I was expecting to see a thread about this here. Did any other DVXUSERs go? I was there, and here are the details, and my thoughts:
All the shots made for(?) the screening were shot internal DCI 4K 24p with pre-release firmware and Cine-D profile, and all footage was shown on a 4K cinema projector on a 10(?) foot screen in a professional post-production screening room. I was sitting on the front row, I would say about 12-15 feet away from the screen. Caveat that I'm not a professional cinematographer or colorist, but just an enthusiast with some training who reads a lot about this stuff.
What was shown: One daylight exterior shot on the GH4 with a model, some foliage, and some houses on the background, with a patch of sunlight on the siding of one of the houses that was way overexposed (they said 5 stops overexposed), which they said they left in so we could see what that looked/behaved like. They showed this shot both graded and ungraded. From what could be determined from this shot (i.e. there was no camera motion so couldn't evaluate that), everything looked fine to me. There was lots of detail, like individual hair strands that were floating away from the model's head, on a loose medium shot. DR was hard to really evaluate from viewing for a few seconds, but I recall there was plenty of detail in the dark foliage behind the model. The overexposed area on the house looked nuclear, as to be expected, but hard to determine falloff, because it seemed like a sharp sunlight patch.
All the remaining shots were of the same model in front of a greenscreen, lit indoors. This shot they repeated on the GH4 at 4K, Arri Alexa at 2.8K(?), RED Epic Dragon at 6K, Canon 5D mkIII (ML Raw - 1080p?) and Canon 1DC at 4K. The same lens was used for every shot (Schneider Xenon). They color corrected for both the skin tones and the greenscreen, at this professional post-production facility.
The 1DC footage was shown graded two different ways, because they could not get a grade that was suitable for both skin tone and greenscreen, so they targeted them separately. On the skintone grade, the greenscreen looked fairly bluish. On the greenscreen grade, the skintone looked sickly, IIRC. Other than that, all the other cameras looked fairly similar. The main noticeable difference was the sharpness/detail: the Dragon and GH4 looked sharpest, then 1DC and Alexa, and finally 5D, as to be expected. There was a seam on the greenscreen that was a visible fine black line on the sharpest cameras that was almost completely invisible on the least sharp cameras. I thought the colors looked good on all the cameras except the 1DC. What I could see of the DR on the model's hair, face, and eyes was inconclusive because of the brief screening.
In the end, it seemed to me that if you were willing to adjust sharpness, grading, and perhaps lighting, you could cut the Dragon, Alexa, and GH4 together. The 1DC and 5D would be tougher because of color and sharpness differences, respectively. That's just my amateur opinion, based on what was shown.
Finally, they showed the Panasonic Yucatan, Mexico promo video in UHD 29.97, and it looked fantastic!
I think that the people criticizing the camera so far are off the mark. There were people all over the nofilmschool article about this screening complaining that the camera doesn't look cinematic, and I think they just haven't seen something made to look specifically cinematic yet. I think this camera will be a great low-budget filmmaker's tool, and even for specific uses on big-budget films too (crash cam, tight spaces, drones, etc)
All the shots made for(?) the screening were shot internal DCI 4K 24p with pre-release firmware and Cine-D profile, and all footage was shown on a 4K cinema projector on a 10(?) foot screen in a professional post-production screening room. I was sitting on the front row, I would say about 12-15 feet away from the screen. Caveat that I'm not a professional cinematographer or colorist, but just an enthusiast with some training who reads a lot about this stuff.
What was shown: One daylight exterior shot on the GH4 with a model, some foliage, and some houses on the background, with a patch of sunlight on the siding of one of the houses that was way overexposed (they said 5 stops overexposed), which they said they left in so we could see what that looked/behaved like. They showed this shot both graded and ungraded. From what could be determined from this shot (i.e. there was no camera motion so couldn't evaluate that), everything looked fine to me. There was lots of detail, like individual hair strands that were floating away from the model's head, on a loose medium shot. DR was hard to really evaluate from viewing for a few seconds, but I recall there was plenty of detail in the dark foliage behind the model. The overexposed area on the house looked nuclear, as to be expected, but hard to determine falloff, because it seemed like a sharp sunlight patch.
All the remaining shots were of the same model in front of a greenscreen, lit indoors. This shot they repeated on the GH4 at 4K, Arri Alexa at 2.8K(?), RED Epic Dragon at 6K, Canon 5D mkIII (ML Raw - 1080p?) and Canon 1DC at 4K. The same lens was used for every shot (Schneider Xenon). They color corrected for both the skin tones and the greenscreen, at this professional post-production facility.
The 1DC footage was shown graded two different ways, because they could not get a grade that was suitable for both skin tone and greenscreen, so they targeted them separately. On the skintone grade, the greenscreen looked fairly bluish. On the greenscreen grade, the skintone looked sickly, IIRC. Other than that, all the other cameras looked fairly similar. The main noticeable difference was the sharpness/detail: the Dragon and GH4 looked sharpest, then 1DC and Alexa, and finally 5D, as to be expected. There was a seam on the greenscreen that was a visible fine black line on the sharpest cameras that was almost completely invisible on the least sharp cameras. I thought the colors looked good on all the cameras except the 1DC. What I could see of the DR on the model's hair, face, and eyes was inconclusive because of the brief screening.
In the end, it seemed to me that if you were willing to adjust sharpness, grading, and perhaps lighting, you could cut the Dragon, Alexa, and GH4 together. The 1DC and 5D would be tougher because of color and sharpness differences, respectively. That's just my amateur opinion, based on what was shown.
Finally, they showed the Panasonic Yucatan, Mexico promo video in UHD 29.97, and it looked fantastic!
I think that the people criticizing the camera so far are off the mark. There were people all over the nofilmschool article about this screening complaining that the camera doesn't look cinematic, and I think they just haven't seen something made to look specifically cinematic yet. I think this camera will be a great low-budget filmmaker's tool, and even for specific uses on big-budget films too (crash cam, tight spaces, drones, etc)
but the IMAGE looked as good as any movie I'd seen. Even from Canon's fake, crippled version of "HD". NO DOUBT GH4 would stand up well on large projection - IF the content was equally matched. I plan to use it for exactly that.
