Mozim

Personally I'd get the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 instead of the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 unless you absolutely need an ultra wide-angle lens. I own the Tokina 11-16 and for most shooting scenarios, 11mm on an APS-C body (1,6x crop factor) is too wide in my opinion. I like to use the lens without a Speedbooster on my GH3, so that's a 22mm full frame equivalent. Using the Sigma 18-35 with a Speedbooster and the wide angle converter, the result will be a 22mm full frame equivalent, too. Plus the Sigma is a lot faster, extremely sharp and very usable even when shot wide open. The Tokina isn't exactly sharp unless you step it down quite a bit.

If you focus manually, then I would not get the Panasonic 12-35. It's basically unusable manually so you have to rely on the AF. Another option is to get a Sigma / Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 plus a Speedbooster which basically turns them into a 12-35mm f/2.0. Both have image stabilization, too, and the manual focus is actually usable as opposed to the Panasonic. One of these two + Speedbooster will be cheaper than the Panasonic 12-35mm.

True, but exciting new technologies are always right around the corner, right? Sure the A7s and the GH4 are massive improvements over what was available a year ago, at least for video, but I'm fairly sure that the situation won't be any different this time next year. @jason: If you want your new camera to supersede your 60D for stills, but want to keep your 60D as a back up camera... well in that case it doesn't make sense to me that you sold your 5D3. Of course you can buy whatever camera and put an whatever-to-EF speedbooster on there, but autofocus won't be as good anymore and to me that's fairly important when it comes to shooting stills. Quality-wise, the GH3 is better than my 600D and it's quite a bit more ergonomic. The image quality isn't massively different though, and I can't really comment on low light ability. I'm sure neither the 60D nor the GH3 (GH4 is very similiar stills-wise!) will come close to the 5D3. Two things I dislike about the GH3 both have to do with sensor size. First the aspect ratio is different, so your pictures will be a 4:3 aspect ratio instead of 3:2. I can't get used to 4:3, so I always crop the images to 3:2 - which means I lose another 4 megapixels, so consider my GH3 to be a 12mp camera instead of 16mp. Not an huge issue, but of course I'd prefer 24mp over 12mp. The other issue I have with the GH3 is the MFT sensor size and seperating your subject from the background. I currently own the Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 and the Olympus 45mm f/1.8. Both are fantastic lenses, no doubt about that. You can get very, very good background seperation with these if you move in close enough. What I really, really miss though is a general-purpose lens that creates a shallow depth of field. I bought a Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 IS for my Canon and it cost me around $350. The MFT equivalent - Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 IS - costs almost three times as much and it's even more difficult to create a shallow depth of field because of the smaller sensor size. Plus it's almost impossible to focus manually with (almost) any of the native MFT lenses because of their aweful focussing mechanism. The Sony looks fantastic for video, although it's not as simple as picking it up and starting to shoot. There are some issues and post-production isn't as easy. And the Sony lens options aren't anywhere as good as the Nikon or Canon offerings. I'm looking for a camera that allows me to shoot both stills and video at the best quality possible. I doubt that the A7s (lens selection) and the GH4 (sensor size, lack of good lenses that aren't primes) will come close to the Canon or Nikon full frame offerings.

The scene Danyyel was referring to is at the 2:30 minute mark. The transition looks very smooth and I'm very excited about this feature. Depending on how it actually works in real life situations, this might be a huge feature for run and gun-type shooting.

I've been waiting for some real world feedback on the D750 and didn't expect it to show up that quickly - thanks Andrew! I feel like this may be the best hybrid stills/video camera right now. As a stills camera, it's fantastic in almost every regard. I don't think MFT will be able to compete with full frame any time soon and the more I shoot with my GH3 (which is lovely), the more I wish for a bigger sensor. The reason for that is that it's very difficult to get shallow DOF with wide lenses. I know having shallow DOF is just one of many stylistic elements and should be used carefully, but considering how quickly compact cameras are getting better, I feel like this is the main thing that'll keep seperating professionall full frame cameras from smaller cams. The video mode looks great as well. While I'd love to pick up an A7s, I don't think it's very user friendly unless you're working in a controlled environment. And the GH4 is fantastic but I don't want to limit myself to MFT, so as a person who shoots both video and stills, I'd like to stick with a lens system that I can potentially adopt to many different lens mounts. Andrew, a couple of questions about the D750... - How's the LCD screen on the back? I actually prefer shooting with an LCD screen and a loupe as opposed to using an EVF as it gives you more stability and it's easier to focus. - What's the battery life like? - Any issues with rolling shutter? What's it comparable to? - It only has 60p, right? Or is there the option to choose an even higher frame rate? - The D810 has a feature that allows you to set the minimum and maximum ISO and the camera will smoothly adjust the ISO when the light changes. Does the D750 have the same feature? Thanks a ton for your effort, I'm looking forward to reading part 2 of the review!

You said that you're a 50/50 stills and video user. Is the camera you're looking for purely for video and the 60D purely for stills? This is the first thing to consider in my opinion, mainly because there aren't many (good) native lenses for the A7s. The are more and better native lens options for the GH4. They do have some drawbacks though: focussing manually with them is very annoying and you can't use them on larger sensors... plus of course getting very shallow depth of field will be more challenging than when shooting full frame. I currently own a 600D and a GH3 and prefer the GH3 in almost every aspect. What I dislike about the GH3 (or the mft system in general) is the lack of good, native lenses that don't cost a fortune. A 12-35mm f/2.8 that has an unusable manual focus and doesn't exactly allow you to seperate the subject from the background, yet costs close to $1000, doesn't really excite me. The A7s looks lovely for video but has too many drawbacks in my opinion: Battery runtime, lack of native lenses, weird issues with some light sources, rolling shutter... doesn't exactly seem like a camera you can simply pick up and get the shot. Right now I actually think that the Nikon D750 looks like a fantastic stills/video hybrid. Lots of native glass available, great AF system & speed and the video mode seems to be very very decent. I'm looking forward to Andrew's review.

Yeah you have to stick to ISO 3200 if you want to shoot slog. Doesn't mean it's useless but you'll have to use some pretty strong ND filters. @ Andrew: Apparently the D810 has an Auto ISO feature that allows you to set the minimum and maximum ISO and it smoothly ramps between the ISOs to keep the exposure consistent. This was mentioned in the comments of the Every Moment Counts D810 video. Could you please let us know if the D750 has the same feature? It seems to work very well and it would be fantastic to have this on the D750. Thanks!

I was going to say the same but it looks like nothing is in focus at all when shooting at f/1.8. In my experience, the Pana 25mm f/1.4 is decently sharp wide open. It does get a little better when stopping it down but I don't hesitate to use it at f/1.4 or f/1.8. What I noticed when shooting wide open in very contrasty conditions is that there can be quite a bit of purple fringing... but none of the fuzziness you described!

Hey, so I'm in the middle of editing some footage that I shot a while ago. I was shooting with two cameras and both cameras' white balances were set to sunny. We were shooting in a forest and didn't have any control over the lighting and dialling in the white balance for each shot manually was not possible. The footage we shot around noon has a very strong, green colour cast with quite a few blown out light patches whereas the footage we shot in the afternoon is lit fairly evenly and doesn't have a colour cast. How do I go about removing or correcting the greenish color cast? I never used somewhat advanced colour correction tools other than the histogram and this is the first time I encountered an issue like this. My initial plan is to rely at the vectorscope and shift around the overall colour around so that the white dot in the vectorscope (whatever you call that) moves towards the middle instead of one of the extremes. I just attemted it by pushing the entire image towards blue, so now the vectorscope moved to the center and the entire image looks a lot more neutral, so I think I'm on the right track. Is there a better way to do this? It doesn't have to be perfect but some help would be greatly appreciated.

Of course the shutter speed should at least equal the fps as you pointed out and the rule of thumb is to set the shutter speed to double the frame rate, so 1/120s shutter speed when shooting 60fps for example. However in my experience using an even faster shutter speed usually gives nicer results because it gets rid of the motion blur, which can look great when shooting slow motion stuff. Do you still have the option to set the shutter when shooting slow mo stuff on the GH4? So is there an automatic shutter speed mode that you can turn off, or do you have no control over the shutter speed whatsoever when shooting in VFR?

This certainly isn't the most practical solution but using the A7S in crop mode with a Speedbooster gives you roughly the same field of view as full frame but rolling shutter is far better than in full frame mode.

So apparantly it does make sense to use the Speedbooster on the A7S in crop mode. Using the crop mode + speedbooster gives roughly the same field of view as the full frame mode but reduces the rolling shutter issue a lot.

Thanks for this. I couldn't have said it any better! Let's not forget that the people behind this video most likely were very well-aware of what they were doing, how they were shooting the video and how they edited it. I'm sure they wanted the video to look exactly like it does. In addition to that, the technical "flaws" that some were pointing out - such as the horrible warp-effect - actually helped to create a very fitting, distinct feel to the video that fit the music perfectly. And it's great to see tools that don't cost an arm and a leg are used to create big-budget stuff. So why all the negativety?

Yeah, if that's the case then there's got to be something wrong. As I said, I don't have any experience with either one of the lenses you mentioned but I shoot lots of handheld stuff on my Canon 600D with the Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 OS and even when shooting at 50mm handheld, I can get some pretty decent results without the jittering.

I don't have any of the lenses you mention, so this may not be the kind of advice you're looking for... Is there a way to turn off the IS on the lens and compare it? The vibration does look strange especially compared to the 14-42 lens. What I experienced though is that the micro jittering is much more noticable when shooting in Ex Tele. When I'm shooting with my Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 lens in Ex Tele, the image is a lot more shaky than when shooting with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 although they're about the same focal length. So maybe you should turn off the Ex Tele mode and replicate your tests?

Quick update, just got home from another video project. I switched the picture style from Natural to Scenery. According to Canon, it changes the way greens and blues are processed. I'm not sure if this is true for Panasonic as well but the footage looks much better and neon colors do finally pop. The saturation is quite a bit higher than when shooting in Natural picture style (both were set to Saturation -4) but it still is very gradable, so I'm very happy with the results. Thanks for the advice, it was really helpful!

I'm using Final Cut Pro X as my NLE. So far what I usually do is do some basic colour corrections if the shots aren't exposed correctly, then I shift the shadows towards blue, highlights towards orange, increase the saturation a bit, usually increase the brightness of the highlights a bit (this gives the images a bit more pop) and then it gets tricky... By this point the images from both cameras look "similar enough", unless there's very bright neon colors. I can selectively shift the greens of the Panasonic footage towards yellow and increase the brightness. But this will mess up the way the leaves and grass look. Unfortunately I can't adjust the hue in the camera - I can do this on my 600D but not with the Panasonic. Any other solutions? Is there any way to adjust this using Davinci Resolve? As stupid as it sounds, this is the main reason why haven't bought a GH4 yet. The quality image of the GH3 looks fantastic compared to the 600D but the greens are way off...

I hope this helps explaining the issue I have. Both shots were taken at the exact same time and as stated earlier, the settings are fairly similar, too. I know that the second image is out of focus but it highlights the color of the bike. Both pictures are straight out of the camera, no color correction or grading applied.

Hey, I currently shoot with a Canon 600D and a Panasonic GH3 and some issues matching and grading the footage. Generally speaking the footage from both cameras matches just fine but the Panasonic GH3 seems to reproduce neon colors, especially neon yellow, in a very weird way. Basically neon yellow turns into a darkish yellow and the color does not "pop" anymore. Same goes for neon orange, although this isn't affected as strongly - still, it is quite noticeable, especially compared to the 600D. This is a fairly big issue for me because I shoot a lot of sports events (downhill mountainbiking) and I can basically throw away all the footage of riders on neon-colored bikes or in neon-colored clothing shot with the GH3. I know that in general neon colors in pictures or videos don't come across as bright as they are in reality, but it's a huge difference between the GH3 and the 600D. The camera settings are: - White Balance set to 5200K (sunny) on both cameras - ISO around 400 - GH3: Natural picture style, Contrast -4, Sharpness -5, Saturation -4, Noise Reduction -5 - 600D: Standard picture style, Sharpness 2, Contrast -2, Saturation -2 - Aperture and shutter speed doesn't have any effect Setting the White Balance to 5200K improved things a bit compared to setting the WB to cloudy or shady but the issue still is very apparant. As I said, in general the footage matches, it's just these neon colors that are giving me a very hard time. Basically the only thing I can do right now is selectively adjust these specific colors, push them around a bit and increase the saturation of these colors - but this doesn't always work and looks fairly fake. Has anyone experienced the same? Any solutions or suggestions what I could do? Thanks a ton! -Moritz

I agree. I find it very hard to find the information that I'm looking for when not actively participating in this topic because there are so many conversations going on at the same time. It would be great to have a subforum for Lenses with specific topics about specific lenses. Sure it won't be on the front page anymore but I'm sure lots of people will participate in these topics because they're really essential.

Well he said that it'd be a 12-25mm f/1.2 in Micro Four Thirds terms. 18mm x 0,71 (Speedbooster) = 12,78mm, so the wide end will be very close to a 12mm MFT prime. Now when you factor in the MFT crop factor (2x), a MFT 12mm prime will be a 24mm lens in terms of photographic full frame and the Sigma 18-35mm will be a 24-50mm in terms of photographic full frame.

That's what I thought, thanks! Any chance you guys know if the direction of the focus ring is the same on both the Canon and the Nikon version? Or is it the other way around for the Nikon version?

I don't get this part. How can I set the aperture manually without removing the lens when using a cheap adapter? As far as I know, the Sigma 18-35mm does not have a manual aperture ring - including the Nikon-mount version. I know that mounting a Speedbooster between the camera (GH3 for example) and the lens allows you to change the aperture because the Speedbooster has built-in aperture blades. But how am I supposed to change the aperture on the lens when the lens relies on electronic communication with the camera?

Again, thanks for the input! For some reason I was assuming that the Samsung 840 is an external SSD drive that connects via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 - and that would've been a fantastic solution, but I guess I'll have to look elsewhere. Of course I won't replace the internal hard drive, that's not going to solve any of my problems. Let me know about your experiences with the Seagate Backup Plus, it'll be very interesting to hear. RAID 0 means that it's one large 4GB drive instead of two 2GB ones that mirror each other, right? That's no big deal for me, since I'm more concerned about my stuff getting stolen instead of one of the drives actually failing. I'll also think about the LaCie 10TB drive but right now it's hard to justify the price since I'm just starting out. But you're right, I shouldn't just consider current needs but think about the future as well.

Thanks for the advice! Right now I'm using 2 Western Digital My Passport for Mac external drives. I use one to store the raw files (as in video raw material that I haven't edited yet) and the other one to store the projects and video material once the video is finished and exported. Read and write speeds are around 100MB/s. I bought the MacBook Pro in May 2013, so I assume it's the early 2013 one. It has a dedicated graphic card and the performance is fine for what I'm doing right now. Looking back at it now I could've gone with the 16GB RAM version but that would've been even more expensive and I just started making videos about a year ago, so when I bought the Laptop editing videos was far from being my main concern. Having to deliver fast and good results for clients within a short period of time started just a few weeks ago and I'm not a professional video maker. I know that I would like to buy a proper editing computer (not a portable one) soon depending on how things go though. Still, when editing smaller projects on my laptop the performance is great, despite the lack of RAM. Anyways... the way I work right now is I shoot the footage, usually between 50 and 200GB per event / weekend. This material is stored on my external hard drive #1. Then I go through the footage, make a pre-selection of shots and sequences etc. and then import the files into my editing suite (FCP X) where the files are converted to ProRes. The source files and the project are stored on the external drive because my laptop doesn't have enough storage space internally. Then I make various edits for various clients and they share some of the footage - this is why it's important for me to have one big project containing all the footage from the event instead of having various smaller projects. Once the edits are finished, exported and uploaded, I make sure clean up the footage (deleting scenes that I haven't used and won't use in the future, tagging the footage with keywords etc.). So now I'm done editing, and I won't need the projects or footage any longer unless a client asks for specific shots from the past. The last step is to transfer the entire project (raw material, converted material and final edits) from external hard drive #1 to external hard drive #2. Now I have plenty of space on hard drive #1 for the next event and I use hard drive #2 as a back up drive. Right now hard drive #2 is a portable hard drive but I'll buy a stationary external drive soon because that seems more secure to me. As stated earlier, the issue I have is that the performance of the system is fairly slow when editing straight off the external hard drive. This is NOT the case when editing straight off the internal SSD of my computer, but the SSD capacity is very limited and most projects are too big for the internal SSD. Once the footage is cut and exported, I don't really care how long it takes to access the project if I have to. An external drive with a ton of capacity and a USB 3.0 connection would be perfectly fine because it'll only be used to store old projects... maybe two instead of one to have a back up just in case. ;) The LaCie solutions look great but right now I can't really predict if I'll be making any money from shooting videos, so I'm a little hesitant to spend that much money. Do you think that the solution Brellivids suggested will work for me? Jonpais, have you tried editing off the Seagate Backup Plus Fast? Looks like a great solution if it's fast enough... Again, thank you so much for your help, I greatly appreciate it! Cheers, Moritz