Zacuto Shootout (GH1 specific)

I was down with this test till bloom basically showed we don't know how to use a GH1 and don't have optimal settings. Then they compare that to his mastered canon presets that give him the 'film' look they are all going for... not a fair test. You also see them monitoring and tweaking the canon settings on the fly - we know they didn't do that with the GH1.
 
Still, even with the test being what it was, people can't say that the GH1's footage didn't look good against the competition. Now, it didn't look it's best and that's unfortunate, but it wasn't the mess of artifacts and jumbled noise that every one would lead you to believe it should have been up against everybody's favorite cameras. I mean, I have heard that if you shoot a tree, or have leaves in your shots, the GH1 would explode and the shrapnel would kill children for a 50 mile radius...

@MadHMC150
I'm with you- "baked in look?" What's that mean? Not the words I would expect a pro colorist to use with footage that has been shot by cinematographers and pro whatever.
 
pharpsied said:
Still, even with the test being what it was, people can't say that the GH1's footage didn't look good against the competition. Now, it didn't look it's best and that's unfortunate, but it wasn't the mess of artifacts and jumbled noise that every one would lead you to believe it should have been up against everybody's favorite cameras. I mean, I have heard that if you shoot a tree, or have leaves in your shots, the GH1 would explode and the shrapnel would kill children for a 50 mile radius...

@MadHMC150
I'm with you- "baked in look?" What's that mean? Not the words I would expect a pro colorist to use with footage that has been shot by cinematographers and pro whatever.
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Thats what I am saying... maybe they should put warnings on the GH1 - Warning! Could Bake your talent - use with caution...

If anything - I have used a mix of canon dslrs and the footage they produce (out of the box with only a little tweaking) its no where near that of what bloom gets out of it... Its great to see the 5D has the ability to perform so well, but its a lot of settings to get right and a DVD to buy - Hrmmmmm... Also at the cost of a few GH1's for just a body? And give up features only the GH1 has - not now not never - thats what I say :)
 
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Point is just that, the GH1 heald up well, even though the others were shown at their optimum and tweaked to their optimum, GH1 was thrown in just to make it look unbiased, but by doing so just demonstrated their total bias to the Canon platform. Fair enough, Canon does have a better platform but doesnt mean it the best, just the most flexible. I for one hope that Sony and Panasonic up the ante in this market. Ideally we need an APS-C evf solution. At this moment only the GH1 has the evf solution, if Sony was to add the evf to their upcoming system then it could be very interesting. Ultimately we need more EVIL solutions like the GH1, and larger sensors. This approach to cinema is still in its infancy but is getting very interesting as we can all appreciate.
 
Why is it that in these "shoot outs" people shoot Panasonic cameras at the default with out setting up the adjustments correctly, the same thing happened when the HVX200 came out and the reviewer pan it till he got so much feed back that he had to do a reshoot with adjustments to the base setting, and low and behold it looked great. One of the aspects that a lot of us like about Panasonic is the ability to "paint" it the way we like.
 
MadHMC150 said:
Thats what I am saying... maybe they should put warnings on the GH1 - Warning! Could Bake your talent - use with caution...

If anything - I have used a mix of canon dslrs and the footage they produce (out of the box with only a little tweaking) its no where near that of what bloom gets out of it... Its great to see the 5D has the ability to perform so well, but its a lot of settings to get right and a DVD to buy - Hrmmmmm... Also at the cost of a few GH1's for just a body? And give up features only the GH1 has - not now not never - thats what I say :)
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lol! Agreed.

And you hit the nail on the head; Bloom's 7d work is stunning, amazing, and I've yet to see it equal- and that's the problem.
 
Ben_B said:
...if you shoot on Normal or Smooth mode, on -2 Contrast, on +1 Sharpness, on -2 Noise Reduction, and on 0 Saturation I know from experience that it looks much more like the way they made the Canons look...particularly on the tub scene.
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***HIJACK ALERT***

Are these settings that would emulate the Canons' look or are these what you use?

Do you have multiple user settings? Do you posting or PM'ing?

On another note- COLOR SPACE- sRGB or Adobe RGB?? are these for stills only?

thanks
 
Yak said:
One of the aspects that a lot of us like about Panasonic is the ability to "paint" it the way we like.
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This is what makes me as close to a fanboy as I'm gonna get. My tests with this camera show that extremely good results come with a minimum of effort.

But we must remember that the GH1 was an afterthought camera that was thrown in to justify the buzz that it got when it was released. It was even placed after a 720p only camera at the bottom of the list, and it was said that it wasn't even expected to place among the choices (paraphrase). Maybe it was to seem unbiased as Tameside said, or maybe it was to appease us- the proud and loyal users, but the fact of the matter is that it didn't look like sh*t like it was supposed to against these cameras, it didn't fall apart completely in to unusable oblivion, and it showed that us that we are on the right track by actually learning how to use this tool.

Although I can do without the huge "let's talk about how dreamy the Canons are" breaks, the obviously clipped comments on anything without a number before the D in the title, and the lame attempts to boil the whole thing down to the 5d and 7d vs film (IMHO), I appreciate the shoot out for showing me the value of these cameras, but mostly the fact that the Hollywood mentality doesn't have to extend to gear as far as the end user is concerned.
 
And before there's too much gnashing of teeth, lighting of torches and angry mob gathering, just remember that your GH1 is just as good today as it was yesterday. Who really cares what Bloom, Weiss or anyone else think? Even if they claim the 5DII is the "winner," it's only the champion in their own minds, and for their own purposes.

After seeing JDS's short film "Depth of Phil" (shot on the GH1) on the big screen, nothing anyone could say would ever change my opinion that ANY of these cameras can, in the right hands, produce images that may not be the equal of 35mm film, but for the price are close enough for government work.

Sure, the tests about latitude and dynamic range have some value, as it may help guide users in setting up their cameras in certain conditions. But if you (heart) your GH1, and you and your clients are happy with the footage it produces, that's all that matters.

Go. Shoot. Learn. Grow.
 
Who really cares what Bloom, Weiss or anyone else think? If you (heart) your GH1, and you and your clients are happy with the footage it produces, that's all that matters.
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These guys are considered experts, and that's why we should care. Their opinions have value among the filmmaking/photography community. If their opinions generate a negative image of the GH1 that is unwarranted, it can have an effect on how clients perceive the camera and thereby your credibility. That's why it matters. Plus, it's the principle of it. If the test is faulty because the experts are ignorant of how to make the GH1 perform at it's best, then claim that the GH1 is inferior, then that's a problem.

I'm not using my GH1 to make money, I use it to make short films, so I personally don't care, but I can see how it should matter to those using it to make a living. But others are right: this was just a latitude test. When it comes to aliasing and moire problems, it's another story.
 
cept for the banding i thought the GH1 looked good.
I also wouldnt say that phillip bloom has no idea what he is doing.
Since his GH1 footage is some of the best i have seen. These tests are fun tho:)
 
This is the point!

This is the point!

The GH1 should of had an f2 and 0.5 focal length lens to be equiv to the f4 full frame Canon, then we are comparing like with like. At this equivalent set-up, we will see new differences, eg the higher sensitivity of the GH1 etc etc. These Guys are so called pro's maybe they should act like it.
 
I'm a big GH1 fan, but my understanding is that Bloom feels (and was saying here) that he cannot dial down the GH1 settings to where he'd like. Obviously he's aware of the ability to use the different profiles in Camera, but -2 on the GH1 isn't the same as on the Canon, or there isn't as much flexibility, or the GH1 is just sharper overall and can't get quite as backed off. Whatever the exact combo or reasoning, whether we agree with them or not, I don't believe we can argue that Bloom doesn't know how to tweak these cameras...

That being said, I thought the GH1 looked the best outside of film for the tub-scene. And I was a little surprised by (was it the colorist?) saying it had a baked in or artificial look.

I don't believe this test was biased at all. With that in mind, however, I believe that the Canons have become 'the DSLRs' and it wouldn't make much sense to spend a lot of time on the quirky options from these folks point of view. It's amazing...at Bloom's seminar and meet-up a couple of weeks ago, I'd say most of the people present hadn't even heard of the GH1.

I love the camera, I like the 7D too, and I want a 5D (not least because I think taking stills on it might be amazing). Bottom line is it's an exciting time!
 
PappasArts said:
Exactly! I posted about this awhile ago. The setting ( Nostalgic ) has a very flat contrast, however I never see it used.
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http://www.vimeo.com/9591567

Shot that music video with the 7D and GH1. The GH1 is all the slider shots and snorricam. I ended up degrading the image a bunch for the look, but the original gh1 footage was quite warm like the 2 jpegs attached and had pretty nice DR for moving throughout a building with nothing in the way of controlled lighting other than bounce board.

Between the grabs and the final video though, it shows you can manipulate the GH1 image quite a bit, so the whole baked in things seems silly. Shooting default on a GH1 or in Dynamic mode is like shooting a 7D or 5D2 on faithful. There's a seriously baked in look for the Canons.

The grabs have a bit of CC for added contrast, so even those really don't show the full Latitude you can get in Nostalgic, but it's still good enough to show that you can get an image that isn't "Baked" in while shooting.
 
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I have to concede to some of your comments. As angry as I would like to be, I have to be objective. But I just have a problem with the format of the presentation. It would be impossible to be truly just with all of the cameras without someone crying foul; however, I was watching the shoot out to see how my camera of choice stacked up with film, and I don't see a problem with showing an honest comparison with film. It would take a lot more time and would be a lot more post intensive, but showing how each camera stacked up to the film examples in their own right and in their own way would have been much more interesting to me... 5d mkii vs. Kodak, 7d vs. Kodak, D3s vs. Fuji, so that we could see the camera's merit against the gold standard. Alas, that is not what this is apparently... it's a shoot out to see which one is better against film which makes it a shoot out amongst the cameras themselves.

But many are correct- it's really not about this, but what you do with what you have. I hope to use this to learn the heights and the limits of my camera against the standard and shoot with the big screen in mind and not just web or DVD, and I'm gonna do this whether or not they say anything substantial at all about the non-canon (double entendre) cameras.
 
Kellar42 said:
That being said, I thought the GH1 looked the best outside of film for the tub-scene. And I was a little surprised by (was it the colorist?) saying it had a baked in or artificial look.
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Contrast can be pumped up on the other cameras as well. But this was a latitude test, so going nuts with the contrast (which apparently some people like as your quote suggests) was not the goal.

The GH1 cannot be tweaked to a point where it has as much latitude as the 5D. By definition, it will look more contrasty but have less detail.
 
Chris_TC said:
Contrast can be pumped up on the other cameras as well. But this was a latitude test, so going nuts with the contrast (which apparently some people like as your quote suggests) was not the goal.

The GH1 cannot be tweaked to a point where it has as much latitude as the 5D. By definition, it will look more contrasty but have less detail.
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To my eyes, upon inspection, the GH1 looked closer to the fuji and kodak as far as the magazine (and the stuff around it), the bamboo and the tiles on the wall were concerned and although the bricks were washed, the shadow detail was pleasing to my eye. We didn't even have comments from the guys in the theater about it and what specifically they liked or didn't like about it though. If they had put the res chart up first and then showed the tub scene, would the conversation be about the contrast or how it held up against a 4 stop deficit in latitude?
 
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