Audience reaction to Revenge Of The Great Camera Shootout puts GH2 in 3rd place behind Alexa and F65

[Illya Friedman]

Thanks for the kind words eosjames!  Mountain View eh? That would have been 3-years ago now for the NorCal chapter of the digital cinema society. 

I was there showing how cool the GH1 was back in the day.  I had at least a dozen people told me after that screening that the GH1 blew the doors off the (30p) 5D footage that was shown.


B3Guy, the Tuner-S kit is absolutely available in L.A. area rental houses.  Not sure where you were interning or who you called, but should you (or anyone) ever have a question about such a thing, call Hot Rod Cameras directly, we'll tell you which companies have it, in Los Angeles and world wide.  We try to track all the companies we know to be renting our equipment. 

About a year ago it came to my attention that there is a fly-by-night rental house that advertises prominently on Craigslist (and claims a huge list of equipment- turns out they don't actually own 90% of what they list!!), this company does not own any Hot Rod Cameras products, however when customers request a "Tuner kits", rather than subrent a genuine Hot Rod Cameras product from a reputable rental house, they try to pass of a crappy red-anodized Chinese knock-off product as ours, or they make some lame excuse that the crappy one (with a laundry list of problems) is somehow "better" than HRC when the client shows up.  It's very sad.  Since learning of this I do my best to direct people away from the lying liars at that house with the unscrupulous business practices  ???  Yes, same Chinese product that the manufacturer claims is "made in USA" and then lied to their customers (and was subsequently banned for it on another forum when it came to light).

Call us directly if you ever need a rental referral again.

Illya Friedman
President
Hot Rod Cameras
Hollywood, California
www.hotrodcameras.com
323-230-3589

[eosjames]

[quote author=Illya Friedman link=topic=738.msg5503#msg5503 date=1337449952]
Thanks for the kind words eosjames!  Mountain View eh? That would have been 3-years ago now for the NorCal chapter of the digital cinema society. 

I was there showing how cool the GH1 was back in the day.  I had at least a dozen people told me after that screening that the GH1 blew the doors off the (30p) 5D footage that was shown.

[/quote]

Yup, that was it. TransVideo studios. Biggest studio in BayArea. Yeah, you were showing your adapters with the cinema lenses. I didn't even know about the MkII/GH1 then. Hard to believe its been 3 years.

[Jaime Valles]

[quote author=Illya Friedman link=topic=738.msg5495#msg5495 date=1337423460]
I was at the Hollywood screening.  To say that it evoked a strong reaction in some is to put it mildly.  That being said, during the "blind" portion of the test, several people brave enough to give their "best of" picks, named the still unnamed GH2 as one of their favorites. 

When the cameras were revealed I noticed at least two people who named the GH2 flip-flopped and slammed it as inferior to the others, which was ridiculous, the GH2 did do very, very, well in the test...[/quote]

Thanks so much for the detailed insight, Illya!  It's amazing what preconceived notions about cameras can do to a person's analysis of footage.  I have a GH2, and with the hack I find the image exceptionally good.  Wish I could've made the Zacuto screening in NYC last week, but unfortunately I was out of town.  I'm genuinely curious to see what GH2 footage looks like on the big screen when handled properly.  If I may ask, what was the tell-tale artifact you saw that made you recognize the GH2 footage?

Thanks again!

[Illya Friedman]

[quote author=Jaime Valles link=topic=738.msg5507#msg5507 date=1337456059]
Thanks so much for the detailed insight, Illya!.....  If I may ask, what was the tell-tale artifact you saw that made you recognize the GH2 footage?
[/quote]

No problem at all Jaime.  Happy to share.  However, I'd rather wait to point out exactly where and what the artifact is until after the Zacuto shoot out is released, so as not influence anyone yet to view it- or give away the GH2 when someone is watching the test for the first time.

The biggest piece of fun in the test is guessing which is which.  Knowing even one of the cameras in advance takes that away.  It's much better to not know what any of the cameras are when they are shown unnamed.  I really hope that Zacuto changes the order again when they release it on the web, so no one from the screenings gives anything away.

A disclaimer, I am a very critical viewer.  The artifact is clearly visible but not egregious.  It's just the give away.  If you don't catch it on your own, I think you'll agree that the artifact it is entirely within the 'character' of the GH2 when it's pointed out.

All the best,


Illya Friedman
President
Hot Rod Cameras
Hollywood, California
www.hotrodcameras.com
323-230-3589

[Caleb Genheimer]

It was Saturday before I realized what was going on, so a lot of houses were closed. Oh well, it all worked out, and I got to impress everyone with my understanding of mount distances  ;)

Great product, it worked really well on my GH2.

[Jaime Valles]

[quote author=Illya Friedman link=topic=738.msg5508#msg5508 date=1337469200]
[quote author=Jaime Valles link=topic=738.msg5507#msg5507 date=1337456059]
Thanks so much for the detailed insight, Illya!.....  If I may ask, what was the tell-tale artifact you saw that made you recognize the GH2 footage?
[/quote]

No problem at all Jaime.  Happy to share.  However, I'd rather wait to point out exactly where and what the artifact is until after the Zacuto shoot out is released, so as not influence anyone yet to view it- or give away the GH2 when someone is watching the test for the first time.
[/quote]
Makes perfect sense.  After the footage is released, we'll talk.  :)

[HurtinMinorKey]

[quote author=Andrew Reid link=topic=738.msg5491#msg5491 date=1337391606]
Anyway... so what if most people shoot handheld because it is convenient? If it works it works. Not everything needs to be shot on a slider.
[/quote]

Because usually this convenience has a price, paid for by your audience. 

[Ernesto Mantaras]

[quote author=HurtinMinorKey link=topic=738.msg5551#msg5551 date=1337616974]
[quote author=Andrew Reid link=topic=738.msg5491#msg5491 date=1337391606]
Anyway... so what if most people shoot handheld because it is convenient? If it works it works. Not everything needs to be shot on a slider.
[/quote]

Because usually this convenience has a price, paid for by your audience.
[/quote]

Really? Everybody hates handheld? I could agree that "The Bourne Supremacy" went too far, but handheld isn't all about shaking the camera all around and making a mess on the audience understanding of what's going on. It can be very beautiful when done properly, and many movies and short films prove that, whether there's a subtle or a strong movement of the camera.

And as for the "convenience" of shooting handheld, it can be faster than setting up a tripod, but I dare you to hold a camera still on your hands for hours to properly shoot a handheld scene or a whole movie! There's a lot of skill and effort involved to make that look the way you want or need it to be.

[HurtinMinorKey]

[quote author=charlie_orozco link=topic=738.msg5552#msg5552 date=1337619935]
[quote author=HurtinMinorKey link=topic=738.msg5551#msg5551 date=1337616974]
[quote author=Andrew Reid link=topic=738.msg5491#msg5491 date=1337391606]
Anyway... so what if most people shoot handheld because it is convenient? If it works it works. Not everything needs to be shot on a slider.
[/quote]

Because usually this convenience has a price, paid for by your audience.
[/quote]

Really? Everybody hates handheld? I could agree that "The Bourne Supremacy" went too far, but handheld isn't all about shaking the camera all around and making a mess on the audience understanding of what's going on. It can be very beautiful when done properly, and many movies and short films prove that, whether there's a subtle or a strong movement of the camera.

And as for the "convenience" of shooting handheld, it can be faster than setting up a tripod, but I dare you to hold a camera still on your hands for hours to properly shoot a handheld scene or a whole movie! There's a lot of skill and effort involved to make that look the way you want or need it to be.
[/quote]

So I guess that we can agree. If you are choosing it for convenience, that it's probably not the best. On the other hand, if it's inconvenient to use, but you are sticking with handheld,  then at least you know your heart is in the right place!  ;D

[Per Lichtman]

@Evil_Thought2

In my experience shooting with a GH2 for close to a year, I have never had the "dropped frames" mentioned, with any setting. It either recorded properly or it stopped entirely - nothing in-between. And that's coming from the perspective of one of the people that has done the most testing outside the settings authors themselves.

Also, the author of the second quote states their suppositions as objective fact. The C300 may (or may not) have primarily had the image quality issues due to using internal recording vs. an external recorder. Based on my brief hands on time with the C500 (which has some really, really beautiful image quality characteristics) I might guess the same thing, but I would not state it as objective fact.


Based on my experience with the RED Scarlet, there is a huge difference in the way that colors and dynamic range are handled on an Epic vs a GH2, so if the test stressed those areas, I would not be surprised by the observations. But I tell you, if you construct the shoot to the GH2s strengths and are outputting to 2K, the performance delta shrinks rapidly and the two can be intercut very well.

But if you are shooting with a very wide dynamic range, the Epic/Scarlet will completely outperform the GH2.

I say this with love: the GH2 is currently an unbeatable value. The fact that it can be used to intercut footage AT ALL against these other impressive cameras is a huge accomplishment and a boon for the low-cost market. But lets not pretend that there is no reason to use the more expensive ones. My client loves both the GH2 and RED footage from our last music video together and we have used the GH2 before, but they were still impressed enough by the RED footage to start looking at how to afford renting it on more projects in the future (even though we have been doing GH2 shoots at a fraction of the price).

[HurtinMinorKey]

Am I missing something, or this test completely confounded by varying effectiveness of the individual teams' post production performance?

[ZigFilm]

I saw the revenge shootout recently and the biggest take away for both my friend and I was how poorly the 7D looked.  At first I thought it was actually out of focus it was so soft.  The weird thing is that my friend is shooting a feature on the 7D and his footage doesn't look nearly as soft and we've screened his dailies on the same big screen where we showed the Shootout...  The FS100 was the most surprising in a good way, for me.  I've never liked the look of this camera's footage when viewing it on a monitor or big screen TV but graded well and projected from a DCP on a big screen, it looked great!  The GH2 did look surprisingly good but I thought it ranked a little lower than the FS100 but higher than the C300, which also looked pretty bad....

[johnnymossville]

[quote author=HurtinMinorKey link=topic=738.msg5576#msg5576 date=1337733375]
Am I missing something, or this test completely confounded by varying effectiveness of the individual teams' post production performance?
[/quote]

My understanding is that they showed two versions.  One without post production, and one version after they got a chance to grade the footage to their liking.  Could be wrong about this though.

[ZigFilm]

[quote author=HurtinMinorKey link=topic=738.msg5576#msg5576 date=1337733375]
Am I missing something, or this test completely confounded by varying effectiveness of the individual teams' post production performance?
[/quote]

All the post production color grading was done by the same person, in the particular camera's native format, and on the same color grading system (sorry, I can't remember what the name of the system is).  They did a good job of trying to reduce as many variables as possible.  All the cameras even used the same lens except for the iPhone and the two canons who both used canon lenses.  I wonder if that's why the 7D and C300 looked so bad!

[Remsy_Atassi]

I just went to the Chicago shootout and it was more interesting than I expected. Unfortunately we were watching only a 1080p ProRes timeline and there was a strange screen split artifact that appeared whenever cameras panned. It didn't prove too bad because the test shots were relatively stationary, but Steve Weiss didn't seem pleased that they couldn't run the 2K DCP. Apparently there were some issues with the facility we were at.

That said, the shootout still provided a nice measuring stick for the various cams. The format of the shootout was as follows: first every camera shooting a wide scene with an open window as described. Every camera was shown and labeled. Next they showed every camera lit specifically by experts for the individual camera, and also graded in post under the direction the master cinematographers for each cam. This is where there was a lot of room for interpretation. Finally they re-screened these shots with the cameras labeled. In between each set of shots there was a discussion.

The only two I could identify with confidence were the Alexa, which had noticeably better skin details and insane dynamic range, and the F65, which had a strange magenta cast. In my blind test the best cameras I picked were Alexa, Red Epic, and the F3 curiously. No one else mentioned the F3 much at the screening but I thought in terms of DR it was on par with Alexa. It also had great noise control and skin detail. Killed the C300 in most regards, and that's usually my go to rental camera.

Ungraded Epic was questionable - too contrasty and oversaturated - but after post looked amazing. 7D was definitely the worst in my eyes, but I think it had a lot to do with the Cinestyle picture profile which IMO is garbage. Introduces tons of noise and artifacting after the grade.

The GH2 was almost unanimously heralded after the blind set of shots. I argued that it looked too constrasty and oversaturated, but have to admit that I mistook it for the Epic! This was mostly because it looked so much like the Epic from the first set of shots. The F65 was apparently a first release model and honestly did not look great to my eyes. The DR and noise control was there but there was a strange magenta like cast over all the shots that was noticeable.

At the end of the day I think the point that Zacuto was getting at was that any camera in the right hands makes the difference. It seemed that there was a lot of variance in the post and shooting processes, so this wasn't as scientific as last years test.