GH1 DOF Vs HMC-150/HPX170

studio1972 said:
...I was merely meaning that using a prime lens requires a certain type of situation where as a zoom lens allows you to frame a shot in a more flexible way...
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And a less sophisticated way; If you're just zooming to reframe your shot you doing videography, not cinematography.

Maybe you just mean you don't have to swap lenses?

But each focal length affects many things about the image such as the relative distance from one object or actor to another object or actor. Cinematography is about making decisions like that. Maybe the characters should seem distant from one another, maybe they should seem very close. If you're just zooming in without moving the sticks to change the frame without considering not only the frame but the spatial relationships and DOF that's right for the story telling then you're not telling the story visually.

Now you can do that with a zoom lens - pick focal lengths and apertures that help tell the story in conjunction with moving the sticks for the framing - but it sounds like you just wan to zoom in for your closeup like soooooo many people do when shooting bare lens with a video camera.

With a DSLR changing lenses takes only a little longer than taking the lens cap off and on the HMC 150.
 
studio1972 said:
The HMC lens is a 13x zoom 28 - 367mm f/1.6-3.0. Please back up your statement with a reference to the equivalent lens on the GH1 for less than $2000. If you had the faintest idea about the compromises involved with lens design you would realise it's much easier to make a lens like this for a 1/3 sensor than a 4/3 sensor.
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Ok so I'll get 2 zooms for $1,000 each :D
 
jack daniel stanley said:
and a less sophisticated way; if you're just zooming to reframe your shot you doing videography, not cinematography.

Maybe you just mean you don't have to swap lenses?

But each focal length affects many things about the image such as the relative distance from one object or actor to another object or actor. Cinematography is about making decisions like that. Maybe the characters should seem distant from one another, maybe they should seem very close. If you're just zooming in without moving the sticks to change the frame without considering not only the frame but the spatial relationships and dof that's right for the story telling then you're not telling the story visually.

Now you can do that with a zoom lens - pick focal lengths and apertures that help tell the story in conjunction with moving the sticks for the framing - but it sounds like you just wan to zoom in for your closeup like soooooo many people do when shooting bare lens with a video camera.

With a dslr changing lenses takes only a little longer than taking the lens cap off and on the hmc 150.
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yes!
 
Barry_Green said:
the notion that the GH1 is a stills camera with a video mode, whereas the HMC150 is a professional video camera sold and supported by the broadcast division of Panasonic.
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I am starting to think of it more as a consumer video camera (which have been getting better and better and better images...just with fewer features than prosumer cameras) with the ability to take interchangeable lenses, focus manually, etc....that also has a gimmicky photo mode that nobody should really use :D
 
Great. The GH1 isn't for you. Don't buy one.

It's an amazing camera for those of us doing narrative filmmaking.

What I see it doing for a wedding videographer would be that you could leave your HMC setup as a (relatively...you could come back to it and zoom in, tweak framing, etc, as long as you know you have coverage to put over it from the other camera) static camera and then use the GH1 to get a wide variety of very lovely, shallow DOF shots, and cut back and forth.
 
studio1972 said:
The HMC lens is a 13x zoom 28 - 367mm f/1.6-3.0. Please back up your statement with a reference to the equivalent lens on the GH1 for less than $2000. If you had the faintest idea about the compromises involved with lens design you would realise it's much easier to make a lens like this for a 1/3 sensor than a 4/3 sensor.
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You can pick up 2 of the Nikon 28-70mm f2.8 and the 70-200mm f2.8 for roughly that amount. And those lenses were made for FF35mm sensor so yea, I'll say it's more than good enough.

Btw, that's not the actual focal length of the HMC, just the FOV equivalent. Actual focal length is more like 3.6 mm at the wide end and 47mm on the telephoto end.
 
Ben, don't be rude please.

The GH1 may or may not be applicable to Stuart's business. Shallow-DOF gorgeousness could be extremely applicable to wedding videography. As I understand, the 5D Mark II has caught on with wedding videographers; the GH1 is a lot easier to use than the 5DM2 and therefore might be a lot more applicable.

I don't know that I'd want to use it as my sole video camera for such an event, but there's definitely a place for something like it.
 
Barry_Green said:
... As I understand, the 5D Mark II has caught on with wedding videographers; the GH1 is a lot easier to use than the 5DM2 and therefore might be a lot more applicable...
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It seems like the 5D just has some predictable skew issues though as opposed to randomly puking every now and then. Somewhat acceptable when you can do a retake, but I wouldn't trust it as my only cam in a doc situation like a wedding. Additional, as Ben suggested, but doc / videography, no. Next gen or post firmware upgrade yest. But right now no.
 
Ben_B said:
Great. The GH1 isn't for you. Don't buy one.

It's an amazing camera for those of us doing narrative filmmaking.

What I see it doing for a wedding videographer would be that you could leave your HMC setup as a (relatively...you could come back to it and zoom in, tweak framing, etc, as long as you know you have coverage to put over it from the other camera) static camera and then use the GH1 to get a wide variety of very lovely, shallow DOF shots, and cut back and forth.
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I think that is exactly what I could use it for. However, I know a very top end wedding videographer in the UK who was planning to get a GH1 for this purpose and was intending to use it with the stock lens. I think we can all agree that they would need to use faster lenses (primes) to get the shallow DoF.

This can be a bit of a hassle in an event situation as by the time you've attached the right lens, ND filter etc. and moved your sticks, the thing you wanted to film has gone away. This would obviously be less of a problem if you have two operators though as one can get the safe shots with the HMC while the other goes for the more interesting stuff with the GH1 and primes.

It's a shame they don't sell the GH1 without the stock lens though as this would make it a lot more affordable if you don't intend to use that lens. These VDSLRs seem to be getting better and cheaper all the time though, so I think I'll see how it goes and just get shallow DOF using the usual trick of zooming in for the time being.
 
Barry_Green said:
Ben, don't be rude please.
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Sorry. I'm just getting a little annoyed with people, not necessarily in this thread, but across all threads, going after this camera because Panasonic didn't design it with exactly them in mind. It doesn't help that I am one of the people for whom this camera fits perfectly, and I really don't like coming in and reading people bashing it, claiming that because it doesn't work for them that all footage shot with it must be worthless, for the web, for broadcast, for theatrical presentation, whatever (again not so much in this tread but overall.)
 
Huy Vu said:
You can pick up 2 of the Nikon 28-70mm f2.8 and the 70-200mm f2.8 for roughly that amount. And those lenses were made for FF35mm sensor so yea, I'll say it's more than good enough.

Btw, that's not the actual focal length of the HMC, just the FOV equivalent. Actual focal length is more like 3.6 mm at the wide end and 47mm on the telephoto end.
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2 zooms isn't the same as 1 zoom though is it. It's much easier to design 2 lenses with a 3x zoom than one with a 10x zoom. That's why Nikon don't make a 20-200 f/2.8 zoom.

I knew the actual focus length on the HMC was different btw, I own one and it has the numbers printed by the zoom ring for me. I used the 35mm equivalent numbers to make it easier to understand what the zoom range of the lens is in practical terms. The HMC has a crop factor of roughly 7.21 if you're interested. If you look at the first post in this thread this is quite clear.
 
Ben_B said:
Sorry. I'm just getting a little annoyed with people, not necessarily in this thread, but across all threads, going after this camera because Panasonic didn't design it with exactly them in mind. It doesn't help that I am one of the people for whom this camera fits perfectly, and I really don't like coming in and reading people bashing it, claiming that because it doesn't work for them that all footage shot with it must be worthless, for the web, for broadcast, for theatrical presentation, whatever (again not so much in this tread but overall.)
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Well I'm sorry that I annoyed you (assuming that I did), but I don't think I was bashing the camera at all. I actually said a lot of positive things about it.

I was just making a point that with the stock lens the DOF isn't that much shallower than a 1/3 camera, I also said that "Obviously the results would be different with prime lenses etc.". I said that in the first paragraph of the first post in this thread and ever since then people have been having a go at me as if I had said the opposite of that.
 
Well, it's still not an accurate statement though.

With the stock lens, set to the same aperture as the 1/3" camera, the GH1 will slay. You have to go about 3 stops more open before the 1/3" camera can start to catch up.
 
studio1972 said:
...I was just making a point that with the stock lens the DOF isn't that much shallower than a 1/3 camera...
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except that it is
Barry_Green said:
Straw-Combined.jpg
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you can get shallow DOF with a 1/3 chip camera by zooming all the way in and standing on the other side of the park (Barry showed us how to do that in 2004 on the DVX) but it's not comparable to what you can get with the GH1 even with the stock lens.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, it's still not an accurate statement though.
With the stock lens, set to the same aperture as the 1/3" camera, the GH1 will slay. You have to go about 3 stops more open before the 1/3" camera can start to catch up.
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You're darn tootin'.
 
Light the straw man like he's in a film noir and see if you can get dramatic lighting without banding.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, it's still not an accurate statement though.

With the stock lens, set to the same aperture as the 1/3" camera, the GH1 will slay. You have to go about 3 stops more open before the 1/3" camera can start to catch up.
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But the stock lens isn't capable of the same aperture as the hmc lens. Bit silly to restrict the hmc to f/4 and narrower when you would obviously open it up and apply nd filters to achieve shallow dof. I think that's a bit disingenuous to be honest. Now we are going round in circles though.
 
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