Upcoming Panasonic GH-4K

thetrickster,

thanks a lot for posting that video. The colours looked great. Could you tell us how easy manual WB was please? Did you have a red filter in place and did you use a white slate/palm/surface of the water/some other method. I'm seriously interested in this cam, but I want to be sure about the ease of manual WB. It took me a while to get things sorted on my GH2.

Cheers,

Matt

White Balancing was done very easily using the sequence: WB Button, UP Button and then Shutter, while pointing at a Amphibico White Balance slate. It never gave me any issues from 3m to 20m. Really fast, accurate and no problems. Can't see it needing that slate - Im sure it will work with any - it won't be for a couple of weeks, but I my old PADI Photography slate somewhere - I can do some comparisons for you - if you can wait

Colours have been adjusted in FCPX as I'm purposely running the GH4 in STD with every turned down (-3,-3,-3,0) and then I have a Preset which I've created to bring up the colours in FCPX - I'm not spending any time playing with it scene by scene, adjusting this and that - literally I imported the first couple of clips, got them how I liked (Saturation, Constrast etc) and saved the preset and then applied it to all the clips - so not a big workflow issue. I do need to spend some time with the other colour profiles (CineV etc) and see how much difference they are - and see how the camera responds to have for example the saturation turned UP on the camera.. these will be for when I have a tripod so I can really get some good comparison shots. I do believe with a correct profile on the camera a good white balance, no NLE adjustments could be needed.

Adjustments:
Color: Global 0%; Shadows 3%; Midtones 16%; Highlights 0%
Saturation: Global 0%; Shadows -12%; Midtones 4%; Highlights 47%
Exposure: Global 0%; Shadows -30%; Midtones -13%; Highlights 0%

One thing I've played with and forgot to reset was master pedestal its set to +12 on the camera (doh) - hence the minus exposure / sat adjustments

Running 4K on my little 11" MacBook has been quite amazing too be honest (apart from the initial import and transcoding the proxies!!)

Below is a side by side of a ungraded vs graded frame. (if it helps)

[video=youtube;2fofPXkfOkQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fofPXkfOkQ

I'm very surprised at how much colour information it captures for an 8bit 420 camera.

I havn't seen any banding yet & there is plenty of colour in the red Chanel for grading.

I am very excited about this camera so far.

White Balancing was done very easily using the sequence: WB Button, UP Button and then Shutter, while pointing at a Amphibico White Balance slate. It never gave me any issues from 3m to 20m. Really fast, accurate and no problems. Can't see it needing that slate - Im sure it will work with any - it won't be for a couple of weeks, but I my old PADI Photography slate somewhere - I can do some comparisons for you - if you can wait

Try white balancing on the palm of your hand. Is that possible with your rig? You might be surprised. Check out the tests I did in 2007 with my Sony Z1.

Also, I find your graded footage rather red. Personally I would make it less red and more blue. But of course this is personal preference.

Yeah, it probably is too saturated in the Reds - I might blame my cheapie monitors at home when I edited at the weekend. Also the same preset was applied to all the clips - so some might be a lot shallower so the preset has blown the reds more on particular shots..

Here at work I agree... the Saturation is erm.. WOW.... LOL

This was my first go with it, so I'll let myself off for now, have plenty of time to refine how I use the camera and how I edit it. But again - really pleased.

Didn't try my hand, will do thou.

(Just had a look at your post - yeah the hand its a much nicer colour balance!)

But of course the GH4 white balance behaviour may be very different from the old Sony Z1 white balance behaviour. Definitely worth a try. A big advantage of using the palm of the hand is that it's always with you and you usually know where it is.

To those using the olympus 12-50, could I get by with it as my only lens initially?

I've only had a fixed lens/dome port before but attracted to the idea of being able to shot macro and wide angle on the one dive. Is this even possible. My limited experience with a still camera involved fitting a macro or a wideangle port before the dive.

thanks

I've yet to see a single video clip from it, just stills, and I've been monitoring things pretty closely. It sits behind a flat port of course. I expect you might be rather frustrated with the limited field of view for "wide angle" dives, and I expect corner sharpness might not be good. I view it as a way to get "wideish" establishing shots on "primarily macro" dives. I stand to be corrected on these points, as I haven't used it yet.

Personally for me, before diving in, you have to make a choice...Macro, CFWA, WA and from there you select your lens for that dive. Anything other than this is a compromise, especially behind a flat port.

I spoke too soon. Here's some macro with the Oly 12-50. Looks like it's all shot in macro mode though.

edit: Just realised it's Pete's

Haha, you beat me to it Nick, I was just about to post my video.

Yes I pretty much used it only the macro mode as that was my main goal for that dive. I wanted to see how well the macro setting worked.

It actually shoots pretty wide in that flat port & I will do some tests with that lens soon in a wider setting.

Pretty happy with the macro setting but I desperately want manual focus on this lens.

Cheers Pete.

Thanks for the info. Was thinking it may limited 'wideish' establishing shot before the macro use but wondered how wideish that was.

On one dive last week I sawMantas, pigmy seahorses and a leaf fish. Maybe need to dive with 2 cameras.

Peter, great work.

Thanks mate. I am actually using this 12-50mm again tomorrow at a site that offers both medium & macro shooting so will do some tests with a wider setting & see how wide I can go & how it looks.

I'll get something together after the weekend & post it up.

Cheers pete.

I've yet to see a single video clip from it, just stills, and I've been monitoring things pretty closely. It sits behind a flat port of course. I expect you might be rather frustrated with the limited field of view for "wide angle" dives, and I expect corner sharpness might not be good. I view it as a way to get "wideish" establishing shots on "primarily macro" dives. I stand to be corrected on these points, as I haven't used it yet.

Nick - I have several clips on vimeo using the 12-50mm exclusively:

https://vimeo.com/67626406

Thanks Bob. Having watched those, I think it's probably OK for wide static shots but a bit strange for moving shots because of the inherent distortion of wide angle behind a flat port.

Thanks Bob. Having watched those, I think it's probably OK for wide static shots but a bit strange for moving shots because of the inherent distortion of wide angle behind a flat port.

You can put the same lens behind a 4" wide angle port, this will give the opposite issue at long focal length but nauticam also produces a flip diopter for the wide angle port

I have never seen any footage of the latter but this was my choice of port on paper when I was still considering a 4:3 camera

Thanks Bob. Having watched those, I think it's probably OK for wide static shots but a bit strange for moving shots because of the inherent distortion of wide angle behind a flat port.

Interesting - I hadn't noticed this - I will have to revisit my footage and plan better. I shot with my 7-14mm again last weekend, after having gone nearly a year without using it and I must say, I do prefer that lens for WA!! The versatility of the 12-50mm, along with my preference for shooting close and macro makes me pretty happy shooting with the longer zoom on most dives.

You can put the same lens behind a 4" wide angle port, this will give the opposite issue at long focal length but nauticam also produces a flip diopter for the wide angle port

I have never seen any footage of the latter but this was my choice of port on paper when I was still considering a 4:3 camera

Thanks for that. You mean this I guess. Were you thinking of using that with the Olympus 12-50 in macro mode? Seems a bit of a hotchpotch for macro, but you never know... I would be interested to see footage or stills. Non-macro footage should theoretically be better than with the flat port, but if the macro quality is badly compromised then the flat port seems a better bet, and use a 7-14 with dome for dedicated wide-angle dives.

I thought you could use the port as is for wide angle and instead of using the macro mode as you do with the flat use a diopter and zoom in. Anyway the tests on this lens in terms of sharpness when combined with the panasonic give mediocre results even on land and the lens is not stabilised so I dropped the whole idea of 4:3

Nick, with the couple of dives that I have used the 12-50mm lens on the GH4, I have not seen the same amount of softness in the corners at full wide.

Whilst I can't remember the numbers off hand, the GH4 in UHD mode has a different crop factor compared to 1080, something like 2x for 1080 & 2.3x for UHD plus it reads the sensor differently in the two modes so I do think the 12-50mm is better on the GH4 but sydneys conditions this last week have been not very good for wide angle shooting so it may be a little while before I can do some decent tests with this lens in the 12mm region.

Cheers Pete.