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

[mercer]

There's plenty of stuff online about it, I was just wondering your thoughts/settings on the 1080p on your G6. 

[PannySVHS]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

There's plenty of stuff online about it, I was just wondering your thoughts/settings on the 1080p on your G6. 

 

My settings are -2 contrast, -2 sharpness, 0!! color, -2 noise reduction. Natural. Mostly adjusting Kelvin by hand, with A3G3 setting from John Matthews and jase. I agree on your and others findings, to not lessen color below 0.

I am very happy with the G6. But I think the GH3´s codec will hold up better.

This filmmaker´s works I find inspiring with its visual approach and stellar example for the use of GH3, also his sharing of knowledge.

 

[John Matthews]

7 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

@John Matthews 

Hallo John! Thank you! I graded in Davinci.

It is one node, making the difference- Lowering saturation in the blue channel, using the blue color curve. Besides that it is curve after curve,

adding upon one another or counteracting one another. Also playing with saturation and desaturation in a variety of nodes, solving one problem after another.

Main thing is gamma and a tendency to find threedimensional luminance, by exploring the green color information, going pretty wild. Then counteracting and correcting the greenish touches. In this example after the gamma and desaturation and "3d" work, I finished it muted supposely to look like Fuji, counteracting the overall bluish cast of the daylight.

Was shot at 5400 Kelvin with your A3G3 recipe. Thanks for that!:) Filmed with autoshutter due to small crew of us 2, also used Fstop of 8.

What I'm really liking in this grade as well as what @mercer said is the way you really got the reds to pop... and it's not overdone either. I'm going to look a little at Davinci. Great work with the story too... keep it up! It left me wanting to watch more.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I've been rocking the GH3 for a long time and love it. Solid 50mbps HD, 1080/60p, legendary battery life, ergonomically wonderful, headphone and mic jacks, and it even has a mini HDMI out, which is much more solid than micro.

My only real issue with it is, as you all have pointed out, the lack of peaking, but the back screen is usually good enough to pull off of; plus, I use my Aputure VS-2 FineHD whenever I can, which has all that useful shit built in anyway.

[mercer]

@TheRenaissanceMan do you use Natural? Should I expect the profiles to be similar to the G7 (minus the cine) and the gx85? How do you like the 72mbps all-i?

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I prefer the 50mbps. Looks better and takes less space. And Natural all the way! Generally with NR and Sharpening at -4 (-5 actually does some weird stuff), Saturation and Contrast at -2. You can pull the shadows pretty well, but there's generally nothing hiding in the highlights to pull out later. Err on the side of caution, and don't let the histogram drift too high if you're not okay with clipping your hotspots (the roll off is nice, so it's not the end of the world if you do).

Also, avoid bright point sources at high ISOs. They can sometimes produce these weird blobby artefacts that can't be removed in post. The GH4 suffers from this too, and I'm not sure why.

[mercer]

Great tips, thanks. With the GX85 I had started underexposing by about a half a stop and liked the results better than ettr, so good to know. How is the in camera audio... Is it usable with the rode video mic pro? Does it need the +20db?

[TheRenaissanceMan]

I generally run dual system sound, so I'm not really sure. I have a VideoMic Pro though, and could test it for you if I can find the time.

[jase]

Finally finished the recap of 3 weeks of backpacking in Peru!

Lessons learned:

1. Dont just bring a MF only lens with you, I had discard too many shots that would have been great, yet where out of focus.
2. Next to 1, dont just bring a 25mm lens with you, especially for landscape this does not cut it. Next time I will buy a (ultra) wide zoom, this will give me much more possibilities. Maybe the Sigma 18-35, will see...
3. And dont forget your sun hood

[Cinegain]

Great stuff, man! Cool footage, fun edit! Nice job on the sound as well, btw. 3:53 timelapse was stunning!

Agree with going wide! I had the 25 and 42.5mm with me in NYC. Ended up using the 12-60mm for just about everything. Be careful with that Sigma. It's a beaut, but I wouldn't really use it handheld. Dual IS (2) works like a charm btw when you throw an OIS lens in front. It's like monopod-mode or something (for handheld camerashake, not necessarily replacing a gimbal stabilizer any day soon).

[jase]

9 hours ago, Cinegain said:

Great stuff, man! Cool footage, fun edit! Nice job on the sound as well, btw. 3:53 timelapse was stunning!

Be careful with that Sigma. It's a beaut, but I wouldn't really use it handheld. Dual IS (2) works like a charm btw when you throw an OIS lens in front. It's like monopod-mode or something (for handheld camerashake, not necessarily replacing a gimbal stabilizer any day soon).

Why wouldnt you use the SIgma handheld? Because it is so big? I would tend to put both hands on the lens and leave the body "handsfree" (the same i did with the Voigtländer in combination with the GM1). Dual IS is tempting, but focus by wire simply doesnt cut it. I hate it... so in the m43 realm, the only lenses that would be suitable for me are the oly pro 7-14 or 12-40 since they have a good manual mode (at least thats what i have read). Of course, the Pana 12-35 2.8 could be a perfect fit for Dual IS, but yeah.. focus pulls will be a pain.

[Kisaha]

Very nice trip and video. Very enjoyable and proper editing. Welldone!

I really admired the use of your limited means, and the rythm of the edit.

18mm on a croped sensor like this won't be wide at all. All these mountains and epic nature and architecture would be benefited by an ultra wide lens. There are ultra wide to medium options very well suited for these kind of trips.

[jase]

7 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

Very nice trip and video. Very enjoyable and proper editing. Welldone!

I really admired the use of your limited means, and the rythm of the edit.

18mm on a croped sensor like this won't be wide at all. All these mountains and epic nature and architecture would be benefited by an ultra wide lens. There are ultra wide to medium options very well suited for these kind of trips.

Thanks! Which lenses would be suited in your opinion?

[Kisaha]

I have no much knowledge as I am mainly an APS-C shooter (and obviously, the smaller the sensor, the less the ultra wide options), but my impression always was that with Pana 7-14/12-35/35-100 2.8f you are set for everything!

I do not know pricing, your lenses, and your style, but the 12-35 is a logical step, being 24-70, with a couple more primes you are perfect. Another option, and maybe greater but more breakthrough-ing is to go ultra wide, 7-14 and another couple of primes. For such a trip usually tele lenses are not that great. What I do is usually wide scenaries/architecture and normal to short tele (around 50-70mm equiv.) for people, action, wide portraits etc.

In my system, 16-50 (25-77mm 2-2.8f) is my standard lens for my main camera (NX1) and I have the 12-24(18-37 4f) on my secondary/smaller one (NX500). That works great for A-B work too. 

The 18-36 Sigma would be 36-72 on m4/3, not wide at all in my book. Everything further from 24 is just not wide enough (that is why I detest the 18mm zooms for most APS-C systems, 30mm are not wide enough for me, 24-26 is much better)! As I said, everything is depending of the style of the video/photo-grapher.

I do not know about Olympus lenses as they didn't(don't?) had IS, so not really great for GH4 I was using back then.

Ofcourse there is always the speedbooster option..

[jase]

37 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

 

The 18-36 Sigma would be 36-72 on m4/3, not wide at all in my book. Everything further from 24 is just not wide enough (that is why I detest the 18mm zooms for most APS-C systems, 30mm are not wide enough for me, 24-26 is much better)! As I said, everything is depending of the style of the video/photo-grapher.

Ofcourse there is always the speedbooster option..

Sorry, I forgot to mention that i could buy a Metabones Speedbooster XL EF Mount quite cheap, so the Sigma would translate into a 11,5-22,5 (23-45 FF equiv), which would be quite promising...

[jonpais]

46 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

. The 18-36 Sigma would be 36-72 on m4/3, not wide at all in my book. Everything further from 24 is just not wide enough (that is why I detest the 18mm zooms for most APS-C systems, 30mm are not wide enough for me, 24-26 is much better)! As I said, everything is depending of the style of the video/photo-grapher.

 

There is no 18-36 Sigma lens. If you mean the 18-35, with a Metabones Speedbooster XL on micro four-thirds shooting C4K, the resulting focal lengths would be from 27mm-52.5mm. 

2 hours ago, jase said:

Why wouldnt you use the SIgma handheld? Because it is so big? I would tend to put both hands on the lens and leave the body "handsfree" (the same i did with the Voigtländer in combination with the GM1). Dual IS is tempting, but focus by wire simply doesnt cut it. I hate it... so in the m43 realm, the only lenses that would be suitable for me are the oly pro 7-14 or 12-40 since they have a good manual mode (at least thats what i have read). Of course, the Pana 12-35 2.8 could be a perfect fit for Dual IS, but yeah.. focus pulls will be a pain.

I envy your rock-steady arms.  

[Kisaha]

Very important little detail! Then you are set and done, do not know about AF and lens image stabilization though. My advice, always, is to have at least one good native lens, for whatever reason.

[jonpais]

16 minutes ago, jase said:

Sorry, I forgot to mention that i could buy a Metabones Speedbooster XL EF Mount quite cheap, so the Sigma would translate into a 11,5-22,5 (23-45 FF equiv), which would be quite promising...

I bought the XL for something like $700 including shipping to Vietnam. It costs $650 USD at B&H. How cheap are you talking?

[jase]

Just now, jonpais said:

I bought the XL for something like $700 including shipping to Vietnam. It costs $650 USD at B&H. How cheap are you talking?

absolute bargain: 300 euros!

[jonpais]

Where?