DevonChris

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

It would need to get to 1:1 with the dollar before you see any savings. The pricing here is ridiculously high compared to the states.... almost every product is 1:1

Then you have VAT and export costs. 

Might be some deals for European shooters though.

VAT would not be charged for export to non EU countries.

Interestingly when we leave the EU, we in the UK would not have to pay VAT if we bought goods from Europe (unless that gets negotiated away in the exit deal).

14 minutes ago, Buckster said:

I'd have been tempted with a GX8 as I like the form and fit - it feels nice in the hand

BUT I get absolutely fed up with having to consider shutter shock all the time on my G6 (with my 14-140 MKII)

add the built in IS and its a no brainer

I use a GX8 daily for commercial photography and video and have never once encountered shutter shock.

In fact I cannot remember taking a photo with camera shake or that is out of focus when using the 12-35 f/2.8.

I now use a Voigt 25mm f/0.95 as my main lens so that takes more care (I much prefer manual lenses and love this Voigt), but I remain hugely impressed by this camera (I dumped my Nikon D810 and pro glass for it).

The two factors that have elevated it for me are :

• Using the Voigt lens for photography. The still images are very close to Leica quality.
• Using a Ninja Star for video. the images look awesome and are very gradeable.

If the GH5 is to be predominantly for video then having in-built ND's would be hugely beneficial. 

I use a NInja Star with a GX8 and the images quality is excellent. As I only shoot with one cam, I use prores HQ.

I get that thick looking colour depth with good latitude for grading and that is just with the 8 bit stream from the GX8. 10 bit from the GH4 would be fantastic.

I just stream 1080 to it from the GX8, but I will see if the NInja Star downscales 4K from the GX8. I think it probably won't.

Yay, it works on the GX8 Many thanks, John and Fuzzy.

I've spent ages puzzling over how to get manual exposure to work with the custom modes and couldn't find out how to do it in the operating manual.

I have just been using the motion picture setting with exposure mode set to "M".

These Panny cameras are really excellent. I'm so pleased that I moved to the GX8 from Nikon FF for pro photo and video work.

3 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

Yes. No problem. Put it in "M" mode and save it as a custom mode. You can adjust your aperture and shutter independently. I wasn't aware of the GX8 limitation...

Thanks, John. I'll try that on the GX8.

Quote

This took me about 5 minutes to shoot. I saw an interesting opportunity, went to get the GX80 and Zoom H1 from my office. For the settings above, I only need to put the camera in “C” mode to start. The Zoom is always put back with the level at 70, I only need to place it near the subject and start recording.

@John Mathews On the GX80 can you use manual exposure, setting both SS and aperture independently, in "C" mode?

I have been trying for months to find a way to use manual mode on the GX8 in its version of "C" mode.

Thanks, Chris

6 minutes ago, DevonChris said:

The poor old GX8 keeps being overlooked, yet it is the best of the Panny bunch for photography and superb for video too.

I did a shoot today with the GX8/Nikon 28-70/Metabones/Atomos Ninja Star and the quality was really amazing at 1080.

I love using the GX8 with the Ninja Star as it is so easy to get very high quality footage with long battery life in both the cam and external recorder and for some reason you still get live view when streaming via HDMI even though the manual says that you can't

I found something about the GX8 out by accident today which blew my mind.

I was setting up manual focus and double clicked the MF Assist which was set to full screen. I was recording via the Ninja Star at the same time, but when I checked the file after the shoot I had recorded the magnified MF assist screen, which created an amazing close up of the subject.

It means that you can double tap the screen to punch in and out of zoom via the MF assist screen. The quality didn't seem to suffer either.

The client was delighted that I had got such an amazing close up of his woodworking skills!

It would be interesting to know if this happens with the other Panny cams when using an external recorder.

11 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

GX80 manual says the same... I don't know why Panasonic is doing that to us- then they don't tell us if it's 8-bit 4:2:2 or 4:2:0. I believe the GX80 one-ups the GX8 on that point because it will record internally at the same time. I would say both cameras are very capable. However, I believe this person is after value based on what he said... I'm going to say the GX80 beats the GX8 because it's less expensive. If he wants weather-sealing though, the GX80 is NOT the way to go- choose GX8 of GH4.

I just pixel-peeped it and still couldn't tell a difference. Staying with the original file.

Yes, it sounds like the GX80 would offer the better value and it is great to record both internally and externally at the same time for redundancy.

17 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

First, let's get the naming right!   It's GX80... I mean GX85... I mean GX7 mark ii. If value or bang for the buck is what you're after, this is it. The other cameras you mention probably all have significantly better EVFs... probably due to form-factor. The IBIS in the camera is stellar. The 4k crop will be less than the GX8 and GH4. At the end of the day (Brit expression), it's most about which feels best in your hand and how important portability is for you. For me, it was THE reason for me to consider MFT. The other cameras are all bigger than the GX80.

The poor old GX8 keeps being overlooked, yet it is the best of the Panny bunch for photography and superb for video too.

I did a shoot today with the GX8/Nikon 28-70/Metabones/Atomos Ninja Star and the quality was really amazing at 1080.

I love using the GX8 with the Ninja Star as it is so easy to get very high quality footage with long battery life in both the cam and external recorder and for some reason you still get live view when streaming via HDMI even though the manual says that you can't

6 hours ago, Inazuma said:

BTW I recommend making the WB adjustment (A:3 G:3) even for a manually whitebalanced scene.

Your kids are so carefree fuzzy! I wish I had subjects like that to test my camera settings with.

Jase, really nice shots as aways. I think the -5 everything works well for you. Do you use idynamic or change the highlight curve at all?

I'll test out that WB adjustment, but not for my shoot today.

@jase it would be interesting for you to compare it to Natural -5,-5,-5,-5 but my bettting is that you won't notice much difference.

Do you colour correct and do any grading before using FilmConvert or do you just use the OOC images with FilmConvert?

I bought a Voigt 25mm 0.95 a couple of weeks ago and it is now my go to lens for video and photography. The more I use it, the better it becomes

37 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

Natural Color Profile: 0,-5,-5,-2.

Indoor shots with a 55mm FD lens, Chinese Speedbooster, no filters.

Stabilizer set to 40mm

Highlights set to -2

White Balance Adjust A:3 G:3 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sqfycip8z52s3z9/AADEWeIG1R1i1hUObtrLGlrea?dl=0

Very nice. You're nailing it with this set up

From my testing, I was surprised that:

1. The Panasonic colours are actually accurate once that red channel is tamed.
2. White balance is very accurate when you do a manual WB using a grey card.

I'm intrigued that you use a WB adjust. Is that a permanent setting or did you use those values just for that shoot?

I think people who complain about Panny colours are probably not using WB properly or haven't spent time learning the nuances of their camera. 

On 13/06/2016 at 8:02 PM, Inazuma said:

Footage with the default settings on this camera looks great, if a little clinical. 

I have been toying around with the settings whilst comparing it to the nikon d5500. It seems to me that the best way to get a slightly more filmic and nicer look is to use the following:

Natural 0 / -5 / -5 / -2 (cont, sharp, nr, sat). -2 highlights. No iDynamic. And whitebalance adjustment set to A3 G3.

With this setting, greenery looks less digital green and has more of a warm tint to it like film. And skin tones veer less towards the red and again has a warmer appearance (without looking yellowy like with GH4 stuff). 

 

I know this quote from Inazuma was a few weeks ago, but it is very good advice.

I have been extensively testing various profile settings for my GX8 using an x-rite passport and resolve.

In short I have made these findings :

1) Natural profile gives the best skin tones and overall accuracy of colours, but with too much saturation, particularly in the red channel

2) Standard just seems to add saturation to the base level natural profile -> Not so good

3) There is no point in Cinelike D as natural profile has more accurate colours and I could not detect any significantly increased DR

4) There is no need to de-saturate to -5 unless you want that for artistic reasons. -2 for saturation is optimal to reduce the Panny over saturated reds and give more accurate overall colour rendition.

5) I agree with Inazuma that Natural 0, -5, -5, -2 gives the best results so far, and that is what I will be using from now on, but testing will continue.....

6 hours ago, Michael Coffee said:

Ugh.. syncing is a pain. I suggest using something like a zoom, and then line out to the camera.. my next setup will be a gx85 and a zoom both going into an external recorder - better codec for the panny and synced audio.. what a dream! Almost the perfect setup, apart from global shutter, higher DR and a7s lowlight:) (and better autofocus).. saving my pennies right now:)

I use an Atomos Ninja Star with my GX8 and the sound quality from the internal mic is actually quite good (but I still only use it for synching purposes).

I think these cameras apply horrendous amounts of compresion to the audio, which is why the internally recorded audio is so bad.

You can connect a zoom straight into the Ninja Star which gives excellent synched audio and video quality, at least with the GX8. Maybe this is the dream setup for your GX85 that you mentioned

I use Movie Studio Platinum and rate it almost as highly as you do. However there is one big problem that has driven me away from it into the arms of Resolve, which I also rate highly.

The problem is that the UI is not compatible with 4K display resolutions so I struggle to see and use the interface on my Windows 10 laptop with a 4k display.

I hope the new owners of these excellent Sony products sort this issue out soon, but I am very happy with Resolve 12.5.

1 hour ago, John Matthews said:

I'd say yes as long as you put NR and sharpness at -5. Otherwise, it looks like a bad 1080p image blown up to 4k. I know that iDynamic on many of the Panasonic camera didn't yield great results, but have you actually tried it on the GX80?

I think the sharpness setting should depend on the lens.

If you are using a Panny lens then I agree with the -5 setting, however if you are using a vintage lens which does not have that digital sharpening - Ai-S for example, then I think you should use a setting closer to 0.

7 minutes ago, jgharding said:

Is that a question or a statement? I've not used in a while so my knowledge could be out of date...

What I mean is: you had to manage projects and users in a very arbitrary way. I'd like to just bang open a project and start throwing stuff in. The last time I used it, the whole thing was needlessly complicated for my use: define a user, log in as a user, start a project, all the folders had to be manually defined and so on, it all felt slow and clunkiy. The whole thing didn't seem as friewndly and fast as just opening a project, dragging stuff in and going.

If this is no longer true though, I'll happily give it another try, in fact I hope I'm entirely worng, as the grading interface is exceptional

No, this is no longer true. You don't need to define a user etc. You can simply create a new project and drag clips into the media pool and start editing straight away.

If you are creating a very large project then smart bins help - they automatically store specific items like sound clips, stills etc

Whilst the eco system around Adobe products is far larger than for Resolve, there has been an explosion in the number of high quality tutorials since Resolve 11 started to become a viable alternative.

I think you would be surprised by how large the Resolve community has become.

I used and really liked FCPX but had to switch to Windows and therefore used Premiere, which I didn't like as much as FCPX.

I switched to Resolve 12 (now 12.5) which rocks. Black Magic are improving Resolve dramatically and I intend to stick with this now.

The free version allows export up to and including UHD. I took this quote from their website :

Quote

About DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Software

The free DaVinci Resolve 12.5 includes all of the same high quality processing as DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Studio and can handle unlimited resolution media files. However it does limit project mastering and output to Ultra HD resolutions or lower. DaVinci Resolve 12.5 only supports a single processing GPU on Windows and 2 GPUs on the latest Mac Pro.

If you need features such as support for multiple GPUs, 4K output, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, HDR tools, Lens distortion correction, de-interlacing, Resolve FX Lens Flare, Lens Blur and Film Grain, 3D stereoscopic tools, remote rendering, an external database server and collaboration tools that let multiple users work on the same project at the same time, please upgrade to DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Studio.

Quote

I agree with RWR, I learned with Sony cams the hard way that auto white balance does not really work. Now i also found AWB on the GX80 not that good so I dial in my kelvin values. Just use 5600k whenever daylight is available and dial in something in 3000-4000k whenever you have artifical light. Surely not the perfect approach, but for run&gun this works well.

I realised a while back that using AWB was not working well for my Panny GX8 so I carry an x-rite color passport with me and do custom white balances whenever possible. It's made a huge difference to the colours for both photography and video. 

5 hours ago, Kristoferman said:

Thanks everyone. What is the focus throw of the Bourne lens? 

I'm selling my Bourne Lens:

16 minutes ago, David Webster said:

Semi random question I haven't seen answered anywhere else (I did look).

Is there a time limit to liveview out over HDMI? Either with or without recording internally?

Scenario is that I use a Nikon D5200 to feed an HDMI signal to a Wirecast/BlackMagic rig for live streaming.

I use the hacked D5200 firmware to keep it Live View awake for up to 3 hours.

I'd love to step up to 4k, but the deal breaker has been finding a camera that can keep Live View open for the duration of a rock show.

I've heard the GH4 will do that? Does this one or any other you guys know about?

I can obv purchase one and find out the hard way but thought I'd ask first.

Thanks!

I use a Ninja Star with a Panasonix GX8 and that keeps streaming 1080P over HDMI.

I haven't tried 4K out of the HDMI as that is not supported by the NInja Star.

18 hours ago, TheRenaissanceMan said:

Yeah...really gotta stick with elarits for the wides and summicrons for 50/90 if you want to keep things economical. They're doable. But the faster, rarer glass will break the bank.

My current plan is to forgo Leicas and pair my Zeiss set with fast Minolta MCs, which I can then convert to EF mount. It depends what camera I get next-- only the Leicas will work on Nikon, and I can avoid paying $150 per lens to convert the Minoltas if I stick with mirrorless mount cameras.

Minolta developed a few of the Leica lenses, I believe. The Leica 35-70 costs £££'s but the Minolta 35-70 equivalent only costs ££'s. I think the Elmarit 28mm was also developed by Minolta.

I don't know if the Leica versions have different coatings to their Minolta equivalents though.

It would be interesting to see how close the Leica and Minolta lenses are in use.

I'm bowing out of this discussion as it is clear that some people don't understand the principles.

The link that @Nikkor provided explains it perfectly, and mathematically supports the argument that sensor size does influence DoF.

<edit>

This is the important part of the article in the link :

Quote

Although the perspective, composition and F-number are the same, the depths of field differ greatly. The digital image has 5 meters of DOF, the 35-mm image barely 1 meter. This is due to the very short focal length of the digital camera, which outweighs the smaller COC criterion. The infinity blur in the above table denotes the blur disk diameter, on the film/sensor, of a distant point. So, in addition to the larger DOF, the digital image also has less background blur. (Both absolute and relative.) On a 20×30 cm print, the blur disks would measure 0.43 and 1.8 mm, respectively. These characteristics of miniature-sensor digital cameras are considered an advantage in landscape photography, which often requires a large DOF, but it becomes a nuisance in portraiture when the photographer tries to blur the background. This is often just not possible, certainly not with cell phone cameras which usually have an even smaller sensor than in the shown example.

</edit>