One of my current projects is 3d printing a quadcopter. It's a learning journey.

I thought i'd use my hiccups along the way to test the VFR slow motion on the FZ2500.

Here's a sample on vimeo. SS 125, f4, iso 200, portrait (Chris's suggested settings of +5sharpness, -5nr). I think IS/level shot may have been on too, so sensor was cropped a bit.

drone crash on Vimeo

I was pretty disappointed with noise/grain/softness of the image. Vimeo has mushed it up a bit, original is very noisey.

Just to compare, I set up a similar shot with my GH4 on 26% slowmo setting with 35-100 2.8 at f4, iso 200 ss100.

drone crash 2 on Vimeo

Looks way better to my eyes.

Anyone else done any tests with VFR settings on the FZ yet?

Joe

PS. Also, if you have advice on building/flying quadcopters... I could obviously use that too.

Hi Joe

The FZ2500 settings were for stills not video ...ie: portrait mode and sharpness at +5 and noise at -5 ...I shoot my video in the standard profile with everything at zero on the sliders. To be honest I think that MP4 on the camera is way sharper than other formats but you cannot use MP4 for VFR sadly ...if I want slomo I just shoot 50P MP4 and then slow the clip down in post ..much easier ...

Try some footage in STD mode with either 25P or 50P ....I guess all your dones are dead now??? If that was me I would have given up for sure!!

Chris, if you choose MP4(LPCM) you can shoot VFR video.

I was shooting 100mps 25.00p MOV format.

Chris, have you found that MP4 gives better results than MOV at same data/framerates?

I did some more tests and found the image holds up better at VFR 96fps than 120fps.

96fps is a slow as the GH4 goes. So the GH4 sample was 96fps.

So, nice to have the 120fps option, but be aware that the image suffers a bit.

Joe

PS. Drone is 3d printed, So I crash it and re-print it! Next crash will be 50p slowed down. Stay tuned.

Joe, MP4 and MOV are wrappers that contain the codec the camera uses. I would think the quality of the footage would be the same from each from the same camera as the codecs would be the same. I can't verify that from personal experience because I've never compared the two. You could record the exact same scene with each and compare the file sizes. If they are in fact the same size then I suspect the compression applied to both is the same and quality should be the same.

Thanks Joe

I just shoot Mp4 because Vegas seems to like it better than the older AVCHD that my Sony's used to record in ... hard to tell as the Sony EA-50 gave a much softer image. If I need slomo which is very seldom I just shoot double frame rate and drop it on a 25P time line and slow down the clip and it works well!!

Thanks Tom ..Never shot in MOV to be honest it's always MP4 ...I let sleeping dogs lie!