Hacked GH2 Impressed in the new Zacuto shootout

[jdesignhi]

Having someone rent it from you for $1200/day.

If you could get an Alexa, and were in a market that was commanding those rates, you'd be a blithering fool to NOT get it...

Acquisition of a camera such as the Alexa or Epic is a strictly business decision. You look at what the equipment costs, and what you can expect to receive from it, and you make your decision on that basis.

I know a guy in Hawaii who owns an Alexa. I do not know if that camera has ever even been to Hawaii. There is so much work for it, that it spends all of its time in transit from one job to the next, on the continental U.S. It is a nice business for him.

[Skeptikal]

What? Someone attacked the Shootout because it's used for marketing?

Not true. A few of us identified the marketing aspect of the whole "test" but I don't think anyone here was negative on the tests BECAUSE they're used for marketing.

That's silly.

I was referring to comments made elsewhere...but I should have clarified that. By any standard the usual discussions here are quite balanced and civil compared to some other forums...

[Skeptikal]

I think the genius of the Zacuto test is the blind unlabeled portion of the screening. Having read Ilya Friedmans account of when several people picked the unlabeled footage of the GH2 as the best footage, who when they found out it was Gh2 footage, retracted their pick. That says a lot. That portion of the test puts everyone and specifically the established professionals in a precarious position because if they picked the $600 cam it just might blow their whole world apart and they might see it as hurting their reputation as arbiters of quality image making. That part of the test is what i believe scares people and maybe the reason for Francis kennys implosion. Ilya in his post said " several people BRAVE enough to give their best of picks" (emphasis mine). Thats what that test did, maybe inadvertently Zacuto put a line in the sand and made veteran cameramen fearfully step over it

Very well put...I agree completely.

I liked Ilya Friedman's article and linked it in the ongoing thread I started at Wetpixel about the Adelaide screening. He also made the valid point that some of the digital artifacts that were obvious in the cheaper cameras were probably only obvious to people sitting nearer the screen.

In the screening I attended there was only one comment from an experienced pro that came across a bit like sour grapes...although he made a valid point about banding on the GH2 (largely avoidable if you know what to do). Several other highly experienced ACS members were glowing in their praise of the GH2 material...even though they weren't likely to use one themselves. After the screening I spoke to a RED Epic owner and an Alexa user (their cameras were part of the hardware display that evening). They both thought that the GH2 looked great but were in no way threatened by that. Obviously they were comfortable with their own skill and equipment choice...

[DBP]

Does anyone know which picture profile they used with the GH2 for the tests? (smooth, standard etc..)

[Ryan Farnes]

I'm not surprised to see the GH2 do so well in a blind test. The first time I saw Driftwood hacked GH2 footage on a 1080p monitor, I was amazed. It was what I had thought the 3K Scarlet would look like. It is easily the cleanest and clearest image I have ever shot.

[keylight]

Does anyone know which picture profile they used with the GH2 for the tests? (smooth, standard etc..)

From Kholi over at Personal-View.... (I'm assuming it's DVXUSER Kholi):

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/d...#Comment_62932

I was the one that prepared Colt for the GH2 segment of Zacuto's shootout.
They used Quantum V9B, Sandisk 64GB Cards, more than likely Smooth or standard dialed all the way down, etc.
I sent a pretty simple to follow "check list" of things to do when you shoot, including the ISO bug etc. After reports back from various people that I know that have seen it, the GH2 was done justice and went beyond expectations in a way that made a certain very famous filmmaker pick it as his choice of image.
Personally, I can't wait to see the results.

[Ian-T]

All the info on every camera and how they shot the scene for each camera on that Zacuto shoot can be found here:

http://www.zacuto.com/zvideo/RGCSO-T...ntation-V1.pdf

[keylight]

All the info on every camera and how they shot the scene for each camera on that Zacuto shoot can be found here:

http://www.zacuto.com/zvideo/RGCSO-T...ntation-V1.pdf

Alas, not all..... They don't state which picture profile they used and any changes made to that profile:

Camera	Format	Compression
iPhone	Filmic Pro	24Mbps h.264 MOV
GH2	Quantum B v9	150Mbps AVCHD MTS
7D	Technicolor Profile	h.264 MOV
FS-100	Custom Profile	AVCHD 28Mbps
C300	CLog	50Mbos XF MXF
F3	SLog 4:4:4	10bit DPX
Epic	Red Raw	7:1 R3D
Alexa	s.two	Arriraw

They give profile information (in the "Format" column) for all the cameras except the GH2 and FS-100. (A slight digression/question, but shouldn't "Quantum B v9" actually be "Quantum v9b"?)

What they don't give is the profile. For all the other cameras, they use the Format column to give the profile information. So they probably should rename "Format" to "Profile", and rename "Compression" to "Format/Compression" in v1.2 of the technical specs.

Even though it didn't contain profile info, thanks for the link. It was very interesting nonetheless....

[nathankw]

I've just been to the London screening - here are my thoughts.




My overall impression was how similar the cameras looked – with the exception of the iphone and the Canon 7d.




The iphone of course stands out – though not nearly as much as you'd expect.
As many people said – in some ways it was the biggest surprise of the day – it was actually watchable on a big screen.




The 7d was better, but not by that much! Clearly softer than the others and with poor shadow detail.




All the other cameras were, to my eyes at least, in the same ballpark. In the non-blind test where all the cameras use the same lighting setup you could tell that the more expensive the camera, the better the dynamic range. Other differences were subtle.




Then there's the blind section where they could relight for each camera. For the lower end cameras that presumably meant reducing the Dynamic Range. That made it much harder to tell apart and meant there was more of a subjective factor as different DoPs took different approaches.

The iphone was easily identifiable and no one liked the 7d. The FS100 also did pretty badly – several people picked it out and didn't like it. All the other cameras looked great. The GH2 was in several people's top 3.




When it came to the reveal, the GH2 definitely got the biggest reaction of surprise. Sadly I saw at least one person changing their vote after the GH2 had been revealed – they'd originally put it top. But even so it had clearly done well.




I hadn't actually chosen the GH2 shot in the blind test. I thought the shot looked technically good but the look didn't grab me – it was too clean somehow. I actually guessed it was the RED. Ironically, the shot I did like best was the real RED one. Arri looked lovely too.




But really what it showed is that we were responding to aesthetic choices made by the DoP and in grading.
One person summed it up well by saying you had one class which was clearly ahead – and the differences between them are very subtle – and then the B cameras that are still good but not in the same league. I don't think he realised when he listed the top class cameras that the GH2 was one of them!




Anyway, it was a fascinating exercise – well done to all involved.

[Ian-T]

Thanks for that write up Nathan. I’m glad the GH-2 did as well as it did.

I don't have any doubt that all of these cameras could hold their own on the large screen. The thing about tests like these though is when folks start comparing this or that cam against cams that are ten times its price we are going to see some obvious differences. But, if people were to watch a well-executed movie on the big screen that was shot entirely on a 7D none of this would matter (think “28 Days Later”). Then again, it seems, that is not what this Zacuto test was all about. What they did was show me that the Pro vs.consumer gap nowadays is so thin there’s just no more room for excuses.