zephyrnoid

Great review Andrew! I'll probably get one, as I have the budget and a gap in my field kit. I do agree that the next iteration ought to implement a wireless I/O comm, but it can't happen with current wireless protocols AND pass a 4K stream. My guess is that the next 'BMD Video Assist, will support 4K Prores as an update. It would be great if that occurred via firmware.

Thank goodness I caught a link to this review on the GH4 Forum in fb. I've been honing my major hybrid upgrade strategy for weeks now and the Issues that you bring up with the A7SII simply never showed up in other reviews. I'm definitely getting the A7RII but was hoping the A7SII would be my backup and video centric version. No more. Thanks for saving me $3K Cheers.

Kaizen doctrine would rule that A7 could be eliminated. I'm praying for a 24MP A7S2 so I can avoid having to buy a second body, the A7R2 for stills. And yes. I really need the 42MP sensor for some stills.

"How often do you record continuous takes one after the other of 30 min+" It's a perennial conundrum. How Long a 'Take' should a capture system accommodate? The answer depends on the context of the situation. - Well planned interviews (except ones of incessant talkers) should warn the interviewee of roughly how much time they have for an answer. I keep my questions short and one point per question. At most, I've pushed the interviewees into 20 minute answers on one question. - Documentaries are notorious for running into longish takes. Particularly if the subject is an event with multiple subsections flowing continuously like a parade for an hour or more. In such cases, multicams and continuous audio are the solution. - For TVC, Feature film etc. somewhere between 10 seconds and 5 minutes max for a take. If you're shooting politicians talking, you might want to use a camera that can accommodate an hour take or more I woould have rephrased that as : Samsung H.265 CODEC, Sony Sensor and Olympus IBIS

​Are you referring to STILL or MOVIE Images in your declaration? Hybrids are expected to COMPROMISE to achieve a balance.

Andrew I haven't commented in AGES. That's because I've been waiting for a Hybrid like the A7RII. So now some questions. If you know the answers.... Internal 4K . How has Sony solved what is typically a Heat Management Issue for the sensor?Based on 1. Is there a record time limit at 4K Internally?We're guessing that 4K is Sony4K compressed 10bit at best. Any news on the color space spec front?Is there a chance it'll send out a signal via WiFi to a Smartphone as does the Samsung NX1?

@leeys The Note3 had been in my sights for a while as a phablette. Trying to get a used unlocked and clean one

A smart phone in a ff camera. So you take a $300 camera, add wireless com and then shackle your customer to service plan or charge them $1,000 to buy it outright. Doesn't seem very SMART to me LOL! 😈

Would love to finally toss my 5year old point and shoot camera. My only problem is that smart phones are shackles to your carrier but unlocked this may be worth the buy out cost. Do we know all the rest of the facts? - removable battery? Lion or lipo chemistry? - screen resolution and dimensions? - wireless functionality and protocols? - 1/4-20 mount??? Tell all Andrew!

"Now if someone can find out how to make the perfect ergonomic camera with Super 35mm sensor for news, run & gun and documentary shooters, they will have a winner on their hands." The actual questions is WHY none of the susual suspects have done so, not "how" The answer has been the same for the past 6 years. The don't want to fill the gap as long as selling at both ends of the market segementation makes them more money. The Gap filler is not a "Super 35mm sensor for news, run & gun and documentary shooters," But rather, a Super 35mm sensor for documentary shooters. For news, run & gun and events, the Panasonic GH4 is ideal.

"The way this works is quite technical but it essentially amounts to using the extra pixels present in the 4K files to rebuild the lost colour information. Neighbouring pixels are summed to create a super pixel with a greater bit depth and better sampling. It requires a lot of processing power and a finishing codec good enough to store the extra colour data (10bit 4:4:4, with CineForm and ProRes being suitable choices) which is why the camera doesn’t do it internally. It does require a transcoding step in post but the increase in quality over the 8bit internal 1080p codec will be marked. The message is clear. Even if you’re working in 1080p, shoot 4K on the GH4 if you want the best quality." That's pure fakery. What matters to me is the ORIGINAL RAW Clut. It's not 10Bit 4:4:4. So they are trying to convince you that by widening the color space via dithering ( AKA Interpolation) that 'magically' a wider gamut has been recovered. That's incorrect because the the orginal space off the sensor was 8Bit 4:2:0 The 4K>2K hat trick is just that. A TRICK A trick because pixel density has NOTHING at all to do with capture color gamut. Sorry to be so harsh. You will discover this when someone runs Imperical Chroma Key tests. Panasonic Please stop this nonsense!

You missed two key points about the GH4 1. It's a hybrid FOR hybrid shooters, like I used to be. Shoot stills for bread n butter, shoot video for bread and butter and fun. 2. It's a transitional camera. A fuller integrated 4k camera SHOULD emerge from Panasonic that is boxy and does not required external box or 4k recorder. My guess is it will be called Arri Amira ;)

If you read all my posts you'll have the answer. They're rolling out incremental upgrades to make adopters pay for the bigger milestones down the timeline

Excellent comparison. Some points to ponder. "Sensor size and your choice of lens is indelibly linked – an important thing to consider..." Indeed. So let's put the squeeze on Panasonic to get it right. APS-C/DX ! When discussing critical highlight exposure (zoneVIII) it helps to mention that pros, reflexively lock in that highlight tone and holding VIII becomes a non issue in post. Also. The BMCC is not a hybrid. It's an experimental beta product. The GH4 is a bone afide hybrid. But you've already implied the distinction.

Dx

I've famously gripped (pre speed booster days ) that there isn't enough bokeh in m43 sensors making foreground / background separation challenging. The sweet spot is DX/APSC NOT ff, but the engineers at Panasonic have an obsession it seems. Now. Reading the spec more closely, looks like there's even more crop factor with this 4k sensor, which is a real deal killer for me. Then again, I have zero invested in M43 lenses.

Fantastic overview! You hit all the key points, so I have little else to add except to ask.... When will Panasonic change to a larger sensor and when will the break from this excellent hybrid and finally give us the whole package in one sweet boxy video-centric camera!

Well done sir! Finally. You've started to apply numerical ratings! Don't be too generous though. 7/10 might be enough for Sony to call it a Big Win! Further. "A small rant" should be a pinned block of bold text in your reviews banner, to remind the makers that this is our cardinal lamentation! Finally. In a new section,it might behoove you to start a conversation about the next generation of products.Your energy might be put to better use this way.

Really AWESOME Review! Not only becuase of its thoroughness but you are 95% perfect on the formatting of the whole thing. Look for a PM from me for the other 5%. Well done is all I can say! Thank You!

SPOT ON !

The reason that getting 4K content capture out FIRST has become so critical, is that content distributors discovered from past mistakes that putting the 'cart before the horse' resulted in lost sales opportunities and obsolete Hardware. Builting momentuum in the CONTENT is the correct driver, pushing the development of the rest of the value chain components to 'Hurry Up & Deliver' in logical sequence. An example is that when Blu-Ray won the lottery as the defacto 1080p HD Disc Distribution format, the electronics industry bussied themselves releasing the players and burners (all but Apple I may add) , too long before there was much content to run on the machines. Online Video to> handhelds immediately shifted the paradigm and POOF! mass distributed Blu-Ray content is all but dead. This time, the smart money is to get the 4K content rolling out ( especially since lower than 4K formats are easy to procure from the masters). Once the content is out, then the rest of the components ( Storage> Processing>Editing>Distribution) will follow in logical 'roll-outs' thereafter. I didn't invent this concept of Content First. RED Digital Cinema did way back in 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema_Camera_Company

If Nikon was REALLY smart, they'd get out of the camera business altogether and focus on Selling Lenses, as have Zeiss, Leica and the (formerly dark horses) Sigma etc. You really only need three or four players in the Camera market, given that they share innovations, cross license and then deliver nearly identical 'packages'. Nikon, Zeiss, Leica optics are another matter.

We all ( yes. even ME ) sometimes forget that in the larger scheme of things, the consumer Photography/Videography market is often the smaller revenue generator for the big boys. For its last two decades Kodak made far more money from other than photography segments ( chemicals> plastics>carpets). Nikon has for a long time been big in industrial optics as well as microscopes, telescopes, scanners and more. Canon? Copiers, scanners and other industrial applications. So let's be nice to our 'camera divisions', as they are mostly, loss leaders ( building brands)

Look. Resolution matters. But over and over I keep sending folks to this chart to learn that 10bit 4:2:2 matters more since perceived resolution can be far more easily adjusted in post, than 8bit 4:2:0 color- graded in challenging situations. Plus over and over we need to rememember that a lot of would be customers that have a lot of ChromaKey work in mind will make this distinction as well. So let's pray for the enhanced color space first. If we get both, 4K at 10bit 4:2:2 then we've hit the jackpot. Finally "The sensor size with a Metabones Speed Booster adapter will almost be as large as the Canon 1D C in 4K video mode, at 1.4x crop over full frame (APS-H on the 1D C’s 4K video mode is 1.3x crop). That’s slightly larger than Super 35mm." That's the other piece of good news I was looking to hear as I am only going to pursue a system that allows me the 'sweet spot' compromise between great DOF and difficult to follow-focus FF sensor. I'm even willing to let go of my aversion to 'DSLR Body Shapes' if Panasonic indeed gets this right at $3K Thanks for the great and hopeful report!

"even if the GH4 is the all singing and all dancing camera we hope it is - all of us will still want more. (Another GH camera, but instead of 4k - its got 120FPS!)" If Panasonic nails the 'Balance' between stills quality  and mostly  Indie/enthusiast video and does it in something that is NOT a DSLR form-factor, then they will have finally broken from the 'beaten path'.