tosvus

Tweaked - less yellow/orange saturation in the mids.
 

Why not make two versions? Fine, sell this to ENG - then make a slightly different version with a mft mount for filmmakers that want to swap out lenses..

​No point in stooping to a common tactic like that - I have great MFT lenses and would like to utilize those.. I also know a lot of people wanting to run Speedboosters etc - it opens up light gathering abilities and DoF possibilities, compared to whatever the built in zoom on this thing can do. Also, that way, the glass is separated out, so you don't pay for it when all you need is a camera, you can get better quality lenses, and if you want a better camera, you are not locked into spending more money than necessary again..
Not sure why you take offense with a simple comment about having two versions being preferable, but maybe you are just having a crappy day.
 

​No point in stooping to a common tactic like that - I have great MFT lenses and would like to utilize those.. I also know a lot of people wanting to run Speedboosters etc - it opens up light gathering abilities and DoF possibilities, compared to whatever the built in zoom on this thing can do. Also, that way, the glass is separated out, so you don't pay for it when all you need is a camera, you can get better quality lenses, and if you want a better camera, you are not locked into spending more money than necessary again..
Not sure why you take offense with a simple comment about having two versions being preferable, but maybe you are just having a crappy day.
 

Why not make two versions? Fine, sell this to ENG - then make a slightly different version with a mft mount for filmmakers that want to swap out lenses..

I don't want to come across as being self-serving with this, but I work at one of the retailers that received pre-release firmware to test on the GH4. There are "reasons" V-LOG-L is not part of the v2.2 update, but I can assure you, Panasonic would not have let us release the footage we shot with it if they weren't planning on actually bringing it to the GH4. We tested it in some fairly low-light conditions and, yes, it is noisy, but the footage was still a dream to work with in post compared to CineD.
Here is a link to a basic before/after color grade test I did (sorry if the colors are "dodgy" ;-) ): https://youtu.be/AhPK56Ii5sw
And our full presentation: https://youtu.be/_aEMUDQlRFE
Lens used was a Cooke 40mm t/2.3 2x anamorphic.
Again, really not trying to come across as self-serving or spammy here, just wanting to contribute to the conversation.

This is a rehersal of the norwegian entry in Europe's biggest song competition (ESC) where every country once a year submit a contestant to represent their country. Last years winner host the following year. The show is seen live on tv throughout europe by approx 600 million people and is one of the biggest tv-shows here. Audience watching the show live in the hall is about 20 000 people. After every country's had their go, each country vote and submit their countrys points and its all added up to decleare the winner. In 1974 Abba won with Waterloo so this contest have rocketed some carriers. My country Norway has won a couple of times and in putting the show on takes a lot of combined efforts. Your observations regarding tv vs audience is true btw. Its all done for tv, however, being there is quite fin and spectacular. Especially for us interested in the technique and such. Its a massive machinery. 

​If you look closely at the BTS video around the 44 second mark, you can see that she's performing for a bunch of cardboard cut outs in an empty arena. I guess the priority really is the tv audience.

it's even worse than that. She has to turn around to follow the camera so at times she has her back to the audience. I guess the priority is the tv audience.

It's funny, without all of the glitter and camera moves it's just a girl singing stationary on the stage. Pretty boring to watch live I would assume.

Just thought to report on new firmware availlable (hadn't come across it yet around here, I just happened to stumble upon it myself as I regularly visit their page (incl. at the end of this post).
What's new in Blackmagic Camera Setup 2.1?

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
    New Blackmagic Camera Setup software     Adds support for more frame guide options     Adds Japanese and Chinese language menu support     Holding down MENU will bypass Dashboard and go straight into settings     Peaking state is remembered after power cycle Blackmagic Cinema Camera
    New Blackmagic Camera Setup software     Adds lossless compressed RAW support     Adds support for more frame guide options     Holding down MENU will bypass the Dashboard     Peaking state is remembered after power cycle ~ https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/family/professional-cameras
[UPD 10 APR 2015] ACTUAL VERSION 2.3* https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/ad22dd8b8478486da80392d8b230d7c4
[UPD 01 JUN 2015] ACTUAL VERSION 2.4* https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/9e1fa7d6a85c4925a782c304089f9381
[UPD 08 JUL 2015] ACTUAL VERSION 2.5* https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/566fc3dfd31444bdb77d53d1277ec963
[UPD 18 AUG 2015] ACTUAL VERSION 2.6* https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/ecea966625724017b4739915b8603133
[UPD 11 SEP 2015] ACTUAL VERSION 2.7* https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/63affb6a84b64ffd84ae9b220abd5830
[UPD 07 OCT 2015] ACTUAL VERSION 2.8* https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/cac66e2bd33d4ac4af767c2bb3aecaa6
* UPD doesn't affect BMPCC

​I think the problem I that Canon have shown themselves to be very cynical with lower priced cameras in the past.. Withholding features to protect their own high end equipment won't win them any favor with the majority of visitors to this site. By all means though, if the can come out with a price competitive camera for once, that would be great!!

You probably need to think about what things are most important to you. As people have mentioned, the D5300 is probably the best budget solution to combat moire. I'm not so convinced there is that much practical difference in terms of low-light compared to the GH3, unless you shoot very specialized, demanding scenes. You may prefer the colors from the Nikon. I think that's the positives for the D5300, except possibly AF speed if you plan on using that a lot. In all other regards, for video, the GH3 will win hands down. (usability, features, codec, stability, robustness, weather-sealing etc). If you prefer to use manual glass, the m43 cameras are great for that, and you can even get a speedbooster (maybe a cheaper one first, and save up for a good one!). Some people feel using this and say Nikon lenses gives a less clinical look than using m43 lenses, and it will allow shallower depth of fields for when you want that & equalize any low light advantage the D5300 may have. The Panasonic G6 could even be a good alternative. Think about how you want to deal with audio. The Gh3 has headphone jack, which is hugely helpful if you plan to record audio straight into the camera.  If you plan to use an external recorder and sync in post, not a big deal, of course.

​Yes I saw that comment from Olympus.
They are right and they're wrong.
Pana, Sony, Samsung do need to generate 4K content for their TVs.
However my question to Olympus is do you see the potential in great 1080p? BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T EVEN DONE THAT YET!

You're both taking Olympus' poor video performance as proof of the entire m4/3 system sucking. Ever tried the GH4? BlackMagic Pocket?

​Incredibly well.
http://vimeo.com/115516762

not sure it will look all that great without a lens though  :)

Don't be expecting an Andrew Reid review here! These are my quick thoughts....

An FS7 landed on my desk yesterday for a music video shoot.

The camera is built like a rock and the grip is very comfortable. Shoulder mounting was pretty nifty. I had a brief go of shooting things round the office - yep, got it!

We set up the band performance scene in a derelict swimming baths inside a lunatic asylum estate. The roof had fallen in, so plenty of light. 2 inches of water was on the surface and it was slippy. Ideal day for a new camera! ;)

I started shooting with Canon FD L Series lenses, the mount I had was shit as it didn't click into place on the mount but it stayed on solid. No gulpy moments!

I came into an issue straight away. When I turned the camera on, it would just freeze when loading the image. It was set to 4k 50fps, so to unfreeze I had to set it back to 25fps then back to 50fps. This started to become a major issue as every time the camera was switched off I would have to do this over and over again. Needs a fix fast!!!

Another issue was the responsiveness of the buttons. It felt like the buttons didn't work properly combined with slow software. This was tedious because the menus are ridiculously complicated. To change from 4k to 1080p 180fps feels like a lifetime!! They definitely need to work on this!!!

I filmed in Slog3, dynamic range is superb. You can also view footage with a LUT. I did in 709. Images looked great on the monitor, very clear and sharp. Peaking is very good too.

I held the camera for around 25 angles of a 3:30min song. All handheld for a frantic feel. My right arm was dead by the end of the shoot, and my back was punished. Expected really. Shooting felt right though. ;)

To get the most out of this camera, you need a lot of hard drive space. A 64gb card lasts 15 minutes at 4k 50fps. I filled 6 cards and dumped them throughout the day. As an owner, you will definitely need to factor in hard drives into the cost. You will need many.

I really loved this little feature with a light meter on the display to tell you if parts of the image were too high in exposure or too low. The function of a histogram but different. Quite nifty.

The footage looks great, very impressive. Very low noise. Clear and sharp. Dynamic range is fabulous. I can't release any images or footage due to confidentiality yet, but very pleased with the results. Will share on release.

My overall thoughts on first use is that the camera is a great piece of kit, but let down by some shoddy firmware which ruins the user experience. Sony really need to update it fast. This is a serious production camera and it covers so many bases. You can shoot in lower bit rates at 1080 if you wish, but to use the best features - you need a crapload of hard drives.

Once Sony sort out the firmware, this will be an excellent camera!

Glad you got the FS7.
 
The more people keep buying the old 1080p stuff from Canon the more they are going to keep the 4K stuff in the vault and coast along. They can sell us a $5k 1080p camera and then also a $8k 4K camera at some point in 2015. Such profit. Please people stop buying dated equipment and reward the innovators like Sony...

Had a play with a LX100 this weekend, I liked:
 
IQ is, in general, pretty good. It's not as good as an APS-C stills camera at 100% but viewed from a monitor or, I'd imagine, a small print, I doubt anyone would notice the difference. Tends to meter and white balance differently to my Ricoh GR, not sure which is more accurate. Dynamic range seems, anecdotally, ok but not great, about the m4/3 average.
 
Either way, the zoom works well and can compensate for any resolution/detail issues as you can obviously zoom closer. I've never been a zoom fan tbh but I actually like it on the LX100 as the camera is still small with it. I also like that, as you zoom, it gives you 35mm equivalent focal lengths, so I know 'oh ok now I've shooting w/a 50mm' etc, that's useful.
 
A note on the zoom, with the sensor having it's multi-aspect, in video you actually get, I think, a 26mm-81mm lens, not a 24-75mm (in stills). Prob doesn't make practically any difference but still.
 
The 4k is good, no Cine-D/V which is a shame (and no log when that comes out presumably), but it's solid otherwise. The camera also triggers my wireless flash, which may not be useful to most but other cameras like the GH4 and the GX7 didn't.
 
What I didn't like:
 
Picture profiles for stills and video aren't separate despite both having their own menu option - set the video to a low contrast and you'll get the same for Jpegs. Obviously shooting RAW removes this issue but I found it was a shame; I often like to shoot high contrast jpeg b+w's (hence the Ricoh GR!) and it'd be a chore to have to unpick any settings for when I wanted to shoot video.
 
The LCD and EVF are sufficient but not great. The LCD has a colour shift towards blue I think and the EVF is pretty small and, whilst useful as a compositional aid, isn't especially clear for critical work. Again, it's all fine but it's not great.
 
The biggest issue I have is with the sensor. It starts as a M4/3 sensor but as it's multi-aspect when you take stills you end up with a 12mp (not 16mp image). You also end up with a sensor crop that goes from a 2" sensor to a 1.5" sensor. This means the sensor is practically similar to the 1" RX100 sensor vs a m4/3 sensor, and is therefore quite a way from an APS-C sensor in characteristics.
 
This means if you zoom in and shoot wide open you still can get shallow DoF if you're in tight, but not really if you're in a wider shot. To be fair, you can't have it all and I don't have any 'problem' with it, just observing that it was always a bit of a challenge w/m4/3 sensors, and it's even more of one with the LX100.
 
The other big issue is the lack of built in ND. I think above anything else if the camera had've had this it would be a truly great camera, but even on a rubbish London day with dark greys skies I was having to stop down to f/7.1 to get a properly exposed image when shooting at 1/50 and ISO 200 in 4k video, at least going by the cameras histogram. It would be such a cool feature to have an ND built in that would let you shoot wide open.
 
That's what vari-nd's are for of course, and the LX100 does have a filter thread, but it's not an ideal shooting situation as the lens protrudes, but likes retracting in various playback modes, and looks quite fragile and I'm not sure how well it'd do as a throw in the bag type longevity if I was having to jam an ND on it the whole time.
 
Video IQ is also typical of M4/3 cameras. Personally I was never a big fan of the GH4 video IQ as I preferred the naturalness of the colours from a BMPCC, even despite the resolution advantage. I'd say it's decent thou, 90% of what the GH4 can offer and obviously in a much cheaper, smaller, more convenient package.
 
tl;dr great camera, lots of great features, 4k video, decent stills, good zoom, small and light and really easy to use. has issues that will either be deal breakers or simply things to work around, depending on your opinion.

I've been playing with the GH4 today in RAW stills burst mode. My workflow needs some refinement to get the motion blur looking more regular, but I actually quite like the filmic staccato of 12fps. The image quality is insanely nice though:
 

 
Note: Plus members can download the original Prores LT file on Vimeo. I REALLY RECOMMEND DOING THIS - motion looks much worse when streamed.
 
Vimeo blurb below:
 
First test of using GH4 in RAW stills burst mode to make video. 
RAW stills converted to ProRes 444HQ and slowed to 50% in 24p FCPX timeline. Graded in FCPX and some grain applied. Also used REVisionEffects' RSMB to add motion blur as most of this was shot with a very high shutter speed. This has caused some unpleasant motion artefacts here and there. The final shot in the video (of blowing leaves and cars) used a 180 degree shutter in-camera (1/25s) and looks better I think. I will try using that setting for my next attempt. Rolling shutter looks quite severe. The GH4 buffer can only do about 40 frames in raw burst mode, so you can't really get longer than a 3 second clip. My card is a Sandisk 95MB/s U1 - I don't know if a faster card would do better.
I actually really like the 12fps look, particularly when used with film grain and the really bold colours you can get from raw. I like the excessive motion blur. I think if you avoid severe camera movement so as not to draw attention to the rolling shutter and low frame rate, it can look very filmic. Obviously this can't be used for everything but with some refinement I think I will be using it a fair bit. If you like the 12fps look (12fps is right on the border of human perception of individual frames - I think this makes it rather interesting) and can live with the short burst times, there are a lot of good reasons to try this out. Yet another great thing about the awesome GH4. 
Check our blog for further testing of this mode: lintelfilms.co.uk/blog/
Note: I tried using 'optical flow' (FCPX's version of Twixtor) to create 'real' 24fps, but it was a mess, with lots of the usual warping around movement (even though I used a very fast shutter speed). 
Music by Chris Zabriskie.

Yet another manufacturer using the micro four thirds mount!
 
I'm almost starting to lose track of how many camera manufacturers there are now with cameras in the pipeline with a micro four thirds mount! :-D
(Panasonic, Olympus, Kodak, JVC, Blackmagic Design, apertus°, and now.... fps1000 too! And that is just the camera manufacturers, many many more accessories/lenses/etc manufacturers too)
 
As I've often said m4/3 is the most robust and best camera system, it has so much more support behind it than any other mount.

Rather than Twixtor, download the latest software for GoPro. It is free, and apparently they own Twixtor and included that technology into their video editor.
 
"GoPro Studio Flux":
 
http://cheesycam.com/gopro-studio-flux-slow-motion-option/

Still waiting for Panasonic to surprise us with AF100 successor.

All great choises with their unique strenghts and weaknesses.
 
size of lenses = some what GH4 (smallest possible lenses) combined size + weight
 
low light - Sony
 
Most future proof 4k / best quality in good light is - perhaps Samsung. then again can you acchieve that at decent enought level with Samsung lenses? is some what a question mark.. the samsung "proper lenses" have nott been tested at dxo. even tho like Andrew test seems to show that CA might not be that much of an issue.
 
Both mft and sony platforms are speculated / known to be getting interesting technological options later down the road. Sony A7000 (perhaps with 4k output)  A9/A7RII GH5, Olympus EM5-II / EM6 even tho those cameras may not end up beeing video specific unil GH5. Samsungs platform evolution past NX1 is even more ellusive question mark.
 
I'm personally learning with GH2 and G6 for now. During the spring I will likely invest into a cheaper GH4 or something else.
 
Do what I do .. learn with cheap camera.  get lights now from ebay. etc .. LEARN .. perhaps buy used or cheaper GH4 later. I sense this upcoming spring time will be soper hot competition between all brands. Even Canon will likely release a FF mirrorless.