GH4 Panasonic GH5 coming in 2017

TheDingo said:
This is absolutely bonkers. I started out as a commercial studio photographer 30 years ago working mainly with 4x5 and 8x10 inch film cameras ( Sinar and Toyo ), and I've shot with everything from a 8mm Minox film camera ( you are shooting with 8mm movie film ) up to the 20x24 inch Polaroid instant print camera with it's 5+ foot long bellows and f/180 lens F-stops. What you are saying makes no sense at all. There is no "magic FF" recipe that makes a FF lens produce a better image than a Super35 lens, or even a 16mm lens. When properly designed you can achieve the SAME optical qualities from a lens made for almost any format, assuming you can match the same relative tolerances when manufacturing each lens.

What is different is the amount of detail you can obtain from the recording medium assuming all recording medium behaves the same. ( when film was king this was the case ) So an 8x10 inch camera can record far more detail than a 4x5 inch camera, or a 6x6 cm camera, or a 35mm Full frame camera. But if you match the focal lengths and DOF between formats, whether it's a FF 35mm film camera or a 8x10 inch Sinar sheet-film camera, the image recorded is essentially the same. The amount of recorded detail is vastly different, but if all you are making is 4x6 inch prints you might have a very tough time figuring out which camera shot what.

The same principles apply to digital formats, where different camera optics can produce near identical images if used correctly.
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You're absolutely wrong on this. I too have shot everything from 20x24 polaroid, 8x10, 4x5 on down.

I shoot interior space. When I used my 8x10 vide camera my wide angle lens was a 180mm with typical Fstop of 22-32. On 4x5 is was 65mm to 120mm's with Fstop from 16-22. 35mm shooting today I shoot from 17-24 for wides with Fstops from 11-14. Put all cameras in the same spot and here is what you will see. A 180-240mm on the 8x10 will compress the image but have a huge FOV. Imagine putting the 180 on the 35mm. You're gonna lose FOV but that image is going to be near far compressed. Going from 8x10 with the 180mm to the 4x5 with a 90mm, you will have the same FOV, but less near far compression.

What is a lens? It's basically a focusable magnifier. A 180mm lens, regardless of format, is a 180mm lens. A 50mm is a 50mm. The format determines the FOV. The lens determines the near far magnification.

I shoot the 8x10 with 180 in an interior and the image will be far more compressed (near far relationship and far less distorted angle) than a 24mm on the FF 35mm camera. I have clients that I've been shooting for for 20 years that beg me to use 8x10 view cameras for interior space because they hate the FF 35mm look of how it records their design.

Now, an 8x10 view camera is drastically different than a FF35mm as the 35mm is closer to M4/3.

You can see what I'm talking about easily. grab your 35mm camera and put a 24mm on it. Then stick a 180mm lens on the camera and try to visualize that on the 8x10 view camera, the FOV would have been like the 24mm on the FF camera.

And your wrong on detail too. Actually 35mm film was more resolute than 4x5 or 8x10 film. It was just that you had to enlarge sheet film less.

My 24mm TS lens will NEVER EVER look like my 180mm on the 8x10. The rooms I would shoot looked far more natural on the 8x10. Especially when shooting squares at an angle (like a picture in a frame or windows). The convergence was far less.
 
aldolega said:
Ok. Then why does a dolly zoom give the effect it does? Ignoring DOF of course
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When I used to shoot a lot of headshots in the 80's using a Nikon F3 camera, it was common knowledge that if you wanted to "expand" the perspective of a person's face you would use a 70mm - 85mm lens and shoot from 4-5 feet from the person's face. So if you had an actor or model with a "flat" looking face, you could "un-flatten" their face using this technique. If you did not want to change the perspective of a person's face you would use a 105mm lens from about 6-7 feet away. And if somebody had large protruding features and you wanted to "flatten" the perspective of their face you would use 135mm - 200mm and stand 10 - 14 feet away. The reason why this technique works has NOTHING to do with the lens, but rather the distance your camera was from the person.

If you ever want to surprise yourself, take a photo of somebody standing 14 feet away with a 200mm lens on a Full Frame camera, then switch to a 28mm wide-angle lens and take their photo again WITHOUT moving closer or farther away from the person ( so your camera is the SAME distance from the person ), and then bring both photos into Photoshop and crop the 28mm photo until it matches the area displayed by the photo taken with the 200mm lens, now blow up the 28mm photo until the size matches the photo you took with the 200mm lens, and you will see that both photos have IDENTICAL perspective. ( the 200mm photo will have way more detail compared to the 28mm photo, but the perspective of both photos will be a perfect match ) If you matched the detail between both photos you would not be able to tell which photo was taken with which lens. ( matching the F-stop will also help to achieve identical DOF )

...Back to your question, a dolly-zoom works because you are changing the perspective of your subject in the foreground by moving closer to them. If you just stayed the SAME distance away and did a regular zoom, then their is no perspective change, and it looks like a normal zoom. It all works by changing the distance of the camera to your subject, and could be duplicated by any zoom that can match the same focal lengths. The weird distortion you are seeing has nothing to do with the zoom lens.

aldolega said:
(although it would be really cool to see a dolly zoom done with an iris pull and coordinated gain/ISO boost).
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Yeah, I've thought of that too. If you could manage to keep the same look throughout the GAIN/ISO boost it would probably be a freaky DOF effect. ( this could probably be done with RAW footage that you adjust in post to match the exposure as the IRIS changes )
 
dustylense said:
You're absolutely wrong on this. Put all cameras in the same spot and here is what you will see.
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Put all of the cameras in the same spot. Shoot everything with the same angle of view and match the DOF for each format by using the appropriate F-stop, and all camera images will match. Compression comes from the distance you are from your subject. You can make a compressed shot with a wide angle lens if you shoot from far enough away and then crop down your image to match the the image area of a shot made with a longer lens. ( I know this defeats the whole purpose of using larger formats, but if the goal is to match the shot this should do the trick )

For instance. Use a Nikon 300mm lens to take a head shot of somebody standing 20 feet away. Shoot at f/5.6. Next take your 8x10 inch camera and place it in exactly the same spot, and use a 300mm f/5.6 lens to take a photo of the same person you shot with the Nikon. If you crop the 8x10 image to match the same area as the Nikon image, the images will be identical. ( the Nikon will probably be sharper than a 300mm 8x10 lens wide open, but the perspective will be identical, and DOF should also be a near perfect match )

I did this on commercial shoots from time to time when a client would want 4x5 or 8x10 shots and matching identical shots made with a Mamiya RZ67. ( the lens didn't always match, but I could always crop the wider shot to match the narrower shot, as long as the cameras were in the same place when taking both shots )
 
TheDingo said:
Put all of the cameras in the same spot. Shoot everything with the same angle of view and match the DOF for each format by using the appropriate F-stop, and all camera images will match. Compression comes from the distance you are from your subject. You can make a compressed shot with a wide angle lens if you shoot from far enough away and then crop down your image to match the the image area of a shot made with a longer lens. ( I know this defeats the whole purpose of using larger formats, but if the goal is to match the shot this should do the trick )

For instance. Use a Nikon 300mm lens to take a head shot of somebody standing 20 feet away. Shoot at f/5.6. Next take your 8x10 inch camera and place it in exactly the same spot, and use a 300mm f/5.6 lens to take a photo of the same person you shot with the Nikon. If you crop the 8x10 image to match the same area as the Nikon image, the images will be identical. ( the Nikon will probably be sharper than a 300mm 8x10 lens wide open, but the perspective will be identical, and DOF should also be a near perfect match )

I did this on commercial shoots from time to time when a client would want 4x5 or 8x10 shots and matching identical shots made with a Mamiya RZ67. ( the lens didn't always match, but I could always crop the wider shot to match the narrower shot, as long as the cameras were in the same place when taking both shots )
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I've done it dude. 100's of 1000's of times.

In this shot with the 17 TS, had I shot that on 8x10, the tables roundness and magnifying glass roundness would be far more of a natural circle. The whole perspective of the room and the way the lines travel horizontally would have been far less severe. The couch in the foreground in relation to the armchair in the corner would scale far better on the 8x10. And all without any back movements. Just a drop of the lens.
4-Capri-Portifino_Family Room.jpg
 
I have to say that this is one of the coolest thread hijacks ever.

With the correct answer being "more of everything". Larger sensors, more pixels, better dynamic range. And then finding the balance between the resolution and the low-light performance. Sony decided to split their camera technology into two distinct units in 7S and 7R but it's likely to be merged into a single product on the higher end models.

PS. And much like 4K is an intermediate step to 8K, FF is an intermediate step to Medium Format. Alexa65 is only a tip of the iceberg.
 
GH4+YAGH combo is now retailing for $1,797 at B&H. This also includes a free 3-year warranty (via a mail-in rebate) on GH4 and the 4% in-house "reward", making the overall price lower than the original price of GH4 only and $1,500+ less than what the combo was upon its release.
 
dustylense said:
I've done it dude. 100's of 1000's of times.

In this shot with the 17 TS, had I shot that on 8x10, the tables roundness and magnifying glass roundness would be far more of a natural circle. The whole perspective of the room and the way the lines travel horizontally would have been far less severe. The couch in the foreground in relation to the armchair in the corner would scale far better on the 8x10. And all without any back movements. Just a drop of the lens.
View attachment 105529
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What you're describing sounds more like a difference in distortion at the edges of the particular lenses that you were comparing. From the little that I know, the edges are where the really tricky stuff has to be done with lenses (especially the wide angles) to fix the inherent distortions and other issues (sharpness, vignetting, barrel, pincussion, etc), so I can definitely see where you would get different results with completely different lenses (diff. manufacturers, lines, etc). However, that shouldn't invalidate the idea that as long as the location of the camera doesn't change in relation ot the subject, focal length and crop factor should have no effect on perspective or foreground to background compression. On the other hand that's a pretty extreme difference in crop factor between 135 and 8x10, so I suppose it's possible that there's some other effect at play that we don't see when going from, say, 135 to M43.
 
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Right. What dustylense seems to be describing and showing have to do with a lens's rectilinearity. From Wikipedia:

In photography, a rectilinear lens is a photographic lens that yields images where straight features, such as the walls of buildings, appear with straight lines, as opposed to being curved. In other words, it is a lens with little or no barrel or pincushion distortion. At particularly wide angles, however, the rectilinear perspective will cause objects to appear increasingly stretched and enlarged as they near the edge of the frame.
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--- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectilinear_lens

Furthermore, when you say your "17 TS," do you mean tilt-shift? Because I would think that a tilt-shifting lens adds a whole new variable into the mix. In fact, take a look at this review of the Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L Tilt-Shift Lens:

The TS-E 17mm f/4L optically turns to junk when tilted. Tilted as little as 1 degree, the image quality visibly deteriorates . . .
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--- See page 2 of the reviews. Sorry, I didn't see a way to link directly to a particular review.


The best way to test this is if someone has an A7S or some other camera with a crop mode, and they put a zoom lens on it. Shoot in full-frame mode at 50mm and then in crop mode at 35mm (or whatever exact focal length matches the crop factor). Obviously lock down the tripod between shots. And don't forget to change the f-stop by the same amount as the crop factor, to get the same depth of field. By using a zoom lens you factor out differences in optical quality between two lenses. Mathematically, and from some various tests scattered about the Internet, I'm convinced. But maybe someone can do a demonstration to erase all doubt.
 
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As unlikely as it may seem to a lot of people, the argument that "Panasonic isn't going to change horses and move to FF" doesn't really make sense to me if we recall that not too long ago Sony was only making APS sensor mirrorless cameras. Surely Panasonic can see the popularity of the A7 intro (messy as it was/is) and this would probably be an ideal time to wade into FF. If Sony can have a FF and cropped line of cameras sharing a mount what is to stop Panasonic? The Leica SL rumors are tantalizing, but I'm kinda-thinking its going to be some sort of downsized Leica S.

Whether FF is needed is another issue altogether, personally for Vid work the s35 format feels ideal to me and really doesn't represent any compromises, and I can live with m43 especially at GH4 prices. That said, I fully expect an incremental update with the sensor from the GX8 and all its image-stab tech in a GH3/GH4 body.

4:2:2 internal would be nice.
 
LyleGorch said:
If Sony can have a FF and cropped line of cameras sharing a mount what is to stop Panasonic?
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That's exactly what throws a wrench into this idea - as far as I have heard/read here, the m43 mount is not large enough for FF. However, it is large enough APS-C / Super 35, which is why I think that that is a possibility although not very likely. They could still do FF, but it would be a completely different mount from m43.
 
Shenan said:
That's exactly what throws a wrench into this idea - as far as I have heard/read here, the m43 mount is not large enough for FF. However, it is large enough APS-C / Super 35, which is why I think that that is a possibility although not very likely. They could still do FF, but it would be a completely different mount from m43.
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I just ran my digital micrometer over some of my collection of lenses and adapters, NEX/FE the internal throat average around 41mm where the m43s are all around 35mm, I actually have a lot of LTM stuff that I use for macro work and the internal throat on LTM are often narrower than m43's. Also the FFD for m43 is greater than that for Sony NEX/FE. So its possible.

So the next question is: how many FF format lenses did Sony have for NEX/FE mount when the A7 was introduced? Was it one or two?
 
i'm tired of 8bit internal.

i really want/need/desire/lust 10bit/422/internal.

ymmv

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
 
robfilms said:
i'm tired of 8bit internal...
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As of right now, the lowest priced camera with the internal 10-bit is Black Magic Design's URSA. Older models are shipping. New models, including Mini, may ship soon.

The point about Leica was that it likely has the Panasonic guts and thus a similar Panasonic camera - I am thinking AF-200 - might not be far away. GH5 should stay with the MFT DVX 200 specs.
 
I'm sure the GHx series will continue with the m43 mount and sensor size, and be a niche hybrid camera.

Telling all your existing customers to go chuck away their investment in glass wouldn't go down well in any circles. Especially with lots of m43 lenses on the roadmap.

As previously, most of the Lecia consumer stuff has just been rebranded Panasonics (thinking the point and shots) aren't they built in China/Japan and then shipped to Germany to be 'hand finished'?

Anyway, for sure I can see a FF Panasonic - it's would be this Lecia but 1/3 of the price and in plastic and not 'handmade'

but do they really need too? Really? What do they gain?
 
DLD said:
As of right now, the lowest priced camera with the internal 10-bit is Black Magic Design's URSA.
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DLD your slipping.

Blackmagic's Pocket & Micro are the lowest priced cameras with internal 10-bit, but imagine your well aware of that.
 
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