tosvus

I got the GH4 as I knew it'd work nicely via a Speedbooster with my EF lenses. Had it a few days and used it a few times already and love it.
 
A7S was just that bit too expensive (double what I paid for the GH4) and I don't like the colours I've seen off it. NX1 I really like the look of, but no Speedbooster available for it to work properly with EF lenses, so that sort of made my mind up.

I have been asking myself the same question for a while and finally went for the GH4. Couldn't be happier. You know when you get something and it just feels right? Panasonic really do know how to make cameras for filmmakers.
 
I think the image quality between the three is all give and take - none are clearly superior. But in terms of loving using the camera, the GH4 appears to be well in the lead. It was the 10-bit out option that sealed the deal for me though. 10-bit 422 out option + 4K in a beautifully designed video camera for £900? Incredible really.  :wub:

I had similar problem...

Bought lx100.

And you are doing the reverse which is the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with all that you're saying. And my post was not to single out yourself in particular, it was meant as a general statement.

I've seen your recommendation for the Nikon 28-70 zoom on here in the past - and it is in fact a lens I've used on commercials! (So - good reccomendation ;))

I just see so many newbies these days rushing out to buy the latest and greatest camera body, and spend hours looking online to find the right profile, or the right settings that's going to make their picture look the most cinematic.
I think it's just really important to look at what Cinematography really is, and what actually makes you a Cinematographer - and it's really not got much to do with what camera you use, and definitely has very little to do with what the in-camera sharpness or saturation setting is at.

I've shot outdoors on sunny days at T11. The Australian sun is unforgiving. We had an incomplete ND set, so I had an ND1.5 in and still had to stop down to T11.
It wasn't (just ;)) the fact that we were shooting on Alexa that made those couple of shots still look good, and indeed cinematic - it was more where I put the camera and how I shaped the light in that spot.

My eye and my lighting is what gets me work, and is what people like about my work - It's not the cameras I shoot on, or the stop I shoot at. Perhaps evidenced by the fact that nearly every project I shoot is shot on a different camera.

All cameras are tools. And all lenses have a different look, different stops have different looks and depth of field characteristics. I think most people would agree and say 'duh obviously.' But if you want to be a DP, your choices should all be driven by the story, not what looks the 'coolest' or the most 'cinematic.'
I've shot things that don't look cool, don't look cinematic, and don't mimic what professionals are doing on their major features.
But it's what the story called for and it worked with the story. The Director and I both loved the look.

As I'm sure you're well aware, something looking cinematic has very little to do with shooting at f/16 outside.

Now, I don't make a habit of shooting at that extreme a stop, but I do shoot there, and if the story called for a look that suggested shooting stopped down that much, I would go for it.

All I'm trying to say is that a shooter will never understand the 'how' until they understand the 'why'. And blindly rushing out to buy or use gear simply because 'that's what x does and their stuff looks really good' is missing the point completely. I know that's not what you're going for, but it can be interpreted as such - and you will never succeed as a DP if all you do is copy those better than you. You're right - you can't buy experience you have to earn it. But how does a newbie even know they need more experience if they're told that all they need is x camera, y lens, and z settings and their image will be just as good as anything you see in a movie (again I know this isn't what you're saying, but as a more general comment).
You could give a newbie an Alexa with Master Primes and a full set of NDs or a RED Dragon with Leicas and they still wouldn't shoot stuff that looks as good anything shot by Roger Deakins or Jeff Cronenweth.
As evidenced by the fact that one of the most awful-looking films I've ever seen was shot by someone I know who was never really a DP, but thought they could be. Shot it on RED Epic in 5K, and it's the most awful thing I've ever seen - even worse than many home videos I've seen shot on DSLR.

I think if you want to be a professional shooter, you should build up some experience on kit lenses, or whatever you have. Just get out and shoot and find what you like. Your style might not be shooting on Angie zooms and Cooke Primes wide open. That's cool. Your style might be. Maybe I'm being too pretentious with this whole give a man a fish/teach a man to fish thing...

I would love to share my knowledge about how I work and my lighting choices etc. This seems to be mostly a gear forum, so perhaps I'm posting in the wrong place.

as you say the Sony is alot better than a Canon in low light so its the exception to the rule ,
 
Its all about what ever you are used to working with
I came from Super16 for along time, Super 35 then DigiBeta Cam and B4 lenses , then 5D , then Panasonic because of your work on the GH2 .
So I'm used to small gate/ frame size .
And this past year now there are so many good speedboosters for Panasonic cameras it has transformed Panasonics into very serious workable cameras that have a Super 35mm field of view - you can use all those focal lengths exactly as you can on Super 35.
 
Also don't forget Directors like David Fincher de noise everything they shoot on Red Cameras in post, so its all cleaned up - Red Epic is noisy in the blacks too its not super clean.

I think it's hard to give a one answer suits all for this.
 
Devil is in the detail. If you're focused on infinity with a wide angle lens and there's nothing in the foreground within 5 meters, then A7S is clearly going to be better in low light even though the 'deep depth of field' is a little less deep on the A7S shot, that shot will look the same as the GH4 because nothing will be out of focus.
 
APS-C crop mode on the A7S still benefits from the massive 9 micron pixels so we should compare that 1.5x crop to GH4's 2.3 crop in the DOF calculations, not full frame. There A7S will be cleaner on all shots, just not by as much.
 
The GH4 gets a bad rap in low light, it's not so bad actually. The reference point should be Super 35m film which gets noisy at 800 ASA and $25,000 cinema cameras which get noisy at ISO 3200. By those standards the GH4 is perfectly fine. The A7S is an alien from another planet, an exception.

yes exactly if you read American Cinematographer each month you will see most features shoot in the f2- f2.8 for night stuff
and f2.8 - f4 - f5.6 for day stuff....in general roughly speaking , every cinematographer has their own style , some set a stop and shoot the whole film to that stop  ..like Darius Khondji shot Alien Resurestion at f2.8 for almost the entire film so it kept a uniform look .   
I can't to that kind of stuff on full frame so I stopped using my Canons......
 
When Shane Hurlbut shot Act Of Valor on Canon 5ds and Full Frame Zeiss primes he had to shoot at around or below f4 or f5.6 to get the look they wanted anything faster was just tooooo narrow dof on full frame .
 
proper modern cinema lenses are designed to work sharp fully wide open.

Well, I don't mind the price. I captured a theater performance yesterday and the LX100 was my master shot. First gig with it. I was pretty blown away by it and preferred it to the Canon 5dIII, especially considering the ease of the workflow (realising ML Raw is not even an option here) and how easy it was to rig up (15mm tube clamp under the camera to mount it to rods and you have access to battery chamber).
 
You do have the disadvantage of not having hdmi out and freedom of lenses, no headphone, no microphone in, etc. But I think it's a perfect companion to a GH4. What is there not to like? It pays itself back in a couple of jobs. And being able to shoot in a square format larger than hd is pretty wild for fx shots...
 
The 15 min recording limit is a bit silly of course, but what a great low profile camera this is.

W...what's wrong with criticizing a manufacturer's shortcomings? 
Even if it's not the end of Canon, even if the 1DC is a great camera (for the price of a car).
 
I... don't assume many would still pick a 5D Mark3 over a GH4 when the former looks "out of focus" in all image quality comparisons. 
The 5Ds became a standard in enthusiast videography because they were good at the time for a fairly affordable price. 
Now Canon is more or less dead (in terms of exciting new things) in that same segment (No...not talking about the 12.000$ segment).
Why would you not state that from the top of your lungs?
By now I doubt Canon listen to criticism, but some companies sometimes do.
 
Sometimes a (mass) critical train of thought can sway a company towards improvement.
Why would you bring strawman arguments to defend the company? Yes, bash the living shit out of them, bash the living shit out of everyone if there's ever a reason, because that's the only way you might see improvement. Ever.
 
Canon's shortcomings in the lower price segment are factual. 
And I really don't think Canon make their money out of 1DCs.
And the average enthusiast can have a fairly strong influence in what the "masses" adopt with somewhat of a delay if their go-to company isn't really doing anything. 
 
Do you think the mass consumer doesn't hear 4K at least three times a week? 
Of course he does.
And of course it's working. It's just working slowly.
 
A parallel was (jokingly?) drawn in this thread between Canon and Nokia. 
Good parallel. 
I don't think Canon are gonna become irrelevant anytime soon, but they are stagnating ferociously and I really can't see why anyone would chose to say "Yea, but..." in the face of that.  
 
Why be content? 
Nobody's ever gained anything from being content. 

Indeed. What's interesting is that none of the defensive posters are actually enthusiasts. One owns an Epic and one's simply just an idiot with a keyboard instead of a camera. The problem with Canon is not the pro $12,000 stuff it is the enthusiast $1k-3k cameras that aren't giving us the innovation we want on the video side. Nobody can defend it, not even Canon themselves. Which is why they are so quiet about it.

Which makes you perfect placed to comment on the enthusiast subject at hand.


I've shot with the 1D C. Type EOSHD 1D C review into Google when you have a spare moment.


Really? A7S not better in low light? Hmm.


No I think you'll find the ergonomics suck as well. Perhaps the most unintuitive camera for video I've ever shot with.


Does your Epic have AF? Thought not. There's a reason for that.

You have your facts wrong. ALL the Canon, Tamron and Sigma lenses have f-stop control and IS via the Metabones adapter to Sony E-mount.
 

I have seen the A7S's 4K projected at Pinewood Studios. I can tell you what it looks like. It looks superb and it is full frame 4K not 1.3x crop on a 2 year old sensor aka 1D C.

well,well. Andrew you are bound to step on a few toes (not that many anymore though...).
 
I think your article is spot on. I think defensiveness on the part of a few commenters trumped them paying attention to the segment you were addressing.

True that! Like you and Ebrahim said, it's hard to imagine the need for such a filter, or UV filters in general, it's the evergoing debate, but I take your side in this matter. You throw on a filter if you're really cornered and need a quite drastic change made to your image in order to pull a shoot off. I doubt however that this 300 lollars filter will be as effective for what it's supposed to do as a ND or polarizer filter when you don't want to change shutterspeed/depth of field:(aperture)/ISO of lighting setup (if possible at all), but need to lower exposure or... you're shooting cars... or shooting through glass at the zoo. In these situations filters become more or less lifesavers that can save a shot... I doubt one cannot live without their fancy UV IR Digital filter by Heliopan. It's just not that essential, if you get a lousy Mediamarkt Hama one it might even degrade performance. So as long as you have no complaints, don't put schtuff in front of your lens!

I do have to say though, I'm always delighted when someone sends me their old lens and it comes with the UV filter they've been using it with. Does show me they care about keeping the lens in premo nick. So I'm somewhat of a hypocrit. :P

- Actually wanted to try that ND3/ND6 from the Kickstarter campaign, because there are quite a few people opposed to using variable ND's and it seems like a cool way to try out static ND filters, but they have regular filters too, should you want some lens protection and do not want a Hama filter, but also not spend 300 lollars.

And you'd break $300 on it without even seeing proof of that effect?
 
I don't believe in UV filters. IR is pointless, unless you are using a camera that is over-sensitive to IR, like the Leica M8.
 
 
Also, regarding Heliopan vs Hoya vs B&W etc. Check this:
 
http://www.lenstip.com/113.4-article-UV_filters_test_Description_of_the_results_and_summary.html
 
I'm not saying Heliopan is bad. But you can't just judge a filter on the brand name. It's hard to find really thorough reviews of this kinda stuff, but lenstip does this well.

what ! he's not real ? :(

Well, we decided it was best to break it to our daughter that Santa isn't the one bringing presents. She is 10 and more and more of her friends started saying he doesn't exist. She was a bit shocked and quickly deducted there is no easter bunny or tooth fairy either.
 
I hope you are not similarly shocked ;)

zzzzzzzzzzzz......
 
By the way, anyone happen to know if there is a blacklist function on this site?

I'm aware of that, but here the image is not becoming too flat (I'm using Contrast:0) and I like the results. I would only advice not to push it too far, but mainly because of noise (the color shift is still small at S/H:+5/-5).
 
It is the same 8bit codec as in GH4. People are using really flat profiles with GH4 - tuning not only highlights/shadows but also Master Pedestal and CineLikeD with low Contrast so don't say we are going too flat with these settings here - go and criticize GH4 users ;).
 
 
Wrong topic. Deleting.. :lol:

There are more photosites on the RGB sensor on the F35 than any bayer pattern camera since made .  Or at least I think so .  I don't know.
 
Anyway here's something I just shot on the f35 - regraded using davinci.  It can create such lovely colors.
 

I learned this technique some 6 or 7 years ago in some short Photoshop course and totally forgot about it.
There are different combinations of CMYK percentages that represent common variations of proper skintones from various races.
Of course, no skintone is exactly the same so this is used as a guideline and you adjust the percentages just a little bit for your actual subject.
Then you can throw that corrected still into your editing suite and use it as a reference.
 
Here is tutorial link:
 
http://www.graphicconnectionkc.com/skin-tone-correction.html
 
At the bottom of that page are most common skintones with CMYK percentages.

Did you try in Natural instead of Standard? I find that Natural has lower contrast to start with so my guess was that it would be better for color grading. Especially since I read that many people shoot in Natural picture profile on the GH4 instead of the Cine-D. I shot with both cameras in neutral with C-3, S-5, NR-2 and got the same footage look that was easy to mix together. I did not do any tests though. Since the NR is awful in the LX100, I guess setting it to -5 is the right decision.

I'm trying to find most neutral settings on my LX100 (partially probably common with GH4). By neutral I mean getting most data from sensor not modified digitally after captured (by camera soft).

What I think after small tests:
Contrast: 0
- it looks like -5 is not getting/protecting any additional data. When I lower contrast in post, I get the same shadow/highlight data as -5. It looks like the camera is lowering the contrast after image is burned.
Sharpness: -5
- sharpening looks like pure 'post'-sharpening. I can get the same pixel level image as 0 after sharpening -5 in post.
Noise reduction: -5
- noise looks nice and I see recovered data (especially with sharpness -5).
Saturation: 0?
- 0 colors look natural and I don't see a difference when lowering in post vs -5 when needed. But not sure how to test it more detailed.

Picture profile: Standard.
- More flat Portrait looks like mostly just Standard with lower contrast..

Highlight/Shadow curve: -5/+5 if needed.
- In opposite to lowering contrast, here I can see some recovered both highlights and shadows. Not much of them, but always something. The noise in shadows people are complaining about is lower (looks better) than by raising shadows in post instead. As side effect, the colors look different, not sure if easily correctable in post.

Do you have any other findings/ideas? Also in GH4 cause probably they are similar.

Except for the fact that it's a side effect of the GH4 being used with external monitors and recorders. So there's no way they could leave it out if they wanted to. Pretty sure the feature wasn't added in mind that you could use it for FPV and monitoring on aerial shoots. So it's not quite the same. That's why I said that probably they do not expect you to rig the LX100 up and just use it as it is, because it is so compact, that's the key selling point, that it is all-in-one already. And yeah, it's a step below the GH-line, surely. But I'm not sure adding HDMI-out during recording to the LX100 would effect GH4 sales that much. So I hope they have a change of hearts then if it's technically possible to add it with a firmware update.
 
The other point. Yeah, a couple of years ago you'd have to go with spycam(like) cameras. There weren't any gimbals around for consumers/prosumers, let alone an afforable FPV solution. So I did fly without seeing any livefeed... and still people are shooting without a live feed... just because it can't be budgeted for, so it's not impossible, it's not that insane, people have been shooting like that for years.
But fair enough, those people then probably don't have the means to get themselves a multirotor with gimbalmount to handle a camera such as the LX100. So admittedly it's already more serious and I know it's not years ago now, we live in 2014 with all this technology availlable... except then for the lack of video-out whilst recording, lol. Well, I hope Matt will respond to this and maybe tell us if anything will be possible in the future.
 
 
The range though... besides, people aren't fond of Wi-Fi signals when they're flying their multirotor. Wouldn't want to get signal mess-ups.