Friday 24 October 2014

GH4 with Speed booster - our thoughts

The Panasonic GH4 is one of a few new cameras that has got a lot of people very excited. Along with the Sony A7s they promise amazing features, that only a few years back where reserved for serious video cameras, small size, light weigh and cheap price. Whats not to like right ?

My GH4 fully rigged up with SmallHD screen and Rode Mic


So looking to upgrade the 5D3 for video ( as looking back at its footage, it really isn't that great is it ?! ) I got a GH4 pretty soon. I had always though the crop factor and fact it was never marketed as a low light camera to be some pretty big downsides, but was confident that the Metabones speed booster was just round the corner.


I waited a good 4 months till anything concrete came up online but it did, and again I ordered one of the very first batch of speed boosters that would let me get all my Canon glass on the GH4, with all the smart adapter goodness, wider, brighter blah blah.
Shooting some time lapse with the built in under crank setting.
Being small and light makes it ideal for use on the travel jib.

Without the speed booster, and using Panasonics glass this camera gave a very video style look to the footage, I didn't really like the camera. What it promised and what I thought, and hoped would make it shine though... really does. In my opinion of course. Enter the Speed booster.

Off the camera. CineD and everything off. Sharp and Sat down fully.
With a bit of a grade. Lot of play here which is great.
The Metabones EF-M43 Speed booster is well made, not to bad price wise, makes all your glass a good stop or two brighter, ( makes my 24-105 F4 more like a 35-150ish F2.8 ) wider and softens the footage just a hair, which it needed. Before it was a touch clinical, now its sweet.

Don't push the ISO past 800 if you can help it, never ever past 1600. Accept that 96p while amazing, and at full HD, is a touch softer than 60p or 4K, so learn when to use it.

Look at how sharp and crisp it is in 4K
Picture profiles are something that can make or break this camera. I did the normal thing of trying to get the absolute flattest image I could out the box, and it doesn't work like that. I read up a bit and have now got it pretty dialed. I use CineD ( the flat one ) but then I back off sharpening and saturation fully, leave NR at 0 and leave everything else off and at 0. This gives me nice DR, and no noise to speak of till ISO 800. Its when the camera is trying to adjust the image lots digitally in camera all the noise you may have seen comes in, so leave most stuff as it is and all's well.

Another off the camera shot

And a bit of a grade.
Embrace the post flexibility 4K gives you, and the fact one battery can last a full days shooting, have 96p at full HD, and 4K internally, and if you use fast glass and a speed booster you can still get nice shallow DOF, I now have a camera I am really happy with.

Few little Instagram videos shot with the GH4/Speed booster from the last few weeks.





All this is just my personal opinion, and try not to compare it to closely with an FS700, FS7 or even a C100 or C300 as what you need to remember is this camera body only is £1200! That's insane value.  Yes they will be better than the GH4 in some ways, but they cost lots more, and are all bigger, havier and some arnt as good ... food for thought.

Cheers Jacob

Thursday 23 October 2014

Recent work - Aug/Sept

As ever, no posts for ages. We all know why, working! Its a good problem to have I know.

Anyway the last few months have been manic as ever for Aspect. Work of all kinds, all over the place and seemingly all the time. Here are just a few of the recent videos we have put out in the last month or so...

Sam's World

Web series following the two Sam's to some nice places riding and doing there thing. Working along side Monster energy through the whole creative process and we have just put out part two from Cali.



Roma

A documentary that one half of Aspect, Chris Seager helped shoot, as part of a killer team and as part of his final uni project. Staff pick on Vimeo, picked up by Dazed and amazing feedback.



Crankworx

This year Aspect covered Whistler Crankworx for EpicTV. Great week shooting, here is the video from Whip Off.


Science In Sport

Last year we worked with sports nutrition company Science in Sport quite a bit on various projects. Here is a short mash up of some clips from the various jobs to give you an idea of the stuff we shot. 



Trippin

Trippin World Wide. 3 mates travel all over the world, riding bikes and having a good time. Showing the viewer some of the more off the beaten path places to check out etc Episode 3 came out a few weeks back from Whistler. 



Back on Track

Now we didn't produce this amazing series for Redbull but we where extra camera men at all the EWS rounds this year for it. So a lot of the footage in the episodes is ours ( about half ) . Great to be involved in such a good series and nice to see our footage used to its potential and not butchered. 



So there you have it. This isn't even everything we have put out in the last month or so, there's more ( keep up on everything we do via our facebook ) there's photo shoots, meetings, planning etc etc

But hopefully if you watch some of these videos, you can let us off not putting up too many blog posts. Saying that its "off season" now so here's to a few more of these things over winter.

Aspect