Andrew Reid

Patrick I'll be blunt, please don't take this personally. It is your test shoot that is heavily flawed not the camera. It looks like your method / compression in post for the GH2's footage is not optimal or it is shot interlaced. It is very soft especially in the garden at 35 seconds in. Your first GH2 shot is way over exposed. If you're on full automatic it should be easy to get proper exposure. But intelligent auto mode is not the right way to shoot video. You need to enable Creative Movie Mode and shoot 24p (not 1080i) with manual control of ISO, etc. The lens you are using is F4-F5.6 at best and that isn't giving you a very shallow depth of field. It isn't as sharp as a prime because it is a zoom. Use a fast prime like the Olympus 45mm F1.8 or Lumix 20mm F1.7 and preferably the same lens on both cameras. Focus manually at the same point on each cameras to do a valid comparison. In some shots your focus is at difference places so hard to compare resolution. Your Vimeo clip streams at 720p, not full HD so this completely masks the GH2's resolution advantage and introduces moire to the GH2 footage. I downloaded your 1080p clip and there's moire only on the 550D footage at 38 seconds on the garden paving stones. I recommend not doing any more tests and just going out to shoot with the GH2 and getting to grips with it.

Agree love the music. This whole thing is something which takes time to percolate in your mind. Love Lynch's work.

I am 30 minutes through after 5 days now.

Good news, pretty much confirms for certain 1080/60p for the new GH3... Or better. Hope they keep the 24p mode and put 25p in there.

Didn't realise it was shot on the PD-150. The lighting is fantastic.

Assume it was Nikon G version with adapter where you can control mechanical aperture of the G lens. I personally have the Canon mount version so have no experience of Nikon G adapters. It is fine wide open at F2.8 with NDs on standard Hong Kong Micro Four Thirds > EOS adapter.

[quote name='Axel' timestamp='1342537647' post='14043'] Exactly. Enough tests, enough techno yak. The GH2 is approved by Coppola? So there. See [i]Musgo[/i] and what it should tell you. Action speaks louder than words. Shut up and shoot. [/quote] FAR too over the other side. You need the techno yak to better your shoot and if you are like me then you are very interested in the technology. Please no more of this BS argument.

Don't no for sure Sandro but I am expecting announcement at Photokina and actual stock closer to November so a while to go yet.

If you let Rich know you want a GH2 housing I am sure he will consider producing it. So keep the requests coming. The NEX 5N is not a bad camera - sure it doesn't have the same image quality as a GH2 but it isn't far off and it has a larger sensor and 1080/60p. If you want to see a direct comparison for yourself I did one last year between the GH2 and NEX 5N mostly in low light... [media]http://vimeo.com/28529236[/media]

[quote name='Xiong' timestamp='1342497145' post='14021'] WOW! That last clip, that first side shot of him smoking, all that detail on his face pops so nicely. Its really fantastic, thats what I like about the GH2, its weak in some parts but when it shines, it shines! [/quote] It sure does have an image that pops. What a gift it is to low budget filmmakers. I've been able to invest so much more in the lenses and almost forget about the camera side.

Hi Vincent. Does the band go away at 1/25 shutter? This is a common artefact not a defect. You get around it by exposing a brighter shot. There's only very few times where it is a real issue. Use a faster F-stop and light the wall.

Agree it is likely to be 1.33x squeeze. Visually very similar a 16:9 adapter from the 4:3 digital video era. Post some footage would love to see it! How wide can you go without vignetting?

Hello Mr Rao :) I'm not really crying, it was a figure of speech :) The only time I cried was when Spike snuffed it. That was far worse than some misconceptions ;) Remember the above is just my opinion - others may disagree. But I hope to have balanced my subjectivity with enough facts to make it useful to read.

[quote name='mattbatt' timestamp='1342485877' post='14007']That said, Colt and everyone on the test is way more experienced than me - I do not know much about setting up a lot of lights for cinema, but I would love to learn more.[/quote] Would be great to learn more about lighting setup for sure. As long as it also included natural light, which is a big skill to get right - with timing your shoots, weather, locations, etc. Also audio. Sound is half of cinema

You can choose a SmallHD or Zacuto EVF in place of the CLM if you prefer to work that way. The V55 is however a lot cheaper and lighter than something like the DP6. For checking focus, which is the main purpose of it, it's one of the best value DSLR monitors available. 1 sold already. Congrats Sergio, first buyer!

Reading a lot of the reaction to the Shootout Part 2 is making me cry a little inside. I want to offer my view of it and rebuff what I think are the misconceptions out there. I am sure Steve can chip in as well to correct me if I'm wrong. [b]Misconception - "Coppola did not pick "the GH2" as having the best technical performance, he picked the way it was used as being more appealing than the way some of the others were."[/b] This is only half true. Any shot is a marriage of 'the way the tool was used' and 'the technical performance'. The resulting shot is the sum of all parts. You cannot give the camera no credit or say the camera doesn't matter, even if the lighting was a bigger factor, the camera still plays a critical role in delivering the image. [b]Misconception - "Gear does not matter. It's you."[/b] "It's you" is the correct part of this statement and the part I think Steve is getting across. "Gear doesn't matter" is often used as shorthand for saying "talent matters most" which is fine but unsurprisingly the way people are interpreting it is often very literal, very black and white. Of course gear matters. Filmmaking is a marriage of man and machine, of the technical and the artistic. Both aspects matter [i]greatly[/i]. "It's you... And a thousand other things". Let's not over simplify it. [b]Misconception - "Clean images look too plastic"[/b] I've seen grungy stuff that is so out of place. Sometimes I cry out for that highly saturated HD look. A silky smooth image with no noise. Grungy images are just one of the paints in the filmmaking palette, they are not automatically more cinematic than a clean image. I personally like putting the life back in with old lenses, film grain overlays, etc. But it doesn't mean I will shoot everything like that. Just the stuff that needs it. [b]Misconception - "Content is king"[/b] This is shorthand for saying that unless you have a narrative script which goes from A to B, you have no content. For me, a beautiful shot or a small unspoken moment can have as much content as 10 pages of dialogue. For these kinds of shot, how you shoot it visually is more important than the literal interpretation of the script. It actually transcends the content and the words on the paper. If we count everything in front of the camera as 'content' and crown it king, that also is wrong - because you can have a complete dummy behind the camera with no feel for the language of cinema and piss that content right up the wall. [b]Misconception - "Grading is cheating / Grading doesn't matter / Grading is essential"[/b] Again extreme arguments when the truth is never that black and white or one trick suits all. Overheard a quote elsewhere about the Shootout and think it is worth drawing attention too... "This is crazy that people are basically implying that the lighting and coloring was a form of cheating. Guess what camera looks good with no regard to lighting/post work? None of them." Whilst I don't agree that footage automatically looks rubbish if you don't grade it I do agree that to imply that grading and post work to lift the lower end cameras in the Shootout was a form of cheating is ridiculous. It is a viable and established technique in filmmaking and all the cameras were touched by the colourist even the F65. [b]Misconception - "Lighting is king"[/b] Lighting is very important but sadly there are many many many people who have a very boxed in view of what lighting is. A key light, a fill light, a man literally moving an electronic light source into position. 'That is how you control lighting'. No it isn't! Your key light could be the sun. Your key light could even be the god damned moon. Your fill light could be a rear window, it could be the end of a tunnel or even a cloudy London sky. Woody Allen likes Europe because of our shit weather. Our shit weather is his fill light. Go and square that with your Arri Fresnel set! [b]Misconception - "It is bad to be more interested in camera gear than everything else"[/b] Filmmaking is a collaborative effort that brings a range of people together. They are focussed on what they're most interested in, only the director, writer and producer have a very broad overview of the whole thing. If I hire a DP I'd be worried if he was NOT interested in the camera technology. I wouldn't want him as a writer that is for sure :) Some of these obsessives who talk about cameras and pixel peeping are future cinematographers. They are not merely hobbyists.

More sharpness but it does have a few cute things going - weaker anti-aliasing on the horizontal axis, the filter not same in all directions, you might find aliasing an issue when you sharpen in post versus the 5D Mark III If you compare both the 5D Mark III sharpened in post to the same optimally sharp footage from the 1D X they will be very close I think. They're close enough as it is actually.... I am not going to be parting with $6000 any time soon. It is a lot of money for a camera without peaking.

[quote name='steve zacuto' timestamp='1342480997' post='13997'] Couple of things. Let's talk about the GH2, the hack they used was not stable and crashed a lot. I don't think it would be viable in a real production. One thing that seems to be misunderstood is that the scene was supposed to be very dark. The original lighting was supposed to be a room with a few practlcle lights on in the house and the extreme light coming in form the window. What Colt and Jonny did was to over light the scene and make it a bright room. I think people interpreted this as having the most DR as opposed to being the most pleasing and artfully done. I preferred Polly and Rodney's interpretation, it was more about retaining a moody scene. There are two tests. In part 3 you are going to see how the cameras look out of the box in an apples to apples test with no lighting changes. In part two you saw what talented DP's can do with these cameras. Together this shows you the comparison of what is-- and what is possible. Steve [/quote] Thank you for coming on the board Steve. For sure the hack is not stable. The extremely high bitrate 'performance' versions are not designed to be the go-to patches for reliability on paid work. Please if anyone is thinking of taking an untested GH2 straight out of the box onto a paid shoot with Driftwood's hack, don't do it. Think about reliability. The 44Mbit image looks almost as good as the 176Mbit version. Driftwood himself gives a variety of patches, some are designed for performance and some for reliability. Lighting is subjective, it is interesting that people reacted more to the lighting than to the cameras and this is a testament to the job those Japanese engineers did at Panasonic to put so MUCH into a consumer cam. It is crazy! But wonderful. Because it opens doors. Long may it continue. I thought that with the huge window at the back, it was too much of a stretch of logic to accept a dark room. Colt seemed to be the only DP to question this. To prove this. But your explanation of Colt's lighting makes perfect sense - the audience reacted to that illusion of dynamic range. He did a great job, because cinema, after all... Is an illusion. I can see why you guys wanted the darker room and brighter window - as a test of the cameras.

[quote name='KahL' timestamp='1342460719' post='13979'] You seem to use the words "fact" a bit loosely here for some odd reason. The only "fact" is that yes, you can get a strong image from the GH2 for its price. What is NOT a fact is that the GH2 can hang with the big boys [of this shootout] with its image. Only after huge lighting modifications are added and major post work has been done can it do so. Even the twin DPs admitted this BEFORE and DURING the shoot. Why can't you?[/quote] I for a fact, have shot with the GH2 countless times and not needed to use $40,000 worth of lighting and post production to get it to look like cinema. I know for a fact the camera in the right hands is capable of 'hanging with the big boys' as you put it without spending tons of money. On the shootout, all the cameras had similar treatment - same set, they were all lit with expensive lights, all attached to the same god damn expensive lens. This is not what makes the GH2 sing, for me. You have to give the camera some credit. Plus the fact Colt Seaman did a very creative take on the lighting. Whether your light is studio rigged, or natural, or expensive, or free... It doesn't matter. Your job as a DP is to find the right light for the story, or the mood you are trying to create. That is what Malick does with the magic hour sun. And sun light is free. There is a guy on the comments for my Shanghai piece where he mistakes it for Red Epic footage. [media]http://vimeo.com/33047750[/media] The reason for this is simple, that after both are graded for a punchy 1080p look, the GH2 looks like the Epic. There's a 2nd reason, and that is I didn't f*** up the look and made the most of the camera. But it really is down to the camera to deliver as much as it is down to me. It is a joint effort!! Both important!!

[img]http://www.eoshd.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/compact-cine-systems-nex-5n-cinema-housing.jpg[/img] [url="http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&pub=5574929666&toolid=10001&campid=5336727214&customid=&icep_item=120951703965&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg"]Click here to purchase your Cine Housing for the NEX 5N[/url][img]http://rover.ebay.com/roverimp/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=2&pub=5574929666&toolid=10001&campid=5336727214&customid=&item=120951703965&mpt=[CACHEBUSTER][/img] Due to demand Richard Gale has decided to go ahead and put into production his Compact Cine Systems housing for the Sony NEX 5N. The housing is designed to be used with the NEX 5N, Sony CLM V55 monitor and lens. It is built to order and made in England.

Nice that you like it. I'm a great fan of this and Roberto's filmmaking. I've blogged about it before http://www.eoshd.com/content/6462/new-official-gh2-firmware-out-adds-25p-early-findings

This is what the Zacuto Shootout 2013 should be like. More rabbit heads please.

[quote name='Chris Santucci' timestamp='1342456990' post='13976'] Where'd the highlights go? [/quote] Silver screen. No super white. It looks like it is being projected. Helps soften the harsh electronic highlights you get when viewing stuff on an LCD monitor. That is my theory of why he's done it that way. I don't tend to shoot like that but in this instance it worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdjWWSKfKsg&feature=related Thoughts welcome :)

[quote name='onedogdan' timestamp='1342452653' post='13967'] The look of this is very good! It was shot in 1080? I find the stuttering during pans and fast motion to be pretty distracting, but maybe it's because my GH1 has the same issue, and I'm looking to closely for it? Maybe to a normal viewer who is not a filmmaker would smooth right over that issue? Otherwise, the lighting and grading is superb. As a viewer- It's a little overly dramatic in the scene direction and soundtrack for my taste... I'd call it 'well on the way to being a solid film', rather than a breakout hit. But as a filmmaker- I can safely say I would die happy having reached this level of ability. Thanks for sharing! [/quote] It is 24p and you are streaming it over Vimeo. Also your monitor is not going to look as cinematic for motion as a good home theatre projector. Maybe you can experiment with your set up a bit. It is the way it is being displayed not the camera or the shooting style which has the issue.