Wide angle with GH4 and 14-42mm PZ lens

Alright, it's not conventional to go this route, but I'm trying to save money so I'm letting the cat out of the bag. A few people here know that I have been using my Opteka WA lens when I have my Panasonic LX-7 set up. The LX-7 have wide angle wet lens challenge, only Inon UWL-H100 works on it, but I'm not willing to spend $500 for a wet lens. With a bit research, I came across the Opteka lens which is for land use, and they happen to have a 67mm version:

For about $150, it's worth a try when I had the LX7. It works on the LX7, so I'm sure it will work with the GH4. But with 4K, would I see the imperfection of the Opteka lens? You be the judge. Here are the Opteka Lens pictures

- Very flat:

- Lens is made out of glass, so a bit heavy but will minimize the reflection of the lens barrel when pointing toward the sky.

- back of the lens is concave, no space between the front and back of the lens, so it won't flood in water.

- thread size 67mm, will work with lens that have big opening.

- field of view of 14mm of the 12-42mm PZ lens inside the Nauticam housing. (Took this at night at my hotel room)

- field of view at 14mm of the 14-42mm PZ lens after attached the Opteka lens. No vignette, fisheye effect will disappear once in water due to water distortion. May be a bit chromatic aberration, but then, it seems to disappear once in water, or is hard to spot due to video, not still.

Here is the result, watch in Youtube and turn on 4K:

The visibility got worse during second dive, and it was about 5pm Winter in Florida. Since the lens is not fast, the GH4 bump up the ISO (shot at shutter priority of 1/60). There are places where you can see noise. I didn't use manual focus at all since it's a WA dive. I used AFC with 49-point focus area. You can see the camera hunt for focus, during the lion fish and the box fish at the end, it's a drawback of the DFD technolgoy Panasonic use. But if the subject doesn't move much, it shouldn't be an issue. The lobster is big, I got really close that its "antenna" can touch my lens, and it show that the Opteka lens is sharp enough. For $150, it's a steal!

So in conclusion, the 14-42mm PZ truly function like a point and shoot lens, give you decent macro and with Opteka lens (don't know about the Inon UWL-H100), you can shoot macro and WA in the same dive. My only complain is the lens is not bright/fast. Hope the info help!

I think the result is acceptable. Not as good as a bright day with the 7-14mm and a large dome however that lens also has a minimum f/4 and you need f/5.6 to perform decently

I think you are spoiled with the LX7 shooting at f/1.7 and still giving you sharp images most of GH4 shooters travel around f/5.6 and f/8 at wide angle

GH4 0 dB gain is ISO 400 on a bright day in the Red Sea you easily get ISO 200 and the camera will start naturally going towards f/8

When you get your LX100 finally in a housing and you put it behind a tiny 3.5" dome the type of problems will be similar and you will need small apertures

The Opteka with 1/60 was probably using the lens at f/3.5 and due to the extensive 4L crop a lot of chromatic aberration and corner sharpness issues are elimiated

I can confirm the Inon UWL-H100 also work with the 35 port however in 4K due to the 2.615x crop the equivalent focal length is 22mm which is not really that wide at all however that lens could potentially work with the dome

One issue that I see are colors all the GH4 video I have seen so far except ejunlae have really dead colours I think the cinelike profiles are not really suited to underwater use

One issue that I see are colors all the GH4 video I have seen so far except ejunlae have really dead colours I think the cinelike profiles are not really suited to underwater use

I can't speak for cinelike-D, as I have not used this profile. I for one think flat profiles for most u/w shooting are an exercise in futility. Cinelike-V, however, creates great colors from the GH4. For some fish/situations, the Cinelike-V maybe a little to vibrant for some people's taste.

Is it what you use for your clips? Your colours despite being in colder water look richer. I was referring to the flat profiles that give that soapy look. Now I am reading the manual and there is mention of cinelike V that priorities contrast whilst cinelike D priorities dynamic range and is 'suited for editing' whatever that means. I guess it's a matter of taste from what I have seen I like my own video with filter and settings right in camera more than the soft looking dead coloured output of most of those graded clips. So I agree a waste of time overall for me at least non pro user

During my macro dive, I shot both CineD and CineV. They both give that washout look, with CineV give more vibrant color during close up shoot. For both CineD and CineV, I have to adjust the shadow and a bit highlight during post to make the marine life and coral looks decent, but the blue water background look soapy, with the visibility was part of the factor as well. It could also be because the water in Florida is not true tropical water. With the WA dive, the cloudy day makes the blue water grading more difficult, at some point I thought it look too purple but the marine and coral looks correct.

Yes I'm spoiled by the LX-7. To be honest, if Nauticam makes a flat port for the 12-35mm lens, I'm willing to pay for that price tag and use it as an all around lens, especially the Opteka lens would give me acceptable WA. GH4+12-35mm set up cost close to $5000 and no wide angle option (well, someone put a WA conversion lens on the 12-35mm lens behind the dome, but it's not removable under water)

My option now is the LX100. In next 3-4 years, I should be ready for something more highend like the GH4. Besides, Panasonic plan to have 6K camera late 2015 or early 2016, 8K by 2020!

How does the GH4 White balance in water? Did you get any white balance error messages during the dives?

The white balance works well, never had error. I use my left hand for white balance reference since I don't have a white slate. I think Sony is the only one that has white balance error. For me, the white balance challenge was the size of the housing like I pointed out in the other discussion.

The only thing I didn't try was having a red filter and custom white balance.

I've managed to WB my GH4 down at 45-50m with ambient lighting. The colours were horrid mind. But no errors. Olympus EPL's were awful for MWB, even below 10m they would error.

That's good to know. My lx7 white balanced without error but in my opinion the colours were actually ugly and off unless I found a good non reflective reference and sand used to work much better than slates except it would not be available on wrecks!!!

I too feel that the color is off about the Lx7, but toward the last trip before I sold my LX7, I finally found out that you have the set the color to "scenery" to get a nice blue color, instead of wash out light blue color if using "Natural". I didn't try it in the GH4 since I thought the CineD profile is the way to go since I'm getting into color grading as well. Regardless, Panasonic is very solid when come to Custom White Balance.

I have looked at the wide angle options for the GH4 and to be honest the choice is not great once you go to 4K due the extensive crop

4:3 to 3:2 crop 2.08x 4K crop 1.2x add the 16:9 crop you are at crop factor 2.615

So with the 7-14mm you are only getting 18.3-36.6 mm field of view 99.5-61 like you would get in HD with the 9-18 Olympus lens I am not sure how to justify the expense of a glass large dome especially considering that the corners are cropped anyway you could get away with a 4" wide angle port instead

Generally speaking the whole 4K experience seems a bit expensive for what you get so I think your opteka solution is reasonable I also believe wet lenses on top of the PZ14-42 are also an option

I wonder however what is the whole point of doing that if all you get are 1875 lines resolution??

Am not really finding the 4K logic very reasonable. Sure the clips look better but that is in virtue of the fact that HD is most likely less than 1000 lines resolution??

4K video is consider a "premium" right now, except for the LX100. I prefer 4K over 1080p mainly because of the flexibility of cropping, down sampling to reduce noise, but not at $5000 price tag with GH4. I don't know what the FOV of the 8mm fisheye lens would be once it's behind the dome. I haven't encounter manta ray, whale shark or anything that size so I don't even know if the 8mm lens would be enough. But I'm quite happy with the Opteka .4x. for general size like turtle and shark.

I recently just acquire the 72mm version Opteka .3x (http://opteka.com/OPTSCFE.aspx). It could work underwater and if that's the case, I should be able to get more wide field of view.

Another option is use the goPro Hero4 as a supplement, so if you need really wide angle (more than 100degree), use the goPro instead. Since it will be close distance, there may not be the need of white balance as long as the ambient light is sufficient, or there is enough video light.

A rough estimate for the 8mm cropped to 4K would give you around 21mm fisheye which is about 120 degrees diagonal, this is plentiful for whale sharks

I got a 4K tv now and just got a media player I have now decided that I will go 4K once the camera encode h265 as h264 is not efficient enough at this resolution and bitrate to be consumer

Once we reach H265 commercially you can easily work with 25-50 mbps and get the same results you now get with H264 at 100 mbps saving yourself memory cards cost and disk space

PS I just bought a Panasonic GX7 and I look forward to playing with it stay tuned

The replacement for GX7 should come out soon. Are you planning to bring the GX7 into the water?

Samsung NX1 uses H.265 for 4K. So far the big complain is post processing the H.265 content, the lack of software support mean user has to convert H.265 to prores files (which is very big!) before they can manipulate the video.

The GX7 replacement will probably come out at photokina and if it follows the same path of the GX7 a housing will come end of February so there is still over one year of life and you reuse lenses and ports anyway. I don't believe 2015 will when 4K will be consumer but probably by the end of this year there will be more devices with h265 and software able to manage it which for me means an investment in a 4K camera in 2016 and house it in 2017. Camera lenses don't resolve more than 2800-3000 lines and generally taking a huge crop means just a 1.5x improvement over HD. If there was no crop you are looking at 2.25x. I would also argue that scaling 2x2 in camera is not so much different from scaling in software so you can produce similar quality from a 10 megapixel camera (LX100) or from a 16 Megapixel camera with crop but if you have a 32 megapixel sensor you would definitely get better quality using the whole set and then scaling. Meanwhile I have upgraded my TV set and media player to 4K and will get more familiar with content and codecs. I hope it goes well with the LX100 for you but as far as cameras are concerned am jumping off the ship now

I'm headed to Bonaire late February and still considering GH4 and LX100, or failing that a GoPro Hero4 with a flip +5 or +10 diopter (to put off the main decision). I was wondering if there is any consensus on a video camera with medium wide angle to medium macro for predominant use taking u/w 4K video.

I was thinking LX100 for now (with NA-LX100), but am nervous about when I can get my hands on the housing - if it will be too late for my trip. Plus saw interceptor121's Nauticam LX-100 port write-up on his page and am wondering about that. Hmm. Can one put a flip dual lens frame on the NA-LX100 - one with +5 and the other 0.4x WA? OK I'd probably settle for one.

Have shot u/w video (Sony 8mm, then "digital" 720x480) for many years without a stabilizer, so was thinking that the Olympic 12-50 would be fine with GH4 due to macro feature. Then I saw the lembok videos (and above one) with the 14-42 and +5 and saw how stable that looked. Like kc_moses, I too want one setup that will cover most situations. I have two 10000 lumen (100w/25v) led lights so smaller aperature is not an issue.

Was also thinking that the Hero4 mounted on top of GH4 or LX100 could provide wide angle coverage, but would prefer not to have to do that.

Is there any hope, or should I too jump off the ship. Would be a shame to reach Bonaire without a nice 4K camera - that would be relevant for at least a while.

None of the lx100 and GH4 have a one size fit for all port. The 14-42 after crop reduces to 36-100mm. The LX100 dome focussed only in the 24-40mm range (though this might be improved possibly) otherwise that would be your best option. Flat port 26-81 will reduce field of view in water to 35-100 as well

After playing with my GH4 for a while I think Intercepter is right about 'is 4K worth it' question....

Do I regret the money I've spent, no - as all the lenses and ports will carry forward, and I'm still using my GH3 housing, so not much in the grand scheme of things spent on '4k'.

I mean the resolution is amazing and if going to 1080p you're getting some super crisp footage and so many options for creative editing.

But we are still ultimately limited by the 8bit codec and (for 4x 1080) a lowly 100Mbps bandwidth - we need twice this I would say, if not 4x....

The last bit of video I recorded, apart from the particles in the water, was very blotchy / noisy. (Perhaps due to lots going on in the scene)

So I fired up NeatVideo and did some profiling with the NeatImage calibration chart. Needless to say, it was almost impossible to get any profiles working, due to the macro blocking and NeatVideo telling me the colours weren't uniform. (This was on the test chart too, so only shades of Green / Purple)

If Blackmagic ever get a 4k BMPCC out (in the same form factor) I think thats what I would go for next...

The 100 mbit codec is 4x AVCHD 24/25p I don't think you can push grading and effect too far. However the 100 mbit IPB mode has definitely room for grading am not sure about prores 200 mbit seems a bit inefficient. Panasonic pixel blending for 1080p seems excellent and I think H264 is not cut at those bitrates to handle 4K in water but could be fine for land use as the example demonstrate.

When I looked at bmpcc again I found difficult to march lenses with stabilisation and that would work well considering the distortion blackmagic doesn't fix on olympus and panasonic lens so not for me

MrScuba,

If you go with the LX100, you will get your housing before your Bonaire trip. I ordered my NA-LX100 housing last week from Reef Photos and it's arriving today. It will be in my hand tomorrow as I have to stay at office to work today instead of stay home waiting for the UPS guy. It seems odd that Nauticam hasn't make any product profile announcement while the housing is already ready for shipping.

Anyway, I ordered the 67mm flip lens holder but is not available yet so I won't be able to test it right away. With the 67mm flip lens holder, I will be able to change macro diopters during dive, and I will test and see if the Opteka is okay to use on top of the 67mm flip lens holder.

The reason I chose LX100 over the GH4 is because I feel like 4K underwater is not that mature yet, and get very expensive very quickly. I anticipate GH4 will get outdated in next year or so because 60fps 4K should be out, or 6K in 2016. Spending $5000 (camera + body housing) for an equipment that will become outdated in 2 years seem not a good investment for me.

The LX100 setup would be less than $2500, I can use it for 2 or 3 years until I get use to the 4K work flow, more powerful computer/laptop exist, and more choices open up (Sony?) then I might consider a more pro level upgrade next time.

If you already have an existing set up that's less than 2 years old, then I don't really see getting a new system because of 4K.

I'm keeping my GH4 camera for on land use, with the 14-140mm lens, I can shoot dolphin, islands etc. while I'm on the dive boat, and leave the LX100 in its housing. The GH4 touch screen make it a perfect land shooting camera.

I will open up another discussion thread once I have my hand on the LX100 housing.