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Saw GH2 and Scarlet on the big screen yesterday
  • mintcheeriosmintcheerios

    I entered a film for a 72 hour short film contest where the top 10 finalists get to screen in Chelsea's Clearview Theater in Manhattan (it's a normal theater that plays Hollywood films), and to my pleasant surprise, it made top 10 and got screened. I sent them a 1080p copy with a 10mbps MainConcept single-pass vbr encoded .mp4 file. I shot using only the Olympus 14-54mm zoom lens on a Quantum 9b hacked GH2. Unfortunately since the contest allowed such a short time (and we stupidly had lots of locations), I didn't have time to color correct and the sound was a bit sloppy.

    When the footage came on, I noticed the resolution looked as good as any of the recent Hollywood movies I had seen (with 2k projectors of course). I had just seen Batman in 2k (imax was sold out) the day before, and the GH2 didn't look worse in terms of detail and clarity. I think if 2k is your final output, the GH2 can easily compare with any camera resolution-wise. I have to admit though, I was in the back row. Since I shot smooth with -2 on everything but saturation, it looked a bit washed out on many scenes, but scenes with hard sunlight had more pop since the limit of its dynamic range acted as a natural contrast booster. Overall, it looked really good and I can see why it was picked so much in the Zacuto shootout.

    There was also a film shot with the Scarlet (it mentioned the camera in the credits), and I can say that it easily looked better than the GH2 on the outdoor scenes. The dynamic range just captured everything flawlessly even with the harsh sunlight. The sky was completely intact and the shadows held a lot of visible detail. Even if the GH2 can catch the entire dynamic range of a scene, the stuff captured three stops above or more just loses too much color information. The Scarlet just captured everything beautifully and even my layman friend next to me could notice. The indoor shots in the film looked noticeably better in the shadows, but the improvement wasn't as stark as it was in the outdoor scenes. It should be noted that they actually color corrected their film though.

    All this is making me reconsider the BMC, but I will wait to see if they have an m43 version planned.

    If you're curious about what my film is, here's a link to a color corrected version with some VFX added:

    Here's a link to the one shot on Scarlet:
    Finally, here's the version of our film that was screened with no color correction and less effects: http://www.aafilmlab.org/72hours/2012/07/29/team-mintcheerios-early-adopter-2012-finalist/

  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • fehafeha

    @mintcheerios , great work. What lenses did you use ?

  • vicharrisvicharris

    Your CC version looks pretty damn good. Not impressed at all with the scarlet stuff. I don't know too much about that camera but it seems like they were trying to make it look like shit.

  • nomadnomad

    It's easy to make any camera look like shit – see the Sony F65's colors in the Zacuto shootout ;-)

  • mintcheeriosmintcheerios

    @feha

    Thanks! I only used one zoom lens for the whole shoot which was the Olympus 14=54mm mkII. It was a 72 hour contest so I needed a zoom lens that covered all my focal lengths with a decent aperture (f2.8-f3.5) in order to save time and shoot quickly.

    Also, remember this was a 72 hour contest, so there wasn't enough time to make things look perfect. Our film only looked good after the color correction.

  • AlbertZAlbertZ

    @mintcheerios Good cinematography, I love 48h contests. Video quality on big screen: I've watched lots of GH2, canon 5d and scarlet footage on the big screen and I was very impressed by gh2 quality. However, it could seem a joke, but when you are wathing the big screen even super 8 is nice.. just think of masterpieces on MiniDV like Lars Von Trier 's Idiots ;)

  • vicharrisvicharris

    @nomad Well put sir, well put.

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp

    @mintcheerios Fab - and very funny! Well done!

  • doczdocz

    I must admit I really liked this!! It was very funny and masterfully made!

    I prefered the non-CC version. It had a much more natural look, that at least for me immersed me into the story. I think the non-CC version had that classic comedy look from the 90s. Allthough the CC version looked a lot more polished and modern.

    Anyways great job :)

  • mintcheeriosmintcheerios

    Thanks everyone for the kind words!

    @docz

    Hah, I know what you mean by the comedy look of the 90's. I saw Home Alone again not too long ago and realized how low the contrast was. These days it's all about jacking up the contrast and making things pop out.

  • JDNJDN

    How does GH2 compare to Scarlet under optimal outdoor shooting, eg first 2-3 hrs after sunrise and before sunset? Was it just mid day when you noticed the difference, or on all outdoor shots?

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