neosushi

The image is unbelievably detailed and doesn't look digitally sharpened. Colours are really, really nice too. But shadows here are noisy and really lacking in information. No wonder Andrew crushed them in his video.

 

I'm sure this video has been graded. The blue in the shadows is a giveaway - I've never seen any camera do that natively. 

Yep you're right about the blue in the shadows - its definitely suspect -.

About the amount of details, I also agree with that, it looks like plain resolution, not a sharpness effect. Thats what 4k should look like ! :) 

Interesting video, with a more "filmic" aspect (less contrast) but still contrasty and sharp. I think it was shot with the 16-50mm f2-2.8 lens.

I really think the colors are nice, however I don't know if this clip was graded or not.

Am I missing something? All those YT vids above have 720p resolution. How am I supposed to judge the quality of the original video?

Furthermore, those seem to be converted by Handbrake, which Andrew noted has inferior conversion quality, no?

So basically, what we see here I re-re-converted video downsampled to about 16% percent of its original resolution.

Can't those in possession of a NX1 post 1:1 stills from the original H265 material?

If you click the "youtube" icon, it takes you to youtube where you can see the footage in 4K. For those videos posted on vimeo, you can usually download the "original" footage (which is footage already converted from h265 to prores). Of course we don't always know how those conversions were made, but looking at all those videos gives you an overall of the details, noise, and color science of the camera. 

But of course the only way to really get a grasp on a camera is to try it yourself :) 

An interesting video with before/after color grading... I really like the color science out of this camera...

On the last one I think the guy used a Tiffen BPM filter explaining the extreme softness of the video :) 

I think when it comes down to looking at these 3 cameras that fit into somewhat the same category you are going to have some give and take in different areas, but what it comes down to is what is going to be best for what you are trying to accomplish. 

 

I really like the look of the NX1 and the colour and the detail are great, right now I am leaning towards the NX1 over the GH4.

So am I...

Or maybe using both :D But I wonder how difficult color matching those two cameras would be...

I think that GH4 codec is not breaking. It is the noisy sensor which breaks down when digging curves too much. GH4 has so much curve adjustment range that I can get the same lightness of midtones at iso200 and iso1600. It is not looking very good though.

 

Is the Samsung image bad at contrast -10?

I think the Atomos Shogun will be a good test to see how a H264 from the internal GH4 compares to prores in terms of color grading. I also agree with you that the sensor is too noisy. It takes a lot of practice to make use of the potential dynamic range without getting weird highlights (as using ETTR) or noisy patterns in black areas. 

Also there are different kind of noises in the GH4. Some of the noise looks just like "grain" which is ok. But there are more greenysh noisy patterns which are horrible :/ 

Which is why we need more tests comparing both. I don't see any problem with having dark blacks. But we don't have enough materials yet to say which of this camera offers the best details in blacks. 

From what I have seen so far is that samsung seems to prefer offering a contrasty but clean image, where you have to work in camera to get what you want after. Also - imho - I think Samsung offers more interesting colors, which means easier work in post.

Whereas Panasonic started giving lots of tweaks in the gh4 (cine-d, master pedestal, curves) but with a codec breaking appart very quickly in post, and with a very mushy result most of the time (except when you just select cine-d and leave everything else to 0). But don't get me wrong, I love the Gh4 (happy owner of one and probably of a second one in a few weeks).

However in terms of details I think there is absolutely no hesitation. But details is just one part of the equation...!

Thanks Andrew for keeping testing the NX1 :) Your review is definitely the most interesting I have ran into. I also believe that the Samsung is definitely sharper or rather - more detailed than the GH4. 

However do you think you could do a dynamic range comparison ? Thanks again for sharing your opinion with us :) 

Hi Tim, I was also looking into getting an a7s. I thought this video shown a very interesting grading, maybe  you'll find it interesting in terms of color grading. 

Also the director shares (not much) some of his settings. I must say I am not a huge fan of the skin tone either on this particular video, but I still think it's a very nice grade. 

Good luck !