Shadowplay - low light Zeiss GH1 footage

commanderspike

commanderspike

Carbonite Member
Took my fast lenses out on a whim last night. This is the first time I've used such fast lenses on any camera I've owned, let alone a video camera. So it was a nice surprise - like stepping into new territory for me. I've a Zeiss Planar 85mm F1.4 for £180 and it's worth the 4x extra over a Canon FD.

In testing out these lenses I have decided to give up on 1080 24p for now because I can achieve more creative freedom with the 720p mode. The firmware updated 1/25 shutter works well. It almost looks the same as native 24p and gives you a small extra notch of low light performance. The entire video is shot at 1/25 in 60p mode :) There is no risk of mud and jello is almost a none-issue. Ultra low light time lapses can be achieved with a shutter like 1/5, with speed at 500% in Final Cut Pro. For the opposite affect you can have proper slow motion in 720p. You can't do any of this in the full HD mode.

sp1.jpg


sp3.jpg


sp2.jpg


I enjoyed shooting this and couldn't imagine not having that rotatable LCD to hand. It's a massively underrated feature. Creatively, if I did this again I'd make a more abstract video, with more bokeh, more shallow DOF shots and more strangeness. But I am satisfied with the end result from just a few hours work.

http://www.vimeo.com/5744461
 
Hi, I wonder if "Atmosphere" would of added more to the video? love shadoplay too, but just wondering? great video and the new long shutter is a real bonus!

Has anybody tried upsampling 720p footage and comparing against native 1080 just to see what you lose?
 
Tameside said:
Hi, I wonder if "Atmosphere" would of added more to the video? love shadoplay too, but just wondering? great video and the new long shutter is a real bonus!

Has anybody tried upsampling 720p footage and comparing against native 1080 just to see what you lose?
Click to expand...

Yeah the long shutters and 1/25 is a real bonus for low light. The video would have looked quite different in 720 with the previous firmware at 1/30 and without the long exposure takes which add so much. Nice suggestion for the song by the way :) I have other favourite Joy Division tracks but decided to cut it to this one, music is a subjective thing.
 
Great job - I think 'Shadowplay' works well for this clip. Damn, wish I could find those Zeiss for the money you do over here.

The overexposed shoots look super and weird at the same time, especially the high rise. We have a new camera trick now. "Night-for-Day" :)
 
Music subjective, correct. Am going to do some tests just to see what you lose in 25p vs 60p. So in 1/25 and panning around a bit, no stutter? smooth motion? Wonder why its only available full manual and not in S priority.
 
Nice demo of the camera in low light and looking clean. Do you not see any drop in quality shooting at 1/25? When looking at the lcd and dropping the shutter below 1/60 in 720/50, the image on screen looks like the cineframe mode on the Sony cameras, so I've avoided it to this point. I want to try some more low light, so will give it a try myself.
 
1/25 shutter seems to sit somewhere between native 24p and 30p with the advantages of both.

Via HDMI out 24p has an inconsistent stutter, but 720p 1/25 is steadier. However I think that might be down to the demands of outputting an HDMI signal and I haven't noticed this so much when editing 24p footage.
 
commanderspike said:
1/25 shutter seems to sit somewhere between native 24p and 30p with the advantages of both.

Via HDMI out 24p has an inconsistent stutter, but 720p 1/25 is steadier. However I think that might be down to the demands of outputting an HDMI signal and I haven't noticed this so much when editing 24p footage.
Click to expand...

Does the USA version have 1/24th? What are the total shutter speeds with the new firmware?

At the end of the video you have a time lapse; how was that shot? 720/60-1600asa sped up

I hear that if you set the 3200iso in photo mode, however push video record, you can shoot at 3200iso too.
 
My camera is a NTSC Japanese model. Shutter speed is 1/25, 1/30, 1/40, 1/50, 1/60. Whenever there is a 20, like 1/125 it seems to add a 5.

Time lapse was ISO 1600, shutter 1/5. Slow shutter introduces more motion blur obviously, so fast movement is gonna be pretty blurred, but with the slow moving clouds not so much. Then speed up in Final Cut Pro.

ISO 3200 in video mode - interesting, I will give that a try.
 
Some of the best night stuff yet from this camera. I really can't wait to get my camera and throw on my 1.4's. Really great stuff and makes me want to get some Joy Division music. I wasn't aware they performed that song originally. Very cool!

Now for a question... Same lens for every shot? There were some shots where the bokeh was polygonal-shaped but your frame grabs above show round. Also, on those polygonal-shaped bokeh they looked deformed, like there's something wrong with the aperture plates and light is slipping through the cracks or something.
 
The aperture plates on the Zeiss 85mm I have cause that pattern with the bokeh. Fully open the bokeh is round, but when the lens stops down the bokeh is not perfectly round and you can see the outline of the iris at a certain focus.

I actually quite like it :) But... erm... is my lens knackered?
 
It's not the polygonal shape that got me. It's the sort of line of light spilling outside the shape at the corners. It's like the plates aren't resting against each other when the iris is closed. Or they aren't properly aligned.
 
I wonder what the GH1 really does when 60p is shot with shutters under 1/30. We already knew from previous experiments from other people in this forum that going under 1/60 made the camera record double frames, resulting in 30p inside a 60p wrapper.
If you go under 1/30 I guess it will repeat even more frames, maybe record triple frames resulting in 20p or cuadruple frames resulting in 15p footage.
Maybe I'll try to download this 60p footage shot at 1/25 shutter from Vimeo and see what is happening. Checking raw footage would be even better!!
Great footage by the way!!
 
Very good footage - makes me feel confident the GH1 has a lot of the same low light possibilities as the MKII.

Did you do anything special to the file before editing? Like convert from 60p or retime or anything? Or just transcode to an editing codec and then drop it on the timeline?
 
dmoreno said:
I wonder what the GH1 really does when 60p is shot with shutters under 1/30. We already knew from previous experiments from other people in this forum that going under 1/60 made the camera record double frames, resulting in 30p inside a 60p wrapper.
If you go under 1/30 I guess it will repeat even more frames, maybe record triple frames resulting in 20p or cuadruple frames resulting in 15p footage.
Maybe I'll try to download this 60p footage shot at 1/25 shutter from Vimeo and see what is happening. Checking raw footage would be even better!!
Great footage by the way!!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I downloaded the quicktime from Vimeo and stepped through it. It is essentially playing back at 20 fps (3 repeated frames for each frame in the 60P stream), so it's just like if you were using a Canon T1i! ;-)

Cool footage though. :beer:
 
i'm not following. it's 60p at 1/25 shutter? what's the good in that, just to have the extra bit of light? are the frames now being double and or tripled?
anyway you can upload an original file with some type of action so we/I can check out the frames?
 
dmoreno said:
I wonder what the GH1 really does when 60p is shot with shutters under 1/30.
Click to expand...

I shot the entire "A Kindling Light" with 1/2 shutter speed. The file actually only has 2 new frames per second even if it's reported as 50 fps, basically it looks like it recorded just the i-frames. Toast that I mainly use for transcoding couldn't make heads or tail of it but Voltaic handled it.
 
Mike@AF said:
It's not the polygonal shape that got me. It's the sort of line of light spilling outside the shape at the corners. It's like the plates aren't resting against each other when the iris is closed. Or they aren't properly aligned.
Click to expand...

I found out the earlier Zeiss lenses have this 'ninja star' bokeh as a characteristic. It's not a fault, just part of the charm :)

20p inside a 60p wrapper? Are you sure? Because 1/25 shutter looks more fluid than the 1/20 shutter, so it must be storing those extra 5fps somewhere?
 
I think this is all just stunning.. I love the shot of the row of houses.. just looked so cinematic and I love the color palette that's in the shots.. just so creamy and full of goodness. Man I liked it.

Also great to hear about you shooting in blackpool. I'm from Nottingham myself and Blackpool sounds like a great location for a feature.. wish I was over there now to assist... Good luck and I hope we get to see a lot more of your footage.

Really really nice stuff man. I have been looking for this cam for months and it's no where to be found in the states...
 
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