BTM_Pix

I'll be doing a bit more poking around this afternoon so if there's anything new I'll pop back with an update. If anyone has access to one of the new cheap GX800/GX850/GF9/WhateverItsCalledInYourCountry then I'd be curious to see them try it on that.

The IBIS works well with it but of course with it being a non-native zoom lens its not ideal as you have to tell the camera which focal length you're going to be using. Its not something you'd be wanting to handhold much though to be honest. Oddly enough though, despite being 1.8kg and weighing 300g more than my Nikon 70-200 f2.8, it feels far lighter because the 70-200 is very nose heavy. The hand grip combines with that better balance to make it doable - especially as it has the heft to sit solidly in your palm so works well in a look down mode with a swivel up rear VF like the GX80 - but, as I say, its not really a walkabout lens! It does function without power but don't expect to be doing a smooth zoom as there is a fair amount of resistance on the ring. That battery plate I'm using (which is a cheapo one for the BMPCC) weighs nothing and has an integral velcro strap and tripod thread so its easy to mount it out of the way with out without additional rigging. You could probably get away with a smaller version of the Sony battery as well but its all I had around. It covers both HD and 4K without vignetting but you must engage either the len's own doubler if you're using it in 4K mode but if its just HD then you have the option of using the EX-TELE function on the camera instead to achieve the same effect which avoids the light loss of the doubler.

Yes, you just have to modify the html file so that when you hit 'Deploy' it takes you to B&H Website where you can then buy a GH5

If you're after vintage, cheap, big constant aperture zoom range and parfocal then have a look at some B4 stuff. I got this Angenieux for the LS300 as I needed it for the press conference stuff I do but obviously with it now being MFT mount I put it on the GX80 for a laugh! Its 8.7mm f1.7 with a 15x zoom. With the GX80 you have to deploy the internal doubler on the lens to get the image to fill the frame so its then 18mm-ish and f2.8 but the LS300 just laughs at that kind of behaviour and uses its VSM to scale it so you don't need the doubler. And it then makes it a 30x zoom by using its Prime Zoom function as well ! £200 for the lens, £70 for the adapter and about £50 for the battery plate, cable and Sony NP battery to power the servo zoom. It is ever so slightly unbalanced on the GX80 obviously ! I'll put a bit of footage up of it when I get a chance if anyone is interested.

Try it again as sometimes it won't accept the handshake first time round. It should have stored a connection in the camera called D2304. If you go into the Setup menu in the camera, then WiFi, then WiFi Function, then Select A Destination From History you should see it. If you can confirm that that is there, it means the camera has authorised the connection so if you try again it should work. I would imagine that the firmware version would not affect the initial communication link so if that doesn't work then you could confirm that you can talk to the camera through the IOS or Android app that would be useful in terms of troubleshooting.

Not thus far but I havent dug too deep with that for now.

I think the 800 for the GH4 stuck in my head from Shane Hurlbut's review http://www.thehurlblog.com/cinematography-panasonic-lumix-dmc-gh4/ Mind you, I might well have had yet another of my senior moments and been thinking of the BMPCC. Or a Kodak Instamatic.

Yeah I think I probably got 800 stuck in my head from when the GH4 vlog debates where happening. After enabling ISO50000 for this camera yesterday we should all rejoice that it's not that! I did mean to mention that Cinelike V works as well but not sure I've ever actually seen anyone who uses it!

Absolutely not ideal that its not built in. However, the way to deal with that though is to use the third C setting as the current working setting and save that before exiting. So when you initially turn the camera on you would load C1 as a base point to work from if you wanted to use Cinelike D or C2 if you want to use a standard profile. These would contain the basic stuff like frame size and shutter (which generally won't change as it'll be 180degrees), a base ISO (which again could be fixed and will be probably be 800 on these cameras?) etc so you can get going quickly, then as soon as you've changed your aperture and WB you save it and subsequent changes to C3. If you're using manual aperture lenses of course then that takes care of itself in terms of recalling its setting on power on/off That way its there when you switch the camera back on as it reverts to the last C setting you were using before power off. From there on in for that day or whatever you just keep overwriting C3 when you make changes. Its a lot more intuitive than it sounds !

Yeah, apologies for that, wasn't being very exacting just getting something with some range in it to show that Cinelike D is possible on the GX80 rather than showing it as a way of working if you know what I mean. Hopefully now I've put it out there people can run more tests to put up to compare it with the other profiles as I've got a bit more digging around to be doing for a while

OK So for anyone wanting to try this, I have made a really simple method to do it. I have tested this numerous times on my GX80 and it has lived to tell the tale but obviously do this at your own risk. All that this process does is fool the camera into thinking its talking to the smartphone app and then the commands it sends are exactly what the smartphone app sends. Or would do if the smartphone app thought it was talking to a camera equipped with Cinelike D ! So as such it is only getting sent what the Panasonic app would be sending to it so there are no hacky or sneaky debug things getting sent to it. Again, though, proceed at your own risk. Although I would say, if you’ve tried that region switching hack on YouTube with the 10 million key press combos during power up then you’re already brave enough to try this! Bear in mind that my unit is a GX80 and the firmware is version 1.0 If you have a GX85 or have got a different firmware then I just don’t know because obviously I haven’t got any other devices to test it on. Here we go then…. Follow these instructions exactly and you should have Cinelike D on your GX80/85 You will need a laptop or a phone with a browser, the camera and to download the simple html file attached. 1) Switch on camera and turn on wifi as though you were connecting the app and you should see the waiting screen on the camera 2) Load the Deploy Cinelike D.html file into your browser 3) Select ‘Handshake’ 4) You should see the browser page change and it confirm that its connected to a GX80 5) Hit the back key on the browser 6) Select ‘Connect’ 7) You should see the browser page change to say ‘ok’ and the camera give you an ‘Under Remote Control’ message 8) Wait until the camera screen shows you a live view 9) Hit the back key on the browser 10) Select ‘Deploy’ 11) You should see the browser page change to say ‘ok’ and the camera should NOT now be displaying the Photo Style you had selected (i.e. Standard, Vivid etc) 12) Cinelike D is now active on the camera 13) If you go into the menu on the camera and select Photo Style you will see that it is blank and you can’t navigate to other Photo Styles such as Standard etc. 14) To restore the Photo Styles hit the back button on the browser and select ‘Restore’ and the camera will display the Standard photo style and you should then be able to go into Photo Styles and change them. 15) Repeat 9-14 to switch between them to your hearts content! So, like other settings, the Cinelike D profile will persist when you switch the camera off so if you want to use the other Photo Styles again then you MUST go this process again to re-enable them. However, if you would like to switch between them without using this method again (and who wouldn’t) here is a neat way round it. When you’ve done Step 12 and got Cinelike D on, set all your other parameters (4K24p etc) as you’d like them and save these into C1 of the custom settings. Then go to Step 14 and use the ‘Restore’ to get your standard Photo Styles back, set all your other parameters (4K24p etc) as you’d like them and then save these into C2 of the custom settings. Now when you switch the camera on, you simply choose C1 to have Cinelike D or C2 for the standard Photo Styles and forget about using any nonsense about using browsers and wifi connections! In couple of weeks I’m hoping to show you how you can do stuff like this and some other useful bits and pieces from a little hardware gadget that will work on the Panasonic cameras but have fun with this in the meantime. DEPLOY CINELIKE D.html

Kind of but its actually a lot more basic than that to be honest mate and doesn't require any modification of the app. I've got a really simple way of testing it if anyone wants to have a go themselves?

I think one advantage of it for many people is that there are a large number of LUTs available that use Cinelike D as a base point so it might appeal on that level.

Well it was never going to be a low light monster but I can let you have ISO50000 now if you want it as well Top ISO6400 (max for video) Middle ISO25600 (standard max for stills) Bottom ISO50000 (modified max for stills) It still reports it as 25600 in the exif funnily enough. And it doesn't display it onscreen either, just like it doesn't with the Cinelike D So there seems to be a mismatch between the values it writes in the metadata and displays on screen with what it can actually be made to do. This is very potentially very interesting regarding a bitrate I thought I'd persuaded it to do earlier......

No, its easy and it does persist on switch off. But that can be an issue as once you've enabled it you then needed to then use the wifi to go back to the other profiles. And when I say 'you then needed to' I mean in the past tense as I've worked out a way to make it permanently switchable in camera using the C functions so you dedicate one of them to being Cinelike D and you must have one of the others set to Standard or another one of the profiles so you can switch back to them otherwise you'd have to use the wifi. I'm working on something that will be quite the useful little standalone gadget for these Panasonic cameras but for now it can be done using a laptop or phone. I do have an LX100. It currently does 'something' and I just need to work out why that 'something' isn't currently the 'something' we want it to do.

I'm exploring some permanence using the custom C options to give you a switchable configuration. By 'exploring' I mean double checking as I already have it working. I'm just working on this prototype version of making a mic input appear via wifi

As per the image above, it is very close to Cinelike D. By which I mean, it actually is Cinelike D

I'm not confirming or denying anything but check out the comparison image in the new thread

Just to illustrate this, erm, 'non standard' profile for the GX80/85 here is a comparison collage. The top picture is a G7 using Cinelike D and the bottom one is a GX80 using this non standard profile. Strange eh?

I'm just working on something to make it a bit more readily deployable in the field and then I'll post it up.

As mentioned in the other thread for @jonpais and @mercer here are some grabs from a G7 to compare a Contax Zeiss 50mm f1.7 with a modern Nikon 50mm AFS f1.8G. Not the most thrilling of shots but set up to compare colour, sharpness and DOF on a typical MFT camera. Profile on the G7 was set to Cinelike D Lenses were both mounted on inexpensive basic C/Y and Nikon G to MFT adapters. I'd originally planned to use speedboosters but as per the other thread last week the C/Y to MFT adapter I've got is more or less a very expensive soft focus filter. The guitar was 1.8metres from the camera and the focus and colour charts an additional 60cm behind it and then obviously a distant background. Shots were at f1.7 (Nikon had to be exposure matched as its max aperture is f1.8) and f5.6. The four compilations here show focus on guitar and then charts at both apertures. In each one, the Contax Zeiss is the image on the top and the Nikon on the bottom. All compilations are from JPEG frame exports of uncorrected clips from a 4K FCPX timeline. Draw your own conclusions obviously but any marked difference is not leaping off the screen really. Cost wise, there isn't a lot in it either with a used Contax Zeiss being around £150 on eBay and more or less the same for a used Nikon as tested here. Plus point for the Nikon is obviously if you have a Nikon camera to put it on then you also get AF. Plus points for the Contax Zeiss are very slightly wider aperture, manual aperture ring, a bit more of a forgiving focus ring IMO and a more compact form factor.

I've got the same lens. I'll try it on the X-T20 and X-T2 when I get a chance today or tomorrow and see if its the same. I expect it will be similar and I've a feeling it might have some variance between the X-T20 and X-T2 because of the different crop.

<cough> Ready your wallet <cough>

So, as some of you may know, I've been "experimenting" with having little chats with different Panasonic cameras over WiFi and after whispering in the GX80s ear last night, I may have come up with something quite interesting. The first image is a grab from a GX80 using its Standard profile. The second image is a grab from a GX80 that is definitely not using the Standard profile.......

The Yuneec Breeze is about €330 here in Spain. Far less featured and bigger but probably enough for the target market for this one which is why I thought DJI would come in at the same price. The Zerotech Dobby is similarly priced too. Never seen anyone using either one in the wild though.....