In depth test - 5D Mark III and 7D Raw vs Blackmagic Pocket vs GH3

[Andrew Reid]

[media]http://vimeo.com/77268402[/media]

68GB worth of material was used to get a studio based test this finely tuned, with the cameras matched in post as close as possible. This effort to remove the variables of grading and camera settings leaves behind a truer picture of the differences in hardware capabilities.

The 5D Mark III raw (from Magic Lantern), if it were a film stock, would be Fuji. Warm vivid colours which may need taming a bit in post. The Blackmagic is more Kodak, cooler and more muted, it often requires the opposite treatment in post to the Canon cameras. The 7D is totally back from the dead - with Magic Lantern raw and the Mosaic Engineering VAF-7D tested here, it offers lovely image quality from a Super 35mm sized sensor, at a similar price to the Pocket Cinema Camera. The Panasonic GH3 - best of the standard system cameras out of the box without modifications does a good job keeping up with them.

The scene was lit three ways to test resolution, dynamic range and low light performance.

[url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/11350/depth-test-5d-mark-iii-7d-raw-vs-blackmagic-pocket-vs-gh3]Read the full article here[/url]

[maxotics]

Cool, I get to be the first posted comment, which is:  SIMPLY F'ING AWESOME!  I don't know how you get the time to do all this but this is what I've wanted to know for months!  Finally I can get on with my life.  THANK YOU!

[grisnjam]

Quick question Andrew,

 

In the Pocket Cam + Sigma 18-35 + Speedbooster article comments you mentioned that the GH2 + Sigma 18-35 + Speedbooster seems to get murky corners with the Sigma.  Does the 1.86x crop factor of the GH2 vs the 2.0x crop factor of the GH3 make a difference?  In other words how does the GH3 play with the Sigma 18-35 + Speedbooster when at 18mm (12mm effective)?

 

Thanks for all the amazing work you do.

[PeterGregg]

I find the GH3 gives the lowest noise ironically in the Vivid mode. Also, turning the color settings all the way down gives me the most latitude. Might be worth noting.

[tttulio]

I'd love to have seen the FS100 amongst them.

[MattH]

In the dynamic range test the 5d3s shadow areas are noticeably brighter than the pocket cams.  So I think 2 stops difference is exaggerating it a bit.  And the highlights are only a little bit brighter so I would actually say they are pretty equal for dynamic range.

I noticed a bit of rainbow moire on the side of the camera on the pocket low light test. Not bad, but its there.

 

Did you sell your cinema camera? It would be grate to see it included in comparisons.

[Marek Kędzierski]

You should to remember that Magic Lantern doesn't save info about white balance in RAW files. We have to set it manually when importing files in ACR, Resolve etc. You can set it on camera but it's not saved in RAW file.

[Axel]

Czesc Marek, yes, that's what I understood as well.

 

@Andrew

Very interesting.

For staying in 8-bit and avoiding the need to handle raw, the GH3 (and of course the 5D) are still in the game.

 

Dapper still life. You seem to like a victorian club atmosphere that looks as if lit by gaslight, somewhat inappropriate for technical stuff. I wonder if you smoke a pipe and play a fiddle at night ;-)

 

We also have some posessions in common: The 2001 paperback, the Bolex Paillard with spring mechanism and a rusty film can ;-)

[D.L. Watson]

If you expose for blown out highlights, push shadows, clean with neat video, you can capture just as much dynamic range from the GH3 as you can from Magic Lantern RAW.

 

https://vimeo.com/76030718

[Jean-Marc Abela]

Thank you Andrew.. your reviews are so thorough at to the point. Much appreciated.

[Axel]

@ D.L.Watson

Nice clip. Good pans. Which tripod do you use?

[terozzz]

I wonder how the Nikon D5200/D7100 with ninja 2. 4:2:2 is compared to these...

[richg101]

Sod messing around with raw.  the improvement over the gh3 is tiny IMO.  Well done GH3!

 

Great test Andrew.  Not got time to read the full article yet, but is there a reason why the noise levels on the 7d is so much higher than the rest? 

[richg101]

If you expose for blown out highlights, push shadows, clean with neat video, you can capture just as much dynamic range from the GH3 as you can from Magic Lantern RAW.

 

https://vimeo.com/76030718

 

based on my few experiences,  I find that a clean and dynamic result can be obtained by gh3 footage where the highlights have been pushed slightly.  there always seems to be more information in apparently blown highlights and pulling them down rather than pushing up shadows I feel yields superb results that would not require use of neat video due to the shadows being exposed better from the start.    

[Keith Williams]

I agree with Terozz, I would love to see how the Nikon D5200 compares in the same testing after seeing how highly Andrew praised it in his earlier review.

[/p/]

If you expose for blown out highlights, push shadows, clean with neat video, you can capture just as much dynamic range from the GH3 as you can from Magic Lantern RAW.

 

https://vimeo.com/76030718

 

This doesn't exactly give you the "cinematic" look.... It looks like a .jpg that's been molested by Trey Ratcliff in Photomatix.

[thedest]

Andrew, you seem to have problems grading the low light footage from the BMPCC. You crushed the DR and got bad colors. I wonder if you can share the original low light shot of the BMPCC so we can see if there is a better way out. Im not having those problems in low light. I can grade them without throwing away good dynamic range. And I can recover more color info than that.

 

Great test BTW

[terozzz]

Here in video i did shoot with Nikon D5200 and flaat 11. no collor correct.. Straight from camera.. DR isnt bad with D5200 ;)

 

http://youtu.be/MR5a-dxg7-g

 

And here is the "fixed"

 

http://youtu.be/J9IsZFtdQ-I

[nathanleebush]

Thanks for the test! Your blog is the most vital destination for budget filmmakers on the web, IMO!

[theSUBVERSIVE]

I'm curious to know how would be the stock 5DMKIII's score.