GH5 Prototype

[Neumann Films]

1 hour ago, Emanuel said:

LOL

Luke, people are all crazy with your NDA... Can't they allow a time for a break? It's Christmas time, after all! :-)

Ha, I wish.  Will be able to say whatever I want on the 4th (i think).

[Emanuel]

3 minutes ago, Neumann Films said:

Ha, I wish.  Will be able to say whatever I want on the 4th (i think).

I, aham... we all hope so! ; ) This camera is a dream to become true for first time in decades!!

[Orangenz]

14 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

I, aham... we all hope so! ; ) This camera is a dream to become true for first time in decades!!

I have more interesting dreams than a camera even on my off days. Now if only you could make them come true.

[Emanuel]

1 hour ago, Orangenz said:

I have more interesting dreams than a camera even on my off days. Now if only you could make them come true.

For sure. But, as same as happens with plots or subplots within an inner theme, so we're talking about cameras -- our POV into this topic, not yachts, jets, jetpack, trips to Mars, right? ; )

E :-)

[Cary Knoop]

5 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

For sure. But, as same as happens with plots or subplots within an inner theme, we're talking about cameras, our POV into this topic, not yachts, jets, jetpack, trips to Mars, right? ; )

E :-)

Yachts: Too expensive!

Jets: Too fancy!

Jetpack: Too dangerous!

Trip to Mars: Too exotic!

Panasonic GH5: Just right!

 

[Zak Forsman]

Going to be a little more cautious with the GH5 than I was with the GH4. I took possession of two of those on day one and spent a year trying to wrestle that image into something it wasn't capable of -- and VLog was a massive disappointment. Have been much happier with the Blackmagic line -- especially with the more cinematic motion cadence of those cameras. Optimistic about the GH5 but again, taking a wait and see approach.

[Cary Knoop]

11 minutes ago, Zak Forsman said:

...more cinematic motion cadence of those cameras. .

What is a 'more cinematic motion cadence'?

 

[Stanley]

30 minutes ago, Zak Forsman said:

Going to be a little more cautious with the GH5 than I was with the GH4. I took possession of two of those on day one and spent a year trying to wrestle that image into something it wasn't capable of -- and VLog was a massive disappointment. Have been much happier with the Blackmagic line -- especially with the more cinematic motion cadence of those cameras. Optimistic about the GH5 but again, taking a wait and see approach.

Did you shoot much 24fps,1080p on the GH4, and if so was it an improvement on the GH3/GH2 ?

  

[Zak Forsman]

13 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Did you shoot much 24fps,1080p on the GH4, and if so was it an improvement on the GH3/GH2 ?

1

never owned a GH2 or 3. Had an AF100 prior to owning the pair of GH4s. Dont think I ever shot 1080p. Pretty much 4K exclusively.

34 minutes ago, Cary Knoop said:

What is a 'more cinematic motion cadence'?

 

there's a few threads on this site (and others) that cover the topic in-depth if you'd like to learn about it.

[Cary Knoop]

13 minutes ago, Zak Forsman said:

there's a few threads on this site (and others) that cover the topic in-depth if you'd like to learn about it.

Apart from a global shutter I do not know of any cadence differences with respect to the GH4, so as long as it is real and not crackpot "filmic" science I would certainly want to learn about it.

 

 

[studiodc]

Agreed, I'm curious too. The GH4 has always had a very filmic motion cadence in 24p 4K if you ask me, and I've been crew and DIT on productions with Alexas and C300.

[jonpais]

27 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Did you shoot much 24fps,1080p on the GH4, and if so was it an improvement on the GH3/GH2 ?

  

You do not want to shoot 1080p on the GH4 unless you need the slo mo or something. There have already been numerous discussions and videos online about this. Shooting 4K and downsampling to 1080p in the NLE timeline will result in more detailed images without the aliasing and moire that plagues these cameras when shooting HD. With Panasonic, the 4K does not require terabytes of SD cards, either. If you're looking for a camera that shoots nice HD, get yourself a cheap used GM1.

Have a look at Jase's handheld work with the GM1 and Nokton: it's beautiful. Panasonic fumbled when they discontinued the GM lineup. Sorry to hijack this thread with off topic discussion, but in a few days we'll know all the specs of the GH5 anyway: organic global shutter, 20 stops of dynamic range, H265, etc. ?

[Zak Forsman]

1 hour ago, Cary Knoop said:

Apart from a global shutter I do not know of any cadence differences with respect to the GH4, so as long as it is real and not crackpot "filmic" science I would certainly want to learn about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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51 minutes ago, studiodc said:

Agreed, I'm curious too. The GH4 has always had a very filmic motion cadence in 24p 4K if you ask me, and I've been crew and DIT on productions with Alexas and C300.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My understanding is that it's a codec issue, but I'm far from an expert. I just know what i see. the GH4 handled it better than most low-cost cameras, but it still often rendered motion with a "doubling" or "tripling" of the fast-motion portions of the image in single frames. It was always easiest to spot on specular highlights on passing cars. Take a look at the car's grill in this image from a clip I shot many moons ago. You see how fast motion in this frame is rendered in three "steps", rather than one smooth motion?

On the whole, this subtly nudges the perception of motion closer to a "video look" (for lack of a better term) when played back at speed. It's something that I don't see on the Alexa (the Mini specifically) or even the BMCC, BMPCC & BMMCC sensors when shooting in RAW. Certainly there are more important considerations than this when choosing a camera -- and many would say this is acceptable -- but given the choice, it's something I try to avoid.

[aldolega]

IMO the motion difference has a lot to do with the recorded format. The BlackMagics, Alexa etc all shoot to intraframe formats. The GH4 is all interframe (IPB), except for the 200mbps 1080p mode, which is bitrate-starved for intraframe and thus is a little soft. I do use it a lot for high-motion stuff, though. 

[Emanuel]

2 hours ago, Zak Forsman said:

 

My understanding is that it's a codec issue, but I'm far from an expert. I just know what i see. the GH4 handled it better than most low-cost cameras, but it still often rendered motion with a "doubling" or "tripling" of the fast-motion portions of the image in single frames. It was always easiest to spot on specular highlights on passing cars. Take a look at the car's grill in this image from a clip I shot many moons ago. You see how fast motion in this frame is rendered in three "steps", rather than one smooth motion?

On the whole, this subtly nudges the perception of motion closer to a "video look" (for lack of a better term) when played back at speed. It's something that I don't see on the Alexa (the Mini specifically) or even the BMCC, BMPCC & BMMCC sensors when shooting in RAW. Certainly there are more important considerations than this when choosing a camera -- and many would say this is acceptable -- but given the choice, it's something I try to avoid.

(...) Well, IPB or not, low bit rate doesn't offer miracles. Not good enough is not good enough :-)

[studiodc]

2 hours ago, Zak Forsman said:

My understanding is that it's a codec issue, but I'm far from an expert. I just know what i see. the GH4 handled it better than most low-cost cameras, but it still often rendered motion with a "doubling" or "tripling" of the fast-motion portions of the image in single frames. It was always easiest to spot on specular highlights on passing cars. Take a look at the car's grill in this image from a clip I shot many moons ago. You see how fast motion in this frame is rendered in three "steps", rather than one smooth motion?

I can definitely understand what you're talking about - but that's not something I would at all class as "motion cadence", which to me implies a) regularity in frame exposure duration and b) regularity in frame exposure timing. Judder is a big factor here - the playback interpolation of frames during 24p -> 60p telecine pulldown to match most modern monitor refresh rates makes a far bigger difference in the viewer's perception. For instance, when shooting GH4 footage at 30p it will often be described by clients as more "cinematic" when in fact, they are discussing video shown on monitors versus what they see in projected 24p theatres. So, there's a big perception difference in frame rates, pulldown effects, and frame timing (which is provably inaccurate on some cameras at certain frame rates), all of which I would classify into perceived motion cadence issues.

The "quantized in-frame capture" you mention on the other hand... that's odd. I'd noticed it before on some footage (can't remember which camera) and wrote it off to perhaps the lighting in the studio (60hz AC versus 23.97p) doing something a bit funky, but now that you mention it outdoors, I'll have to comb through the footage again. This said, I can't say that would make a significant difference in "motion" perception, although perhaps if it's randomized frame to frame instead of consistent it could lead to a flicker effect. But of course I've seen 35mm film in fast pans or fast cross-frame motion "flicker" too, thanks to our inherent perception of the motion differences versus blur in those large-delta situations, so it's entirely possible.

Then again, I did a lot of my GH4 recording externally direct to ProRes... might make a difference.

Edit: thinking about it: are you sure this isn't including telecine effects of frame interpolation? It sure as hell looks like it, some modern telecine implementations (in FCPX, for instance) frame blend instead of just blandly repeating...

[Cary Knoop]

26 minutes ago, studiodc said:

I can definitely understand what you're talking about - but that's not something I would at all class as "motion cadence", which to me implies a) regularity in frame exposure duration and b) regularity in frame exposure timing. Judder is a big factor here - the playback interpolation of frames during 24p -> 60p telecine pulldown to match most modern monitor refresh rates makes a far bigger difference in the viewer's perception.

Modern monitors should have no problems using refresh rates for 24p or 23.976p.

[Zak Forsman]

41 minutes ago, studiodc said:

I can definitely understand what you're talking about - but that's not something I would at all class as "motion cadence",

<<<EDIT>>> 

Edit: thinking about it: are you sure this isn't including telecine effects of frame interpolation? It sure as hell looks like it, some modern telecine implementations (in FCPX, for instance) frame blend instead of just blandly repeating...

 

 

 

 

Yeah, i agree "motion cadence" is an imperfect name, but it's what people tend to use as a catchall term for anything that affects how motion reads on-screen. And this definitely pushes some GH4 footage away from what I'd consider ideal, which is also imperfectly described as "more cinematic". No post funny business with the frame interpolation or blending here -- not in the timeline, nor in the monitor. This was straight DCI 4K at true 24.000fps, albeit cropped and scaled to 2K (2048x858).
 

[Emanuel]

6 minutes ago, Zak Forsman said:

No post funny business with the frame interpolation or blending here. This was straight DCI 4K at true 24.000fps, albeit cropped and scaled to 2K (2048x858).
 

Have you never tested going with ProRes recorded on any external device via HDMI?

[Zak Forsman]

1 minute ago, Emanuel said:

Have you never tested going with ProRes recorded on any external device via HDMI?

Yeah, I get the same result going to an Odyssey 7Q+. Or "got" I should say. I don't own those GH4s anymore.