Leaderboard

  Yes I can confirm that using AF for video is f***ing stupid

I haven't posted here, but I have to say this post bothered me a little bit so I had chime in. I'm a colorist for a living in between directing and editing, I grade Alexa footage constantly and I have to work with everything from that to RED, to DSLR stuff all the time. As much as I love my GH2 and GH3, I had a pretty good suspicion there was no way this comparison would remotely hold up. I let it go, but the latest post seems to be pushing the argument farther. I've included an example here from the downloaded gh4 footage and the publicly available Alexa footage to illustrate my point, which is, theres a million factors that go into a comparison like this. Glass, codecs, bit rates, resolution, color space, dynamic range and more, but for the purpose of this illustration, I'm just talking about dynamic range, codec, and color space. There is no comparing what an Alexa is putting out in S-log, vs the modes this GH4 footage was shot in. As shown in the example, the first cut of the guy on the bongos is S-log. There isn't a single pixel in that image that is clipping one way or the other. This means in a perfect world I have full control over what i want to make black and what I want white. The Panasonic isn't giving me nearly as much. Whether thats simply the color profile thats on, the codec squeezing it, the quality of the glass, or simply the cameras dynamic range ability, there is simply no way to take a GH4's image to the places you can take an Alexas. The example videos point that out. For the Alexa, it starts as S-log, than kinda normalized start no detail lost yet, then a nice little crushed punchy look, then an extreme s-curve look, than a completely ludicrous version. Of course no one is grading at ludicrous speed that often, but the illustration is that even at that level, the image is tight as can be and nearly noise free. pretty incredible A real test of how strong an image holds up is fixing a broken one, rather than slightly grading a nicely exposed one. Luckily there were a few good examples to use in the supplied link and in those you can see where the GH4 cannot hold a candle to the Alexa. In the spire shots where I tried to neutralized all the haze, the image gets noisy as heck. Even the sky has pretty noticeable banding if you look close or put up on a waveform monitor. In the shot of that tilts down from the buildings to the people, it grades well, but theres still noise littered all over the blacks. Those same images shot with the Alexa would have had more head room for fixing. Now Im not a hater, I actually love the GH4 is putting out on a well exposure image, like the car. i was actually able to recover clipped detail in the hood before I even began grading, pretty nice for an 8 bit codec! If i could get a truly log like starting point from the camera I'd love to see how far it can be pushed. And given how "bad" the tilt down shot was originally, i was very happy how far i could push it to something usable. Anyway, I love what panasonic is doing, and it looks like they have another winner, but lets not get crazy here people! :)

You're rather defensive. I agree with others here (and elsewhere) that these grades look not pleasant. I get what you are trying to do and that is take blue/green light and make it amber warm showing the cameras ability to grade heavy. But maybe when people say "I'm not too keen on the look" you might wanna try not coming back with "I know you are but what am I" with "I wanted to test the cameras limits and falsely color the image to my minds eye". Production Diary? Going to the park with a beta camera is a production now? Is that Gorilla Pod your Production rig? At best, everything to date shot by you on the Gh4 is just a heavily magenta colored vacation video blog of Berlin.

I would like to give my platform to up and coming musicians around the world to showcase their music through my cinematography to an audience of around 250,000 people per month. This is the EOSHD Music Challenge. Readers act as DJ - they can pick music from up and coming singers and bands, with suggestions that might suit the mood of my cinematography and future camera tests. Cinematic music is really important to me but I haven't been satisfied with The Music Bed or similar resources so far. How does the challenge work? 1. Suggest a band or musician on this thread. They have to be up and coming not signed to a major label or already huge. 2. I investigate and do the contacting of those which I like and credit you for the find! 3. If they agree to let me use their music, they will find a new audience through my blog and hopefully sell some tracks on iTunes from a link on EOSHD. You will be designated as the discoverer of talent and winner of the challenge. 4. You can have fun with this challenge and play DJ - use your taste to select the right standard of music to fit EOSHD and in turn you might discover new music yourself which you really enjoy listening to. 5. My cinematography at EOSHD is purely an artistic endeavour and experimental, non commercial and does not make any money but for all videos featuring unsigned acts I will consider enabling the Vimeo Tip Jar and sharing the proceeds with the musician 50:50! This is a new idea and it will start off as a trial. If it works then great! If not then we will swap things around until it does, because I am determined to find new music and up and coming artists. Good soundtracks are really important for filmmakers and I believe in finding new talent. Perhaps you know some artists yourself? Perhaps you are one?

Something I have discovered while editing all this GH4 4K material is that the 8bit codec Panasonic uses is quite complex and requires more power than ProRes. I have also found that the sequence settings and video proxy settings in Premiere are a good thing to pay attention to this time... the default ones no longer cut it. Along the way I have found a few tricks to get the colours in GH4 footage to absolutely sing with Film Convert and Premiere using the Alexa Rec 709 profile. Read the full article here

Various sources have told Sony Alpha Rumors that an A7S is coming on Sunday "in Las Vegas". It isn't hard to figure out what is starting in Las Vegas this weekend. If the rumours are true the Sony A7S will be at NAB 2014 - the largest video, broadcast and cinema trade show of the year. Is Sony about to give us a 'full frame GH4'? Read the full article here

i don't remember Arri film cameras having focus peaking, wave forms, barely a video tap and yet somehow the accomplished the greatest movies ever made. I think people are really spoiled .

I may upload again with a slightly more evenly matched grade. But I love the Kodak look.

  It's just the grade. Settings were correct, including ISO.

Close to a stop yes. Shouldn't make 'too' much difference in gauging what it's trying to show though.

My experience with sony products has been of getting ripped off, almost always I had a better choice from Canon, Nikon or Panasonic, even a blank DVD costs more if it has a sony badge. The thought of having 4k on a full frame sensor is amazing, even with a 1.3 crop, I woud drop every gear I have in an instant for an FX 4k. I doubt this will happen, there must be a catch if they give 4k right now, it will eighter be very very expensive or have some basic features cut off, maybe some bad codec that breaks up, who knows. At least I know I won't be buying anything from sony until I see 10 reviews discussing every litte thing and maybe waiting even half a year to see user impressions :), that's how bad I see sony products.

Sony has been revealing some nice surprises in recent years, with the A7/7r being a revelation (for photos mainly) for 2013! Let's hope the have enough appetite to keep this going. Canon and Nikon are going nowhere with their DSLR video so I am hoping!

Andrew, I've just come back here to give my apologises - just downloaded it. It IS a big difference... WOW. Its much finer, less blotchy than the GH3 - and much sharper too!

Andrew, I really have no words to thank you about all the test and the energy you invested on this reviews, with all the info you give us have made my choice easier, but now the ambient became dark again with the rumored Sony launch of the a7s, just when i have been decided to get the GH4 the shadow of Sony appears ;) Great times ahead.

its good at f2.8 its one of the sharpest lenses I have plus one of the oldest 1964 !! so its a 50 year old lens!! these are medium format camera lenses so designed to be sharp edge to edge over a 2 1/4 inch square frame !! I shot 2 1/4 negatives for many many years in the late 80's and all through the 90's for stills for record album covers. now if that was a sensor you would all be drooling over it its a huge area to resolve an image over! imagine a 2 1/4 inch square sensor!! so these lenses are very very good!! Zeiss made the lens for Hasselblad if I was buying this new Sony 4k full frame camera anounced today I would be putting Medium format lenses on it as they resolve amazing images !

I haven't posted here, but I have to say this post bothered me a little bit so I had chime in. I'm a colorist for a living in between directing and editing, I grade Alexa footage constantly and I have to work with everything from that to RED, to DSLR stuff all the time. As much as I love my GH2 and GH3, I had a pretty good suspicion there was no way this comparison would remotely hold up. I let it go, but the latest post seems to be pushing the argument farther. I've included an example here from the downloaded gh4 footage and the publicly available Alexa footage to illustrate my point, which is, theres a million factors that go into a comparison like this. Glass, codecs, bit rates, resolution, color space, dynamic range and more, but for the purpose of this illustration, I'm just talking about dynamic range, codec, and color space. There is no comparing what an Alexa is putting out in S-log, vs the modes this GH4 footage was shot in. As shown in the example, the first cut of the guy on the bongos is S-log. There isn't a single pixel in that image that is clipping one way or the other. This means in a perfect world I have full control over what i want to make black and what I want white. The Panasonic isn't giving me nearly as much. Whether thats simply the color profile thats on, the codec squeezing it, the quality of the glass, or simply the cameras dynamic range ability, there is simply no way to take a GH4's image to the places you can take an Alexas. The example videos point that out. For the Alexa, it starts as S-log, than kinda normalized start no detail lost yet, then a nice little crushed punchy look, then an extreme s-curve look, than a completely ludicrous version. Of course no one is grading at ludicrous speed that often, but the illustration is that even at that level, the image is tight as can be and nearly noise free. pretty incredible A real test of how strong an image holds up is fixing a broken one, rather than slightly grading a nicely exposed one. Luckily there were a few good examples to use in the supplied link and in those you can see where the GH4 cannot hold a candle to the Alexa. In the spire shots where I tried to neutralized all the haze, the image gets noisy as heck. Even the sky has pretty noticeable banding if you look close or put up on a waveform monitor. In the shot of that tilts down from the buildings to the people, it grades well, but theres still noise littered all over the blacks. Those same images shot with the Alexa would have had more head room for fixing. Now Im not a hater, I actually love the GH4 is putting out on a well exposure image, like the car. i was actually able to recover clipped detail in the hood before I even began grading, pretty nice for an 8 bit codec! If i could get a truly log like starting point from the camera I'd love to see how far it can be pushed. And given how "bad" the tilt down shot was originally, i was very happy how far i could push it to something usable. Anyway, I love what panasonic is doing, and it looks like they have another winner, but lets not get crazy here people! :)

Andy, I agree that the 1.6x crop sensor is a huge advantage in the a6000. I've been debating the switch from 1.6x to m43 for a long while now, and I just don't think I can do it.... there are too many advantages with the 1.6x crop, especially in terms of using older glass... I believe it's a perfect balance between FF and m43. You still get most of the character of 35mm lenses coming through, but the added depth of field is beneficial for filming... that FF shallow DOF is an effect that should be used sparingly in my opinion, akin to tilt/shift in a way. I look forward to seeing tests posted here from Andrew. As for the Cameralabs tests, I think that his videos are often misleading. It's a shame that 90% of the early testers out there are kind of bad at photography and video. It takes a skilled cinematographer/photographer/editor to know how to coax out the true quality of a camera and then present it accurately without ruining the footage somewhere along the way. But I guess that these testers sometimes only get a very short time to test each camera, and they are probably more focused on the technical side of things...

The P6 Zeiss lenses are very good, especially the 80mm Biometar mine is a 1964 version pre zebra with a plastic focusing ring and it is one of the sharpest lenses I own !! its a great lens with alot of character or you can buy the Russian KMZ copy of it the MC VOLNA 80MM F2.8 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MC-Volna-3B-80mm-f2-8-lens-Pentacon-six-Kiev-60-Biometar-copy-Arsenal-/201051218476?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item2ecf96222c

Hi Thomas, great news ! I've been using 5dtorgb ever since I found out it existed, there's no way I could ever go back to using Mpeg Streamclip or Media Converter. Great software you guys made !

I bet it'll be a rolling shutter monster. but they may surprise us.

Something to consider while looking at the Jena series is I've read steer towards the Pentacon 6 mount and not the M42 version. P6 is the medium format version. Performance is reportedly about twice what the numbers would lead you to expect when paired with a smaller format camera. Also, it may be better to go for the "zebra" versions rather than the black painted or anodized "MC" version because I've read at least one reference that states the coatings on these later versions suffered from supply problems in communist DDR. The earlier, larger, single-coated versions are going to have more "magic". I don't know if this is true for the entire family of Jena glass or just the longer end, or just folklore but the proof is in the pudding AFAIC with the 80mm Biometer. The DSO option sounds like a great alternative if nothing in the 28-35mm range pans out.

Dafranking - Can we up the quality of posts please.

Andy with the speed booster does it become a F2.5-3.2?

  Because it is shown at 720p on a 4Mbit Vimeo stream. Hell that is really letting the Alexa's wings stretch isn't it  :rolleyes:

It's called 'contrast' sir. Hate the flat HDR look.

iscorama 36, 54 and some others are single focus. Look on wikapedia or in Andrew's anamorphic guide for specifics.

You're ignorant of the processes and time each DSO lens takes to renovate / modify. If you want an argument please stay on topic. I very rarely bring up my company here, and certainly don't use this place as a salesroom. - Your selling practices are not good for the forum. And your listings tire me and others when they show up in saved searches related to your tagging of brands and buzzwords unrelated to the goods in the listing.

This forum is better than the telly. Just bought an iscorama. (No disrespect to slr magic.) For sale My SLR magic anamorphot with diopters, 950 euros plus transport, location paris, europe

So this is the private message I had. WOW:- "I will kindly suggest you that the next time you'll open you mouth about me, you should me more careful/polite/gentle. The reason is obvious: You put your nose in things that are out of your business, while your sayings are results of your "supposes" and negativity. About my product: This is the final version of the Slr Magic, officially purchased & in full warranty period. Did I ever mentioned anything about the bullshits that you make? No. Did I ever said that you are a thief with the prices you're selling. NO. NEVER. Even that I don't like them, I never appeared in your fucking topics. So, and my word is final: stay out of my business (especially if they are clean & clear!) so I'll do the same. Gege? I hope yes... If not, be ready (as a start) to troll all your products in every site/forum/topic." Lesson 1. Primary use of a forum to sell sell sell is not productive for a community - I just looed at your post history and over 50% is selling! I came onto your topic because I felt your selling practice on this listing is not ethical and disruptive to the community on the whole. I find your listing to be unfair and on the whole something that appears to be taking advantage of those who are not aware of the importance of having the diopters as part of the setup. Lesson 2. Your personal threats about trolling my own work is pretty sad. As an open community I felt it necessary to bring up some of my assumptions since it is clear some of them are true. Lesson 3. Don't take it as a personal vendetta against you. I'm not trying to damage your reputation. But I have to say you deserved a bit of stick for your use of Iscorama, Bolex and LA7200 tag words in your title if nothing else. BAD PRACTICE. Lesson 4. Use of sexual swearwords in private messages is pretty low. Please avoid this in the future. So bring on your trolling if it makes you feel good. No skin off my nose. - I let me stuff speak for itself and this tends to deter bad mouths.

Bit cheeky if you ask me. Grab the early adopters kit, take away the two most important components of the setup (the diopters), add a huge markup, stir it up and you have a fine anamorphic mess. It's like a new female driver buying a car with no windshield ready for when they pass their test from a rip off merchant who takes advantage of the fact that the new driver hasn't experience with the importance of a windshield. - she can drive it when practicing her 3 point turns and reversing into a bay, but when she actually gets out on most roads it's hopeless due to the fact that wind and insects are bombarding her eyes, then the young driver ends up crashing and killing 30-40 people in a high speed collision. Anyone 'needing' this adaptor quickly will also 'need' the diopters to make it usable for their last minute job. I imagine people would be less harsh if you hadn't listed with such blatant disregard for honesty:- 1. You use the term 'bolex, Iscorama and LA7200' in your title. This is no any of these and certainly shouldn't have the term iscorama mentioned anywhere near this listing. 2. BRAND NEW!!! - This is a lie. It is not brand new. you are not a reseller for SLR Magic. You bought this as an early adopters item and thus, the final product might well be different - and likely improved! 3. as above - you don't mention this is a pre production model and as such is not backed up by a warranty as the production model will be. Even it if were, as a second owner the warranty is null and void.

Cons * 1080p is getting a bit old - 4K is the future Be honest Andrew. You were definitely NOT expecting 4K at this price point and form factor!

As I previously said: this one you take it & you shoot. Right NOW. If you have a job to make, so to get paid & you need this thing right NOW, so to take the job & to get paid, what will you do? You will wait the end of the month (or maybe the next one? as there's no contract from Slr Magic for exact date of delivery), but lose the money? And after all, nobody forced you to buy it. That's how the market works: I have it, you want it, you take it or not. The rest is just to spend your time, if you haven't something better to do in your boring life. If I had the GH4 right now & put it on sale for €2000 (which means 1 month before all others), what's your problem after all? So, to finish with all this as my time is valuable: if you don't like, then you simply don't buy. That's all & so simple.

I brought the sample clip into FCP X to inspect on the histogram, and as suspected, it records into the "super-whites", just like many of Sony's cameras. So by lowering the highlights a bit, you actually recover some more detail and increase the perceived dynamic range. I also noticed some of the artifacts of poor compression around the shadow areas of flesh tones, which was one of the big drawbacks of the NEX-5n and made it almost impossible to color grade effectively (especially at high ISO). The RX cameras don't seem to have this problem. I'm curious about: - Clean HDMI - I doubt it'll be 10-bit, but maybe at least 4:2:2 - pixel binning: I've noticed that the Rx10 and Rx100 are sharper than the D5200 and 5dmkIII because the RX cameras use full-sensor readout. Would be great if Sony somehow implemented a similar downscaling method in the A6000. - overheating: still an issue? - rolling shutter - was awful on the NEX5n; maybe they've taken strides toward improving it. - Is video autofocus improved, or just photo? - really a pity they didn't go for 35mbps at 60p. Just saying.

The 50 1.2L has much better contrast and sharpness wide open than the Nikon. So it should do for the price.   The great thing about the Canon L lenses is that they maintain character, along with their high technical standards. The bokeh on the shots above has a slight curve to it doesn't it? I like it.   I can't wait to use my L glass with Speed Booster on the GH4 to get it closer to the 5D look.   WHERE IS THAT ADAPTER!?!?????