First look - Olympus OM-D E-M1 vs Panasonic GH3

[Dean]

Another couple of clips I put together over the weekend. All hand held ... of course  :)

 

I enjoy shooting stills on the E-M1 but I'm totally addicted to shooting video with it. Ergonomically, when set up to your liking, it's so easy to use and the controls, settings and dials just get out of your way.

 

In the second clip, I resisted throwing all sorts of colour effects over the top and left it as is out of the cam on vivid setting with contrast at -2 as Andrew suggested in a post ... all else at default. No PP at all.

 

Both shot with the Pana 25/1.4. In the scene at the 24sec mark of the 1st clip I used the inbuilt 2x convertor. There is a drop in resolution but the feature is handy.

 

I hope it is OK posting videos here but I did not see another thread that has E-M1 videos.

 

 

[jurgen]

Dean, this is kind of an off-the-rails question as it pertains to the topic, but:

Shooting stills with your E-M1, if you take a jpg (super fine) at ISO 6400, is some of your noise "black," like dark pixels?

http://imgur.com/oll7sU3 (this is what I mean).

It does not show up in RAW, which is great, and of course that's a 300% crop of my dog, so it's heavy pixel peeping on a Micro Four Thirds camera at 6400 ISO in a poorly lit room. I am curious if it's "normal" behavior, though.

Show up that way for you?

[fuzzynormal]

 

Awesome.  Thanks for this.  I shot at this temple 5 years ago in HD and it doesn't look half as good as your footage.  Very encouraging.

[Dean]

Dean, this is kind of an off-the-rails question as it pertains to the topic, but:

Shooting stills with your E-M1, if you take a jpg (super fine) at ISO 6400, is some of your noise "black," like dark pixels?

http://imgur.com/oll7sU3 (this is what I mean).

It does not show up in RAW, which is great, and of course that's a 300% crop of my dog, so it's heavy pixel peeping on a Micro Four Thirds camera at 6400 ISO in a poorly lit room. I am curious if it's "normal" behavior, though.

Show up that way for you?

 

Hi Jurgen, sorry, but I'm really not sure. I haven't really taken many high ISO images. You would probably be better off asking the question on http://www.mu-43.com … they have a lot of super knowledgable people there.

[jurgen]

Hi Jurgen, sorry, but I'm really not sure. I haven't really taken many high ISO images. You would probably be better off asking the question on http://www.mu-43.com … they have a lot of super knowledgable people there.

Cheers! I'll do just that!

[Andrew Reid]

Love the temples. How was the audio recorded? If that was onboard then well done :)

[Shield3]

"Then there’s crop mode, built in EVF, articulated screen, all good features which are missing from the raw shooting 5D Mark III,"

 

Crop mode is missing from 5d3?  Funny, I shoot this way all the time.  3x zoom works just great in raw mode.

[Dean]

Awesome.  Thanks for this.  I shot at this temple 5 years ago in HD and it doesn't look half as good as your footage.  Very encouraging.

 

Thanks, Fuzzy. That's great that you have been there before. It's an amazing Temple ... so colourful and exciting ... especially at this time of year. This weekend  is Chinese New Year and apparently on Sunday the place is absolutely packed. That would make for some pretty interesting footage.

 

 

Love the temples. How was the audio recorded? If that was onboard then well done :)

 

Thanks, Andrew. The audio is straight out of the cam. I've been very pleased with the audio. Even when street shooting it nicely captures the sounds of the city without anything sounding muffled. Less gear the better. With one small camera and one small lens your practically invisible  :)

[Dean]

I don't have too many gripes about the E-M1, and the outstanding IBIS in this camera more than makes up for any shortfall it may have, but there are a few things I wish it did or did better. Obviously the whole 24p 25p thing is an issue but some other things are...

 

• It would be nice if the sprit level was available during video capture. As soon as you press record it disappears.
• Peaking during video would be nice as well.
• The camera should also let you assign what ever you want to the two dials when flicking between lever 1 and lever 2. At the moment it decides the pairs for you. In my ideal set up, I would have the camera always in lever position 1 and assign ISO to one dial and aperture to the other dial.

 

This cam is just perfect for street video where there's no time to set up a shot and skinny DOF isn't really needed. I just leave the camera in shutter priority in movie mode with S-AF & auto ISO when using the 25/1.4. If you see something about to happen you can quickly move the focus dot in position, tap once on the shutter release to gain focus, press record and your off ... and very stable  :)  I find it's easy to react quickly with the E-M1. It acquires focus so instantly and it's dead on 99% of the time in any type of light. I prefer the type of LCD that's in this cam over the GH3 as well for street. I just have it on a 75 degree angle facing me and shoot with the cam at about navel height. I find shooting like this as opposed to looking through the EVF does not attract anyone's attention.

[fuzzynormal]

This cam is just perfect for street video where there's no time to set up a shot and skinny DOF isn't really needed.

 

For what it's worth, if you're shooting a f2 on m43, you have an effective DOF of f4 in regards to full frame cameras.  Considering that feature film cinematographers like to shoot around f5.6, I'd say that m43 sensors work well getting that shallow/skinny DOF look.

 

Something like a f1.4 on a full frame is useful for specialty shots, but shooting motion pictures that way all the time would be a bit much.

 

Anyway, I'm just saying m43 does good motion picture DOF.

[Dean]

For what it's worth, if you're shooting a f2 on m43, you have an effective DOF of f4 in regards to full frame cameras.  Considering that feature film cinematographers like to shoot around f5.6, I'd say that m43 sensors work well getting that shallow/skinny DOF look.

 

Something like a f1.4 on a full frame is useful for specialty shots, but shooting motion pictures that way all the time would be a bit much.

 

Anyway, I'm just saying m43 does good motion picture DOF.

 

 

Good to know, Fuzzy ... thanks. I have a lot to learn but it's so much fun being at base level again. Not saying I'm a great photographer or anything but I've got to the point where I'm OK with stills. Being absolutely new at something again like video is so exciting !!

 

When I have time to set everything up I usually shoot the 25/1.4 @ around 2~2.8.

 

No trouble at all with isolation and blowing out a background with M43 ... you just need the right lenses  :)  I have the 45/1.8 and 75/1.8 which are lovely and get the job done when needed. I just bought a Metabones Speedbooster on the weekend as I have around 10 Nikon MF lenses. I'm really interested to see how the 28/2 Ai-S and 50/1.2 Ai-S handle but they are a bit large on the E-M1. I'm thinking an M adapter and a couple of ZM lenses would be nice too.

 

I've shot FF for years and still shoot with a D800E, but it stays on the shelf most of the time now. I went through such a shallow DOF phase that hardly anything was in focus in any shot for months ... everything always wide open with lenses like the 135DC and 50/1.2 ... I'm a bit more judicious in my approach to using DOF now  :D

[Michael Ma]

deang001,

 

I decided to have some fun and try converting your chicken choppers from 30p video to 24p using the workflow below:

 

If you're interested here are the results:

 

You will want to download it to watch it.  not watch it in the browser which looks heavily compressed.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xjns3jan6vbkc0/cc24p.mp4

 

In After Effects CC

1. create new composite with original video and set Time -> Time Stretch -> Stretch Factor (250%)

2. Composition Settings -> Increase "Duration" by 2.5x (so 40.02 seconds became 1:40:07)

3. Enabled Frame Blending

4. Frame Blending -> Pixel Motion

5. Then export keeping framerate 29.97  What you end up with is a stretched clip by a factor of 2.5x at 29.97fps.  The frames are filled in with computer-generated frames.

 

After that take the stretched file into Premiere Pro

6. Create new sequence with video and set Speed/Duration -> Speed (250%)

7. Set opacity to 50%

8. Then underneath the 24p video layer, I put the original 29.97fps video.

9. Then export sequence to 23.97fps with the Frame Blending enabled

 

Added note: You can change the opacity from anywhere from 0 - 100% in step 7.  Sometimes the original footage doesn't have much movement so no conversion is necessary.  Sometimes the interpolated footage is perfect, so 100% is fine.  But 50% seems fine across the board most of the times.

It turns out After Effects has built in feature to interpolate frames just like Twixtor.  They licensed The Foundry's Kronos and called it Pixel motion.  You can probably do all this within After Effects although I like this workflow because frame blending seems to work better this way for me.

[Dean]

deang001,

 

I decided to have some fun and try converting your chicken choppers from 30p video to 24p using the workflow below:

 

If you're interested here are the results:

 

You will want to download it to watch it.  not watch it in the browser which looks heavily compressed.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xjns3jan6vbkc0/cc24p.mp4

 

In After Effects CC

1. create new composite with original video and set Time -> Time Stretch -> Stretch Factor (250%)

2. Composition Settings -> Increase "Duration" by 2.5x (so 40.02 seconds became 1:40:07)

3. Enabled Frame Blending

4. Frame Blending -> Pixel Motion

5. Then export keeping framerate 29.97  What you end up with is a stretched clip by a factor of 2.5x at 29.97fps.  The frames are filled in with computer-generated frames.

 

After that the the stretched file into Premiere Pro

6. Create new sequence with video and set Speed/Duration -> Speed (250%)

7. Set opacity to 50%

8. Then underneath the 24p video layer, I put the original 29.97fps video.

9. Then export sequence to 23.97fps with the Frame Blending enabled

 

Added note: You can change the opacity from anywhere from 0 - 100% in step 7.  Sometimes the original footage doesn't have much movement so no conversion is necessary.  Sometimes the interpolated footage is perfect, so 100% is fine.  But 50% seems fine across the board most of the times.

It turns out After Effects has built in feature to interpolate frames just like Twixtor.  They licensed The Foundry's Kronos and called it Pixel motion.  You can probably do all this within After Effects although I like this workflow because frame blending seems to work better this way for me.

 

Wow !! Great stuff, Michael.

 

30p doesn't really offend me that much, but it would be a nice update on the E-M1 at some point.

 

Your workflow seems fantastic … hopefully one day I will understand it  :)  Thanks for sharing.

[HurtinMinorKey]

bump

[Dean]

The live crop mode Andrew mentions in the article is quite nifty !! 

 

[David Majer]

Hey Andrew, 

great work, love the site.  

 

Was wondering, which mount is your Sigma 18-35 on m43 Speedbooster?  

x to m43?

 

thanks.

[Andrew Reid]

Thanks. Nikon mount.

[jurgen]

So here's a video I shot at my sister's place with her E-M1. Obviously I forgot to turn off all the auto-exposure and auto WB functions (sorry!) but now that I have one of my own I will be able to shoot some better tests. 

Lens was a Canon FD 28mm 2.8 @ 2.8. Crappy focus pulling done by me. The attempted dolly at the end was done one handed with me shuffle stepping side to side. Everything you see is straight out of camera, just me shooting handheld.

My lack of skill aside, I'm hugely impressed by this thing. I tried to do roughly the same thing with my GH3 while I was there and the video was jumping and jittering all over the place, totally unusable. IBIS makes an ENORMOUS difference. To be able to shoot my Dad's old Canon and Nikon lenses with stabilization is awesome.
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8UCGwwXQ_k&feature=youtu.be

[Dean]

Nice, Jurgen. I'm really not sure why the phrase "it's a dog's life" was invented. Most dog's I see like yours and the crazy little mut we have at home live a fantastic life !!! :)

 

The IBIS does make a massive difference to the usability of the camera. The E-M1 just takes care of the stability side of things for you which is  so liberating.

 

After testing the live crop mode at work yesterday, I decided to test it out walking home from work last night. I think it's a great feature and a lot of fun to use but I need to use it more to see what type of situation it's best suited to. Sometimes the effect looks pretty seamless but sometimes it doesn't.

 

Also tried out the 12-40/2.8 last night for video. I prefer the small primes, but the zoom range is handy.

 

[jurgen]

Looks great, Dean! Great colors, impressive DR!