Guess The Camera!

[mercer]

Panasonic’s 1080p really does look nice. It’s a shame they don’t offer the higher bitrate 1080p on their lower tiered cameras.

[Mattias Burling]

Yup. The preproduction 200mbit HD that was released is what I always liked the most from the GH4 and it has many times tempted me to buy one. Specially now when they are so cheap.

I just wished I could get it in the smaller bodies.

[Matthew Hartman]

11 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

Also, all the screenshots are taken from footage shot in 1080P 10 bit, not 4K. 

And that's why it looks softer in a more pleasing way. I have to say, the 10 bits is doing some nice things for those gradients. Are these jpegs in 8bit? If so, I have a 10 bit monitor, I would'nt mind seeing the originals. 

These blind tests always fool people. I think they're eye opening and show us how much psychology plays into our personal biases. 

That being said, though these images undeniably look great as stills, how do they fair in motion? I think if that was part of the guess the camera equation, more ppl would have nailed it, especially those who own a GH5. I could be wrong. 

My favorite guess the camera EVER. 

 

On 2/17/2018 at 10:16 AM, Benjamin Hilton said:

Does all this pixel peeping over camera nuances really matter on set if you know your camera sensor as a DP?

Probably not. My guess is at the end of the day, no. But some bigger clients care very much what you choose to shoot on and it better be big and impressive, and cost $1-2k per day to rent. Again, psychology.

I imagine as these smaller cams bridge the gap between $3000 and $60,000 it will start mattering less and less to big budget clients. But I can see the speech bubbles now, they see you on your GH5 and one pops up and reads "I can do that too, why did I need him?"

There is nothing in your examples that would suggest "amateur". 

Personally, I'm holding out for this bad boy...

 

[mercer]

4 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

Yup. The preproduction 200mbit HD that was released is what I always liked the most from the GH4 and it has many times tempted me to buy one. Specially now when they are so cheap.

I just wished I could get it in the smaller bodies.

Exactly, the GX9 at $1000 gives me the option of okay 4K or bad 1080. I may as well buy an 80D, at least I’d get a good stills camera (bigger sensor) and okay 1080p with DPAF and Canon color... because okay 4K is pretty useless at that price point. 

Sadly, @Mattias Burling if you were to get and review  the 1080p on a GH4 or GH5, you’d probably be the first reviewer that ever concentrated on that feature in the 4 years since the GH4 was released and the year since the GH5 was announced. 

[Benjamin Hilton]

15 hours ago, Papiskokuji said:

Very encouraging ! Maybe the nicest screen grabs I've seen from the GH5. Especially the first pic of the post and the last one of your last post ! Finally not an overdone color grading. More cinematic and yet natural looking. Really nice ! Makes me wanna buy one ! By the way @Benjamin Hilton what do you think about the 10 bit codec ? Is it strong enough ? Compared to let's say Prores ? Do you get pink macroblocking ? That's my nightmare ! And I'm curious to know your workflow for this grade !

Thx !

Thanks!  The 10 bit codec is very strong, almost as strong as proress I would say, just not as fast editing wise:-)  With 8 bit there is definitely pink macroblocking just like the Gh4, but I haven't  seen any of it with 10 bit.  

I know there is a lot of confusion as to whether you need 10 bit or not in a camera, but I would say that the GH5 is made to work in 10 bit with v log and therefore looks it's best by far in that codec.  Though, many other cameras and log profiles, including Sony's S log 2, are made to take advantage of 8 bit, and therefore look great in 8 bit.  It's not so much that 10 bit gives you huge advantage over all as a reason to buy the GH5, more that the 10 bit is a huge advantage if you shoot with the GH5 and v log, as the camera seems made for 10 bit. 

15 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Were the original screenshots shot with the Canon 24-105mm? Makes it all the more impressive, as that's by no means a fast prime. Nice rendering.

The 10bit looks as good as raw in your grade.

Yes, everything I included was shot with the Canon 24-105 f4, which with a speedbooster, is a f2.5 equivalent. 

4 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

And that's why it looks softer in a more pleasing way. I have to say, the 10 bits is doing some nice things for those gradients. Are these jpegs in 8bit? If so, I have a 10 bit monitor, I would'nt mind seeing the originals. 

These blind tests always fool people. I think they're eye opening and show us how much psychology plays into our personal biases. 

That being said, though these images undeniably look great as stills, how do they fair in motion? I think if that was part of the guess the camera equation, more ppl would have nailed it, especially those who own a GH5. I could be wrong. 

My favorite guess the camera EVER. 

 

Probably not. My guess is at the end of the day, no. But some bigger clients care very much what you choose to shoot on and it better be big and impressive, and cost $1-2k per day to rent. Again, psychology.

I imagine as these smaller cams bridge the gap between $3000 and $60,000 it will start mattering less and less to big budget clients. But I can see the speech bubbles now, they see you on your GH5 and one pops up and reads "I can do that too, why did I need him?"

There is nothing in your examples that would suggest "amateur". 

Personally, I'm holding out for this bad boy...

 

Panasonic really nailed the HD on the GH5.  With the GH4, 1080P was really bad looking compared to shooting 4k and downsampling in post, really soft, and a lot of moire and noise.  But with the GH5, in-camera 1080P doesn't look any different than shooting 4k and downsampling in post.  All my tests have shown they look exactly the same - which is really nice when you need to turn around a quick project for Youtube. 

4 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

That being said, though these images undeniably look great as stills, how do they fair in motion? I think if that was part of the guess the camera equation, more ppl would have nailed it, especially those who own a GH5. I could be wrong. 

 

I think the akward looking motion is mainly due to compression, which is why the 400mb/sec all-i codec is exciting.  The problem with all that though, is that most of my work ends up on Youtube with terrible compression anyway, so I've kind of given up on good motion for now - until we reach the days of amazing internet speeds and prores Youtube:-) 

[IronFilm]

4 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

My favorite guess the camera EVER. 

But he is still using a boom pole with a blimp and a shotgun in it ;-)

 

 

[EthanAlexander]

On 2/17/2018 at 1:57 PM, EthanAlexander said:

Looks like Panasonic so I'm going to go with GH5 or EVA. 

So where do I claim my prize @Benjamin Hilton? Do I just send you my address or how does this work? 

 

 

 

 

[Benjamin Hilton]

I think the GH5 is complimented by soft lenses, as the sensor is naturally really digitally sharp.  I've tried a lot of lenses with it, including native Panasonic m43 lenses, and I still end up grabbing the 24-105 for quick shoots most of the time.  Good zoom reach, color, contrast, flare control, and constant f2.5 aperture with a speedbooster.  And, it's reasonably soft, which I think compliments the GH5 really well.  The native m43 Pansonic lenses are way too sharp when paired with the GH sensors in my opinion. 

[Benjamin Hilton]

The secret to those images though is in the color grade.  There are very few cameras that will look that good with minimal grading.  I have spent months off and on in the color bay with v log tests devoloping LUTs that match my style with the camera in almost every lighting scenerio.  But now that I have the LUTs developed, it's an easy matter of applying them to my footage as a grade, then doing my corrections underneath on each project. 

I think it's possible to create amazing images with almost any camera these days.  The trick is to pick a camera and stick with it for a while.  Take a couple of weeks to test it in every situation.  Find out what exposures compliment the sensor, what ratios it likes, native ISOs, and what it likes for breakfast.  Then after you find its sweat spots, take the footage into Davinci and play with it.  Develope a color science that matches your style.  Most codecs are robust enough these days to really develop whatever color science you want with your images in post, especially if you can shoot log. 

 

[cantsin]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

I think the GH5 is complimented by soft lenses, as the sensor is naturally really digitally sharp.

Not actually the sensor, but the camera's signal processing where you can't completely dial out artificial sharpening.

This has been the issue of the GH series since its beginnings. In the good old GH2 times, people experimented a lot with c-mount lenses and Russian lenses to work against the camera's over-sharpness. Your post proves that this, principally, is still good thinking (although one should use indeed better lenses than c-mounts).

[Matthew Hartman]

3 hours ago, EthanAlexander said:

So where do I claim my prize @Benjamin Hilton? Do I just send you my address or how does this work?

Here you go! You pay ship. 

[TwoScoops]

Voigtlanders at 0.95-1.4 are good for taking the edge off the sharpness too.

[Matthew Hartman]

2 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

The secret to those images though is in the color grade.  There are very few cameras that will look that good with minimal grading.

I think this is a huge point. For most modern mirrorless cameras that shoot to a distribution codec, regardless of 8 or 10bit, the manufactures designed these systems to produce good colors right out of the box. There isn't a lot of room to push colors around in post. You really have to know your way around qualifiers. 

I think sometimes (I feel a philosphy coming on) we get too caught up associating LOG with "professional" but it isnt neccesarily always true.

If you're getting good color and good exposure in camera, what the hell do you honestly need LOG for when you're probably going to arrive at the same grade (or very close to) you would have gotten in camera anyway. In this situation you just unessecarily doubled your workflow.

Now, before you nutty professor's jump on here I just want to state I know why LOG is preferred in most situations...DR. I'm just making an observation that these cameras are optimized by the factory to deliver the best they have to offer out of the box. When we speak about these systems this needs to be acknowledged more. 

43 minutes ago, TwoScoops said:

Voigtlanders at 0.95-1.4 are good for taking the edge off the sharpness too.

As are Tiffen softening filters, and much less expensive. Step up rings are cheap and even matte box versions of these filters are cheaper than a set of lens. 

9 hours ago, IronFilm said:

But he is still using a boom pole with a blimp and a shotgun in it ;-)

 

 

Yeah...DISQUALIFIED! ?

10 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

I think the akward looking motion is mainly due to compression, which is why the 400mb/sec all-i codec is exciting.  The problem with all that though, is that most of my work ends up on Youtube with terrible compression anyway, so I've kind of given up on good motion for now - until we reach the days of amazing internet speeds and prores Youtube:-) 

Heh, that's currently all of our problem. ? The thought of shooting (equals spending) 12 bit RAW to be distilled down to cheap 8bit compressed 20Mbit h.264 is not exactly inviting.

Rec2020 is going to help with this big time. That being said, adoption for UHD 8bit televisions is STILL not widespread let alone televisions enabled with HDR/10bit UHD. 

Streaming Prores? I doubt Apple is going to give Google a license for that. HEVC isn't too far off though. 

And lastly, this...

 

[Benjamin Hilton]

14 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

I think this is a huge point. For most modern mirrorless cameras that shoot to a distribution codec, regardless of 8 or 10bit, the manufactures designed these systems to produce good colors right out of the box. There isn't a lot of room to push colors around in post. You really have to know your way around qualifiers. 

I think sometimes (I feel a philosphy coming on) we get too caught up associating LOG with "professional" but it isnt neccesarily always true.

If you're getting good color and good exposure in camera, what the hell do you honestly need LOG for when you're probably going to arrive at the same grade (or very close to) you would have gotten in camera anyway. In this situation you just unessecarily doubled your workflow.

Now, before you nutty professor's jump on here I just want to state I know why LOG is preferred in most situations...DR. I'm just making an observation that these cameras are optimized by the factory to deliver the best they have to offer out of the box. When we speak about these systems this needs to be acknowledged more. 

As are Tiffen softening filters, and much less expensive. Step up rings are cheap and even matte box versions of these filters are cheaper than a set of lens. 

Yeah...DISQUALIFIED! ?

Heh, that's currently all of our problem. ? The thought of shooting (equals spending) 12 bit RAW to be distilled down to cheap 8bit compressed 20Mbit h.264 is not exactly inviting.

Rec2020 is going to help with this big time. That being said, adoption for UHD 8bit televisions is STILL not widespread let alone televisions enabled with HDR/10bit UHD. 

Streaming Prores? I doubt Apple is going to give Google a license for that. HEVC isn't too far off though. 

And lastly, this...

 

Would you mind removing that picture?  I would prefer to not have profanity associated with my work for religious and professional reasons. 

[Kisaha]

8 minutes ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

Would you mind removing that picture?  I would prefer to not have profanity associated with my work for religious and professional reasons. 

..and that is why I am reluctant to post stuff from work or family, that I would loose control on the internet..lines are so easily crossed, while we do not really know other people's limits. I am sure Matthew didn't want to offend anyone.

[Matthew Hartman]

8 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

Would you mind removing that picture?  I would prefer to not have profanity associated with my work for religious and professional reasons. 

I'm unable to remove it myself but have contacted admin to remove it for me, as well as the copied one in the quote. My apologies. Just to be clear, my intent was not to offend you or criticize the actual work and can understand the nature of your request. 

[Inazuma]

Nice grade. I'm guessing there were no secondary colour corrections? The telltale orange tones of Panasonic are still there.

[Benjamin Hilton]

14 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

I'm unable to remove it myself but have contacted admin to remove it for me, as well as the copied one in the quote. My apologies. Just to be clear, my intent was not to offend you or criticize the actual work and can understand the nature of your request. 

I understand, thank you for your respectfulness.