jasonmillard81

@IronFilm...this company is doing it right...a7s really shines with its iso performance but gh4 is an all around monster

Thanks all...I think the best of all of options is this: Sell my 60D and Tamron 17-50 lens....keep 5d3 and my 50mm 1.8 and rokinon 85mm 1.4....save up for a a bit and purchase a GH4...a7s is creamy and nice in low light but the cost is such that i'd probably have to sell 5d3. Now the dilemma is when using the gh4 do i go zoom or prime for mostly doc work...i say zoom and the question is should i get the Tamron 24-70 and a speed booster or go for the lumix 12-35 Also...I have the Rode NTG2 condenser mic...is that good enough to run audio through the GH4 or will I need a diff mic

Any reason to not consider the gh4?

Check this guy's workflow...it looks like hollywood to me...great work:

Probably a sacrifice of negating longer processes is less quality...trade-offs one of the reasons I am close to abandoning 5d3 raw as others have unless an easier workflow works...

Amazing anamorphic shots...I have to read up on this now :) Question: may sound dumb but... since the gh4 is garbage above 800 ISO compared to most FF cameras, what is the prospect of having a shoe mount LED light on the top of the camera for lower lit situations, will that look "nice" and "natural?

jcs...first off those models are sending my 32 year old single blooded male head into a tizzy...secondly the main shots were on a gh4? They looked stunning...I'm hopeful you have some original clips to upload...720p in a 27" iMac looks like rubbish.

I agree with jcs's points on the benchmark, but Andrews counterpoints ring true for most who can't handle the workflow and HD space needed for raw. I can't say I am ready to sacrifice image though. I think the GH4 and a7s in particular match or best the 5d3 raw in some areas and this has yet to be seen with the brand new d750...like I said I would love for andrew to have static human subjects and compare the a7s, gh4, and d750, maybe even ML Raw for kicks. That would truly give us a picture of which system is where.

Wow Andrew, that is pretty convincing. I can't wait for you to release a/b and then side-by-side video footage of ML Raw on the 5d3 vs. D750... Any shot at you doing that while also including the a7s and gh4 in the mix to have a real conversation starter on the 4 main DSLRs in today's market? Thanks!

My main camera is the 5d3...like I said I am looking to most likely upgrade because of video...the ml raw files are just absurd in size and while post-processing is slowly becoming easier the setup etc. is still not ideal. UI is something that one can adapt to assuming their open minded with that. I have to sell my 5d3 to get the money to purchase a better DSLR that takes great photos and produces better native video than the 5d3. So I think it does make a lot of sense as to why I am looking to sell it. Make sense? I need that cash to purchase whatever is replacing it. I understand that whatever I replace (outside of Nikon 750, 810, etc) will be a quality sacrifice to some degree in photos, but since half of my desire to upgrade is video that is okay. Fair points about Sony & Panasonic...Samsung NX1 may be an option when we get some real world results...also the new Nikon D750 looks promising compromise.

Thanks! I would like my 5d3 replacement to supersede my 60d for stills...I just meant I have 60d as a backup in the meantime if I decide to do some shooting. I like to use my DSLR for both photos/video for my students making mini-docs and i'd say video quality is number 1 and photo is number 2....for photo i'd like to print my stills fairly large for framing. I saw Dugdale do it with the a7s and said that 12mp didn't seem to limit too much the quality upon printing. Battery runtime is a concern but I am sure I could purchase 1-2 back-ups in the event I need a long-time to run. Again I don't shoot professionally or continually for hours. It seems the advent of the D750 and D810 along with the NX1 means I should hold off until mid-October before making a major decision on which system to go to. Yet I wanted to start the conversation and get some educated and thoughtful discourse going in the meantime. I look forward to follow-up replies by Andrew and others on my particular situation, which I am sure others are in.

Greetings again. I have tried for the past month working with ML raw and have not had the ease of experience or luck that I had hoped. The time, knowledge, and dedication it requires is simply not where I am currently at to a degree. Also driving this is the knowledge I have that newer cameras are capable of equal or near-equal quality in terms of image quality with nearly half the work required to produce pleasing images. I finally put my 5d3 up for sale on Craigslist this morning and hope to sell it by weeks end. I am also selling 2 KB 64gb 1000x cards as well. I own a Tamron 17-50 for ASPC, 50mm 1.8, and a Rokinon 85mm 1.4 I have no current intentions of selling them and will wait to see where my next purchase takes me. I also own a Canon 60D in decent condition which I will keep purely for stills. The two main contenders may be obvious, Sony a7s and Panasonic GH4. The impending release of the Samsung NX1 may make me wait a few weeks before making a purchase. I am about 50/50 a stills/video user. I make short docs for my students in history as well as personal narrative/docs for travel, family, etc. I have seen some excellent output on both the GH4 and a7s, and Dugdale's review has left me more confused than confident. I am partial to just stop overthinking and go into the a7s realm, but would like to some advice on how you would proceed if you were me in my position with my needs and perspective. Maybe some questions I should be asking myself, or things to consider (lenses, etc.) 4K is not necessary as the a7s 1080p is phenomenal and holds its own next to the GH4. Thanks in advance and look forward to hopefully helping others who are on the fence.

kgv5 can you speak more to this?

I would never make it based 1 person's decision just bringing a long thread and someone's conclusion here for discussion. He has posted plenty of videos throughout the 140+ page thread so I believe you've missed a lot of the discussion over there. There seem to be a series of thought processes going into our decisions especially when you boil it down to trade-offs. The GH4 is the sharpest of the lot as a result of 4k downscaled to 2k...and it doesn't have to look like "video" if you bring down the internal sharpness and apply some nice LUTs to it, yet the color overall can't match Canon or even Sony. Sony clearly is the middle-man, at least in my eyes, it has great ISO advantage has excellent 1080 sharpness while not being as video-like as GH4 still retains some elements and the color isn't as bad as GH4 but not nearly good as 14-bit Canon. And Canon is the least sharp, or maybe on-par with a7s, but the color advantages are very clear, it has better ISO than gh4 but not nearly as good as a7s. The post-processing of raw is what kills people most, then again I don't do this for money just personal use so it is fine with me, though I'd rather have a native codec that did this automatically and save me trouble. In the end...something to really put into perspective: the end video we create is not going to EVER be a/b'ed by those who watch it, including us. I've watched TV and hollywood where there is something moire/aliasing on the cameras used and if i hyper focus on it I can get distracted from the totality of the image. At the end of the day any of the three cameras works perfect for most uses. I still feeling having the power and knowledge to grade effectively is the second most important part, behind a great narrative and a highly competent DP who can capture the proper lighting, angles, focus that is needed to grade properly. I will be keeping my 5d3 and work on raw until I am financially able or bored enough to get another system and work with.

Interesting post from Squigs over at DVXUSER. He has a great reputation and I have read a lot of his posts and seen his videos from both raw and a7s. After 3 weeks of testing I think the A7s is best suited as a b-cam for the 5D MK3 raw. The biggest issue is the 8bit S-log files (including prores), there's not much info there and it's a lot harder to get a solid image in post (this may change when new LUTs come out). The A7s is very good in high contrast scenes (as long as you can avoid the highlight aliasing) and it does have a bit more dynamic range than the MK3. Beyond 3200 ISO the A7s has the edge but for everything else I think the MK3 is a better camera. There's nothing about the A7s that makes it worth giving up the versatility and quality of a digital negative which you can manipulate as much as you want in post. There's just too many compromises with the A7s, it's just not good enough to give up raw and go backwards. I hope somebody does a raw hack on the A7s but until then I'll just use it for production stills and for low light scenes. Having said that I've been known to change my mind on occasion Guess I am keeping my 5d3 and working on some new glass now :)

Andrew, in those conditions etc. yes but until we see a7s footage that rivals the image of some of the best 5d3 raw footage I don't see it trumping raw in terms of look alone,,,,workflow and storage yes.

Twins! :)

So more pertinent to this video...what are people's thoughts about how well this guy was able to make the 5d3 in ml raw mode look? I could see this being on a big screen and being completely happy with the aesthetics of it. I can't say that for most of the gh4, a7s, or even much of the other raw footage.

Thanks guys I appreciate the feedback and new knowledge! I wonder then, why does this guys 5d3 raw footage look as amazing as it does, especially compared to about 95% of the other raw footage coming from comparable cameras?

Well if you look at the image I think it speaks for itself...also have yourself a read if you think Cine lenses and L lenses are the same in terms of aesthetics: http://nofilmschool.com/2013/01/canon-cn-e-cine-prime-vs-l-series-lenses-c300-jonathan-yi/

Everyone is biased. My eyes are biased to the a7s. That doesn't make me a bad person nor an unreliable source of opinion purely because I am partial to a certain look. It is like music. I am biased to Led Zeppelin over Kiss...if I was comparing their albums I would have an inherit bias as I prefer a certain sound to another. So many variables affect reviews such as these like the user's skill set with each camera. Maybe certain cameras lend themselves more easily to ones inherent skill set and therefore produce better images to rivals and thus it is biased. Bias is inevitable...impartiality at 100% doesn't exist in these contexts. What you're inferring is that there was a complicit intent to poorly expose and grade...I doubt that is the case. Other tests have confirmed some of the 1-dimensional tests like these. Unless you have human subjects, a variety of scenes, and side by side comparison with almost the same lens used to diminish variability then you get these results...take from it what you will....complaining about it as you do on a board is subtractive in nature not additive.

What I find most disturbing about the GH4 are twofold: 1. aggressive LUT/Color Corrections the color breaks apart and looks like an iPhone 4s gone bad on instagram 2. the amount of noise, particularly in the blacks, that creep in around iso 800 and above...especially when it is isn't bright daylight

Sorry...this post doesn't fit in the current narrative and direction of the forum but I had to add this: I am blown away by how amazing this image looks...apparently another test comparing cine to L-lenses shows how much more resolution the cine lenses have...but at 5,000 a lens I all never own one, just wanted to share!

whatever the DR is...it looks very nice: http://vimeo.com/101529059