galenb

The results are up at:

http://www.mytherapy.tv/lab/

For some reason I can't access the video on Vimeo. Only through their website.

If I may critique the video a bit: I found it very disappointing. I'm sorry if this offends anyone but really, this was basically the equivalent of just telling us, "In our tests we found this to be true."I wasn't really interested in knowing what camera they choose, I just wanted to see them compared. I thought the whole point was to show us how each camera performed? All we saw was the winning camera's footage for each test. Honestly, I don't really care which one you thought the winner was, I wanted to see how each camera performed so I could decide on my own. Ironically, during the video he even says that we should stop worrying about all the specs of each camera and just choose the one that looks good to us. Well, how are we supposed to know if you don't even show us the footage?

[quote name='MaxAperture Films' timestamp='1351265671' post='20375']
I would recommend trying a sharpness test with both cameras set at 0, rather than -2 and -5. We don't know if the GH2 and GH3 are artificially softening the image at the lowest value or just removing all in-camera sharpening altogether. Comparing both at 0 should increase the liklihood of a fair comparison (no softening or sharpening) assuming Panasonics implementation methodology has not changed.
[/quote]

I was just about to mention this too. with sharpness set to -5 it actually softens the image. This is what Julian found out with his tests. At least, that's the way it appeared.

came and went. To bad.

[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Alright, sorry for being snotty but I didn't really care for your tone. I don't understand why you are talking about 24p @ 4K though. My comment was referring Andrew's original comment about how the 1DC lacks 25p (in any resolution. it's just totally gone) and how Canon seems to be taking some kind of stand on 25p. As if it has no future or something. I was saying, if they are going to get rid of 25p, please oh please get rid of 30p because I hate it. And then you said something about how 24p is the only option for 4k? I don't know how that ties into what I was talking about?[/font][/color]

[quote name='hmcindie' timestamp='1351152563' post='20259']
You do realize that in 4k you only have 24p with the 1DC? I guess not.
[/quote]
You do realize that I realize that?

I thought it was really cool. Nice use of time laps set to music. I was definitely entertained!

[quote]EOSHD remarks: Because 4K is for now mainly a cinematic standard not a broadcast one, the drive to standardise cinema to 24p all over the world is why I think Canon are reluctant to add 25p to the 4K mode, despite of being one of the strongest manufacturers out there for 24/25p switchable 1080p video on DSLRs. I’m all for global standards but 25p exists for a good reason. For as long as PAL countries use 50hz electrical lighting the technical reasons for shooting 25p in the field are relevant. Even if you sync the shutter (i.e. 1/50) you can not avoid strobing or flickering under many common practical lights and street lighting when shooting 24p. Mike remarks that the 1D C will benefit journalists, cameramen (in-house, freelance or indie) and wedding videographers – but the lack of 4K 25p is a serious issue for these users, and a massive workflow hassle when mixing 4K 24p footage from the 1D C with 25p footage from other cameras.[/quote]

Not only that but they have seen fit to put 30p in the camera along side 24p and 60p. Can anyone tell me why that is? When everyone here in the states shoots 24p, even for commercials and TV shows and then has to convert to 30p for broadcast... What's the point of 30p? Honestly, if Canon is going to start taking a stand against 25p then why not 30p as well? Nothing looks less "Cinematic" and more "Video" in my eyes then 30p and the rest of the industry would probably agree too. I don't think that enough people who would by that camera actually need to shoot in 30p. And honestly, if you were shooting ENG and photos wouldn't there be a better camera to take into the field then one that costs $15,000? I'd be afraid of damaging it or something.

I'm just saying, if you're going to get rid of 25p get rid of 30p too.

[quote name='yellow' timestamp='1350941912' post='20136']
You can test if Vegas and Media Player Classic handle the GH3 / Canon MOV's correctly with the test files in this zip:

[url="http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/fullrangetest.zip"]http://www.yellowspa...llrangetest.zip[/url]

If you import the 16-235_flagon.mp4 into Vegas and/or Media Player Classic as long as you see the 16 & 235 text rather than just white and black horizontal bars then the GH3 / Canon MOV's are getting handled correctly and contrast should be correct, shadows will appear less crushed, highlights will appear less blown, depending on decent exposure at time of shooting.

I've created MOV's and mp4's which both contain identical h264 streams but found the MOV's can crash some apps so created mp4's as well. The 16 - 235 in the file name relates to the text, not the luma levels within the file confusingly, they are encoded full luma range.

The 16 text should be RGB value 16 and the 235 text should be RGB value 235 when checked with a pipet / color sampling tool.
[/quote]

I'm on a Mac running Mountain Lion and I see everything fine in QuicktimeX, Quicktime 7 and Premiere Pro 6. I just tested it out and everything looks fine. Apparently they fixed the gamma bug in Mountain Lion?

[quote]My question is: is there any reason not to consider the BMCC for learning/getting started in such a field?[/quote]

Yes. The BMCC is going to be a great camera for shooting beautiful wedding's. Perhaps eventually even the "best' camera. In the hands of an experienced photography pro who knows the in's and out's of cinematography yes, this is going to be a great camera. In the hands of a newbie/novice, prosumer... probably not so much.

I feel like Cinematography is an extension of photography. This is a bare-bones Cinematography tool and as such, not very friendly to beginners. You would be better suited to something that was more forgiving and allowed you to take your time learning the craft.

A well equipped Video DSLR is going to be a better camera to learn on by far. It's pretty easy to get amazing looking shots once you lean the basics. I would recommend something like a Panasonic GH2 or the Canon t2i - t3i. They are some of the cheapest but best cameras out there. With the money you save on the camera, you can go and spend $2000 on lenses, good tripod, mic and audio recorder and some kind of simple rig. Heck, for the money you would spend on a BMCC, you could get two really nice DSLR setups and be able to shoot those all important "Multi cam" shots that you see in wedding videos. ;-)

Seriously though, I'm totally lusting after a BMCC and once they figure out the issues and bugs they currently have, I would love to get one. But right now my current camera is more then enough for me. I would never recommend the BMCC to someone who was just starting out. It's seems like it's a very capable tool but I feel like you need to be experienced in not just shooting video, but "Cinematography". If that makes sense

[quote name='Julian' timestamp='1350919321' post='20121']
That is because I mixed 25p footage (originals) with the 24p footage (edited in resolve) into a 24p project in Vegas...
[/quote]

LOL! Yeah, It's quite simple to understand when you write it out like that. I guess I didn't need to write out my whole thought process like that. Sorry. :-)

Okay... That's just weird... If you look at the fare video, it's the un-graded clips that come from the camera that are messed up but the ones from Resolve seem just fine... Usually it's the post processing that can botch up footage. And even stranger is that those clips are 50fps right? if they are being conformed to 24, the results should simply be slow motion. Maybe it is the framerate conversion and it's just that Resolve knows how to properly handle it but Vegas doesn't know what to do. I guess it's possible that Vegas is trying fix the framerate conversion by frame blending instead of just conforming the rate. Maybe Vegas thinks you are time-stretching or something?

You know, you could just export an XML of the edit in Vegas beck to Resolve and do the final output to H.264 from there.

[edit]

Yeah, now that I look at the footage frame by frame I'm thinking you are right. I bet Vegas is treating the raw footage as if you wanted to time-streatch it. I'll bet too that Resolve knows how to properly conform 50 to 24p and that Vegas thinks it's being clever by frame-blending.

[quote name='Julian' timestamp='1350854826' post='20094']
Some real life bricks, walls and fences.. and moire.
1080p25 @ 1/50s[/quote]

Hmm. You know I was looking at this video and noticed something strange about the motion. There's this ghosting going on. I thought it might be interlacing at first but the more I look at it, the more stumped I am. I think this making the moire even worse. Do you remember what mode this was shot in?

[img]http://www.eoshd.com/comments/uploads/inline/20711/5084df7876dba_Ghosting.jpg[/img]

Oh, I meant to ask you, do you ever use any kind of stabilizer like a flycam? I'm wondering how you get your handheld footage to look so jitter free?

Why do ND filters vary in price so widely? You can literally pay as little as $10 and as much as $120?! I have an old fader ND that I've had for years. Don't remember how much I paid for it. Maybe $20 or something. It's to small to fit on some of my larger lenses so I've been looking to pick up a new small set. However, it's like hell trying to figure out which one to get! I really don't need absolute optical purity. I also keep getting conflicting advice from all my other photography friends. One guy says to get this one brand that only cost about $16 each, another says nothing under $100 is worth it. And it seems looking on Amazon, they are just flooded with $10 cheapo filters. I'm totally lost...

Yeah, [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Voigtlander 25mm. that[/font][/color]'s the lens. Gotta save up.

Those are really nice videos Dale! I've never really cared for wedding videos to much but you've caused me to take a closer look. I'm amazed because I've never really thought of wedding videos as filmmaking but really, they can be just as creative as anything else. One thing I keep wondering as I watch these: Do you ever have clients that see these and say, "Hey, there's not dialog?" or, "You missed when I said..."? Are they mostly happy with what they get in the end?

After working in commercials for 20 years I've gained this really negative toward clients. Most seem to be actively trying to make everything to look bland and boring. Do you ever run up against this? Like, they see the finished product and say, "Well, it certainly is... Ah... Interesting?"

I know a few people who shoot weddings with a 5DkmII and a 7D or T2i as B cam. The way I think of it is that a wedding is kind of like a beauty or fashion shoot; It often looks much better with a nice shallow Depth of field. While it's possible to do this with a GH2, You'll need to buy the right lens and that might cost you quite a bit. Whereas on a 5DMkII or MkIII you can get away with an f/3.5 zoom lens and still have nice shallow depth of field. On the other hand, the 5D is going to cost more initially so maybe it balances out in the end?

I would normally go for the GH2 when shooting indy film but with weddings in churches, I don't know. You don't usually have the option of lighting the scene. Just something to think about.

[quote name='Julian' timestamp='1350741223' post='20040']
This is where the GH3 starts to shine, although I'm curious how a hacked GH2 bit bitrate similar to the GH3 would hold up.

This GH2 footage was around 20Mbit. The GH3 is 72Mbit All-i (thats what i'm shooting in all the time btw).
[/quote]

OMG! I totally forgot that you were comparing the GH3 to an un-hacked GH2! So Yes, since the GH2 image is only "falling apart" due to the low bitrate of the codec, a hacked GH2 will probably look similar at the same bitrate. And it can only get better from there since the GH2 can go way beyond 75Mbps. My GH1 is currently hacked at around 75Mbps.

[quote][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Dialling down the sharpness on the GH3 to -5 has a pretty big effect. More so than -2 on the GH2 it seems.[/font][/color][/quote]

Yes indeed! So it looks like Panasonic decided to give us a lot more control range with -5 to +5. It's looking more like -10 though. ;-) This is good though. I have a feeling this is going to stump a lot of people who get the GH3 and dial everything down and get mushy images. I'm really glad you were smart enough to double check this. I don't know that I would have thought of that. I'd like to see the lamp test again with the sharpness dialed to 0 too. Actually if you could pan slightly and post a video that would give us a better perception of any moire issues. I have a feeling it might come down to dialing the sharpness to some optimum level to avoid moire.

[quote]Vibrant, really? I thought Smooth/Nostalgic were the best modes to get the most out of the GH2 (dynamic range etc).[/quote]

Well, it's obviously pretty subjective. I first saw this latitude trick on youtube done by a guy named Drew.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPHIEU1X1Bo[/media]

[size=2]I don't recommend watching this video right now though. It's really long and he kind of rambles on a bit as he meanders through the topic.[/size]

He recommended "Vibrant" as the profile that captured the most latitude. I think for these tests you just have to make sure they are set to the same profile. Otherwise, there will always be some question as to wether the test is fair. We are just trying to figure out how the cameras compare to each other. Basically, Moire issues aside, I think a hacked GH2 (@75Mbps) and the GH3 are in a dead heat with latitude. I have a feeling that the "Wide dynamic range" listed in the marketing literature is just that: Marketing literature. I have a feeling that they just decided to mention it because they didn't realize it was as important as it is to people's buying decisions till now.

These are awesome test by the way Julian. I totally appreciate you taking the time to do these tests. really answering a lot of questions here. Thank you so much!

Oh weird... Is it just me or does the GH3 just lack an kind of clear focal plane? And, this is a manual lens so it's not an autofocus bug or something right? I can't see how a camera company like Panasonic could let this go out the door as a finished product. Even if it's only close to being finished, it can't see anyone from Panasonic putting this thing into people's hands and expecting them to be impressed by it. Something is seriously wrong here.

Can you do one of those famous depth of field shots where you take a picture of a ruler or measuring tape extending out from the camera? That way, at least something along the ruler should be in focus. Oh and could you stop down the lens a bit too?

Nice little bit about the BMCC at John Brawley's site:

http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/handheld-with-a-bmcc-behind-the-scenes-with-puberty-blues/

And a little bit of footage:

http://vimeo.com/44653311#

Yeah as a general rule, 1/40th or 1/50th actually is even better. The idea is that in order to emulate a 180 degree shutter on a motion picture camera, you need to set your shutter speed to twice that of your frame rate. So, at 24 fps, it should be 1/48th but since we don't have 1/48th, 1/50th is closest. To tell you the truth, I rarely follow this rule but whatever. Maybe I should. ;-)

As far as what to shoot with the GH3, I've seen your videos and they look good so I trust you. :-) Just putting the camera in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing is worlds ahead of what we've seen so far ('Genesis' excluded of course). Obviously shoot in manual mode. ;-) Shoot some locked off stuff of high detail subjects (Shoot at f/11 or higher to get the crispest detail and stress the codec), Shoot some people in a public place like a square, shoot some low light shots. Maybe shoot a resolution chart with both the GH2 and GH3. I'd also like to see how much better the dynamic range is too. I was thinking that maybe if you shot someone inside a house standing next to a window during the day, If you expose for the window then we could see how much detail you can pull from the darker areas of the image in post while still maintaining the view out the window. I think that would be very telling.

Thats all I can think of at the moment...

So, that's if you're grading in AE but what if you just want to grade in Premiere? I just discovered Colorista recently and I think I like it. :-) Has anyone tried setting the sequence to "maximum bit depth"? Does anyone know if this is the same as setting a comp to 16 bit in AE? You might be able to get around the whole transcoding to a higher bit depth codec thing if that's the case. But also, I don't really understand doing that in the first place? Aren't most grading platforms 32 bit internally anyway?

Oh man! Now I'm really on it! Now that I've really looked at the images and compared similar images to other cameras (the bookcase image, is in most of the camera reviews) I can see that it's obviously some kind of user error or a lens issue. The bookcase was shot at f8 there is no reason why is should be as soft and mushy as that. There are even some shots where there is simply no clear focal plane at all (look at shot #33 of the pipe coming out of the brick wall). Even comparing images to those of lesser cameras like the LX7, you can see all the shots seem soft and blurry. In the bookcase shot, look at the "Arizona Highways" book with the little image of the waterfall. Now go look at Sony RX100 review and see how they compare. I can't see how the GH3 could be this bad. It has to be either a photographer error or a lens error.

Weird... For some reason, if I click on the links I get a "forbidden" error. So I just went to the sight to look at them. I have to say, these do not look impressive to me at all. There are some that look downright sub-par. Especially the "Firebread" food cart image. Take a look at the noise and mushy details in that one. Oh, and take a look at the alley shot with the hanging bicycle. Look at that weird salt and pepper noise all over the image... I've never even seen that kind of noise... Ugh. Oh what have Panasonic done to our beloved GH range...

Oh what the... I never would have guessed! It makes so much sense though. Yeah, you are totally polarizing with ND filter... Man, I never even thought about how that might affect skin... Oh and those eye reflections that everyone loves. So, the regular non-fader ND's don't have this issue then. Okay, that's good to know. So you're mainly just using a matte box for holding 4x4 filters. I see.

A trolls paradise! It doesn't help when the head of the heap is a mean and nasty ogre too.

Anyway, @Germy - What do you mean by "gamma fix" in premiere? I haven't heard about this.

About transcoding and all that: I don't really get it. Last night I spent hours pouring over footage I have with banding. if I drop the .mts files into Premiere they seem to work fine and look like I expect. If I run it through 5DtoRGB, with BT709 and broadcast range selected, and then into Premiere there is only a slight difference in contrast but it basically looks exactly the same. I realize that for the most part, since I'm using Premiere, there really isn't any reason to use 5DtoRGB since the whole point was to transcode into a format that your editor can use... But seeing at Premiere seems to be fine with AVCHD... Anyway, forgoing that part of the argument; in 5DtoRGB, if I choose BT709 and full range, back in Premiere it looks washed out (like I was expecting) but I noticed that once it's graded back to something that resembles the original, there seems to be less banding... It's still there but it seems to be pushed into ranges that don't show as much or something... with the 'broadcast range' files, there are clear lines of banding but with the 'full range' files, it looks more like codec crud then banding. And it seems as though there is a bit more latitude with full range! Maybe I'm just fooling myself but it seems like it's 'full range' that fixes the banding to some extent. Am I totally off base here?