Having to buy a B camera for a job and the contenders are...

Scott Wellington

Scott Wellington

Active member
Hello all,

I respect your opinions, as that is what this board is for, so I want to know what you guys think. I have an AF100, a nikon MTF german made manual mount, and several nikon lenses. All Redrock ff and accessories.

My contenders for a B cam are:

The GH3
The Nikon D800
or wait for the AF100A and chalk up the extra $, maybe even selling my af100 when the job ends in a few months and keeping the "A"

thoughts?

Right now I am between the first 2.
 
Get (rent) an AF100 for your B Cam

There are so many threads about attempts to match disparate cameras!
Dont know why anyone thinks it would work without major grief and frustration.
 
If I was out to buy yet another camera at the moment, I would buy a GH2. Because the GH3's release, you can find great deals on new GH2s and even better if you buy used. I just picked up an used GH2 (my second) in mint condition for 300 bucks! It's a great little camera and I'm not seeing much in the GH3 to warrant the price yet, specially as a second camera. GH2s are a great deal now more than ever. I think the GH2 complements the AF100 quite well since they have the same mount too. If you adjust them to match close enough it's not that hard to match them in post. When I get shots where the AF100 can't handle the highlights or I need extra sharpness I pull my GH2 out and it will do it without breaking a sweat. When my GH2 is giving me hell with aliasing, I pull out the AF100 and it will not even blink at aliasing and give me artifacts free footage. I'm sure the GH3 will be a great camera and most likely better than the Gh2. But at the current prices and considering the quality difference seems to be small so far, a GH2 with a good hack is a heck of deal hard to beat.
 
I shot a spot last week with the GH2 as a second angle and now wished I rented another AF-100 instead. I now have more post work to do than I wanted. Lesson learned.
 
Adamsenoj said:
If I was out to buy yet another camera at the moment, I would buy a GH2. Because the GH3's release, you can find great deals on new GH2s and even better if you buy used. I just picked up an used GH2 (my second) in mint condition for 300 bucks! It's a great little camera and I'm not seeing much in the GH3 to warrant the price yet, specially as a second camera. GH2s are a great deal now more than ever. I think the GH2 complements the AF100 quite well since they have the same mount too. If you adjust them to match close enough it's not that hard to match them in post. When I get shots where the AF100 can't handle the highlights or I need extra sharpness I pull my GH2 out and it will do it without breaking a sweat. When my GH2 is giving me hell with aliasing, I pull out the AF100 and it will not even blink at aliasing and give me artifacts free footage. I'm sure the GH3 will be a great camera and most likely better than the Gh2. But at the current prices and considering the quality difference seems to be small so far, a GH2 with a good hack is a heck of deal hard to beat.
Click to expand...

The GH3 has so many nice new features I had to preorder it. Not just the video part but for stills alone it's a big leap forward and I use my GH2 as my main stills camera now. The WiFi feature looks amazing. New I-frame codec. Yum, and it's still a great value compared to the Canon's. Ooops. Sorry I went a tad off topic. :)
 
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Scott Wellington said:
Shooter, with both the GH2, and the AF100 in your bag of tricks, haven't you used both in one shoot?
Click to expand...


I have used them on the same shoot but never had the intention of intercutting them.

I would intercut them if I was after the different look feel that each camera brought to a given project though.

To me ...a "B-Cam" is a coverage camera designed to intercut. Hence my advice...match the cameras.

Its real easy to make same cameras look different.. Its real hard to make different cameras look the same
 
"I have used them on the same shoot but never had the intention of intercutting them.

I would intercut them if I was after the different look feel that each camera brought to a given project though.

To me ...a "B-Cam" is a coverage camera designed to intercut. Hence my advice...match the cameras.

Its real easy to make same cameras look different.. Its real hard to make different cameras look the same"



Great point shooter, just spend days trying to make a 7d and a hpx170 seem acceptable. Rental would have been so much easier.
 
I have experimented, although not exhaustively, with matching my AF100 to the GH2. Barry and lpowell have great threads on settings that work. The thing to remember is that you have to match the AF100 to the GH2 because the GH2 doesn't really afford enough control to to it the other way. Consequently you wind up pushing the pedestal way down to match the contrast of the GH2. My preference is to do that later in post. I usually wind up pulling the blacks down a little anyway.

If you're really buying a B cam and not a still camera you can use as a B Cam, you can get AF100s pretty cheap right now, used, with low mileage. I'd do that.
 
The editor I work with has matched the AF100 and gh2 to intercut very nicely. I believe he uses Boris and it doesn't take him very long either.
 
I don't think you'll ever match an AF100 to a GH1/2/3 perfectly. That said, I inter-cut them all the time.

I don't think it's such a big deal, just requires some post work. Here and here you can see videos that I've used the GH1 inter-cut with the AF100 (interviews with AF as A cam, GH as B cam). I think if you're going from a wide to a closeup you can get away with inter-cutting more easily. And you can definitely use it for miscellaneous B-Roll without any issues.
 
Shot a job using the AF100 as A cam and the 160A as B cam.
Was a mistake, should have rented another AF. Had the same scene file parameters but the AF held the blacks better and had an over all better look, I'm looking for a good deal on an second AF...
 
Erik Naso said:
The GH3 has so many nice new features I had to preorder it. Not just the video part but for stills alone it's a big leap forward and I use my GH2 as my main stills camera now. The WiFi feature looks amazing. New I-frame codec. Yum, and it's still a great value compared to the Canon's. Ooops. Sorry I went a tad off topic. :)
Click to expand...

Don't forget weatherproofing and built in timelapse timer. This is big for me in situations I don't want to use a more expensive camera or to quickly capture nice timelapse for projects. Got mine on pre-order also.
 
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