I borrowed that same cam to do more tests, and I think he got a lemon... everything I shoot in 1080 looks like crap.... noisy, blocky...it's awful. Could it be just the MOV and MP4 formats? I haven't tried the AVCHD but it's my understanding that the AVCHD is an even lower bitrate.

Nevermind - He had upgraded to ver 1.1 and didn't reset everything - I did a global reset on the camera and it looks great! But not liking how Reds get blocky at 2 stops under, and muddy as fuck anywhere below that.

Still playing with the pedestal and curves settings. and bouncing around with 16-235, 16-255, and 0-255. So far I'm finding these settings take a little getting used to... they make it really easy to underexpose the camera if you're not using a meter, and then not paying attention to the in cam meter...

When properly exposed this camera is very nice. If my testing shows me that there is 11-12 claimed stops (which likely means 9 actual and then 7 usable) then I'll order mine tomorrow. So far the shadow response is as disappointing as the BMCC. But the highlights behave very nicely.

When I have concrete data and video to go with it... I'll post it.

only if you have issues... If i'd known he'd upgraded the firmware and I was having these problems it would have been the first thing I did

@chauncy 2 things - image gets pretty blocky on certain colors once you get below 2 stops under even on 200 ISO (just like the GH2 [even hacked]) and can't be lifted without artifacting, I would have thought with a baseline 100mbps design (a la DVCPRO cameras) they'd have a better shadow response like the HVX had.

On the BMCC you can't really lift the shadows much - but you can dial in the highlights... I'm finding the same here with the GH4. I will continue to test, and will post results likely in a few weeks.

A lot to like about this camera....a lot. After shooting with it for a few days and then doing some side-by-sides with the GH2 Intravenus I was not liking the way my old GH2 operated and felt in my hands and on my rig... I NEVER thought I'd say that.

I'll postpone a final opinion until I see what I can really do with it in terms of settings, falloff, DR, and then in post - different looks... some with crushed shadows, others with lifted shadows, and various contrast ratios. Wish I had more time to immerse myself with this cam. I think it might have really great potential without an external recorder, but too much going on right now to do that.

can anybody post a hacked gh2 and a gh4 comparison?

I don't have time to export and upload the video, but here's some stills from an extreme high contrast/low light test. The 3rd one is showing the amount of sensor crop there is when shooting 4K...quite a lot. A Speedbooster is likely next on my list of things to buy, cuz wow it crops the hell out of an already cropped lens circle.

Light Setup - 100 watt CFL light against the wall, and a diffused 100 watt CFL dome light spill from hallway to the left about 17 feet away. Handheld meter reads ambient light in the room at an average of f1.4 (7EV) @1600 ISO. The hotspot on the wall reads 7 stops over. The side of Spawn's cowl where we get detail back is 4.3 stops over. Where the detail on the pale yellow wall starts to pick up detail is 3.3 stops over. The corner of the towel that is edging out of the light and into the shelf shadow is even exposure and the top left corner of frame is 4 stops under.

If you study the light splash, especially to the left of the image, you'll see where the detail and color starts to return more gradually with the GH4. Also notice the color retention on the towel and the guitar headstock.

In the GH2 shot, at around the 9th fret or so, the neck on the guitar has a highlight on it , cuz the door was cracked slightly further open so part of the spill from the hall was falling directly on it and bringing up the exposure on that left side of the frame a bit.

If you discount the hot spot which is blown out, this shot has a DR of around +4 and -4 (9 stops) but 3.3 on top before pale yellow blows out and 4 on the bottom giving us about 9 stops with detail. I'd hesitate to call it 7 usable stop just yet until I do a skin tone test. But I think I'll find 7 usable and 9 with at least a little detail giving us a true 11 stops of DR on the cam. (1 being black, 11 being pure white) Which is what film had up until about 15 years ago when they found ways to expand it. That should be plenty.

GH2 Intravenus 1600 ISO, 20mm Pancake, f1.7 [smooth -2,-2,-2,-2]

GH4 4k downconverted to 1080 1600 ISO, 20mm Pancake, f1.7 [CineD, curves preset 2, pedestal 0, 16-255]

crop factor - this is GH2 HD cropped to meet framing of 4k GH4

Much better falloff in the GH4 image in the shadows, the grain even at 1600 is nice and smooth, oh and the detail... you can actually read the titles in my DVD collection with the 4K. Also notice the amount of shadow detail in the light wrap around the shelf and the lamp - considerable improvement there. I can shoot a lot more of the things I like to shoot with this cam, without having to make it work in post... I can get it in cam a lot easier.

What I did in Post on these: I had to desaturate the GH2 footage to match, cuz it was much more saturated which at this ISO created a bit of color smearing compared to the GH4. Since the GH4 was shot at 16-255, I dropped the black levels down to broadcast to match the GH2, otherwise you'd see a noticeable shadow lift which gives one a false sense of shadow response. I've found that 0-255, 16-235, 16-255 are all kind of nonsense. They don't help your exposure or image quality at all... they only do for you what 5DtoRGB does to MTS files, move the black and white points around, they don't give you any more latitude. To test this; I shot the same thing with all three settings, then moved the appropriate white and black points to match the full 0-255 spectrum... they look identical. Then moved all the white/black points to match 16-235... same thing.

GH2 with no desat

@shian, great stuff! I've been meaning to do some more empirical testing to confirm some of what I thought to be true, but now I feel even less urgency! Ha... :) So are you going to shoot at 0-255 now, or did I misunderstand your conclusion?

@glopro, what monitor are you using there? I have a cheap Lilliput 668GL that worked very satisfactorily with my Moon T7 GH2, but it does not work with the GH4... I have to decide if I want to get something else economical for the GH4, or wait until a combo monitor/4K recorder comes out for it and spend some bucks on that. Every once in a while I feel like the in-cam data rate is just a little bit shy of where it really needs to be for a shot here and there, so I'm mildly tempted by a clean HDMI recorder.

@tjabo - haven't decided yet. Setting blacks to 16 does give you the ability to gauge how much blocking and noise you will have in your blacks when playing back the footage onto a monitor. So I may shoot 16-255. But it will require more testing for me to find a comfort zone that produces the best possible image. And to see if any of these settings stress out the camera and codec, and are to be avoided.

Test with GH4 and Mitakon EOS to M43 Lens Turbo focal reducer.

Test with GH4 and Mitakon Lens Turbo Eos to M43 focal reducer and Contax Zeiss 85mm F1.4 and Voigtlander 58mm F.4 lenses.

Settings:

Natural: 0,0,0, +1, 0

Cinema 4k clips transcoded to ProRes 422(HQ) in Sorenson Squeeze Pro 9 then imported into FCP 7 on a PRORES 422(HQ) 1080P timeline sequence setting.

i.Resolution-Off

i.Dynamic-Off

Master Pedestal-0

Highlight/Shadow-0/0

16-235

Contax Zeiss 85mm f1.4 shot at F2 to F2.8(first 4 clips)-Contax to EOS adapter.

Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 shot at F4.(last 3 clips)-Nikon to EOS adapter.

POST DONE:

RGB Balancing

@Soupertrooper

I suggest to check out http://www.personal-view.com/talks/categories/monitors-viewfinders

Topics for popular monitors usually have posts from GH and BM cameras owners.

@superset, I did some tests with all the different luminance settings and profiles. I'm not exactly sure what the GH4 does differently, but I find the highlight roll off to be smoother and to show less clipping with 16-235 than 0-255.

here's a gif animation that goes back and forth between the two showing the scopes from Vegas. I believe the scale for Vegas scopes are -20 to +120 IRE. It also doesn't do any adjustments based on the flags in the file. Vegas is a wysiwyg editor, unlike Premiere and FCP that automatically try to display what ever you shot in to 16-235. http://www.c3di.com/c3films/cineV-0_255-vs-16_235.gif

Anyway, I'm finding my workflow to be easier with 16-235.

Cheers, Pete

@shian, I have. If you look at the image, you can clearly see that 0-255 clips harder and is much more abrupt at the top of the highlights. 16-235 is a smoother roll off. I know I'm not the best colorist by any means, but I can't get anywhere near as clean an image with that hard clip in 0-255 when adjusting in post.

I will admit the two scenes are not locked off at exactly the same time, so there may be some differences in the clouds and brightness. Definitely more of the clouds in the 0-255 clip so it's not definitive, but I've seen the effect a number of times with bright daylight scenes.

Curious to see if others are seeing the same thing in their scopes.

Cheers, Pete

@shian So, what's your take on the GH4 so far ... quick summation of specific usefulness/problems vis a vis other cams around ... and with what basic post?