GH5 How interested are you in a GH6 anymore?

[ahalpert]

I also remember when I had an operator for (almost) every camera -- at least every camera except for the wide establishing.
But in the last year the number of shoots where I've been DP'ing and operating 3 or even 4 cameras to limit the number of people (due to Covid protocols) has made me wish for better AF from my GH5s and BGH1, and really see the need for an EVA2 with great continuous AF (to match that of the FX6 and FX9).

Absolutely. Obviously, you still need to worry about panning the cameras to reframe. But as far as keeping the subject in focus on unmanned cameras, AF is an absolute boon. And with wifi smartphone control, I can monitor my cameras remotely without any additional wireless transmission systems (albeit with some drawbacks (yet some advantages) over an additional system). I can rack focus to a different subject and have the camera track them using the smartphone app, for example

 

[Thomas Smet]

right, so what we're saying is totally irrelevant if you're definitely going to use the 60fps as slow mo. But I shoot a lot of stuff that is all 60fps just in case the editor wants to slow mo something. And two shots from the same clip could be used separately as normal speed and as slow motion right next to the other in the edit. So, I'm keen to experiment more with 120fps for that scenario. If I shoot is 1/120 shutter then I'm probably at the same shutter speed I was going to use for 60fps anyway

The shutter speed is where it gets interesting and where you run into a The Hobbit situation. Sticking 120p in a 24p sequence sounds logical until you factor in technically 120p would be shot at 1/250th shutter. That means each of those 24p frames would like they were also shot at 1/250th which isn't always optimal for normal motion and can look a bit jittery. If you want it to be slow motion you really do want it at 1/250th so each frame slowed down to 24p looks exactly like it would as if the subject was moving that slow in real life. But for a conversion its problematic.

Thats why its really best to shoot slow motion as slow motion and plan for it if at all possible. I guess this is one area where faked motion blur in post could help a bit more. I'm just not a fan of it personally and think it looks fake. Many of us are trying to move more towards natural looking video and away from over processed.

The same is true if you can't shoot higher framreate but still want to use optical flow in post for slow motion. If one can only shoot 24p on their camera and they really want a 5x slow motion they should shoot that 24p at 1/250th. That way the optical flow processing has sharper frames to use to create new frames and the motion blur will look as it should as if the camera could shoot 120p. Optical flow is based on motion vectors and predicting motion. The more motion blur there is the harder it is to predict and create edges.

With that said we can't always know when and where slow motion will be used in an edit so we have to make do as best we can. I do try to plan for slow motion as much as I can so I can do it the optimal way.

 

[OnSet]

Hello Thomas,
Thanks for the suggestions.
I'll have to give it a try with some testing before the next music video with that director (who also has a tendency to put a lot of his performers in reflective silver and gold outfits -- always makes for an interesting shoot!)

 

[ahalpert]

Hello Thomas,
Thanks for the suggestions.
I'll have to give it a try with some testing before the next music video with that director (who also has a tendency to put a lot of his performers in reflective silver and gold outfits -- always makes for an interesting shoot!)

What codec are you shooting in? I feel like keying is the one time I'd really rather have shot RAW than 4:2:2. (I mean, I'd prefer it all the time. But it's the only circumstance I really regret

 

[ahalpert]

.

With that said we can't always know when and where slow motion will be used in an edit so we have to make do as best we can. I do try to plan for slow motion as much as I can so I can do it the optimal way.

This is true. For the music video I'm referencing, I had started out shooting all lip synching run-throughs as 24fps and everything else as either 120 or 60. But the performer was very inconsistent, and she also did some dance moves in-between lyrics that I thought could be useful in slow mo. I really don't like the look of footage slowed down in post, so i decided that 24p with a higher shutter was a lesser evil. (Can't remember if I used 1/120 or 1/250)

i consulted on the edit. The 2 most common slow motion speeds the editor used were 40% and 60%, probably used in equal measure. She probably used 20% and 80% in equal measure, albeit less often. There was one shot where she dropped below 20% (to 15% perhaps). I also feel like having more frames to work with probably yields better speed ramps in post

 

[Thomas Smet]

This is true. For the music video I'm referencing, I had started out shooting all lip synching run-throughs as 24fps and everything else as either 120 or 60. But the performer was very inconsistent, and she also did some dance moves in-between lyrics that I thought could be useful in slow mo. I really don't like the look of footage slowed down in post, so i decided that 24p with a higher shutter was a lesser evil. (Can't remember if I used 1/120 or 1/250)

i consulted on the edit. The 2 most common slow motion speeds the editor used were 40% and 60%, probably used in equal measure. She probably used 20% and 80% in equal measure, albeit less often. There was one shot where she dropped below 20% (to 15% perhaps). I also feel like having more frames to work with probably yields better speed ramps in post

It definitely does. 60p works much better for optical flow than 24p does for example. Less gaps between frames and less motion blur. Its much harder to have completely new random motion between each frame with 60p. 24p has a ton of gaps and something as simple as an eye blink can be eye open one frame and the next frame completely closed. Its impossible to have motion vectors for that because its like an on/off switch with no in-betweens to factor in. 60p allows that eye blink to at least have some movement of that eyelid. 120p will be even better.

Eventually we will hit a point where having higher frame rates for slow motion may be kind of pointless. For 24p projects 60p is already 2.5x slow motion which is actually a lot really. Especially for normal motion like people walking or day to day motion like getting into a car. Sports can need a bit more since the subjects move very fast. 120p is 5x which is typically enough for that. 5x starts to get really slow and can sometimes be a bad thing for our low attention span generation. Even a very basic task at 5x slow motion is a very long shot to watch. You have to have a very specific purpose for slow motion at that speed. Like a basketball slam dunk for example. Something that would be over in one second and now can be five seconds to better show the emotion of the act. A guy walking his dog at 5x slow motion is kind of ridiculous really and kind of becoming a cliche like lens flares and overuse of rack focusing were at one point. We are throwing things into slow motion now just because we can without any real aesthetic value.

Beyond that for like 240p really is silly and only really useful for engineers and science to study things. It has very little creative value outside of explosions which I hope most of us are not actually doing on a low budget. Because 120p is already very highly temporally detailed its pretty easy to optical flow that to 240p anyway. Unless your subject in insanely fast like a fiery explosion or bullet through an apple.

 

[Zim]

The GH5II is nickels and dimes. You should just get it and make your next film and then when it's done I'll go in and zoom in 300% on all of the parts where focus is dancing around. lol

And people say a lot of things...it's why we've had world wars.

As long as people can't see it at 200%!!
Okay I'll make films and you can enlarge other peoples work to 300%. Keep up the good work!

 

[OnSet]

What codec are you shooting in? I feel like keying is the one time I'd really rather have shot RAW than 4:2:2. (I mean, I'd prefer it all the time. But it's the only circumstance I really regret

Yes, this could have been part of the issue as well, since I was doing VFR 120fps with the EVA1 - which as I recall meant that for full sensor shooting, the sensor would have been set to s35/2.8k recording 1080 4:2:0. I do recall setting up the various camera settings on an sd card so I could quickly switch between 4k 4:2:2 for normal speed, 4k h.265 at vfr 60p, and the 1080 vfr 120p 4:2:0.
Of course I'd like to see more options and internal setup files for the EVA2 as well if it ever happens...

However -- for normal green screen shoots my corporate clients have been extremely happy with the EVA1 (and often GH5s as second camera) shooting 4k / 30p / 10-bit LongGOP 150mbps. Probably well over 100 hours of footage. They don't want to deal with either RAW or LOG, and actually prefer the smaller 150mbps files. I also keep "L" mounting adapters for both cameras in the kit to allow orienting for a vertical frame for head-to-toe single person shots.

 

[Thomas Smet]

Yes, this could have been part of the issue as well, since I was doing VFR 120fps with the EVA1 - which as I recall meant that for full sensor shooting, the sensor would have been set to s35/2.8k recording 1080 4:2:0. I do recall setting up the various camera settings on an sd card so I could quickly switch between 4k 4:2:2 for normal speed, 4k h.265 at vfr 60p, and the 1080 vfr 120p 4:2:0.
Of course I'd like to see more options and internal setup files for the EVA2 as well if it ever happens...

However -- for normal green screen shoots my corporate clients have been extremely happy with the EVA1 (and often GH5s as second camera) shooting 4k / 30p / 10-bit LongGOP 150mbps. Probably well over 100 hours of footage. They don't want to deal with either RAW or LOG, and actually prefer the smaller 150mbps files. I also keep "L" mounting adapters for both cameras in the kit to allow orienting for a vertical frame for head-to-toe single person shots.

Chroma sampling really has no impact on blur or how well something keys. It only impacts pixelated edges really. When we have 4K and 4:4:4 the two chroma channels are 3840x2160. The same as the luma channel. 4:2:2 is 1920x2160 for the two chroma channels and 4:2:0 is 1920x1080 for the two chroma channels. It’s less color detail but nothing else really changes. The images are still the same look. The only thing that changes really is how the edges keyed out can be pixelated or look jagged. Even that is kind of hard to see on 4K. A lot of cinema VFX is done at 2k anyway so really even 4K 4:2:0 has as much chroma detail to work with as most Hollywood movies have had for a decade.

if you take 4:4:4 material and convert to 4:2:0 you will essentially pull the exact same keys with the exact same challenges. Only difference is the 4:2:0 may be slightly jagged long the edges. The other thing that can happen is those edge pixels are not just jagged but an average. So a green pixel and a white pixel from a shirt become a pixel 2 pixels wide that are an average of those two colors. This can lead to a very slight extra softness or glow to the edges along with the jaggedness. Not a big deal and you have to be insanely anal and picky to really notice it. Especially at 4K where every pixel is super tiny to begin with.

I used to work with DV 4:1:1 with Apple Shake before they killed it and would create my own macros to upscale the chroma channels and pull very accurate keys. The edges were softer than they should have been but it was clean. I do the same thing with 4:2:0 now in Fusion. You split the video into luma and chroma channels, blur the chroma channels and merged the channel back together. Eliminates any jagged edges you could have. When it comes to 4K however you don’t always have to do that and some -refer to just leave the potential jagged edges vs the softer edge detail that may not look as natural. 4:2:2 is even harder to see the missing chroma values.

4:4:4 is the best of course but I wouldn’t call it a must. I like 4:4:4 not because of the chroma samples but because it’s not YUV color space and it eliminates any averaged color edges. The 10bit doesn’t hurt either to reduce any fine posterization along subtle green screen values. Again not a must.

 

[NorBro]

As long as people can't see it at 200%!!
Okay I'll make films and you can enlarge other peoples work to 300%. Keep up the good work!

They are both a waste of time. lol

ha, I'm just playing...hope it turns out beautifully.

 

[ahalpert]

We are throwing things into slow motion now just because we can without any real aesthetic value.
.

I think the campaign to overuse slow motion has been in full swing at least since the FS700. And, y'know, a year ago I would have agreed with what you wrote. But now that I have the a7siii and have been playing with 120fps, my thinking has changed

First of all, I use slow motion with the opposite strategy. Mostly, I slow down things that were already slow, and they become more dreamlike and epic. Things that were fast I usually let remain fast. I also use it a lot on static subjects just to smooth out my camera movement

But the larger issue here is I'm debating 120fps vs 60fps, not 120fps vs 24fps. There are already many occasions I'm required to shoot 60fps continuously. The primary reason is so the editor can extend a shot from 1 second to 2.5 seconds if the shot wasn't captured for long enough to make the edit. And I don't like the way 60fps conforms to 24fps when they run it in real-time, which is more common than slow-moing it

If you shoot 120fps with 1/120 shutter, then you still have flawless 60fps @ 1/120 available. Your 24 is still @ 1/120 but now you don't have to interpolate frames. And as a bonus you get slightly blurry 120fps and slightly crisp 40fps to play with. A major win over shooting 60fps

you can jump cut or speed ramp if you want to show a longer portion of a slow mo clip in a short time. Your editing rhythm doesn't necessarily need to be altered

 

[Samuel Dilworth]

If you shoot 120fps with 1/120 shutter, then you still have flawless 60fps @ 1/120 available. Your 24 is still @ 1/120 but now you don't have to interpolate frames. And as a bonus you get slightly blurry 120fps and slightly crisp 40fps to play with. A major win over shooting 60fps

Is the camera more likely to overheat at 120 than 60 FPS or does that not make much difference?

 

[ahalpert]

Is the camera more likely to overheat at 120 than 60 FPS or does that not make much difference?

It is more likely to overheat at 120fps. But truly I've only found it to be a problem while using wifi smartphone control, which apparently heats things up. If I get a heat warning, I turn off the wifi and it goes away. So the net effect is that sometimes I lose my smartphone controller when shooting 120fps, which doesn't happen at 60fps. (Note: any 10-min+ recordings I do are usually at 24fps)

There are a couple other downsides on the a7siii and fx3. 120fps is only available in 1.1x crop and you lose the options to do distortion/vignetting/CA correction as well as electronic "active" IBIS. (So, when I used the 12mm on this recent music video, I dropped to 60fps because the distortion is awful without correction)

But I'm sort of discussing theoretical benefits of the 2 framerates. It's easy to imagine another camera (especially a m43 camera) that can do 120fps without any drawbacks

 

[stoneinapond]

It's easy to imagine another camera (especially a m43 camera) that can do 120fps without any drawbacks

Yeeeaaaaahhh! :laugh:

 

[DLD]

A tease with a 2/22 announcement (at CP+).

FWIW, Fuji Africa teased XH-2 for May. That one is supposed to be an 8K "high end" APS-C camera for the same $2,500.

 

[Samuel Dilworth]

That one is supposed to be an 8K "high end" APS-C camera for the same $2,500.

You’re obsessed with 8K. Is everyone else? If so the GH6 is doomed.

 

[stoneinapond]

You’re obsessed with 8K. Is everyone else? If so the GH6 is doomed.

What starts with large TVs eventually filters down to capture devices. As far as I can tell, CES was very much about 8K displays. Have to say that I was tempted way back by the XH-1 for the FUJI colors but for it's lack of IBIS. I'm sure it's coming to the XH-2, but no the GH6 isn't doomed. Panasonic understands the need for video features in hybrids better than anyone, especially if one is interested in anamorphic capture. 5.7K is plenty.

 

[NorBro]

X-H1 was the only Fujifilm then that actually had IBIS. lol

[That's actually what made it extremely popular at the time!]

 

[Thomas Smet]

The GH5 had 5.2k (they called it 6k) for years and not many seemed to care. Not sure if people or only capable of thinking of higher detail in terms of 2k,4k and 8k or if its because 8k TVs are more of a reality now.

Even if we are getting 8k TVs its going to be years before we get a delivery system for that. Apple Airplay from within a home doesn't even support 8k yet.

5k, 5.7k and 6k will all upscale very well to 8k and downscale even better to 4k.

I just watched the DP Redlines thesis on resolution again and he really feels there isn't much advantage over 2k. 4k being the upper limit of usable detail. Anything beyond that is purely marketing and over sampling potential.

I have a pretty large 65" 4k TV and I honestly cannot tell the difference between good 2k and 4k. Maybe someday I will get a 80" but even then I think 2k and 4k will be perfectly wonderful.

I would rather see all TVs go 1600 nits minimum for brightness and at least 90% rec2020 vs 8k. HDR has a much bigger future than impossible to see extra detail that most will not be able to afford for many years. 8k only makes sense on the massive TVs which are still priced out of most peoples budgets. Especially when the 50-75" options look so good and are so much more affordable. Heck we can barely get 4k to customers and have them actually enjoy the real benefits of 4k.

Gaming is still clinging hard to 1080p and gamers prefer low latency and higher frame rate to resolution. graphics cards are finally able to push some gaming to 4k but not without compromises. The graphics cards to push those levels right now cost more than what an entire gaming rig used to cost thanks to the jacked up market. At this at the computer side many of us now hav UHD monitors and 4k on YouTube can look a bit more detailed. 8k computer monitors are many years off as the norm and not very practical at what are considered normal computer monitor sizes. 27" UHD is already a 2x Retina display. A 8k display would be 4x retina and we don't really need that. Its already almost impossible to see individual pixels on a UHD display. So computer 8k viewing is almost completely worthless and an epic waste of money. Unless one loves using a 42" as a computer monitor. Ultrawides have some potential but who produces video that wide to really take advantage of it.

I would say a 8k bayer sensor can make some more pristine 4k vs a 4k bayer sensor but the detail is so fine at that point that I doubt it matters. It really is splitting hairs. I know we have this discussion each new generation but each time it does matter less. Thats the nature of th physics of resolution. It matters less each time. The jump from SD to HD was big. The jump from HD to 4k was decent. The jump from 4k to 8k will be a whimper.

Thats why I would rather see TVs stop cutting corners on brightness and color. HDR is a joke on 90% of the TVs out there. Its barely usable. I have a Vizio from a few years ago that has the highest rated rec2020 color out there. I wouldn't normally but Vizio but its color was very impressive. The brightness is only 400 nits however and that shows. HDR looks amazing on my iPad XDR but its color is a bit more limited to only P3. I would like to see TVs of all sizes and budgets no longer push 250 nits and 300 nits as HDR. We should have at least 1000 nits sustained as the standard now if one is goin to sell a TV as HDR. There should be at least 80% rec2020 as the standard which is pretty much P3 levels. Many TVs can't even do decent P3 color. There are so many other areas of improvement to make TVs stand out without using 8k to fool people.

Where do we go after 8k? Are we really going to pretend 16k has some kind of realistic future in a few years when TV sales are down? 32k? When does the madness end? If Apple someday did make a XDR TV at 4k that thing would be a lot more desirable than a 8k TV that nobody will be able to really tell if they are even watching 8k. If a viewer has to look up specs to see if they are watching 4k or 8k then that right there means it no longer matters.

 

[stoneinapond]

X-H1 was the only Fujifilm then that actually had IBIS. lol

[That's actually what made it extremely popular at the time!]

I stand corrected. Memory is failing.

Which means I forget what put me off purchasing the camera.

But thanks for the correction