GH4 Very Disappointed

estarkey7 said:
The GH4 noise is solely in the luma channel as well. The H246 codec is what starts to degrade the entire image as encoding steals bits from important stuff and applies it to the noise. After seeing that footage, I'll take the GH4 with a Ninja 2's ProRes/DnHD any day
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Remember I said this is severely underexposed to start with. No GH4 nor 5Dmkiii would have handled it any better. Probably not even as well as this. *Maybe* a Sony A7s might have. The huge grain in the Black and White segments was added in by the VFX. That's not just switching the footage to desaturate. Point being - how much color data is there to work with? A lot. Because it's RAW. Not any DNxHD recorder is going to hold that much. Even the Pocket itself in ProRes doesn't hold that much.

GH4 has plenty of chroma noise. It's not solely luma noise. No digital camera has solely luma noise.
 
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Jim Simon said:
I use the original 14-140 with a Format .6 ND for shooting outdoors, and the 12-35, 35-100 and 20mm pancake for shooting indoors. I am very interested in what I might find in older C-mount lenses, but as yet I haven't had the time to even look.

I am planning on the Canon Speedbooster along with the Canon 24mm 2.8, which has OIS. That should give me something quite usable for dark wedding receptions.

The forthcoming Cinema version of the venerable Sigma 18-35 is also on my wish list. (If that thing only had OIS, it would be the perfect reception lens.)

I haven't yet seen any artifacts in BMPCC footage, but there's still two projects yet to edit.

Sound is not great, but I also found it less than acceptable on the GH4 as well. I'll be buying the new Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro with Rycote suspension. (I would have bought that even if I stuck with the GH4.)

Surprisingly, the stereo separation on the BMPCC is superior to that of the GH4. It's just missing some fullness (bass), it's a bit thin in character. The Rode should handle that.
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Thanks for your answers, Jim. Oh, man, check out what is available in Super16 zooms for C, PL, and other mounts that should be adaptable. Some sweet zooms that would be out of most people's affordability range in any other format. Stuff like Angenieux 12-120 f/2.2, 9.5-95 f/2.2, and 9.5-57 t/1.8. Proper cine zooms. Unfortunately I understand that a lot of BMPCC owners had this exact same idea. How could they not? Most of the Super 16 lenses on ebay specifically mention BMPCC in the title. This has apparently caused the prices for vintage Super 16 lenses to go way up in the last few years. But it's still relatively affordable (up to $1k or so right now on ebay) if you think about what you're getting for that money. Unfortunately these are all from the times before OIS.
 
Martin Murphy said:
with the GH4 compression I've found that moving around the color and exposure in the computer makes the image quickly fall apart
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That was also my experience, especially with V-Log. In fact, a company I shoot for told me not to shoot in V-Log because their editor saw the same as well.

Both ProRes and especially RAW offer a lot more room in post.
 
DPStewart said:
the BMPCC's noise is far far more pleasing looking than any Panasonic noise.
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I have noticed that as well. The BMPCC noise from ISO 1600 isn't that objectionable to me. It looks like a mild film grain, whereas the noise from V-Log, even at ISO 400, is just fugly, man.
 
Hey, Jim, I am curious about something.

You're talking about the Sigma 12-35 cine zoom, which is $4,000.

Yet, you seem reluctant to go for a larger size sensor, which will give you a superior low light performance and, in most case, a superior auto focus to the Pocket Cam.
 
Jim Simon said:
Holy freakin' crap, are you kidding me?! ...
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Nope. The prices have been announced last week.

GL Optics cine conversions run as high as $4,300 but offer a 300 degree focus rotation at that price. Sigma's own is 160, IIRC.
 
DLD said:
GL Optics cine conversions run as high as $4,300
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It used to be a ridiculously overpriced $3500. I mean c'mon, the optics are the difficult part. The freaking barrel is nothing. But I figure they're kind of doing "one-offs" (sort of), and it has to be worth their while.

But for Sigma to charge that?! That's just greedy, man. A God damn "cinema tax". This kind of bulls*%te makes me wish I was a billionaire, just so I could do the same as thing GL Optics, but give the lenses away for free, just to fock with Sigma's bottom line.

Or better yet, develop a whole range of proper "video" lenses and sell them below cost, fock with everyone's bottom line.

Futher muckers!
 
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Jim Simon said:
It used to be a ridiculously overpriced $3500. I mean c'mon, the optics are the difficult part. The freaking barrel is nothing. But I figure they're kind of doing "one-offs" (sort of), and it has to be worth their while.

But for Sigma to charge that?! That's just greedy, man. A God damn "cinema tax". This kind of bulls*%te makes me wish I was a billionaire, just so I could do the same as thing GL Optics, but give the lenses away for free, just to fock with Sigma's bottom line.

Or better yet, develop a whole range of proper "video" lenses and sell them below cost, fock with everyone's bottom line.

Futher muckers!
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I like your style Jim!

Now join the party over at BMCUser.com
 
I really don't mean to rock the boat but 4K for a rehoused (not resleaved) zoom is a pretty darn good price. If you don't mind sleaving, Lock Circle does a great job with the Zeiss ZF lenses at a much lower price. We picked up a set just for backups with some of our RED cameras and are impressed with the build quality and smooth ring. There seems to be a lack of understanding of what goes into rehousing, and it's worth every penny. If it doesn't seem worth it to you then it's not for you. Nothing wrong with using stills housing. Light weight, small, perfect for gimbal work.
 
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Kindredmachine said:
I really don't mean to rock the boat but 4K for a rehoused (not resleaved) zoom is a pretty darn good price.
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I don't think it is, considering Sigma isn't rehousing it. They're not taking anything apart and rebulding it. They're simply building it from scratch using different parts, and I'm having a very hard time believing those parts account for the massive price difference.

I would expect the glass to be the hard part. I would expect both versions to be comparable in price, around the $800 mark. I expect this because I see this with other companies lenses. The photo and cinema versions are not that different in price. (In fact, B&H has the cinema version of the Rokinon 24mm m4/3 mount $30 cheaper than the photo version!)
 
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The Rokinons are toys. While I expected the cine price from Sigma to be a bit lower too, cinema lenses are usually very expensive from everyone else. It's only recently that the prices are slowly declining because the competition is brutal.
 
Jim, stills glass is manufactured to be cheap and mass produced so the price can stay low since more volume is entering the market. Cine glass is a niche market and each unit tends to be hand build because very few sets are made. If you know anything about manufacturing, milling a custom piece in low quantity skyrockets the price. Anything custom built falls in the same ballpark which is why we pay $175 for a RED to Helix power cable from Letus. It's just the way it is... and yes, when you're talking about cheap glass, the mechanics are ALWAYS far more costly. Also, someone in our office has a set of the Rokinons lenses you're speaking of and they are indeed garbage.

You want expensive? Look at Arri Ultra Primes...
 
Jim, your posts also tend to expose your inexperience so why do you care about cine glass anyway? You do realize that just one feature is that the mount is rotated 90 degrees so the markings are on the side rather than the top so an assistant can watch exposure and focus. If you're a one man band then why would you need that? Sounds like you just want the looks, not the functions.

If that's the case, then why can't you just use the stills version and be happy knowing you're getting the same resolvable resolution etc...?
 
Bern Caughey said:
The mechanics of any lens is typically more complex to design, & build, then the optics.
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I'm skeptical of that. All they're really doing here is adding three rings to an already designed lens. They're even leaving out auto-focus capability, which seems like it should make the lens even cheaper.

I'm just very hard pressed to believe the huge price difference here is anything more than a "cinema tax", a needless upcharge they get away with solely because they can.
 
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