Queston: Your Opinion About Canon EOS70D vs Nikon D5300 vs Panasonic GH4?

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Denniscasey

Well-known member
I expect I should have posted in the DSLR section but over the years I have received such helpful comments from this forum I thought I would try this forum also. There are some good buys on Canon EOS70D and Nikon D5300 offering a reasonably low priced way to try out DSLR for video and still photos. I continue to like my HMC40 and expect to use it for most video. However, would like to explore shallow depth of field as well as have a good camera for still photos. For instance, yesterday evening we had a thunderstorm move through and then sun came out to highlight fall colors on trees with background of black clouds. I used HMC40 to capture but have not used dynamic range expander or whatever it is called so the contrast between sunlit trees and black clouds was washed out. And from previous posts I know HMC40 is not intended to be best at still photos.

So I would appreciate comments on 70D vs D5300 in following areas:

1. Which offers best auto focus for video following fast moving action (i.e. race cars)

2. Which would offer best dynamic color range (if that is right term) for capturing high contrast scenes like I described above--I don't really know which spec in the camera would allow me to compare.

3. Other features I should know about to compare DSLR--for instance I know some cameras offer still photo features (just a made-up example possibly white balance control) not available in video mode.

I have looked at GH4 to get 4K ability, but with lense(s) cost would be a fair amount more and my other equipment (tv, blu-ray burner, video editing software, etc) is not yet ready for 4K and I am not tech savvy enough to be an early innovator.

Thank you, Dennis
 
Hey Dennis Have you looked at the FZ1000 ..Ok, it doesn't have interchangeable lenses BUT it has an awesome zoom range, good autofocus and amazing value for money and it shoots 4K too!! If you are wanting an interchangeable lens camera then I would still head towards the GH4 rather than the Canon cameras. Take a look at a few samples shot with the FZ1000 on YouTube or Vimeo ...you will be quite amazed at the results people are getting and the price is right too!!!
 
70D has the best auto focus. Don't underestimate the value of 4K for 1080 delivery, though. The GH4's image is significantly better than the 70D's. D5300 probably not for you. Consider aforementione FZ1000 and RX10
 
Gentlemen, thank you for info. I have been wanting to get a good camera for still photos and also experiment with narrow DOF "cinematic" look of DSLR hence questions about DSLRs. I have also thought a lot about getting GH4 for these purposes and also to be ready for 4K. Thought being I could shoot in 4K and keep that footage but as wgtwo mentions downconvert to 1080 delivery now. Right now I use Media Composer for editing (MC7 now may upgrade to MC8 if it provides 4K editing) but it looks complex for 4K editing and downconverting for Blu-ray burning. Which software do you use for editing 4K and downconverting to burn Blu-ray--I am not great with technology so would want something not too complex. Dennis
 
Depends on your operating system, but if I had a GH4 (I don't), I would use MPEG Steamclip or FFMPEG + AnotherGUI to transcode to 1080p DNxHD before editing. Then if you want to reframe with 4K footage etc, you can replace specific clips with 4K ones.
 
wgtwo said:
Depends on your operating system, but if I had a GH4 (I don't), I would use MPEG Steamclip or FFMPEG + AnotherGUI to transcode to 1080p DNxHD before editing. Then if you want to reframe with 4K footage etc, you can replace specific clips with 4K ones.
Click to expand...

Thanks for suggestion. I admit to being pretty much a "rote" editor with MC at this point--means I can do specific tasks without understanding much about CODECS and formats--but your approach sounds like a good work around until NLE's come up with a way to do this within their system. Dennis
 
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