MaxAperture Films

You must not have read the first half of my post where I pointed out the fact WE HAVE ARRIVED at Shangri La (on paper at least). The post was expressing my general opinion which is multidimensional about the subject of recent events. You seem to dig maniacally to uncover points of disagreement and blow them up as if my original post was somehow personally directed at you, which is strange. I wasn't attacking BM or Reid, just giving a personal opinion for crying out loud. Can you coexist with other people's viewpoints?

Did you miss... "I wish BM would show the same level of guts in how they show off their latest products" ? I wasn't speaking about features/performance, they are bold in the spec/price category for sure. Companies like Canon and Adobe are notorious for being tone-deaf to their user base, so I'm just as befuddled as Reid as to why they would ignore a large community like this. ETA - By bypassing the leader of that community with a history of trailblazing in the camera review space.

Well I guess I'm glad that the latest eruption of passion surrounding cameras is no longer asserting itself in the form of a flaming microscope rammed up against a particular spec, colorspace or frame rate. That confirms where we've arrived in terms of true value with current and soon-to-be-released cameras. I'm a bit mystified that camera launches are now a point of critical concern. I would've given my left nut for a camera like the pocket 4K a few years ago, so I think it's a bit of a stretch to also demand that mfrs start marketing cameras in a way that we personally approve of. And I also think it's completely insane that we would knock a person's work because we might not approve of their style and they were lucky enough to get a demo unit pre-release. That just feels snarky to me. Filmmaking is a diverse realm, with a diverse audience - regardless of clicks. That being said, I do think Reid is long overdue for a launch with BM, so I get the rant completely. That's probably because I dig the shooting style (which is definitely under-represented in recent camera launches) and unvarnished attitude even when I don't agree with it 100%. I wish BM would show the same level of guts in how they show off their latest products as Reid does skewering dumb feature implementations and design choices. It concerns me a little bit that one of the greatest camera price-disrupters of the last decade may have become... timid, in spite of their technical achievements. I would hate to think that BM is beginning down the path of Adobe and Canon and playing it safe instead of being bold and owning it.

Andrew, any chance you can inquire with Panasonic about implementing a full sensor width 10 bit time-lapse mode in HEVC? It doesn't seem like it would be a very heavy lift for them to add considering the hard work has already been done on the encoding side of things. It would also save a ton of storage space and time compared to shooting raw stills + image processing. Thanks.

I'm running an RX 480 GPU at the moment. Regarding RAM, you can check out kit compatibility reported informally by some users here - http://rymem.vraith.com/basic/view_by_mobo . If you want to see the BIOS version they were running at the time just click the embedded CPU-Z report. My G.Skill DDR4 3000 is currently running at 2933 with the default XMP profile in Gigabyte BIOS (GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 Motherboard). You're right - it may not hold if I scale up to 4 DIMMs. Waiting to see how things shake out on the support side of things first. It's worth noting, on some motherboards with early BIOS you actually had to overclock the R7 1700 higher than base clock in order to get it to post above the default 2133 memory speed. I believe that issue has been resolved with the latest AMD microcode update. Regardless, you can easily overclock to 3.6 Ghz without even touching voltage. 3.7 Ghz requires only another 0.06V added to the offset (1.248 V-Core). At 3.8+ Ghz the stock cooler isn't really adequate for the resulting heat. 3.7 Ghz appears to be the sweet spot for price/performance with this chip.

Most of my vid rendering work is with Vegas Pro14 these days. I'm only running 16GB of memory at the moment but 4K previews and timeline scrubs are effortless, even when fed by slow USB drives. Render times with the GPU are approximately 50% faster than what my i7 could pull off. Lightroom also seems much faster at importing and exporting files. I would recommend getting the cheapest 8 core chip (1700) and clocking it at 3.6 - 3.8 Ghz, above that the power consumption begins to become exponentially higher and delivers little tangible performance in trade. The stock RGB cooler can handle 3.6 or 3.7 at sustained workloads (Prime 95, long renders, etc.). Buying the 1700X or 1800X is a waste of money for a workstation build, IMO. Better to put that savings toward DDR4 3000 or 3200 memory and see additional performance gains (the so-called "infinity fabric" wakes up at higher clock speeds). Can't say enough good things about this $300 CPU... it is absolutely perfect for creators on a budget. I hope a down-clocked version shows up in laptops this year, at 2.8 Ghz it only consumes around 45W of power. It would be an incredibly responsive system for those of us who need to edit 4K while on the road.

I just did the same thing but not quite as much RAM... R7 CPU + mATX board + V21 cube case + DDR4 memory + 600W P/S for under $600. I then paid off half the upgrade by eBaying my old 4790 and DDR3. Even at a meager 3.6Ghz this system completely eviscerates the Haswell it has replaced. Talk about a cheap performance boost!

The chart is very confusing in how it groups the codecs to the frame rate. If this thing delivers 4K 48P @ 10 bit 4:2:2 after the update I'll be ecstatic. And if Matt confirmed that with Andrew already, I'm sure it's legit. He rarely gets tripped up on specs.

Thanks Luke! And huge props to Panasonic for going "all-in" with this cam and even encouraging more feature requests... they've earned my $$ for sure.

Hey Luke, any chance you can test out the 4K time lapse mode? I'm curious as to whether the video file can now be saved as 10 bit 4:2:2. That feature alone would save me a ton of work in post. Specifically the 2 fps speed in 4K creative mode/variable frame rate (conformed to 24P playback). Thanks.

A little chroma noise lurking in those shadows, but looks pretty solid considering it's still pre-production and only a 150 Mb/s 10 bit codec.

Clayton returns!! I had a feeling he was going places in the industry .

Haha, that would've been the greatest NAB trolling of all time. Seriously though, a sequel is well overdue... funniest damn parody I ever saw. Crowd-fund it and make it bigger than before.

Luke, I'd really like to see a GH5 shot through the Passion-Aggression chassis... I want to find out if the picture will look bigger through that mattebox. BTW, what ever happened to Terron and Clayton? Will they ever re-enter the market with a new product release? I really hope they didn't end up like the Duke Brothers. Also, I like that the GH5 is 10% bigger and heavier. Thanks.

Same here, looking forward to playing around with Pro Color tonight. Filmconvert + GX85 in natural profile has been a winner for me for most situations. Still, there are times when I prefer a more vivid canon-esque grade to conservative film simulations.

This is great... I was hoping you were working on something for Panasonic shooters. Do you know if the LUT portion of this process will work with the VisionColor LUT loader for Sony Vegas? http://www.vision-color.com/lutplugin/ "OFX compatible LUT loader for Sony Vegas by VisionColor. Highly accurate interpolation and multiple file format support for 3D and 1D Lookup Table." Apparently Vegas still doesn't natively support LUTs. Thanks.

In the past, Panasonic's cameras have always featured playback compatibility with their TVs. Their current HDR UHD TVs feature native H.265/HEVC and VP9 decoding at 10 bits. I am not aware of 10 bit H.264 decoding support in these TVs. So there's a good possibility this camera will actually record in HEVC and even have a built in HDR profile (HDR10?) in addition to Log profile for those of us who will grade the images offline. I could be wrong, but it just doesn't seem to make logical sense to shoot in a codec that won't be playback-compatible with their HDR capable TVs, especially considering product lifecycles can run as long as 3 years for a GH. Why hang on to H.264 for another 2-3 years?

​It just looks like an over-exposure issue on a couple clips, most show a huge DR improvement to my eyes. I can't say I'm surprised though, the sensor's raws have a ton of DR when pushed in LR and PS. The sensor is within 1 stop of Canon and Sony in the DR department but I prefer the color science I see coming out of the GH4. Skin tones look very pleasing and greens and blues are preferable to what I typically see in some Sony footage (occasional weird yellows in foliage and unnatural looking "blue" skies).

I'm still quite happy with the images coming out of the GH4 with or without V-log. The metabones XL adapter just added that much more capability to the camera if I should decide to slap on some bigger glass. I might actually be more impressed with Panny if they release a V-log update a few months before the GH5 is announced, that would buck the trend of holding back advanced features for a next-gen product. I can honestly say that I don't feel limited by technology for the first time in a long time. The new Sony tech is very good from the standpoint of hybrid imaging, but not earthshaking for a lot of filmmakers. 4K/60P would be more useful for me than any of the features announced in the A7R II and I doubt they'll be delivering that in a future firmware update.

Great find OP!! This pretty much guarantees more control over highlights, if released. Panasonic does not appear to be pulling any punches, so far they've shown decent firmware support for the GH4. V-Log is actually a high-end Varicam gamma curve for the new cinema and broadcast cameras described as - "To maximize the dynamic range of the recorded images, Panasonic has developed a new log curve (V-Log) which elegantly maps the 14+ stops of image data to the recorded file. The VariCam 35 permits the assignment of various LUTs to individual recording channels and camera outputs. For example, shoot UHD and record non-destructively with the V-Log LUT, but assign a â€baked-in†709 LUT on the HD / proxy recording for a real-time normal contrast look for editing and pre-grading. The camera’s monitor, EVF and EVF outputs have similar selectable LUT capabilities." I doubt the LUT capability will be there on the GH4 (the image looks very flat on the monitor) but who knows!!

I hear that Subversive, I was just offering my thoughts about the camera traditionally having been a photographic tool first and foremost rather than a video machine. That is obviously changing now with the addition of the larger sensor and glorious 4K. Keep in mind that a 3 stop ND filter is not particularly useful for strong daylight video shooting with a fast lens. You would typically need a 6 to 8 stop filter to get shutter speeds down around 1/50 or 1/60 (with wide apertures). That being the case, you would still need to stack on a vari-ND or additional 3-4 stop ND to achieve a proper video shutter angle. I believe it is 100% likely that new features will be added to this camera in the next iteration, that has always been the case with most compact and mirrorless products. You should consider the Leica D-Lux, as it will probably hold more resale value if you decide to upgrade to a new model with a flip/touch screen (I highly doubt the 3 stop ND filter will ever return).

The LX7 had a max shutter speed of 1/2000 at F1.4 so a 3 stop ND filter was integrated to improve the camera's ability to shoot wide open in strong lighting conditions. The LX100 can shoot up to 1/16000 in electronic shutter mode. This is the same exposure result as having a built-in 3 stop ND filter in front of a 1/2000 shutter (without the engineering challenge of covering a much larger sensor with a mechanical piece of glass). For video work I'll carry a Hoya ProND 6 2/3 stop filter, spare battery and card in a small pouch. Compared to lugging around my GH4 and 12-40mm lens, filters, etc. it will be nirvana!

Andrew, I'm just skeptical in general on this one, for many of the reasons you outlined in your original article. When the GH4 was circulating in beta it wore a nearly identical body to the GH3, so I wonder if this could just be new guts in an old shell that is representative of an E-M1 MkII test unit. It seems strange that the Olympus v2.0 firmware scheduled for release next week (http://lightsnowdev.blogspot.com/) does not contain the 4K option. Perhaps they will launch a v2.1 shortly thereafter?? We'll know soon enough I suppose. I want to believe!!

While I hope it's true, this is still a tough one to believe. The person in question who started tweeting the 4K rumor was only listed as an extra on Ironman 2 according to IMDB. Not the typical film production level one would expect from a "secret" beta tester within the industry. This would likely go down as the biggest firmware feature upgrade for any camera in history. I can't imagine Panasonic would sit back and take it without adding a few extra features of their own given the price disparity between the two cameras.

Great job with the tests, Julian. That rolling shutter skew seems very minimal given the speed of travel, was it shot in 4K or FHD?