Some more shots with the GH4 and 35-100mm f2.8

@johnnymossville You are right and I tried to demonstrate it by posting pictures in this discussion taken with D800, M43 camera and even compact camera.

Actually, for my own experience, a camera makes more difference by its color treatment than its pixel count or sensor size. A great color treatment out of the box can deliver instant pleasure and eases a lot the post processing. I discovered this with the Nikon1 V1 and none of my other camera can compete in term of color treatment. Just amazing. See by yourself here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/11546/rare-cine-nikkor-lenses-on-nikon-1#Item_18

The way I am shooting with this camera is good for a personal use, and I will work with the GH4, but I am spending much more time on my GH4 pix to get colors I like, and sometime, I am not fully satisfied.

Here is one of the picture shot suring the workshop I organized for my students. I shot with the GH4 as main camera and the 12-35mm f2.8. All settings on my website http://www.francperet.com/2014/11/19/painting-with-light/

Hallo Franc Peret, after I havent been on "Personalview" for some month. Its a great pleasure for me to find you, and your open competence, here on the forum now. I enjoy your photos, and your photographic point of view. Thank you !

A new workshop I organized completely shot with the GH4 and 12-35mm f2.8 + Olympus 45mm f1.8

Light set up with white board panel, 2 x HMI (150W) and LED Fresnel (150W).

You can see more sample here: http://www.francperet.com/2014/11/30/special-effects/

@johnnymossville Thanks a lot! Here is some more sample shot with the GH4. I am preparing a product shot workshop and work out on one of the most difficult subject to light up!

Being Attractive

Light and composition are more important than the subject itself. There is nothing more true to illustrate this concept than product shots. Product shots are usually done for commercial purpose, and pictures have to be more attractive than the object its self to be considered as successful.

The Magic of light shaping

By learning how to use Light sources, a professional photographer is going to achieve that result, but each object will represent a different challenge according its shape, its reflection, its purpose and the target mood.

Case by Case study

A slice of pizza is not light up and shot the same way than a camera, a jewel or a shower head (which is actually one of the most difficult things to shoot). Only the understanding of quality of light, family of angle, masking with shadow and post processing can make a good shot possible.

Here are some shot to illustrate my purpose. All shot with GH4 + 35-100mm f2.8 @f8, ISO200, 1/50s, Tripod mount.

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I have to agree with @Vesku regarding IQ of GH4.
I don't have GH4 but I friend of mine owns Olympus OM-D EM5 which IQ should be similar to GH4. We took some nice shots of West Virginia waterfalls last fall . The Olympus OM-D images looked acceptable at 25%. At 50% I could see the blotchy pixels and the some noise even at the lowest ISO.
To be honest I don't see any reasons of using 4/3 sensor camera for stills when full frame ones are pretty much affordable nowadays.

Thanks for posting!

To those who are complaining of having too much noise on their GH4 shots, please show us picture samples. As is, it is hard to judge someone else comment without anything to watch and without any datas: jpg? Which preset? raw? which treatment? camera settings? Lens used? Aperture? ISO?

On my side, for every post I had written here, I took the time of uploading my work to sustain my words, ideas and opinion.

You are very welcome to do the same, by respect for people who want to learn something and make up their mind, reading this informative thread.

We are speaking about photography and without pictures to share, words are like wind. Real life pictures, (not pixel peeping chart test or books on a shelve) are needed to sustain any opinion.

Written words doesn't weight much in the balance. Instead by showing us some comparison shots you had taken FF vs M43, good shots I mean, not useless ones (out of focus with wrong exposure settings), we might be well informed about your point.

At least, this would give us an idea of what you usually achieve with whatever camera you are using and this will help us to understand what you consider a good result vs a bad one. And also to see if there was anything wrong about your lens choice, your subject lighting, your camera set up or your post processing.

I am working side by side with Nikon D800, Nikon1 (smaller sensor than M43) and GH4. In certain condition I would prefer the D800, in some others I would chose the GH4 or the Nikon1 V1 or even a point and shoot camera.

Whatever I am using, noise had never been something which bother me that much, as I am not systematically relying on high ISO (photography means "painting with light") and, here, I am posting again my pictures for others to see what i am speaking about.

Here a couple of shot done with the Nikon1 V1 which is 2.7 times smaller than FF sensor of my D800. NIGHT Taxi shots ISO400, f2, 1/13s (Cine Nikkor 10mm f1.8).

NIGHT street working shot ISO100, f0.95, 1/10s (Angenieux 25mm). Being stable and being able to shoot at the right moment are the key of Night shooting pictures. And I am having less bluriness at same shutter speed with my Nikon1 than my D800. with the D800, I would have to push the ISO 8 or 16 times more to get those shots done.

You can see more here: http://www.francperet.com/category/portfolio/photography-portfolio/

@abolit

Better you get a try on your own with different cameras to get your own experience.

For noise problem, all depends on Camera + Camera set up + Lens combinaison and working habit. I know that nowadays people love to push ISO and some really needs that. If you are mainly shooting indoor sport for local event (bad lighting) you might need it..

I am coming from film generation and I was able to do my photojournalist work in any situation with ISO400 maximum (eceptionally ISO800). 90% of my job was done on Fuji Velvia (ISO50) and Fuji Provia (ISO 100).

GH4 base ISO is already ISO200. I barely use my M43 cameras over ISO400. I am pushing my D800 more often (Up to 1600 or 3200) as low speed renders blurry shot due to the great pixel count, and this is a handicap.

Actually the D800 is much better than the GH4 in Studio with Flash, not for street photography. D800 needs great light and controled environment to really shine. And it does.

I had a Canon 5D3 and it is a more flexible camera, but I still prefer my GH4 or my Nikon1 in low light, as I can work at very low shutter speed without getting blurry.

I posted so many things related to that topic that I am not going to repeat everything again... Take few minutes of your time, you should read the thread and click on some links to see my 24 H Le Mans race report shot in 1998 or other old stuff I had done on film (Archaos and Concert), without the need to push ISO as I couldn't... Hope this can help you to understand my point.

http://www.francperet.com/category/portfolio/photography-portfolio/shooting-sports/ http://www.francperet.com/category/portfolio/photography-portfolio/entertainment/

here is an example to demonstrate some uncommon techniques to use the GH4 for extreme low light conditions by utilizing temporal video noise filters.

the 100% cut-out is taken form from a video shot at 1600ISO using ETC and a (not outstanding) telephoto zoom lens wide open (=>1000mm/f5.6 equivalent). i used a very uncommon manual shutter speed: 1/6 sec -- yes, that's far below the usual shutter speed settings for a 25fps movie, but the GH4 concedes you such a setting for special purposes. on the left side you can see a typical still image taken out of the 50Mbps FHD video file.

but using video recordings as source material for still images offers additional capabilities. in this case your are not limited to spatial noise reduction filters of photo editing software, you can also utilize temporal noise canceling techniques from video processing. for nowadays photographers this can be seen similar to the stack processing in HDR exposure series.

the right side of my example is using the ffmpeg video filter settings:

-vf hqdn3d=luma_spatial=2:luma_tmp=50,smartblur=ls-.8:lr=3

this will reduce the noise by comparing 2 pixels aside and 50 frames in the past and sharpen it with a usual unsharp mask. high ISO output from the GH4 suffers from luma, not chroma, noise! that's very different to typical canon full frame material. so you have to use different strategies to eliminate this interferences in both cases.

well it's just a very simple demonstration -- not an impressing aesthetic picture as others would like to see --, but it could give you an idea how good video capturing cameras can open new opportunities for still photography. sure, you can argue, you can simply reach the same goal by using bigger sensors and longer exposure times, but i would counter, that it is often much more realistic to find unblurred frames/sequences in an video than using the classical long exposure attempt in real live.

yes -- a stack of raw photos or raw video sources would definitely lead to better results. it isn't that hard to realize. ffmpeg will accept still image sequences the same way as video clips.

but you have to be aware that hqdn3d is only a very simple video noise reduction filter working in the time domain. there are much more advanced solutions available (e.g. neat), that add optical flow based motion compensation etc.

but this simple example was only thought as little hint, to get a vague impression of hybrid approaches in nowadays still-photo+video-work. i don't want to overestimate the merits of this specific camera model. a more open tool, like the "apertus" camera, in the price range of a consumer mass product would satisfy my personal needs much more. and that's exactly the point, where i often feel a little bit jealous as lumix user watching all those canon / magic latern neighbors. their free developer community is far beyond anything we can think of here in lumix/panasonic land... -- but that's another topic...