GH4 What is wrong with the GH4 as a stills camera for weddings

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greytail

Well-known member
What is exactly wrong with using GH4s for stills at a wedding? From what I have learned, they are certainly fast enough for portraits and with the right lens, you can get lots of bokeh, Still images from 4K are possible. Added to this, it seems mega size prints are out in favor of Facebook sized images. Editing form a raw image in Photoshop or Lightroom seems to yield pretty good results
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Precisely, I do not think there is anything wrong except that I never see a photographer with one and when asked they always say Nikon and Canon are much better for stills. So if they think that, why is that so? Is is popular misconception or what. I hope a photog will jump in here :)
 
I own a panasonic gh4 for video and a nikon d750 for stills. In my amatuer experience trying to learn photography i get the same results on scenery shots with the 2 cameras. I use the same lens equivalent (panny 12-35 2.8 and the tamron 24-70 2.8). If taking photos of people at a wider angle the nikon gets some shallow depth of field and makes a group shot or family shot for a wedding look great, the panasonic has everything in focus and looks not much better than a phone photo. If you use a lens that is 45mm on the panasonic or higher, then you will see the nice bokeh and the panasonic starts to compete with the nikon again. So for scenery/extreme wide shots and close ups I love the gh4 for photography. For all the shots of groups of people or just family hanging out I really dislike the gh4. This is my opinion though and i'm not a pro photographer. I feel like the gh4 hits infinity focus at a close distance so no matter how low your aputure is on a lens shorter than a 40mm its hard to get bokeh unless you are a few feet from the subject
 
Look, the GH4 is a fine stills camera, there's nothing really wrong with it. But the truth is that there are other cameras that are simply better at stills. The A7s will always kill it at low light, for example. Other full frame cameras may be preferred for aesthetic reasons due to DOF and MP count (more MP allows more freedom to crop, etc). Weddings can have inconsistent lighting conditions depending on venue, and get downright dark at the reception, so a camera that can handle low light at a higher iso than the GH4 might be preferred. If someone was looking to purchase a camera purely for wedding photography, I probably wouldn't recommend the GH4. If they were looking for video, I'd recommend it in a heartbeat. This doesn't mean the GH4 is a bad or incapable stills camera.
 
So the key to all this is to use faster lenses? I have the Olympus 45mm and the Nocitron 42.5. Should i stand back a bit more for the family photos and open up the f-stop with a faster shutter?
 
greytail said:
So the key to all this is to use faster lenses? I have the Olympus 45mm and the Nocitron 42.5. Should i stand back a bit more for the family photos and open up the f-stop with a faster shutter?
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Those lenses would get GREAT photos. The thing is thats basically an 85 and 90mm lens which wouldnt be used too much in a wedding reception. For portraits and decorations at the wedding those will be perfect though. I actually have been disappointed in the nikon d750 low light photos. I think they are almost worse than my gh4 at 1600 or 3200 iso. They make dark areas in the background extremely blotchy. And the GH3 is pretty much as good as the gh4 for photos if im not mistaken? you can get one of those for CHEAP theses days.
 
I think a lot of things come into play.

First, Photographers want autofocus and therefore want to use lenses that are native to whatever camera they want.
Most of them already have canon or nikon glass, so its a big investment to move to the gh4.

Second, gh4 looks small. It doesnt look as professional as a big canon fullframe with a battery grip.

Third, most of them are used to the menus, feel, etc of the canon or nikon cameras and trust the cameras.

So if I were also them I would not like to spend money on new lenses and accessories and have to relearn menus and test the reliability of panasonic BUT still get the same image quality.
 
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