GH4 with 14-42mm PZ macro sample and thought.

Alright, so here is the background info. I rented the NA-GH4 for a couple days early this month to try out the GH4 + 14-42mm lens.

The take away is, this lens has potential, I was using this set up like a point and shoot hence the result is hit and miss. I one handed holding the camera a lot, hence a lot of shaky footage (especially the eel). I was playing with Focus Tracking, which didn't work as well hence you see a lot of stuffs going in and out of focus. At some point I gave up Focus tracking and simply use manual focus with focus peaking and it works okay as long as the creature doesn't move too much and if the diopter's depth of field is not too shallow.

For the very close up (like the ubiquitous arrow crab), I stacked the +5 on top of the +7 and zoomed out, so the depth of field get very narrow and making focus difficult especially in manual focus + focus peaking. May be a different diopter like SMC will work better for that kind of close up.

With practice, you should get good result. I hope this help many armature like me out there!

Oh, I post processed to stabilize a lot of the clips, hence I output it to 2.7K. But the clip at 1:25 is without post process of stabilizing, just minor color grading. You can use 1:25 part to judge the quality with the +5 diopter. Also, throughout the dive, I can focus within 12". The fire worm crawling toward me was quite close, like 6-8", I had to move backward so that I don't get stink. but by moving backward, the focus go in and out again because I was using manual focus.

Thanks for the video, looks pretty sharp lens to me. You have some great wildlife there!

I'm liking the look of this lens!

Was hoping to get my 14-42mm wet this weekend, alas it looks like it will be 2015 now!

The 14-42 X PZ has minimum focus distance of 20 cm on land so I would think an Inon UCL-165 which is same of the bluewater or even a subsee +5 are good enough for most situations with a stronger diopter only required for pygmi seahorses and really small stuff

However I am not that impressed by the sharpness of the 14-42 lens to be honest even if we take out the learning element it does not look as sharp to me as my small 1/1.7" Panasonic LX7

http://youtu.be/JYDVDKzMzmo?t=1m36s

I am concerned that once you go to super macro and start pushing small apertures the 14-42 would start performing really bad in terms of diffraction and loose most of the detail the 4K brings

The 14-42mm PZ is not the sharpest lens, but most people can't tell especially for video because it's hard to pixel peep compare to photo. Besides, it's not really the sharpness of the video that catch the viewer's attention, it's the subject/story that engage the viewer, so as long as the IQ is reasonable, people would still watch it. If you're entering video competition and/or project the video in a big auditorium, then it's a different story, but how many places has 4K projector?

For really sharp result, you have to use the 12-35mm, which you already know that. By going with 12-25mm, not only the price go up, but you can't use any diopter or WA lens on it. Therefore I'm going with LX100, which essentially is "the same" as the 12-35mm lens, and you can use diopter on it. For super macro, the 12-42mm lens would not make sense or hard to make it work, in that case, a dedicated macro lens would be the way to go, which is the reason to have an interchangeable lens system to begin with.

The 12-42mm with medium strength diopter give reasonable macro/closeup, like the size of nudribranch as Peter has pointed out in the other discussion. If you want to fill a pygmy seahorse in the whole frame, then a +10 or more is needed, but that makes it challenging to use because of depth of field issue, but it's doable especially with a tripod..

Here is a full size frame capture of the 4K video straight out of the camera. You can use it to determine the IQ of the lens. These are with the diopter on though.

The skin texture and the hairline on the fireworm is good enough for me!

Yes it is not too bad. The 42mm side of the zoom due to the 4K crop factor on the GH4 gives around 109mm with a close working distance of 30cm will give you 1:1 with an Inon UCL-165

With the LX100 due to the limited zoom you will only get 1:1.3 so actually for macro purposes the GH4 is better and also gives you access to more lenses

For me the most useful port for the LX100 is the 3.5 acrylic dome. Nauticam has told me they will not produce a flip diopter holder like they did for the 4" wide port but as still thinking that at full zoom it should be possible to position a 67mm diopter in front of the port and make it work somehow