another mini panel and an upgraded mini panel pannel in the future but this is definitely right for the Target users which are users that want to edit to color on the go with an iPad of course but yeah so it's a pretty long video and I'll see you guys in the next one bye-bye

Channel: Danny Gan

Views: 6,216

Keywords: danny gan, colorist, color grading, davinci resolve tutorial, color grade commercial, commercial colour grade, davinci resolve, commercial color grading, how to color grade, davinci resolve color grading, color correction tutorial, color grade davinci resolve 18, film look, film color grade davinci resolve, film colour grading, micro color panel

Id: jF4O36FnkOM

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024