Gh4 "shootout"

[Andrew Dean]

Last week I got access for a few hours to a preproduction gh4 so I rang up some musicians and some friends and got all the camera's i could to do a video comparison. We ended up with a gh4 with speed booster, gh3, 5diii, 7d and c100.

I wrote more about it on hillbillygriptruck.com, but the main takeaway was that the preproduction unit underexposed the footage, despite having same settings as the gh3 AND a speed booster which in theory would brighten it up even more.

Anyways, if you are rabid too see gh4 footage, it might be worth a gander. Cheers!

Music Video Camera Shootout GH4, GH3, 5d mark iii, 7D, C100 - YouTube

[Les Wilson]

On the GH4, did the display overlay information turn off after 10 seconds like on the GH3 with no means to force it to stay on?

[Noa Put]

That's the question of the year, I read so much contradictory information on that part that I finally want to know as well.

[Gary Huff]

There is no such thing as a free lunch, so I am disappointed that a Speedbooster was used on the GH4 for this test.

[Andrew Dean]

Les/Noa, I asked the guy who was opping the gh4.

Gary, I assume you mean that the speedbooster degrades the image? To be honest, we haven't found that at all. Every comparison we've done, the speedbooster improved the image. We got into an argument once whether it increased edge CA or not... but then agreed we were just seeing the edges of the FF lens which were more prone to CA anyways.

Maybe not a "free lunch" since FF lenses are rather expensive, but my experience has been that any negative affect to the image is extremely subtle, but the gains in sharpness and brightness have been huge.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Andrew Dean

Maybe not a "free lunch" since FF lenses are rather expensive, but my experience has been that any negative affect to the image is extremely subtle, but the gains in sharpness and brightness have been huge.

My experience has been the opposite. The bokeh is destroyed and the image less resolute (I don't understand how it could possibly be *any* sharper because there is a secondary glass element between the lens and the sensor.)

This was on an FS700 into a Ninja-2, so perhaps the increase in recording quality made the difference more apparent.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Andrew Dean

Les/Noa, I asked the guy who was opping the gh4.

I had asked this question to the maker of the paris video which can also be found back on vimeo, he clearly said "You can have the infos as long as you want on GH4"
Bit later I read 2 different comments from separate pre release gh4 users saying the info does disappear? I don't understand how such a simple question can cause so much confusion, they had better send a pre production camera to me. :)

[Darren Levine]

Nice roundup. 4,5,1 were the ones that stuck out to me prior to seeing the reveal. Lovely performers as well!

And it seems pretty definitive that it will have disappearing info again. this was posted over at dpreview:

"Info and level marks become dimmed after 30sec and totally disappear after another 30sec during video recording."

Of course you'll find out if they made any last minute firmware changes to that in about 2 weeks. The AX100 has a similar annoyance, but they did put in at least some control over it.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Darren Levine

Of course you'll find out if they made any last minute firmware changes to that in about 2 weeks. The AX100 has a similar annoyance, but they did put in at least some control over it.

Yeah, nothing lost if there's a least a menu option to change how long or even turn it off forever, and then have a warning pop up about supposed issues if you do.

[Andrew Dean]

Sorry Guys. None of us can remember what happened to the displays on the gh4. We only had the camera for a few hours and only shot the lock-down shots of the musicians and stepped away from the cameras during the shootout since the floor of the hall was really bouncy. The canon guys didn't have any reason to think of it, but I'm surprised the panasonic shooters didn't think to check. doh.


The speed booster making an image sharper makes sense to me. Even though you are introducing another piece of glass, you are concentrating all the "resolution" of a full frame lens onto the sensor rather than just using the middle, vaguely like scaling a 4k image down to fit a 1080 frame vs just using the center. Simply adding more glass doesn't always = worse, since there are endless examples of lenses with large numbers of elements outperforming ones with less.

That said, if you don't like the way it looks, then it doesn't much matter what it is doing. hehe.

[Chris Duczynski]

Hey great test Andrew - thanks for taking the time and posting - really interesting. It goes some way to showing how little difference there is, apart from the 7D, once you're looking at an end product that has been exported for online viewing. I guess in a broadcast workflow the differences would be greater. I was surprised at how little difference there was with C100 and the others.
Loved the first comment on the youtube post "do you have this track without all the different cameras" - ha, some people just break me up.
Well done mate

[Andrew Dean]

Cheers, Chris!

Hey, the guys just reminded me of something i forgot to mention... The gh4 crops in significantly going to 4k. We shot in the UHD (quad HD) mode because it wasn't supposed to do it, but it absolutely did. If you look at the split screen at 2:53, the ONLY change we made between those two shots was switching the camera from 1080 to 4k. Its already a small sensor, so punching in even more for 4k is a bit of a bummer. We'll see what the release version does.

[Steven Bills]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I had asked this question to the maker of the paris video which can also be found back on vimeo, he clearly said "You can have the infos as long as you want on GH4"
Bit later I read 2 different comments from separate pre release gh4 users saying the info does disappear? I don't understand how such a simple question can cause so much confusion, they had better send a pre production camera to me. :)

I spoke to a Panasonic rep at NAB and he said that because of the switch to OLED screens (since the GH3), the display info has a greater tendency to get "burned" into the screen. Hence the disappearing display info.

SB

[Phil Goetz]

Gary -

Please come over for a free lunch when the GH4 starts shipping.

AUSTIN TEXAS!!!

[Andrew Dean]

It turns out when i exported the test to prores everything was great, but when i exported to mp4, premier deinterlaced the c100 footage. argh. nothing like a software anomoly to make me look like a dumbass to the whole world.

Anyways, I've now uploaded a version encoded from the prores export that doesn't destroy the c100 footage:

NEW ENCODING - Gh4, Gh3, 5d3, C100 Shootout - YouTube

sorry!