Shooting 4K for 2K on the Panasonic GH4 plus pre-review short film

[Tim Naylor]

Does everyone here really like the look of this camera?  I am finding it hard to find any dissent.  The narrative and framing of this is excellent just not a fan of the actual look.  Curious to see what the a7s looks like as it becomes more available this summer.

Ok, here I go. I haven't seen anything from this camera that makes me want to buy it. I prefer the BMC 4k and the 5d3 (even in non raw) to the images I've seen from the GH4. They all feel crushed or clipped and somewhat video-ish to me. Perhaps it's the operation or grade. I'm not sure. But it seems to retain a lot of what I never liked about the GH2 and 3 (contrast, DR, colors, etc). And contrary to other claims, the Panasonic rep on the Zacuto clips says it's 11 stops DR at best. Footage I've seen bears this out.

 

What little I've seen of the A7s looks of a much higher quality. This is subjective of course, but I also feel some acolytes of the GH4 seem to see what what they want to believe. As someone who feels 4k doesn't walk on water, I just finished testing an Epic Dragon 5k vs F55 4k vs Alexa 2k for a movie I start soon. The 2k camera still came out on top (judged blind  to brand by director & producer).  Anyway, like you, I await the A7s and hope it delivers. 

 

Am I allowed to say all this?

[sunyata]

No you aren't. Account delete.

 

I totally agree. And don't get me started on the 8bit 4k 4:2:0 to 10bit 2k 4:4:4 myth. The A7s is priced a little high though for the fact that it's 8bit 4:2:0 with no higher export option.  One raw hack and it seems like a winner to me. 

[Andrew Reid]

The GH4 has nearly 12 stops of dynamic range in 4K mode and the colour looks like 10bit... The issue is that the camera hasn't been handled right in post or with the in-camera settings for at least 95% of the footage out there so far on the web. There's a range of weird things you need to do to tweak it and you also need to adjust a few curves in post as well.

 

I have only just mastered it myself!

[varicam]

After less than a week of playing with the GH4, I have to say that this thing is quite capable but definitely not a point-and-shoot camera.  You need to know what you are doing and I haven't quite figured out what exactly I have to do every time I shoot.

 

I hope there will be a GH4 shooter's guide soon. :)

[Tim Naylor]

The GH4 has nearly 12 stops of dynamic range in 4K mode and the colour looks like 10bit... The issue is that the camera hasn't been handled right in post or with the in-camera settings for at least 95% of the footage out there so far on the web. There's a range of weird things you need to do to tweak it and you also need to adjust a few curves in post as well.

 

I have only just mastered it myself!

I'll keep my eye out. I think  we could be witnessing a learning curve. BTW to get 12 stops, what settings do you change?

[sunyata]

This footage is looking pretty good to me... maybe it was just the internal settings on the other clips that were off.

 

 

check it out.

 

maybe a tad over-saturated in some spots, but really the best i've seen so far. 

[amanieux]

hello

will you try comparing external 1080p 4:2:2 10 bits recording on your blackmagic hyperdeck shuttle recodrer to the internal 1080p 4:2:0 8bits and intenal 4k 4:2:0 8bits downsampled to 1080p (4:4:4 10bits equivalent) in post ?

thanks

[Appleidiot]

Don't know how this guy achieved this low light look on the GH4, but it's the best I've seen from this camera.

[varicam]

Wow. How was this done? I have yet to shoot this dark without noise piling up on the GH4.

[Appleidiot]

I don't know how it was done. I first saw this off twitter, and decided to post it here in hopes Andrew would have a look and see what he thinks. He might be using some sort of denoising app, maybe tweaking the master pedestal. He hasn't responded to questions asked on Vimeo, so we may never know.

[lafilm]

Yes this video posted above called "Church Dark" is shockingly good in low-light using the GH4.

 

Does anyone know the settings for this, and if not, has anyone been able to duplicate in their own videos the type of low-light performance here?

 

I've seen nothing that can match it for near dark, so maybe the fact that the guy said it was shot on a GH4 was just a joke? 

[Ricardo Rocha]

Yes this video posted above called "Church Dark" is shockingly good in low-light using the GH4.

 

Does anyone know the settings for this, and if not, has anyone been able to duplicate in their own videos the type of low-light performance here?

 

I've seen nothing that can match it for near dark, so maybe the fact that the guy said it was shot on a GH4 was just a joke? 

 I´m also impressed.

 

I´ve just got my GH4 a few days ago (with kit lens) and yesterday I got a Lumix Leica 25mm 1.4. The difference is enormous.

I´ve being tweaking with CineD and CineV profiles and the general settings. After some testing, it looks like pedestal introduces a good amount of noise in low light scenes, but I´m still checking. Also, pushing shadows with curves brings more noise as well.

[Inazuma]

The aliasing may be due to the editing program incorrectly importing the clips as interlaced. This happened with some of my GX7 clips. Or the editing program had shit scaling algorithm, which creates aliasing (if you remember back in the day if you scaled things in a web browser, they would alias horribly).

 

As for the noise... I kind of feel it's an accurate representation if he's shooting ISO 400-800 (I don't believe it's any higher as the windows are not completely blown out).  The GX7 noise tends to be quite fine and I would imagine that the GH4's 4k mode when scaled down to 1080p would be even finer - such as in that video. Even more impressive I'd say is the colour, which has a lot of nice tonality and subtleties.

[lafilm]

Hmmm…I'm thinking major Neat Video..but it could just be settings. It seems everyone has their take on a custom profile, but the Lumix seems much different than a 5D2/3..the Canon's pretty much everyone used similar profile..a shame the photographer of the piece refuses to talk about his 'work".