Upcoming Panasonic GH-4K

[peterbkk 110]

Hi Peter,

 

May I trouble you a bit please.

 

Is the assc port at the door a M14 size ? The front left at main body surely is an M16 for HDMI.

The Nauticam user manual stated the assc port at the door is M14 but Backscatter and Reef Photo reccomended the vacuum valve of M16 size.

I want to use the vacuum valve at the door assc port and keep the M16 one at main body for HDMI.

I fear the NA-GH4 user manual has a print mistake on the M14 assc port size at the door.

 

Hope its not too troubling you.

 

Many Thanks

SPP

Sorry for the slow response. I was out diving in the South China Sea with my NA-GH4...

 

Seems like you have the answer you need.

 

Initially I bought the M16 vacuum valve for the larger port at the front, thinking that the M16 port is more "out of the way" of the top controls. I use the Mode dial often to flip between 3 custom settings that I have created for different shooting situations and to bring the settings back a known starting point whenever I have been fiddling with some of the controls.

 

However, once I have the Shogun in a housing, I will most likely have to buy the M14 vacuum valve for the rear door port and use the front M16 port for the HDMI cable, as the M16 port is closer to the camera's HDMI socket. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

Regards

Peter

[Viz'art 24]

I'd like to ask if anyone's aware of the Aquatica housing being backwards compatible with the GH3? The GH3/4 bodies are by all accounts are the same, except for the taller mode dial on the GH4. Not sure about clearances inside the housing, but hopefully that wouldn't be a problem?

 

The paperwork says yes, but I would still like to physically try it before going official on this, we designed using the GH4 camera and did not have a GH3, this being said, as you mention, both camera share the same physical property apart from the mode selector dial.

 

I have put this on top of the "to do" list of the engineering department.

[peterbkk 110]

This last weekend I took my GH4 into the sea for the first time. Unfortunately, the conditions were terrible. Visibility was poor, the sky was overcast, making the lighting flat and dark, the water was green and full of particles and the wave and current action never stopped jiggling me and the camera.

 

Despite that, I did manage to get some footage. Not great but, if the camera can deal with these conditions, it'll be really good in better conditions.

 

Here is the 8 minute video: http://www.peterwalker.com/tioman.html

 

Underwater I used the NA-GH4 with Lumix 7-14mm lens in a Zen 170mm dome port and a pair of Keldan Luna 4 (~4000 lumen) lights -- except for the last dive when I used the Olympus 60mm in the Nauticam macro port. The above-water footage came from a GH4 with a Lumix 12-35mm lens and the Panasonic shotgun mic.

 

I shot it all in C4K 24P and kept the footage at 4K from import through rough editing in FCPX, did a little bit of contrast improvement and reduced the green in some shots (but mainly the camera dealt with the WB very well), exported a C4K master file from FCPX then compressed it in Compressor to 1080x1013 24P before uploading to Vimeo.

The housing and camera are great. All worked well. And a couple of pleasant surprises. The Auto-focus works great. Very fast. The Manual WB works in even the lowest of light and greenest of water. My technique of doing WB presets from coloured paper did seem to work OK too. The combined Auto-focus lock and Auto-Exposure Lock control lever on the NA-GH4 housing is very useful.

However, there are two issues to work on:

1. Buoyancy and Balance: With the dome port and lights, the housing is a bit too negative and nose-heavy. It becomes tiring on the wrists after an hour of shooting. When I add the Shogun housing behind the housing, it might improve the balance but will increase the negative buoyancy. For now, I need to add some frontal buoyancy. Looking at the housing, I reckon that a donut float around the neck of the dome port could work. If it was cut as two half donuts they could be locked on with a simple Velcro strap. We are working on that issue this week.

2. Macro: The Olympus 60 is a lovely macro lens but not very useful for video. I know it's works fine for photos, with the strobe's 1/10,000 of a second blast of light. But holding it steady for a 10 second clip is near impossible with any kind of water movement, even on a tripod (large GorillaPod). I got some shots with the housing firmly held down to the ground but that only works where the topography allows it. I have decided to try the Panasonic Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Power O.I.S. Lens and a flip diopter.

One thing that I learned: my earlier camcorder, a Canon XF100, made me careless on focus. This GH4 needs me to pay more attention to focus, especially in low light.

Another thing that I learned: C4K fills a lot of disk space. 6 dives and some surface shots created 100Gb of footage on the SD cards. FCP X then built 600 Gb of transcoded media (which can be zapped when I have finished editing). Nearly a whole Tb from one weekend!

Regards

Peter

[thetrickster 328]

Thanks Peter,

 

Enjoyed that.

 

I'm too not super happy with the buoyancy of the rig + 170mm (and 2x Luna8s)

(got enough lift via 2x 60/200m and 2x 60/250mm) but i need to figure out out to put some of it on more front loaded as the camera, now light in the water is sensitive to forwards/backwards motion.

 

Keep them coming!

[Raptor^ 0]

Has anybody tried the GH4 in a dark environment like cave or wreck? WA natural light shoots of wrecks in low ambient light? Using it at night? I am curious as to how much noise and/or banding is being produced in the dark/black areas as I've seen some comparison videos and a lot of people don't have great things to say about the low light performance of this camera.

 

Also, is it really difficult to shoot with this camera? Can I hand the camera over to a no-camera-skills-buddy and expect he or she to achieve a fair result? I'm thinking maybe making a preset or using auto, allowing them to just press the shutter or record button, point the camera the correct way to film and still get decent result? Or will exposure and focus be all over the place? I know I've had great results giving a GoPro to other buddies and getting useful footage back, but even a compact camera can be tricky for a buddy who knows practically nothing about shooting.

Edited August 7, 2014 by Raptor^

[ScubaBob 37]

Ambient light in a cave or wreck? Who does that? If you are even moderately deep and using ambient light you are going to be at ISO 3200+ (depending on how fast your lens is) and going to definitely have significant noise if you are lifting the shadows. Will be interesting to see how the A7S performs in these kinds of environments.

 

The tests I've done on land with the GH4 in low light has produced much better results then the GH2 at ISO 1600 lifting the shadows by about 50 in Premiere. Even at 3200 the noise has been tolerable and hasn't required any removal. Haven't done any low light underwater testing yet - hopefully soon..

[Raptor^ 0]

Ambient light in a cave or wreck? Who does that?

 

Ambient light shooting wreck exterior, not ambient light inside a wreck or cave obviously.

But if you are inside a wreck or cave with good lights you can still get some very dark areas depending on the shoot you want to make and how you use the video-lights.

 

After seeing Philip Blooms "Now I See" with the Sony A7 I was quite amazed at its low light performance.

 

I'm on the fence about investing in a GH4 and UW-housing setup, and since it is a really big investment I want to be sure before I pull the trigger Autofocus and low light performance is the two things that is most worrying I think. I plan on using it topside as well so everything needs to be considered.

Edited August 7, 2014 by Raptor^

[peterbkk 110]

Has anybody tried the GH4 in a dark environment like cave or wreck? WA natural light shoots of wrecks in low ambient light? Using it at night? I am curious as to how much noise and/or banding is being produced in the dark/black areas as I've seen some comparison videos and a lot of people don't have great things to say about the low light performance of this camera.

 

Also, is it really difficult to shoot with this camera? Can I hand the camera over to a no-camera-skills-buddy and expect he or she to achieve a fair result? I'm thinking maybe making a preset or using auto, allowing them to just press the shutter or record button, point the camera the correct way to film and still get decent result? Or will exposure and focus be all over the place? I know I've had great results giving a GoPro to other buddies and getting useful footage back, but even a compact camera can be tricky for a buddy who knows practically nothing about shooting.

I've looked through some clips I shot in a cave and on a night dive last weekend. No noise or banding in the dark areas.

 

You could set one of the 3 mode-dial custom presets to auto-everything. The shutter release starts the recording. Auto-focus works fine. Or, you could use the AFL / AEL lever to lock in a suitable focus and exposure, then hand the camera to the other person.

 

Regards

Peter

[peterbkk 110]

Thanks Peter,

 

Enjoyed that.

 

I'm too not super happy with the buoyancy of the rig + 170mm (and 2x Luna8s)

(got enough lift via 2x 60/200m and 2x 60/250mm) but i need to figure out out to put some of it on more front loaded as the camera, now light in the water is sensitive to forwards/backwards motion.

 

Keep them coming!

 

I have solved the buoyancy / balance issue with the NA-GH4 and the Zen 170mm Port - with some help from David Cheung of ScubaCam, here in Singapore.

 

A Stix float ring. I had to trim about 0.5cm off the side of three of the floats so that it tucks in behind the port on the right-hand side (the housing body has a bulge on the right for the control rods). The Stix ring locks down nice and tight.

 

In a pool test this morning, with the Luma4 lights on 1" locline arms, the housing is still a little negative (good) but no longer excessively front heavy. In fact, if I move the lights into the right place for WA shooting, the whole rig becomes neatly balanced around the centre pitch line. In the sea, I think that it'll be slightly negative and well-balanced.

 

Here is a photo:

 

 

 

Regards

Peter

[SPP 16]

Sorry for the slow response. I was out diving in the South China Sea with my NA-GH4...

 

Seems like you have the answer you need.

 

Initially I bought the M16 vacuum valve for the larger port at the front, thinking that the M16 port is more "out of the way" of the top controls. I use the Mode dial often to flip between 3 custom settings that I have created for different shooting situations and to bring the settings back a known starting point whenever I have been fiddling with some of the controls.

 

However, once I have the Shogun in a housing, I will most likely have to buy the M14 vacuum valve for the rear door port and use the front M16 port for the HDMI cable, as the M16 port is closer to the camera's HDMI socket. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

Regards

Peter

 

Hi Peter,

 

Thanks for the reply.

My Nauticam housing and the rest of the toys will arrive in a week, I hope.

Can't wait to mess with it.

 

I tested the GH4 with 12-35mm Panny on land. Using 4K, 3840 pixel, focus is slow but it hunts a bit even when subject in middle field.

Also being a camera type lens and not a camcorder or say an RX100, zooming on a subject with bright background will cause insane flicker on the bright areas....ha ha ha.

 

Since it is mirrorless, I wonder why the video focus is not as smart as my Sony NEX-7 and flicker free like NEX-7 when zooming.

 

Anyway, overall I am happy with new nice toys to play with....

 

Thanks n Dive Safe

SPP

[Interceptor121 704]

 

Hi Peter,

 

Thanks for the reply.

My Nauticam housing and the rest of the toys will arrive in a week, I hope.

Can't wait to mess with it.

 

I tested the GH4 with 12-35mm Panny on land. Using 4K, 3840 pixel, focus is slow but it hunts a bit even when subject in middle field.

Also being a camera type lens and not a camcorder or say an RX100, zooming on a subject with bright background will cause insane flicker on the bright areas....ha ha ha.

 

Since it is mirrorless, I wonder why the video focus is not as smart as my Sony NEX-7 and flicker free like NEX-7 when zooming.

 

Anyway, overall I am happy with new nice toys to play with....

 

Thanks n Dive Safe

SPP

Sony A6000 video autofocus is marvellous by the way check that one out

[Davide DB 412]

Guys, a quick info.

 

The new Nauticam 180mm dome for the 7-14mm is it glass or plastic? Does it need an extra ring?

 

I found it on several shop online (I guess) but always without info if it's for mirrorless system or DSRL.

 

I got behind on new toys lately.

 

Thanks

[escape 84]

Guys, a quick info.

 

The new Nauticam 180mm dome for the 7-14mm is it glass or plastic? Does it need an extra ring?

 

I found it on several shop online (I guess) but always without info if it's for mirrorless system or DSRL.

 

I got behind on new toys lately.

 

Thanks

 

 

Hi Davide, I have that Nauticam dome (prototype) and it's glass, no need extension for 7-14mm.

I think they'll release it soon.

[Davide DB 412]

 

 

Hi Davide, I have that Nauticam dome (prototype) and it's glass, no need extension for 7-14mm.

I think they'll release it soon.

 

 

Ah ok, so the 1000USD 180mm dome I see on several site it's not the new one.

It seems that vendors get bored to add some specs...

 

Thanks.

[recd 7]

 

 

Hi Davide, I have that Nauticam dome (prototype) and it's glass, no need extension for 7-14mm.

I think they'll release it soon.

EunJae

How is the balance and bouyancy with the glass dome? What size floats and arms are those shown in the photo.

 

Cheers

[escape 84]

EunJae

How is the balance and bouyancy with the glass dome? What size floats and arms are those shown in the photo.

 

Cheers

 

recd,

Balancing is better then 6inch acrylic dome.

I'm using Ø60x200mm carbon fibre float arm (Buoyancy 240g) x 2ea and it's still negative (which I prefer).

 

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=52332&p=349304

[Pete L 48]

Does it have manual focus EunJae?

[Davide DB 412]

 

 

 

 

BTW nice blockbuster color grading: blue in the shadow and orange in the hilights

[escape 84]

Does it have manual focus EunJae?

Pete.

It doesn't have af gear. Normally I just pre focus on my fin and start shooting.

Edited August 20, 2014 by escape

[ScubaBob 37]

Not the best first showing, but I was finally able to get my GH4 underwater a couple weeks ago. We went out in search of Giant Sea Bass (aka Black Sea Bass) so I started the day with my 7-14mm. Viz was less than ideal, so I switched to the 12-50mm for the last two dives (all footage shown in chronological order). Lessons learned (which are not new or unique to the GH4) are use of manual focus on the 7-14mm and stability (tripod) with the 12-50mm. Overall I'm very excited about using the GH4 more underwater..

 

 

[textilet 7]

We finally got to dive our GH4; here are some thoughts and video:

Our diving is mostly in California in water that often contains particulate matter, as well as being somewhat deep and dark. Our previous camera (HF-G10) had quirks that manifested in our local environment (especially green water) that took us quite some time to figure out. We’ve been encouraged by the results we’ve seen others achieve with their GH series cameras in environments like the ones we frequent.

Our dive site was Ship Rock at Catalina Island in California. This location offers a deep wall area at 150ft/45m and deeper, as well as progressively more sunlit kelp garden type areas to explore on ascent- a perfect spot to play with the camera in a variety of settings.

The rig as we dove it:

Panasonic GH4

Lumix 7-14mm lens

Nauticam NA-GH4 housing

6” Acrylic dome port with focus knob

Keldan Luna 8 lights on UL arms

The objective given the lens was to shoot wide shots and not really attempt Macro. We have discussed the idea of being able to fake “semi” macro with this lens by zooming in to 14mm and then cropping to 25% at 1080p. But that will probably look funny considering the FOV. We will attempt that stuff later when we have the quadpod fitted. Mainly we shoot wider angle anyway and aren’t too concerned with macro at this stage. Being reasonably confident that resolution would be outstanding, we were mostly concerned with low light performance, edge distortion on the Lumix 7-14mm/Nauticam dome combo, attaining sharp focus to take full advantage of the UHD, banding when shooting against open water, and how to set up the camera.

For this dive the camera was set to

Cine-D picture style (hoping to gain a little in low light given the lens is not so fast)

Custom white balance at depth on blank pages of wet notes; auto WB in the shallows.

UHD resolution at 29.97p

Picture style settings set to

-5,-5,-5,-5,0

Pedestal at 0

Luminance 0-255

Highlight/shadow at zero

ISO manual (between 200 and 400 trying to avoid noise)

F stop between 4 and 4.5 on the deep portion, stopped down to 11-22 as needed in the shallow area.

Shutter speed at 60

Focus using the partial shutter depress method

We began recording at 150’ after white balancing with lights on using white pages of wet notes. This has been our method with our previous camera; one diver holds wet notes open at a distance of 3-4 ft from the camera and the camera diver zooms in and sets white balance. The goal is to white balance not for the fully lit foreground, and not to try to correct the un correctable colors beyond the lights at this depth. The Lumix 7-14 is so wide even at 14mm that we couldn’t fill sample area with white from our usual distance, and had to move the wetnotes within about 2 ft of the camera. The GH4 only samples a rectangle in the middle of the frame, so this helps this distance problem somewhat.

Noise was visible immediately on the camera monitor, keeping in mind we are already at ISO 200. Not having time at depth to mess with settings, we simply proceeded with recording. The noise turned out not to be as big an issue as it appeared (see below). As far as exposure goes I was actually pleasantly surprised that even with an f/4 lens there appeared to be enough light between the Keldans and ambient to not need to raise the ISO much at all. The little monitor on the back of the GH4 is very bright and sharp, and it was much more accurate with regard to color and exposure than what I had been used to with our L&M Bluefin monitor from our previous system. Not perfect but ok. The Nauticam housing with the plastic dome is also much less negative in the water than the L&M, which was a nice bonus. With no flotation added the rig was still easy enough to swim around. This being basically the first real dive with the camera combo, all the controls were easy to use and we had no problem effectively using the housing with dry gloves on.

Video from the deep portion of the dive:

Video from the shallow sunny portion:

All told we found the capabilities of the camera in these conditions very satisfying.

Things that made us happy:

Low light performance was fine for our needs.

Noise in the UHD image easy to remove with neat video. Since the NR is occurring at UHD resolution and the video is output to 1080p, I could see no loss of detail in the final image. I don’t have a 4k monitor so I can’t see if there is a visible difference at that resolution, but for my purposes Neat Video almost magically removes the noise with the only side effect being some occaisional micro banding, which can be eliminated by building a more complete profile in neat video.

Great detail all around

Shutter depress focus method was able to focus effectively on the target 90% of the time. Would not attempt to use continuous auto focus however unless the scene was very well lit. Will experiment with manual focus/peaking on later dives.

Battery life was never in question. Over three hours in the water with camera on and still had two bars.

The footage allows for much more latitude to adjust color and exposure (and obviously framing) than the AVCHD from our HF-G10 did. This was a surprise but a pleasant one. This became important because the settings we chose made a flat, somewhat noisy image that needed to be adjusted to be presentable.

Banding is almost a non-issue. If there is banding visible in the video we uploaded, it is a product of Vimeo compression and doesn’t appear at all in the source footage.

With the 4k crop, the edge distortion we’ve seen from this lens is reduced and often not visible at all. Hopefully trying slightly more stopped down/slightly higher ISO combo will eliminate it completely.

We can make nice looking video with this camera. As we learn the camera the footage will only improve.

Things to work on:

We need to black out the printing on the front edge of the lens; when shooting into the light the lettering can sometimes be seen reflected in the dome port.

Settings. Our settings produced noise. As we had it configured there was very fine grain over the whole image. Even in the bright sunlight at 20fsw, there was visible noise in all the images. Since ISO is already low, I believe we need to make adjustments to the other settings in the camera. I have read that Cine-D profile is a known source of noise. Going forward we will be trying Cine-V. More tweaking is needed before we arrive at our known-good configuration.

UHD files play fine on my Macbook Pro, you can cut and edit no problem, but if you need to apply an effect- such as Neat Video- everything goes in to snail mode. This is not a deal breaker but it is a reality if you have an older laptop (mine is a 2011). I need a new one anyway.

Some edge distortion visible at 7mm f/4.

For our first time using a “photo” style camera for video, we were very pleased.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2014 by textilet

[Davide DB 412]

Nice report and good camera work.

 

Are you sure that -5,-5,-5,-5,0 is the way to go?

 

I've seen a lot of user coming from hard core GH2 use going straight to this but I'm reading different opinions. On previous camera there wasn't a real cinestyle profile so people was dialing down everything trying to be flat as much as possible.

Actually yet on GH3 this was not completely true anymore and after several tries a lot of user agreed on a much balanced settings.

GH4 codec is a completely different beast.

 

Bye

[textilet 7]

Actually I'm not at all sure those settings are necessary. Adding all those -5's back in post was a bit laborious. I like the result but I think especially in "easy" conditions like the shallow section we can move some of the work load back in camera. I'm hoping cine-v or raising in camera NR will be the answer to the noise problem, because adding neat video to all clips means final render takes 4 hours plus for a 2 minute clip on my old macbook. Without neat video it's like 30 min which is fine.

[ScubaBob 37]

Would love to see an example of before and after with the NEAT video filter applied if you ever have a chance to post anything. I've actually been pretty happy with the amount of noise so far with the GH4 (using Cinelike-V profile all 0's) even at ISO 1600 and 3200, but imagine there will be times when I will need some cleanup.

 

EDIT: Oh, and thanks for the great write-up!

Edited September 10, 2014 by ScubaBob

[textilet 7]

I may edit one up at some point when I get time. I'm hoping some settings tweaks will make it a moot point. There's supposed to be a firmware update announced tomorrow that's got my interest piqued as well ☺

Edited September 15, 2014 by textilet