BillPryor

My GH5 wishlist would give the camera internal OIS and that 20 megapixel sensor. So far the rumored specs are nice. With OIS I could do some hand held shooting when necessary with my Nikkor lenses and Speedbooster, so that's a big incentive for me.

Very nice article. I wish that if we were discussing motion picture production we'd consider crop factors in terms of the 1.85 ratio cropped out of a vertical piece of 35mm film--ie., the "S35" crop that most people consider "full frame" when shooting movies. There are exceptions, of course, with VistaVision, and newer big sensors. Still, it seems more appropriate to me to look at, for instance, what lens you need to use on a GH4 versus what lens you'd use on an FS100 for the same shot. For many years I shot 16mm and then 2/3" chip broadcast cameras. A 25mm lens for me was reasonably close to "normal." When doing still photography with the old Nikon, a 50mm was "normal." And with the Hasselblad, the 80mm was "normal." When shooting with the FS100, I've found I use the 35mm old Nikkor as my "normal" lens, and use the same lens for the same situation on the GH4 with Speedbooster. I don't recall anybody shooting video or film a few years ago ever comparing lens focal lengths to still camera lenses, until the DSLR revolution came along. It would be nice to revise our thinking and leave the "full frame" still camera out of the equation when talking about crop factors for movie production.

I agree 100% with the article. I'm sure there's a market for a fixed lens camcorder, like TV news, etc. But nobody will use it for cinema work. All Panasonic needs to do is make the same thing but with an MFT mount. Then the world would love them again.

Thanks.

A question: Was the GH4 at 4K, UHD, or HD?

This is a great idea. I can see only one problem. Since it's not a "smart" adapter, if you use EOS lenses then you're going to be shooting wide open all the time, adjusting exposure with the ND. That's fine and I do that a lot with my Schneider variable ND when I want to shoot wide open for minimum depth of field. But what if I want to stop down to increase DOF? To do that, the adapter would have to come off, I think.

I bought a set of the Rokinon "cine" lenses for my Sony FS100. I unpacked the 35mm T1.5 first and when I checked it out on a product shot I was very impressed. It was as sharp as any lens I have, had excellent contrast and color. But then I started opening it up and it fell apart.   At T1.5 it was way too soft, and the color shifted so the whites had a slight yellowish case. The contrast also changed. At a T2-2.8 it was not as soft but still softer than f4, and the color and contrast still looked funky. Basically it is an F4 lens. Another thing is that when I compared it against my old Nikkor 35mm, which was much sharper wide open and had better color and contrast), the Rokinon was most definitely not 35mm. I didn't do any serious measuring but an educated guess says it's really 40-42mm.   I returned the set (24, 35 and 85) back to B&H and went into debt for more Zeiss glass.    Since then I have read more than one post and had email from another person saying that apparently there is some serious variance in manufacturing. Some people get good copies, some get bad. I obviously had a bad one. If this is true, I guess I could have returned the lens and tried another. However, one other person I know has the 35 and says his is soft when opened beyond F4 too. I didn't check out the 24 and 85, just sent them all back.    It was as big disappointment because I had read so many positive things about these lenses from reputable sources. I did read one lone comment about the color and contrast but ignored it since literally hundreds of posts praised the lenses. I guess it's the luck of the draw. I don't want to come out and condemn these lenses because so many people are happy with them. I'm willing to believe that I got a bad one.