5D MKIII or GH3

[jgharding]

That's what i think is most important when picking the kit, what look do you like and what are your tastes? SAme goes to the OP: which do you like the feel of more? Go with that one. You don't want to be stuck with something that really bugs you. 

[AaronChicago]

Rent both of them and try them out first. If you're in the US check out lensrentals.com

[Sebv]

the 50mm f1.8 mm is only 100$ and is plenty cinematic

[Chrad]

I'd like to point out that the GH3 has MUCH better low light handling and dynamic range than the GH2. It's more in line with the Canon crop-sensor cameras, even a bit better.

It's also lightyears better as a stills camera than the GH2. There's a much bigger difference in stills quality than video, in fact.

[Mondo]

Borrowlenses.com also has a good rental selection.

[Mirrorkisser]

If you dont intend to do a lot of photography, i would not go for a 8bit camera anymore. i would rather go for one of the blackmagic ones. true, extra storage costs and you need a decent pc, still, it appeals a lot more to my eye.

 

if you want to go the 8bit route, i think the gh2 is still a fine camera for the price, it has its limitations, but if you dont need it for paid jobs, its absolutely a decent camera. there is a tendency these days to just live the postcard-syndrome, as Robert Bresson put it. People should think less of their gear and more about their ideas and concepts and what they got to do with themselves. I have seen wonderful things shot on average cameras. The dslr canon super shallow depth of field-thingy is terrible in my opinion. i would not even call it cinematic. result is most amateurs shoot 70% of the shit out of focus, even in interviews.People like Sven Nyqvist would have spanked the shit out of most of the people out there with an iphone. These days i watched agnes vardas glaneur et glaneuses (excuse my poor french) shot in terrible digital camera video look. and what a wonderful and poetic movie it was, rightly awarded many prices.

 

Only reason for me to pick the 5d over the gh2/3 would be the option to take superb stills and a better DR than gh2. 

[Chrad]

I totally agree that the Blackmagic cameras are a better choice if you want to purely work with video. I'm looking forward to working with them myself. The question is, are you going to be shooting now, or in six months time?

[jasonmillard81]

Thanks for some great insight and frankly, some funny commentary.  

 

Before we go on... can we establish experiences responses to my original questions?

 

1. Can the GH3 be graded or given certain settings/hacks to get that "cinematic" movie quality feel that you get with the Canon DSLR full frame cameras, but with the sharpness?

2. Can the GH3 perform excellent in low light with certain lenses and programs (NeatVideo)

3. Can the 5DMKIII be brought to be as sharp as the GH3?

 

More needs to be done to the GH3 to get it as "professional" looking as the 5D 3 in my opinion (based purely on Vimeo & YouTube :) but if it could work it would be the BEST option due to m43 and price...

[Zach]

Thanks for some great insight and frankly, some funny commentary.  

 

Before we go on... can we establish experiences responses to my original questions?

 

1. Can the GH3 be graded or given certain settings/hacks to get that "cinematic" movie quality feel that you get with the Canon DSLR full frame cameras, but with the sharpness?

2. Can the GH3 perform excellent in low light with certain lenses and programs (NeatVideo)

3. Can the 5DMKIII be brought to be as sharp as the GH3?

 

More needs to be done to the GH3 to get it as "professional" looking as the 5D 3 in my opinion (based purely on Vimeo & YouTube :) but if it could work it would be the BEST option due to m43 and price...

Can't speak on number 1. 

 

2. By todays standards yes, its a good low light performer. I'm happy to use it at 800 ISO. 1600 in a pinch. Better than Canon APSC cameras by about a stop. I used it to shoot a black and white film alongside my 5D, and I used it at 1600 and 3200 ISO with some great performance, though we were going for a grainer look. 

 

3. Not quite. It sharpens nicely though, and on a TV its hard to tell the difference. The whole sharpness craze is a little silly if you ask me.

 

I think the benefits of the GH3 are greater versatility with lenses, 1080p 60fps, and a nice sharp image out of the camera. 

[hmcindie]

If you want to make independent films with a small budget. 5D3. 

 

If you want to shoot landscape shots to put on Vimeo. GH3.

 

If you want beautiful shots, 5D3. Hands down. I was shooting b-roll with the 5D3 for a film shot on the FS700 and I got a couple of my shots in. Because they just looked awesome. Something the FS700 couldn't touch.

[Huuow]

They´re both excellent cameras. I´d say if price is no matter, the Mark III wins for achieving a beautiful look with lesser effort.

 

The one thing that really stands out on the GH3 (I don´t think the Mark III has it?) is the extended tele mode. Unbelievable useful. put on the superb panasonic 12-35 and with two tabs on the monitor you got 28.8-84mm from the same lens by maintaining image quality (though you don´t get the lens characteristic of a true tele of course)... saved me lots of times already. The GH3 is very fast to use if you know it. Bevor recording I switch to autofocus, camera does the work, back to manuel mode, record. takes no more than two seconds and you´re always there.

 

I´d say the Mark III´s advantage is Magic Lantern support, the full frame wiith it´s shallow depth of field and the EF mount. I know you can put on anything on the GH3 but who really wants a full frame 24mm lens instead of the voigtländer or the slr magic? So once you buy yourself into mft lenses you can only hope that there will always be some outstanding mft cameras... while EF lenses, well... you can use them on any sensor size, and any brand.

 

The GH3 is cheap but needs expensive lenses to really shine while the Mark III is expensive but can achieve a more pleasing result out of cheap lenses... but then again... better burn money on lenses than bodies, their worth will always be high.

 

In lowlight the GH3 will need fast lenses, for I wouldn´t go further than 800 ISO, 1600 is ok too if you got something like neat video. The noise looks acutally very nice, but it´s not for every project... The canon compensates its inability to manage focus on fast lenses with higher ISO and higher f#.

 

so... basically, you´re good whatever you take :)

[Chrad]

there is a tendency these days to just live the postcard-syndrome, as Robert Bresson put it. People should think less of their gear and more about their ideas and concepts and what they got to do with themselves. I have seen wonderful things shot on average cameras. The dslr canon super shallow depth of field-thingy is terrible in my opinion. i would not even call it cinematic. result is most amateurs shoot 70% of the shit out of focus, even in interviews.People like Sven Nyqvist would have spanked the shit out of most of the people out there with an iphone. These days i watched agnes vardas glaneur et glaneuses (excuse my poor french) shot in terrible digital camera video look. and what a wonderful and poetic movie it was, rightly awarded many prices.

Well said.

 

On the previous page I brought up Upstream Color. The important thing regarding that film is not whether it looks plastic or camcorder-y, it's that it was taken seriously at Sundance, was well reviewed and received international distribution deals. The director didn't publicise the use of the GH2 and didn't want it overly publicised so as not to distract attention from the qualities of the film. The write-ups I read didn't go out of their way to criticise the cinematography, and in fact several of them praised it. All of this from a film shot with a consumer stills camera. It makes the excuses a lot of people create that they're waiting for the right equipment to match their vision look very weak.

 

I'm not saying that equipment doesn't matter. I think the aesthetic qualities of a work are very important. I don't believe you should force a  video medium onto a filmmaker that is unhappy with it any more than I think you should force an oil painter to use watercolours. But all that said, the effect you can have on an audience with less desirable equipment can't be denied. Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE is another film shot on fuzzy, low res digital video. The 480p image looked soft and blurry on a 35mm blow up, and the dynamic range there is nothing to write home about. But even so, in its way, it's aesthetically gorgeous, and it's a beautiful, haunting work as a whole. Just recently I watched a great Chilean film, No. Shot on VHS! In 4X3 glory! And yet still more engaging and interesting than most films I've watched in cinemas over the past year.

 

As great as it is to have unrestricted freedom, there is also value in working within limitations. A resilient artist can make the most of what is available to them and thrive even with obstacles in their way. Von Trier's The Five Obstructions is a good film on this subject. Had the Taxi Driver themed sequel not fallen apart in the wake of the Cannes Nazi comment controversy, I imagine one of the challenges would be for Scorsese to remake a scene from the film on an iPhone or some similarly limited video device, and I'm sure Scorsese would knock it out of the park.

 

Another note: everyone seems to be longing for a device that looks as much like film as possible. I think Blackmagic has the most conventionally pleasing look of any consumer or prosumer camera on the market. I adore the look. It's closer to the characteristics of film than other consumer cameras, mostly because of the lack of digital artefacts and the very wide dynamic range, but it has its own visual signature. It looks like Blackmagic footage. Only film truly looks like film. 

I think film(video?)makers can free themselves with this philosophy. You are not shooting with film, so it's okay to make something that looks like video. We all aspire to recreate the gorgeous looking films we were brought up on, but there's nothing wrong with loosening up and going for a less 'perfect' look sometimes. In the case of 'No', VHS was the right aesthetic. it's a good fit for a story about television in the 80s, and it does not end up detracting from the warmth and power of the 'film'.

 

1. Can the GH3 be graded or given certain settings/hacks to get that "cinematic" movie quality feel that you get with the Canon DSLR full frame cameras, but with the sharpness?

2. Can the GH3 perform excellent in low light with certain lenses and programs (NeatVideo)

3. Can the 5DMKIII be brought to be as sharp as the GH3?

1. Well, it depends how good you are. You can make the footage much flatter than the GH2, and it's pretty nice to grade. 

2. Better than anything else in the price range, bar the 5D3 or Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It's no FS100 or C300, but it gets the job done.

3. I don't have one, but the answer seems to be 'no'.

 

The whole sharpness craze is a little silly if you ask me.

 

To an extent, but when you see footage out of the original Blackmagic Cinema Camera you understand. It's like IMAX compared to DSLR video. The test Andrew did a few months ago really proves the point.

https://vimeo.com/63131168

I´d say the Mark III´s advantage is Magic Lantern support, the full frame wiith it´s shallow depth of field and the EF mount. I know you can put on anything on the GH3 but who really wants a full frame 24mm lens instead of the voigtländer or the slr magic? So once you buy yourself into mft lenses you can only hope that there will always be some outstanding mft cameras... while EF lenses, well... you can use them on any sensor size, and any brand.

I'm not too worried about this because of the imminent BMD M43 cameras. I think the Pocket Cam and BMD M43 are going to be competitive for many years to come. I'm not too worried about 4K right now, given that nearly all cinema releases are 2K and all TV broadcasts are 720P.

[jasonmillard81]

Dave Dugdale has a new video and it pretty much sold me on the 6D. Thoughts?

[Mirrorkisser]

Amen Chrad. I find myself sometimes becoming a shopping bitch and worrying more about which glass to buy or what gear to get next instead of what i shoot next. Gear is only there to support the content. If there is no good content, all gear is useless.

 

if you got good content, need a certain gear to make a certain shot possible and you can afford it, go for it by all means. Always use the best gear you can get and then forget about it and just see it as a tool.

 

the gh2 is the best in its priceclass but also has its of limitations (banding, DR, rolling shutter like all dslrs, and i dont like the dark objects on it in lower (but not dark light) although its possible to denoise it well), still i dont see why a good filmmaker should not make a good movie on it.

 

For my purposes it has always been more than enough. When i was making things for television i always had professionals working the camera (non dslr stuff) and editing the footage with me while i focused on the content and how i wanted things to look. Sometimes i brought it with me as a static-cam to film stuff from weird perspectives and angles. the material could always be intercut with the stuff that cameras did which cost 20 times as much.

 

Regarding your questions: so far there is no hack for the gh3. as far as i have heard, some people are not too happy about the options (all-i has a too small bitrate etc). so i would wait and see if it ever gets hacked. i would also wait for blackmagic before i get the mkiii.

 

One thing that just popped in my mind: you said you just film stuff around you, which means you will also carry the stuff. when i do the same thing, i always carry around 6 lenses etc etc. the 5d and EF glass is most of the time heavier than a gh2, plus the gh2 has a decent stealth factor, people dont expect you to film with that tiny beast.

 

As mentioned before, if you dont film for the big screen the sharpened 5d footage is all fine. if you really blow it up though, it looses its appeal in my opinion. I use plenty of old legacy glass on the gh2 and a hack which focuses on gradations (intravenus or valkyrie) and i would not call sharpness an issue, the old glass is way smoother than most lumix lenses.

 

regarding whether its clever to invest in EF or m43 or nikon glass: only time will tell :)

[Zach]

Dave Dugdale has a new video and it pretty much sold me on the 6D. Thoughts?

My intern just got one and I got to shoot with it 2 weekends ago. If you don't mind moire and aliasing in the footage, its great. Slightly better in low light than the 5d in my experience. Overall image is the same

[jasonmillard81]

Zach, why not get the VAF adapter for 365 problem solved?

[Zach]

Zach, why not get the VAF adapter for 365 problem solved?

I was unaware that they already had one for the 6D :) 

[jasonmillard81]

Yea I think I'm pretty sold on the 6d and pair it with tamron 24-70

[AreFlex]

I'm brand new round here, quite like what I read on these forums. In my not very extensive research and testing I've found that the Gh3 definitely has less of a moire and aliasing issue. Of course you could always pop the somewhat expensive VAF filter into the 6D, but then it becomes a royal pain to quickly take stills, which is what these dslr type cams are so great for. So far I find the GH3 the most "useable" of the dslr type cameras. I love being able to auto-focus when shooting video by using the touch pad while keeping my eye glued to the evf. Great for run'n'gun situations without a loupe or monitor. I'm still looking for a picture profile that will give me those lovely Canon skin tones without any grading though.

[jasonmillard81]

I don't think it is possibly to get that "feel" and look of the Canon on the GH3 which is why people like are coming down to this basic predicament:

 

Do I want more sharpness/IQ or more of that "feel"...I think for me It is the latter...I really would love both though!

 

6D is looking like the winner for me!  Plus the VAF and I've got 95% of what the 5D3 offers at 700 less.