An adventure into the Panasonic GX85/80 begins - and a look at the Leica Nocticron for Micro Four Thirds

[RWR]

I think we lost Andrew to that ultra high end Panny..

[John Matthews]

2 hours ago, RWR said:

I think we lost Andrew to that ultra high end Panny..

I'm sure he's still interested in posting something about its video quality. There are over 50000 views on the forum pages concerning the gx80. The interest is certainly there. 

[Tarik Dobbs]

I shot some handheld test footage outdoors yesterday, all on the Sigma 18-35 with Metabones SpeedBooster and Standard Profile (-2,-5,-5,-3). No grading applied.

 

[A Y]

On 6/2/2016 at 1:50 PM, sgreszcz said:

I have uploaded a few small original 4k clips here as part of a colour test of the GX80/LX100/G7.  For what it's worth, I use a 2012 Macbook Pro with the same 2.3GHz processor and it can deal with the 4k from my cameras quite well in FCPX with original media (on a 1080p timeline). 

Thank you! I found some other 4k clips in the footage thread, and indeed editing 4k isn't a problem for the Mini, at least for simple stuff.

[AnthonyWithNoH]

Haven't shot any footage yet, these are just my first impressions. Surprised that there is no standalone charger or body lens cap, not a big deal though since they can be bought separately if needed. Really wish I could charge the camera off USB while it's on, that way batteries can be an after thought with a large portable USB in the hotshoe. I'm not seeing a 23.976 mode, only 24 - could this be problematic for syncing with Canon DSLR footage? I used 24 on the GH4 for a long time and I think I noticed some drifting with long clips so I switched out of the 24hz Film Mode, though I think the most recent plural eyes is suppose to correct for this. The EVF is pretty bad! Makes me think I'd likely suffer from eye problems if I actually depended on it, suppose I've been spoiled by the GH4 and A7 series. The body has a nice weight to it that I didn't expect and I like the look of the silver trim that I went with. Coming from a GH4 the shutter, aperture and ISO buttonlayout feels a bit awkward to me... Especially the ISO, but I guess that's mostly do to the nature of the camera. Glad they used plastic instead of rubber for the back dial as my GH4 one seems to be whithering away. The IBIS is amazing... I love being able to take my Sigma 50 Art and get shots that look like they are on a slider while using my hands. Assuming I wish they had 1080p 50mbps instead of just 20... Also no variable frame that automatically slows the footage down in camera, but these are expected based on the G7. Glad they left the adjust feature in the white balance menu, that's a selling point for me. Going to have to test my 70-200 2.8 IS II and other lenses next. Anyone have any requests?

[fuzzynormal]

If anyone is interested:  I'd like to preview the 1080 60p footage.  Specifically, I want to see how the GX85 handles motion when shot with a 125shutter speed vs. a 60shutter speed.  Often I shoot to conform to slow-mo with my GX7, and I've noticed that I cannot conform 60p/60ss to 30p slow-mo.  For some reason the shutter needs to be on 125ss.  Not a big deal, but one loses a bit of exposure ability.  So...same with the GX85?

A quick test with something like car traffic moving across the shot frame would suffice for review. 

Any help is appreciated.

[Inazuma]

1 hour ago, fuzzynormal said:

If anyone is interested:  I'd like to preview the 1080 60p footage.  Specifically, I want to see how the GX85 handles motion when shot with a 125shutter speed vs. a 60shutter speed.  Often I shoot to conform to slow-mo with my GX7, and I've noticed that I cannot conform 60p/60ss to 30p slow-mo.  For some reason the shutter needs to be on 125ss.  Not a big deal, but one loses a bit of exposure ability.  So...same with the GX85?

A quick test with something like car traffic moving across the shot frame would suffice for review. 

Any help is appreciated.

I think you might be a bit confused? 60p will require 120 ss (or 125 if the camera cant do 120). 180 degree shutter rule and all that

[fuzzynormal]

1 hour ago, Inazuma said:

I think you might be a bit confused? 60p will require 120 ss (or 125 if the camera cant do 120). 180 degree shutter rule and all that

Well, sure, I am confused.  But the issue, I think, should be somewhat irrelevant to the shutter speed.  Shouldn't it?  For example, as you know, the GX7 shoots 60p.  I can set the shutter speed to 125 (180°-ish), shoot 60p footage, and then conform the footage to 30p to create slow-mo.  This works.  

However, if I shoot 60p, set the shutter speed to 60, and then conform that footage (using Cinema Tools) to 30p, it does NOT do it cleanly and smoothly.  Frames will be absent and the slo-mo will therefore be stutter-y.  Not sure why.  This is my experience with the GX7.  

You can try it and confirm.  I would add that shooting with a 0° shutter should not affect the amount of frames being captured by the camera.  If I select 60fps with a 0° shutter (60ss) that's still 60fps, right?  Only if I somehow selected a negative degree value (such as a 30shutter speed) when shooting 60p should it actually "drop" frames, if you know what I mean.

I would also say that I can shoot 60p with a 60 shutter speed on my EM5II and it will slo-mo conform to 30p just fine.

So, I need a little help.  Anyone else notice this quirk?  Just me?  And, ultimately, does this quirk also show up on the Gx85?

[mercer]

I thought you would use the same shutter speed as your desired output? So if you're shooting 60p for slow motion on a 24p timeline, you would use 1/50th shutter speed?

[fuzzynormal]

37 minutes ago, mercer said:

I thought you would use the same shutter speed as your desired output? So if you're shooting 60p for slow motion on a 24p timeline, you would use 1/50th shutter speed?

Sure, it's a rule of thumb though.  In my particular example, a 60p/60shutter would then be a 180° shutter when conformed to 30p.  But I think maybe that's an aside to the issue I'm facing.  I'm conforming GX7 60p footage shot at a 60ss to 30p --and finding that I can't do it without it looking like frames are missing.  For some reason the "recipe" requires footage to be shot with a 125ss.

So, just wondering if the GX85 has the same tendency.

[John Matthews]

Do we still not have any news about the HDMI output on the GX80? Many people are interested! I just asked Jordan at the CameraStoreTV... 

[Inazuma]

7 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Sure, it's a rule of thumb though.  In my particular example, a 60p/60shutter would then be a 180° shutter when conformed to 30p.  But I think maybe that's an aside to the issue I'm facing.  I'm conforming GX7 60p footage shot at a 60ss to 30p --and finding that I can't do it without it looking like frames are missing.  For some reason the "recipe" requires footage to be shot with a 125ss.

So, just wondering if the GX85 has the same tendency.

This is not a mistake of the GX7 or any other camera though. That's how it's meant to be. Even if youre conforming 60p to 30p you still need to shoot at a 180 degree shutter

[bunk]

7 minutes ago, Inazuma said:

This is not a mistake of the GX7 or any other camera though. That's how it's meant to be. Even if youre conforming 60p to 30p you still need to shoot at a 180 degree shutter

Sorry but that doesn't make sense to me. Your NLE doesn't know and doesn't need to know what the shutterspeed was. It only takes in account what the framerate is. Sounds like Cinema tools pick something up that it shouldn't do ...but then again, isn't it tool go from film to video and back again?

@ Fuzzynormal, why don't you render your footage out as a picture sequence and next Import the sequence to the timeline of your choice? Should solve the problem. Better even change the fps of your footage outside of Cinema tools. What ever the reason is that it is happening it has nothing to do with the camera. My guess is that Cinema tools is the culpritt.

[Inazuma]

It's not the camera, it's not the software. It's just physics.

If you shoot 60ss for 30p you will get the same amount of blurring per frame as if you shot 120ss for 60p. Now what happens if you shoot 60ss for 60p? Well you double the amount of blurring in each frame. It's the same as if you were to shoot 30ss for 30p. It doesn't look right. So it (60ss 60p) will not look right when you conform it or put it into a 30p timeline. I've tried it too when I first got my GX7 I tried shooting 50ss for 50p. It ruined a few projects. 

[bunk]

2 hours ago, Inazuma said:

It's not the camera, it's not the software. It's just physics.

Either I or you, completely misunderstood the question.

From what I understand, 30fps at 180* conforms fine, i.e. all frames of the clip are used. 60 fps at anything else than 180* doesn't conform fine, i.e not all frames are used. So it's not about blurriness or anything, it's about disappearing frames.

I could be completely wrong though.

[Fredrik Lyhne]

Here's some quick shots I took yesterday with the GX85 and SLR Magic 10 T2.1 + vari ND. It's nothing special really but that BIS is awesome!

All handheld with no stabilization in post. Natural picture profile -2-5-5-2. Graded in FCPX and Color Finale. I also uploaded the ungraded version, link in youtube description.

 

[fuzzynormal]

5 hours ago, Inazuma said:

It's not the camera, it's not the software. It's just physics.

If you shoot 60ss for 30p you will get the same amount of blurring per frame as if you shot 120ss for 60p. Now what happens if you shoot 60ss for 60p? Well you double the amount of blurring in each frame. It's the same as if you were to shoot 30ss for 30p. It doesn't look right. So it (60ss 60p) will not look right when you conform it or put it into a 30p timeline. I've tried it too when I first got my GX7 I tried shooting 50ss for 50p. It ruined a few projects. 

However, my 60p/60ss EM5II footage conforms/slow-mo's to 30p fine. My GX7 stuff does not.

Very curious.  

Regardless of the reasons why, would still like to know if the GX85 requires footage I want to slow-mo to be shot at a 125ss.  So, if anyone has the time or inclination, I'd love to see shots of cars whizzing across frame shot @60p.  One shot with a 60ss another with a 125ss.

[Oliver Daniel]

50 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

However, my 60p/60ss EM5II footage conforms/slow-mo's to 30p fine. My GX7 stuff does not.

Very curious.  

Regardless of the reasons why, would still like to know if the GX85 requires footage I want to slow-mo to be shot at a 125ss.  So, if anyone has the time or inclination, I'd love to see shots of cars whizzing across frame shot @60p.  One shot with a 60ss another with a 125ss.

 

For best results, the rule is that your shutter should basically be double your frame rate. 

If you shoot 60p and have your shutter at 1/60 - that can end up looking pretty jumpy, especially if the subject is moving quickly. 

So at 60p your shutter should be at least 1/120. 

At 120p it should be 1/240.

At 240p it should be 1/480p...and so on. 

You also need to judge the speed of movement you are capturing - the shutter 1/120 at 60p may need to be a higher number. 

[fuzzynormal]

1 hour ago, Oliver Daniel said:

 

For best results, the rule is that your shutter should basically be double your frame rate. 

If you shoot 60p and have your shutter at 1/60 - that can end up looking pretty jumpy, especially if the subject is moving quickly. 

So at 60p your shutter should be at least 1/120. 

At 120p it should be 1/240.

At 240p it should be 1/480p...and so on. 

You also need to judge the speed of movement you are capturing - the shutter 1/120 at 60p may need to be a higher number. 

Best results/best practices vs. the results I'm going for might be a little different.  That's okay.  

I do wonder if my particular inquiry is being confused with the whole 180° rule, which is mostly an aesthetic rule more than a "written-in-stone" technical rule.  (We all know how a faster shutter was a visual choice on films such as Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator)

I seem to be running into a technical limitation, not an aesthetic one.

As for my particular issue, tomorrow I can post 60p/60ss examples from the EM5II and the GX7 to showcase the odd "drop frames" difference between the two cameras when 30p conforming in Cinema Tools.

Ultimately, my goal would be to shoot 60p so I can slow it down to 30p.  The final frame rate is 30fps.  So therefore a 60ss should be okay.  If on the GX85 it's not do-able, it's just not do-able.  No biggy.  I'd lose a bit of exposure because of having to use the faster 125 shutter speed, but it's not a deal breaker, just want to know how it handles this process I want to do.

BTW, 60p/60ss conforms to 30p just fine with the Xpro2, Canon, and Oly cameras.  Take a look here for some XPro stuff shot 60p/60ss conformed to 30p slow-mo:  

Anyone with LUMIX cameras, I welcome you to confirm this phenomenon.  I mean, I may be completely off base here.  All I know is that I've only been able to make slow-mo work with the GX7 using a 125ss.  Maybe there's some odd setting in LUMIX cams that I'm overlooking, but that's my experience.  Hey, would love to be proven wrong.

Another note regarding the shutter angle aesthetic:  For what it's worth, I actually LIKE shooting quite often with a slower shutter to create MORE motion blur in the image.  To my eye it looks less digital, so I use it.  For example, here's footage from a doc I shot with a 0° shutter.  If you pay attention, you can definitely notice the exaggerated motion blur in the image:

https://vimeo.com/140524680

And here's some footage done with the EM5II 60fps/60ss, with some shots conformed to 30p for slow mo.  

https://vimeo.com/137311259

Oh, another interesting note about 60p shooting: I typically shoot 60p, but ultimately deliver @30p on the final cut.  So, I'm not trying to create a 60p edit, I'm just capturing my footage that way for the flexibility of using a shot in slow-mo if I want to or not.  Since this is my process, that 60ss vs. 125ss issue matters a little bit.

[alanpoiuyt]

On 5/24/2016 at 5:23 AM, fuzzynormal said:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but but problem with that video is that it's poorly shot, not that the 5axis is introducing some jitter into the motion image. (Which it does)

Long fast handheld pans?  Sorry, but 5axis isn't going to help in that scenario. So, the solution?  Don't do ridiculous long and fast handheld panning shots.  Easy enough  

Look, good shots need a good shooter. I don't care if you're filming with an Alexa and the worlds most expensive gimbal. If you don't know what you're doing within the limits of the gear, you're going to create garbage. 

The thing that footage is good for is recognizing the patameters of the stabilizing tech. 

If you suffer from the delusion that 5axis is going to make bad footage good...well, this should disavow you of that notion. 

Here's some quick footage. I like the stabilizer.

Pretty harsh Mathew. We're here to help and share with each other and maybe not to bash. Just grabbed my one-day-old camera on my way to the Bug Fair to mess around and thought I'd share. Hope it was helpful to some to point out some of it's strengths and limitations. Took a look at some your International doc work - nice.