Menjangan - Bali. WA Shoot with GH4, March 2015

Hi all,

My second clip from the last dive trip to Bali.

We went to Menjangan Island on the north of West Bali. Not as popular as other Bali dive site such as Tulamben or Nusa Penida but worth checking.

Some of the dive sites were: Menjangan Coral Garden, Sandy Slop, Eel Garden and Menjangan Wall. Viz was quite good, with some current on the Eel Garden site. Viz on the wall was not that good.

I've been shooting more and more video compare to pic, and some of my experience on this trip are:

1. Shooting video need more plan! Most of the time I just press the video button to shoot video but with this I get 2 type of resolution as GH4 you need to go to movie mode to shoot 4K video. If you on pic mode the video will only 1080 and if you in movie mode your pic is only JPG. Better have plan prior to dive on what you going to do, in what resolution, in what AF mode, etc.

2. There were so many variables in shooting video. With light, without light, auto WB, or manual WB all giving different result. Not to mention auto Focus and manual focus, etc! And I have not shoot macro video just yet!

3. I love editing and tinkering with image. I've used LR and PS for quite some time so coming to Premiere Pro was relatively easy for me. In video you'll edit more and tinker more! Love this part.

4. Need to work on my "story board". My time line selection is usually based on video that have good focus, good wb, good brightness, not shaking, etc. But most of the time the good subject was not capture that way.

5. Camera shaking is horrible! Many clip was ruined due to camera shake. Next trip an underwater tripod is a must and learn to do panning properly. I've got more than 50 dive log already and I think my buoyancy is OK but still panning and stable image need more practice.

Here's the clip, and as always appreciate any comments and critics from the viewer.

Regards,

Bona

What lens are you using? Have you tried the 14-42PZ with wet lenses?

To be honest the more I see GH4 clip and more I think that once scaled down to 1080p and put on youtube they look no better than my Sony RX100 MKII and now Panasonic GX7 clips shot at 24 mbps

Hi Interceptor121,

I'm using Panasonic 7-14 at 7mm.

Nope, have not tried the 14-42PZ. I've read your blog regarding this setup but considering I've already got the 7-14 with 180mm Nauticam glass dome I think I'll stick with the 7-14 setup for now.

PS: Great blog you have. I've learn a lot from it. Thanks for sharing!

Cheers,

Bona

What lens are you using? Have you tried the 14-42PZ with wet lenses?

 

To be honest the more I see GH4 clip and more I think that once scaled down to 1080p and put on youtube they look no better than my Sony RX100 MKII and now Panasonic GX7 clips shot at 24 mbps

Yeah I still see a lot of GH4/AX100 shooter output to 1080p only. Yes, 4K TV/monitor is not common in Asia or some part of the world, but output to 4K now will make your video relevant and have longer shelve life 3 years from now. I think 3 years from now not many people would want to watch 1080p content in youtube, just like right now I don't watch 720p or 460p video in youtube, unless it's just product review which doesn't have long shelf life anyway.

What I meant is that once you scale it down I see no difference contrary to what other people say. Things shot in 1080p look same of 4K scaled down to 1080p. So only worth if you have a screen

People should only scale 4K down to 1080p if:

1.) They want to reduce noise

2.) apply pan & scan technique to recompose image or create a slider effect

3.) Post stabilize image to crop away some 4K pixel and scale to 1080p.

4.) Create a zoomed in effect, like the Clownfish egg result posted in this forum not long ago.

Otherwise, no point to spend the money on 4K equipment just to shoot like 1080p right now.

There are theorist that say that if you shoot 4K and then downscale by magic this is better than 1080p

However I do not see this in the clips produced. Also reduce noise is nothing to do with scaling, scaling is a linear activity so noise is unchanged

The reason why 4K clips are so noisy is that H264 is built around small block of data, when you have many pixels noise becomes part of it and it does not get filtered as well as it does with H265 that has the opposite technique looks for large macroblocks and filters out noise

So for 1080p H264 is good for 4K is noisy, but H265 will be ok

However I do not see this in the clips produced. Also reduce noise is nothing to do with scaling, scaling is a linear activity so noise is unchanged

It's call Noise Averaging, some people call Frame Averaging:

http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27r2tc/eli5_why_does_recording_in_4k_and_downsamping_to/

Besides, the discussion brought up a good point. If you choose 1080p setting on youtube and play back on 1080p monitor, vs choose 4K setting on youtube and playback on 1080p monitor. Which one looks better?

I'm not interested in the science behind it. I just know that when I watch 4K published setting on 1080p monitor, it looks good.

The GH4 has 200Mbps 1080p recording capability. I'm not sure if someone tested 200Mbps 1080p vs 4K downscale to 1080p or not.

At the end of the day, I think people should just publish to 4K if they're shooting 4K, unless they have a really old computer that can't handle 4K processing. My 4 years old Intel i7 desktop can handle 4K editing with Premiere, so editing shouldn't be an excuse. In many part of Asia (South East Asia) where internet speed is super slow, uploading 4K content to Youtube may be one of the reasons people in that region do no publish in 4K.

Also, may be this help?

At the end of the day, I think people should just publish to 4K if they're shooting 4K, unless they have a really old computer that can't handle 4K processing. My 4 years old Intel i7 desktop can handle 4K editing with Premiere, so editing shouldn't be an excuse. In many part of Asia (South East Asia) where internet speed is super slow, uploading 4K content to Youtube may be one of the reasons people in that region do no publish in 4K.

 

Also, may be this help?

 

Good discussion!

I do plan to shoot 4K as often as possible. But one of the reason I've upgraded to GH4 is to have a "better" 1080p camera. Several reviewer such as Phillip Bloom or Dave Dugdale did mentioned that GH4 produce better 1080p compare to even the 5DM3 and they have clips comparing both, with GH4 clearly give better results as in the below youtube clip (its long video, but I've set them to start at 3:50)

As to editing, I still use my 3 yrs old iMac and have no problem working with 4K clips. Bit slow but still ok.

I have seen those videos and read those forums am not at all convinced. The point is that 4K reads all pixels then you scale down to 1080p in software. The same camera still reads all those pixels but does pixel binning and in a way scales down real time. Which one has better 1080p quality depends on the quality of the scaling mechanism that's all. Assuming that software scaling is always better is not necessarily true. I recall reading some other stuff where it said when you downscale 4K it becomes 4:4:4 but that's non sense too

For example if you play the 1080p version of a 4K video you have software scaling if you instead play 4K on a 1080p monitor its hardware and generally better as the file bitrate is higher

All those tests are pure theory