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GH4 4K Panasonic video camera, official topic
  • 3230 Replies sorted by
  • In the hands of professionals...such as...Andrew Reid?

  • There are bound to be some compression artifacts BUT I think you guys are complaining primarily over how your own machines scale down the footage to display it.

    Then we have in-cam-sharpening going on which can really do a bad trick in certain situations. This certainly doesn't happen in blackmagic cameras.

    Like I've said before.. downscaling algorithms will be the next big thing with this camera. Couple this with a digital low pass filter and you have yourself a software.

  • @kellar42 @mpgxsvcd From Gerry Gibbs camera house in Perth Australia. I got in super early on the pre-order where it was listed as expected mid April. It then got changed a couple weeks later on their site with May. I just got an email requesting final payment and expected dispatch within 14 days. Like I said I'll believe it when I see it haha. Australia never gets anything earlier than the rest of the world =)

  • @RRRR is exactly right. What looks like aliasing is just the the rescaling of your graphics card trying to make 4096 line width fit into 1920. If Reid had shot in 3840 it would not be noticeable because the rescale would be evenly divisible by 2.

  • Maybe Panny optimized the codec to furry and hairy animals, like birds... and cats maybe. ;)

    <- beautiful. (could this be ext. recorded?)(yes, this is old footage.)

  • I gotta agree with @RRR & @Tron about scaling within playback for your monitor.

    I like the Footage from both the BMC4k & GH4. The GH4 fits my work better as it seems the BMC4k doesn't look so hot ISO800 and above.

  • Did a grab from voldemorts video on a frame that looks really bad when scaled internally. It's a bit jagged in 100% too, but you can see 1) that it looks sharpened and 2) that it's pretty compressed. (there's additional compression from my jpg conversion, too) What we get straight out of the cam exactly is up in the air until there are factory copies out there.

    vlcsnap-2014-04-02-10h19m34s53.jpg
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  • @Ian_T +1 "Wait till someone does something special with this camera. Unfortunately...since it's a consumer and not pro-sumer camera..we're going to see a lot of the typical crap one would expect from a consumer (mostly on YouTube) plastic skins and all."

    A lot of what we are seeing is exactly this. It is a prosumer camera though, it's just that it's affordable for many amateurs. It's like desktop publishing when the mac came around 25 years ago. We saw a lot of secretaries pretending to be graphic designers and the quality of work suffered. The quantity went through the roof though.

    Which is exactly the way I would want it. Amazing tools like the GH4 can only be sold at the prices they are because of the volume of people buying them. We just have to endure a lot of crap in the process.

  • @Johnnymossville very intelligent remark Because we all know that consumer cameras all have weather sealing, 4:2:2 10 bit output, time code, color bars, master pedestal, zebras, cineliked, shoot all flavors of 4K, have peaking, etc.

    I'm not sure I understand your comparison with desktop publishing though. This is awesome precisely BECAUSE it puts all these tools at everyone's disposal. What you do with it is up to you. In what way is anyone forcing you to endure anything in the process?

    @last_SHIFT does taking a swing at Andrew somehow make you feel like a big man? or do you think you're accumulating points by doing so?

  • @jonpais I'm not particularly fond of bad desktop publishing, but I am super glad pro-level computers and software are in the hands of amateurs, because it makes the tools available to as many people as possible. I think you and I can agree on this right?

  • @johnnymossville Yes, we can both agree and call a truce :)

  • @jonpais You're the one who said its in 'professionals' hands - that would include Voldermort. Looks like you're the one who's all butthurt. I couldn't give a shit about him or a maniacally defensive poster like you. But by seeing your previous posts about what is good video - doesn't surprise me that you'd feel that's 'professional'

  • Here's a 1:1 screen grab from one of the camera files that Andrew uploaded to copy.com. IMHO: the same issues with not-so-great color resolution (artificially looking colors, especially when rendering white people skin) as in the previous GH cameras. Arguably, white balance - particularly on the green/magenta axis - is off in this shot, but this is still no reason why the man's skin in the foreground appears as an almost monochromatic magenta blob.

    Once again, Panasonic's engineers seem to have opted in favor of resolution/sharpness over richer color sampling in its image processing/debayering and codec implementation. I guess that that the GH4 will divide DIY filmmakers into two camps, those going for resolution + great ergonomics + run'n'gun capabilities + maturity and robustness (in everything from hardware design to software workflow) with the GH4, and those going for richness of the image (at the expense of practicality) with Blackmagic cameras.

    (The included screengrab is a JPEG at 80% compression quality because this forum allows a maximum file size of 2 MB. The original, losslessly compressed PNG screengrab (33 MB) can be downloaded here.)

    smoke.jpg
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  • Richer color sampling

    What this mean exactly? May be wires are not properly covered by silver and filter before sensor does not have personal approval by Pope?

  • @cantsin the screen grab DOES look like a magenta blob, now that you mention it :) But I have been shooting with the notorious GH3 for months now and my skin tones aren't chalky or magenta at all. I think it's all a matter of the light you shoot under, color correction, grading, etc. I've posted some of those clips in the GH3 best settings thread. They are far from perfect as far as color goes, since I'm new to all this, but most people who've seen the clips see that it's entirely possible to get good skin tones with the camera. And I find working with the GM1 that colors are improved. I have no doubt they will also be better with the GH4. You should keep in mind that these are some of the first clips Andrew has had the chance to work with, and he himself admitted that he'd made a few mistakes along the way, with exposures (I think it had something to do with the ND filters he was/wasn't using), etc. If I'm not mistaken, he also just applied a LUT in film convert that was intended for BM cameras. He admits that he was in a rush to post, and could have gotten better results had he spent more time grading the image.

    I'll add that I'm tired of all the posts saying Panasonic gives plastic skin tones. It's simply a falsehood. Screengrabs (ungraded, should be live in 30 min.) https://copy.com/EjcvwpX6xfCM

  • @Vitaliy: better chroma resolution.

  • My initial thought was also that skintones look unnatural, but I think It's more about lack of detail on areas like skins and solid like areas. So basically it's about codec and bitrate (some of you disagree with this probably). There was some 1080p All-intra footage that didn't suffer this skin- problem...

  • @jonpais As far as I understood, these are ungraded camera files. Of the five provided by Andrew, I didn't pick one to make the camera look bad, but this issue appears in all of his files. Yes, white balance is bad, but no reason why the skin tones have so little gradation within their color scale.

    Here's another grab from a different file, at 90% jpeg quality.

    andy.jpg
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  • @cantsin

    Are you an alien ancestor? I mean that you have different ratio of sensors in your eyes compared to other poor humans.

  • @blackspot @cantsin

    I think it will be about 10th series about "skin tones". You can just go back on topic or search and find my (and any sane man) position about "skin tones flame".

  • now what we need is 100 more posts about lack of 5-axis ibis

  • The skin tones blurb, plus the "colors aren't rich enough" etc...argument is soo totally boring....as is the "Cinematic/Filmic" rave.. If you don't like the Gh4 then simply buy the Black Magic Camera and make great movies, the endless pixel picking and debating reminds me of guitarists endlessly debating over does Alder sounds better than Ash ..or Nitro sounds better than Acrylic...yada yada or such and such a handwound pup makes a guitar a zillion times better, its basically nonsense, because composition, ability and all the rest of it matters at the end of the day and minute image and sound details will not be noticed. Most of these newer cameras are good enough to make a great movie or doco or music vid, but if you endlessly debate pixels on forums you wont have time to do that...will you?

  • @Astro @Vitaliy +10 at least. Thanks for trying to stop this endless.......