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Category: Panasonic GH3

27 September 2016

While we wait for the GH5: Review of the VARY-i GH4 & GH3 Viewfinder

Written by Paul Moon

Is it just me, or did that GH5 announcement at Photokina seem a bit rushed?  What they brought was only a caged, not-working shell, which amounts to showing up empty-handed.  Panasonic did commit to announcing a few upgrades from the GH4:  internal 4K 30 frames per second recording at 10-bit 4:2:2, and 60 frames per second at 8-bit 4:2:0; and something mostly useless to filmmakers called 6K Photo (burst mode, basically).  What they could not commit to is fixing two Achille’s heels of the GH4:  in-body image stabilization, and improvements to the light sensitivity of the necessarily small Micro Four Thirds sensor.  Betting odds are in favor of them actually delivering on those two critical features (as if they have the choice now, in this market).  But we have to wait until 2017.

What does this mean for the GH4, and the GH3 for that matter?  Well, their non-working GH5 shell certainly looked a lot like the GH4 body, which was almost exactly like the GH3 body, so maybe they’ll keep it going.  That would be great news for those of us who invested in accessories to rig up our cameras.  I created a widely-circulated guide to rigging, in the below video.

One of the themes in my video was that the G-Cup eyepiece created by Miller & Schneider (still the best you can get) adds a critical third point of contact, to stabilize shooting hand-held.  And another key point:  Zacuto didn’t quite get it right with their adapted Z-Finder system on the GH3 and GH4:  over-complicated, expensive, and cropping the view.  I explain this starting from the 3:48 mark (you can click this link to go straight there).

Thankfully, just like Miller & Schneider, another independent entrepreneur has created a large-sized loupe that performs better than the Z-Finder using the rear LCD screen, as an alternative to the more portable G-Cup that attaches to the cameras’ smaller eyecup display.  Fitting both the GH3 and GH4, it adds a diopter for eyeglass wearers, more points of contact for steady hand-holding, and sturdy protection of the swing-out LCD screen.  (Indeed, when I got one of the first GH4s arriving to market, the rear screen flickered badly, as if a loose connection, and required replacement — straight out of the box, not because of rough treatment, suggesting that the swing-out LCD screen is delicate.)

vary-i-gh4-loupe-01

The VARY-i costs €229.75 Euros, and if you’re in the United States, after shipping it’ll cost you about $275 USD.  If you do any serious hand-held shooting with your GH3 or GH4, I think it’s worth it.

vary-i-gh4-loupe-04Something you’ll notice from this top view is that there is a red diopter ring that twists into a lens correction that might or might not match your eyesight, without wearing glasses.  It’s not as advanced as Zacuto’s, also lacking their patented anti-fog coating, but it’s a great bonus if it you normally wear eyeglasses.  That said, I found that regardless of the diopter, I was able to use the VARY-i comfortably with eyeglasses on, too.  Another thing you’ll notice is a switch next to the diopter ring:  it activates a snappy, sturdy shutter over the loupe to protect the glass as well as the rare possibility of direct sunlight getting magnified and damaging the LCD screen.

vary-i-gh4-loupe-08The VARY-i is somewhat “modular”: you first attach a proprietary baseplate to the bottom of the camera, as seen in the above pictures from several angles (click each to enlarge).  You’ll notice a molded simple lens mount on the surface, which might further stabilize but actually can cause a bit of trouble:  you’ll see in the last picture that it can skew everything off-perpendicular (I moved the set screw as far as I could), but that small amount didn’t cause any problem.  Moreover, it’s not an adjustable height, so you may have lenses (like the one you’ll see in these pictures) with a wider lens barrel, fitting differently than any slimmer barrel.  That said, the main purpose of the baseplate is to slide your camera into position onto the loupe’s bottom bracket fitting into the slot you see, then lock it there using the red thumbscrew (which is a little hard to turn with any lens in-place, butting right up against the barrel, but it has a flat-head screwdriver slot for tightening too.  You’ll see in the picture at right that the baseplate includes both 1/4″-20 and 3/8″ threaded sockets for mounting options, so that you can leave the VARY-i attached while using a tripod.

vary-i-gh4-loupe-10vary-i-gh4-loupe-09As seen at left, the rear LCD screen slides into a protective sleeve, and once everything’s in place, it’s surprisingly sturdy.  There’s one more thumb screw (seen at right) to tighten, further reinforcing the bracket’s connection.

The below pictures give a wider view from below of how the VARY-i hooks onto your camera.

vary-i-gh4-loupe-13One of the great features of the GH3 and GH4 is its articulating LCD screen, which means that it can flip out and turn in all directions (compared to, for example, the Sony a7 series which is comparatively limited).  The VARY-i takes advantage of this by also letting you adjust the angle of the viewfinder loupe, as seen below.  You can pivot it up, to look down while pointing forward, or pivot it down, to look up while pointing forward, as you’ll choose whatever gives you the best leverage for different shooting conditions.  The knob seen at right tightens the angle.

And finally, another great feature is the latch built into the VARY-i that lets you flip up the loupe, revealing a direct view of the LCD screen (seen below).  Come to think of it, that’s necessary:  unlike other cameras such as the Sony a7 series, we’re talking about touchscreens here!  It’s a bit of a stretch, poking fingers into that box to reach the surface of the screen, but it’s short enough for any adult-sized fingers to reach it comfortably.

vary-i-gh4-loupe-17

Summing up, having a good viewfinder often gets taken for granted.  You’ll always find them on old-school shoulder-cams, positioned just right, while the bad wrap against digital cinematography using a photo-camera body is that it’s hard to nail critical focus and other adjustments when you’re fighting against the sun and peeking into a tiny hole.  Investing in a viewfinder can be expensive, and the VARY-i is not a small investment.  But with the GH3 and GH4 having more life left in them, and that GH5 looking hazy on the horizon (while maybe even compatible with the VARY-i if its body dimensions stay the same), this thing can really pay off.  Blowing focus or framing can lose you a priceless shot, but a good viewfinder has got your back.  This is the best one you can get for the GH3 and GH4.

September 27, 2016 FocusPulling Original, Panasonic GH3, Panasonic GH4 1 Comment
21 March 2016

Atomos Shogun Flame/Ninja Flame, Say: HDR is Now

Written by Paul Moon

I remember the moment when I first got my Panasonic GH4, feeling amazed that it shot 4K without breaking the bank, but also:  freaked out!  It felt like the beginning of the end for me shooting HD, and sure enough, about a year later, I got fully converted.  My whole workflow now is just Ultra-HD (that’s a few insignificant horizontal pixels shy of cinema 4K resolution), even though I’m usually delivering output in HD.  So, it was one of those moments, of no turning back, 4K or bust, innocence lost.  Mixed emotions!

Today Atomos announces its Shogun Flame and Ninja Flame 4K HDR monitor/recorders.  Just like the GH4, you can call this another turning point, because Atomos is a company that makes things for everyone, not just rental houses and moneyed studios.  The Shogun Flame is up for pre-order now at $1,695, also the Ninja Flame at $1,295, and they’re both slated to ship March 28th, including a full kit of accessories in a hard case just like the launch of the original Shogun — but sooner.  Welcome to the front end of HDR.

flame products lowrez 72dpi

Unlike 4K resolution, which was an easy upgrade to grasp (just quadruple the dots of HD), high dynamic range (HDR) video is a much more complicated transition:  partly, because most of us already have it, and either we aren’t aware, or we’re confused about how to deliver it.  But words speak for themselves, and HDR is just what it says:  a higher range between the brightest and the darkest in your camera footage, generally 10 or more “stops.”  So, these days we’re accustomed to cameras boasting how many stops of dynamic range they can capture, even if the measurement is pretty arbitrary between one manufacturer and the next.  One thing’s for sure:  the more, the better.  And also:  it’s only relevant (for now) when you’re shooting in some brand of film log format, which basically squeezes the brightest and the darkest parts of an image into the gooey middle range of an image’s brightness and saturation, making it look “flat” and dull.  Sony calls it S-Log2 and S-Log3, Canon calls it C-Log, Panasonic calls it V-Log, Blackmagic simply calls it Film, and so on.  As we know, it’s only in post-production, back at the studio, where the flat log footage expands back out into the so-called REC.709 video format that’s ready-to-watch on a television or digital projector.

That is, until recently.  Sony started baking into their cameras a “Gamma Assist” function, so that even though it’s recording those gooey log images internally, you can see an approximate viewfinder preview of the final result as it would look after post-production color grading.  That’s really important when it comes to judging exposure, managing color influences while you have the chance, and your overall composition as a cinematographer.  We aren’t goofing around here!  Meanwhile, for those of us with Shoguns, Atomos last year made good on their promise to release a free firmware update that lets us apply our own look-up tables (LUTs), just like “Gamma Assist,” for previewing the real thing.

I mean, think about it:  when historic/legendary cinematographers peered into Panavision cameras (not today’s mirrorless OLED viewfinders at best), they saw the real world.  That’s important!  And our own eyes see HDR, on steroids.  We deserve something closer to that, whether on location or back in the studio.

Focusing on the moment of acquisition, Atomos is setting us up for HDR with these new Flame monitors that add three crucial specs:

  1. Brightness capability of 1500 nits
  2. 10-bit color accuracy, resolving 1.07 billion colors (compared to only 16.7 million colors on the prior Shogun and Ninja Assassin 8-bit panels)
  3. “AtomHDR” engine to render HDR output in a live view

Here’s the catch:  Atomos can’t solve your need for HDR farther down the road.  That is, their Flames will show you HDR on their monitors, as their prior ones couldn’t, but they’ll still just record whatever log footage you capture, the same as always, straight-to-disk.

Log Equals HDR

OpenEXRSo, it’s up to you once you’re back at the studio to figure out how to preserve all that detail being captured in log.  Normally, whatever LUT you’re using (e.g., FilmConvert) expands your log footage only into the narrow confines of the REC.709 color space, which limits dynamic range to “legal” levels that historically trace back to cathode ray tubes!  Whereas, for example, the latest version of Adobe Premiere has begun to incorporate HDR into the workflow, offering so far an output format you might notice in Adobe Media Encoder called OpenEXR (seen at right).  Meanwhile, when it comes to ultimately viewing the expanded dynamic range of HDR encoded content, there are — surprise, surprise — competing standards between HDR10 and Dolby Vision, sort of like HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray being technically similar but the former more widely adopted in HDR televisions for now.  At home, I have a Sony XBR X850C panel with HDR capability that arrived from a firmware update mid-way into the product’s seasonal life.  Going forward, most HDTV panels will include HDR capability — that was the moneyball at CES — but standards are still in flux.  It’s daunting and yet exciting to consider that everything you ever recorded in log can someday get upgraded to a render in HDR, as if this delivery technology existed all along.  Archive everything carefully?

Shogun_Flame_3(smaller)

Back to the Flames, if you’re like me, you might have felt underwhelmed initially by the news that they’re fundamentally an upgrade to an already best-in-class 7-inch monitor.  But Atomos has clearly treated this re-boot as an occasion to respect customer feedback in some key areas.  Their new design checks off a lot of the boxes that I complained about in my review of the Shogun Action Pack.  Their Armor was a rubbery loose fit on the Shogun and Ninja Assassin, but now it’s an integrally tight part of the Flame chassis.  It used to be that the Atomos Sun Hood posed an either/or dilemma, because you couldn’t mount it at the same time as the Armor; it’s not a problem anymore on the Flames, adding a “snap-fast” feature instead of screws you could lose — and the Sun Hood is included for free!  At that, if you’re shooting without the intention to monitor in HDR, you can flip over to a traditional video mode (REC.709) and get the full 1,500-nit brightness capability of the new Flames for outdoor shooting that has a fighting chance against sunlight, hood or no hood.

1458565296000_IMG_604517Between the Shogun and Ninja versions of the Flame, the differences are parallel to their predecessors:  the Ninja Flame lacks XLR balanced audio inputs, SDI inputs, and raw recording capability from select cameras, but you save some money too.  But both have an upgraded approach to power, addressing a key concern in the battery-hungry original Shogun and Ninja Assassin design, by adding a second battery slot to facilitate longer uninterrupted sessions and hot-swapping.  It’s like they incorporated their Power Station that I reviewed here previously, finding that it added too much bulk as a piggybacked accessory onto the Shogun/Ninja Assassin.  The Flame design effectively incorporates the best of the Power Station, at no extra cost.

Supported formats in the Shogun FlameSpeaking of which, we’re talking about Atomos here.  This is the company from down under (relative to where I am, anyway) who shipped the Shogun with tons of accessories that we’re used to getting gouged for when it comes to cameras, etc.  They never charged for firmware updates, and kept them coming.  They even shipped out free batteries when folks inevitably complained about the included one dying too soon.  I know, you don’t want to penny-pinch when it comes to production of important art/media, but at a time when the costs of gear are soaring into cynical opportunism (say, $2k lenses and bloggers getting flown all over the place to drool), Atomos is sending a message.  But mainly, it’s this:  HDR is here, and it’s for the masses.

March 21, 2016 ARRI Alexa and Amira, Blackmagic Cinema Cameras, Camera User Groups, Canon Cinema EOS, Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EOS 70D, Canon EOS Rebel/70D/80D, FocusPulling Original, Panasonic GH3, Panasonic GH4, Sony a7S, Sony CineAlta F3/F5/F55, Sony NEX-FS100, Sony NEX-FS700, Sony NEX-VG10/VG20/VG30, Sony PXW-FS5, Sony PXW-FS7 8 Comments
27 October 2015

Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95 Lens for Micro Four Thirds

Written by Paul Moon

I was at PhotoPlus Expo this past weekend in New York City while visiting for a film festival I was in, and with only a half-day to make my rounds among familiar faces and brands, it was all talking and no filming. Just when it occurred to me that I should interview someone, the whole thing was over, and (as you know if you’ve ever been to one of these things) at the exact closing minute, convention center crews started rolling up the carpets and unscrewing the booths.

Mitakon 25mm f0.95So, this video has pretty bad audio (even after ripping out the noisy gunk, as best as possible using Izotope RX 5), and not much happens here, but at least we get an exclusive glimpse of this exciting new miniature lens by Zhongyi. Under the name Mitakon, they’ve created an unbelievably tiny 25mm prime lens in the Micro Four Thirds format, which is on a crop lens pretty long (for example, it’s 57.5mm on a Panasonic GH4 shooting 4K video, and 75mm on a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera shooting 1080p video, compared to full-frame). But without thorough testing, I could at least see that the optical quality is tack sharp, and the focus/aperture rings feel very smooth and surprisingly functional despite the tiny size of the lens barrel. Its click-less aperture ring is filmmaker-friendly, and its all-metal construction feels durable. And as you’ll see in the video, it comes in a leather case that, while not something you’d bring onto a set (dudes), does suggest the manufacturer thinks you’re special: and it’s priced generously low, at $399, which is even less than the original estimate of $499. Compare that to SLR Magic, who are starting to price their lenses into the stratosphere for no good reason…

Mitakon 25mm f0.95 CaseYou’ll hear in the video too, that it’s shipping now from the manufacturer itself, and from B&H in the United States within the next couple of weeks.

Since most Micro Four Thirds bodies like the Panasonic GH4 lack image stabilization, this fully manual lens at such a long focal length will be a struggle to use hand-held. But with proper mounting stabilization, this can be a winner. Consider, too, that a Micro Four Thirds sensor has one Achille’s heel: poor low light sensitivity, and thus digital noise. With enough latitude to open your aperture up to f/0.95, your footage has a fighting chance in less-than-ideal lighting conditions.

October 27, 2015 Blackmagic Cinema Cameras, FocusPulling Original, FocusPulling Original Video, Panasonic GH3, Panasonic GH4 1 Comment
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