GH3 Sports Cinematography reel

Scim said:
Going back a few posts I definitely agree with Peter. Also just to be clear, even though I shot all of this on primes, I don't recommend it in the slightest! Any lens that will frame well near the net will be poor out in the neutral zone and beyond obviously. We do multi camera shoots for important state championships, like with a 50 behind the net, 85 in the wing and 135 at half, but dealing with the 180 rule when cutting angles together in a coherent sequence is always difficult. On the 85 I can never run it past 2.8, so the aperture is not an advantage for on the field. The Metabones speed booster is a life saver when shooting in dim gyms and rinks though. You can stop down to F4ish and still have the light needed for slightly higher shutter speed slow mo.

In terms of positioning, yes and no. Set up shots are pretty much impossible, and I am equally happy a shot from either side. It's nice to have a mix of players facing you broadside while shooting, but over the shoulder type shots are pretty neat to. I tend to rotate through lower shot percentage locations such as behind a goal and safer ones like corners and midfield to get a nice mix. There's some players that I know really well, and there's nothing better than seeing a play before it happens and shooting it perfectly!

The real reason I joined these boards was to get a feel on what other people are shooting with for lower budget "cinematic" sports rigs and just see how others shoot stuff like this. I'm getting an image stabilized 70-200 2.8 this spring and am trying to figure out the best way to balance pulling focus, zooming and tripod movement. I'm thinking about rigging up a motorcycle throttle grip on my tripod to actuate a focus whip for zoom control, but might have to bite the bullet on a motorized focus pull.
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I hear you about the primes! I've got some Nikkors from the dark ages - 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 135/3.5, as well as the Panny 25/1.4 and 12-35/2.8. I've been thinking about a used Canon 70-200/4.0 IS, as I got the Metabones Smart-T adapter for a recent birding trip to India with the 400/5.6 on my GH4, with GH3/Panny 100-300 on the side. The Met. .61X adapter would pull it down to a very useful ~ 42-120mm/2.5 range at a manageable size and cost, with full AF-S and IS function.

But the other thing I find very useful with primes shooting 4K is using the 2X dig. zoom - a central 1080HD crop - which is surprisingly clean, and as it's a 1:1 pixel ratio rather than the binned/line-skipped full sensor 1080p, seeming a bit sharper and more free of moire. It's upsampled back to 4K dimensions on the fly. Basically the same idea as using the ETC 2.4X mag. function in native 1080p - likewise a central 1080 crop. I have both of these options on the touch screen Fn tab, switching in seconds. Your effective aperture is not reduced as it would be with the 2-stop loss of a 2X TC, for a pretty nice free lunch...

Pete
 
The Nikkors still hold their value! I've been able to shoot for a friend on the canon 70-200 f4 is, super sharp and compact. It's really tempting to get but I think the Tamron 2.8 would be better for my uses, although the straight up Image quality does not seem to be as amazing. I really need to do my homework on different speedboosters with the gh4 vs gh3 and crop lenses. I know some third party APSCs work with the .64x (tokina 11-16), maybe my tamron 17-50 2.8 but I just need to dedicate a few hours to learn everything.

With a couple jobs I have lined up for next season I can definitely justify the 4k! Being able to have that much room to play with and downscale would be nice. Good point about the 1:1 pixel ratio. The availability of the now $500 GH4 interface with xlr audio and full SDI out would be nice to have as an option too, but Black magic SDI converters would be possible for a lower cost and hassle. I hope to use that working for a switching crew next winter, but no guarantees yet! Now, If only a certain camera would come out that would lower the cost of the GH4 before june...
 
Couple updates: I got the tamron 70-200 2.8 VC and love it (plus the focus rings turn the right direction!:cheesy:) and have been shooting a ton of video and stills and am getting some great opportunities. I also found a very nice deal and bought an used fs700r with 18-200 servo kit lens and metabones smart adapter (no speed booster, still need one but maybe in addition to the reach of the plain adapter). It fits what I need in terms of being broadcast capable with SDI and is exactly what I always wanted, the built in NDs, high iso, internal 240fps and external 4k RAW recording. By the time I kitted out a new GH4 with everything it would have been the same price wise. Not trying to thread jack myself with a camera outside of the panasonic GH range, but just thought I would update you guys! I'll definitely post up some sports projects I am working on in another thread.
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