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GH4 focusing compared to GH2 question
  • howardsthowardst

    i use two hacked gh2s. i do mostly video. im hearing the gh4 flat out blows the gh2 away with auto focus. im thinking of buying one and using my gh2 for.broll. I hear it focuses just like a video camera. any insight appreciated. thanks

  • 6 Replies sorted by
  • brianlbrianl

    I'm considering a similar move to gh4. I don't have much to add other than as good as the evf on the gh2 is, the gh4 is typically judged a significant upgrade. That alone should mean a lot in terms of focusing. Not necessarily auto focusing precisely, but it's a component of auto focus, if you've use a bmpcc you'd relate.

  • caveportcaveport

    Autofocus is better than GH2 but still needs a bit of care to work smoothly. It's not quite as forgiving as a handycam!

  • MRfannyMRfanny

    it doesnt focus like a video cam. closes you will get from my experience is with the 14-140 kit lens. thats one mighty fine autofocus lens. I've used it on runways and it will focus 80% of the time. then they get too close or change direction too fast and it shits itself for a bit but recovers fast. 4k however is slow in the focus department from my experience. 1080 is fast.

  • howardsthowardst

    im considering buying a gh4, not for the 4k, but for the 1080 60p. im wanting to know if the sandisk 95 cards i used with my hacked gh2s flowmotion 2.2 will work in this mode on gh4. im not gonna spend hundreds of dollars on special cards for 4k. any input appreciated thanx

  • AzoAzo

    @howardst

    I have the 64gb 95mbs cards and have no issues at all with the GH4. The 200mbps modes rarely go that high on my camera . Normally it is in the 100mbps range.

  • TjaboTjabo

    Shooting some glidecam footage in very detailed areas with fast camera movement I had a card problem one time with a PNY (I think it is) card that claimed 95MBps on it.

    I always shoot these shots in 1080/60P, and most of them end up right at 200Mbps because of all of the detail in the scene and the fast motion. So far I have not had any problem with the SanDisk Extreme Pro cards.

    Regarding the autofocus, I concur with the comments above. 4K has been pretty slow for me to the point that I would never use autofocus with it. At the other end of the spectrum is the Olympus 7-14 F2.8 lens on a narrow aperture, shooting 1080 modes. Autofocus in those situations is essentially perfect (largely because it hardly has to do anything I suppose... Lol).

    There was one time that I had a problem with it though, when I was goofing around with a buddy and I became enveloped in a cloud of tire smoke. When the smoke cleared a bit, there was an instant where focus was lost. Here's the video in question, with ridiculous color grading that caused a lot of banding and other nonsense, again just for the sake of more goofing around:

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