Tru dat. Skin tones NOT the GH4 strong suit. :)

Sorry but GH4 does produce extremely pleasing, natural skin tones. It's just the grade/LUt used that seemingly skewed them in the video above...

Is anyone else using the GH4 @ 4K for interviews, talking head stuff etc?

I'm finding the 4K image is not so pleasing to the eye if you place it on a 1080p timeline and have the 4K footage at 100% (i.e. a 'center' crop). My hope was to shoot mediums or wides and derive the my close-ups from that, saving time by not having to set up a second or even third camera.

But when you realize 4K at 100Mbps is only 25Mbps in a 100% 1080p crop, it makes sense why to my eye it looks worse than what I've been getting on my GH2s! Of course the results are very nice if you leave it scaled to 50% on a 1080 timeline and get all that nice downsampling.

I'm curious to see if anyone else is having success with this approach and whether adding a touch more in-camera sharpening before the compression happens has helped or not.

I asked the question on another board and the response I got was that it was potentially down to lens performance, but I'm not so sure. I've cropped RAW stills aggressively before and even with soft lenses never seen the kind of artifacts and general nastiness I'm seeing with the 4K video.

@mo7ies, Will do so later - I'm working on another edit right now so it'll have to be in a few hours.

GH4 skin tones: The opening few clips of this video are shot 4K with Cinelike V during late afternoon light with white balance on auto which resulted in very orangish skin. I should have done a custom white balance for better results but in post I did pull out quite a bit of orange yet still wanted to retain the mood and warmth of the golden hour light - open to comments about this grade... Also noticed that on Vimeo, the colors look more saturated and orangish than original. And Movist player results in a warmer, more saturated image than when played with QuickTime player. Another frustration is not having a professionally calibrated monitor.

There are some Cinelike D clips later on in the video to which I ended up adding some warmth as they had much less of the already baked in warmth image of Cinelike V. Cinelike D profile is obviously the best when you have time to color grade in post but of course demands more skill which is an ongoing process for me. There are also several 96p clips included.

I am impressed with how the busy patterned hat looks in the converted 4K footage with regards to moire and aliasing. The GH3 or hacked Gh2 would have surely not been able to compete in this matter.

Since my old computer cannot handle 4K at all, until I am able to upgrade, all my 4K clips have to be converted by Firecoresoft to ProRes 422 (HQ) 1080p prior to NLE import onto a 1080p timeline - I would like to hear opinions on this approach as compared to dropping 4K onto a 1080p timeline - would there be a difference in final 1080p output quality between these two methods?

Can anyone verify that the GH4 works with the Manfrotto MVR901-ECPL or other lanc remote device for power zoom, I didn't think the GH3 did but this post here http://gh4crew.co.uk/?p=352 implies that it does with the 45 - 175 lens on which would be nice + I never realised but it looks like the 45 - 175 is parfocal or at least near enough for me the combination with a remote zoom for the horse competition bits I do would work nicely.

@HHL - just shot four days of little training dramas for a blue chip client, and skin tones (ranging from Caucasian, thru Asian to Afro-Caribbean) have been great. Do you own a GH4, out of interest?

Interesting comparison..

Quick camera test this lunchtime strolling around.

got it used it n did'nt like it. will explore more tomorrow & in coming days. but its jus like basic video. detail is nothing if its not cinematic. disappointed. even iso200 lowest 1. I can see noise in low light. i must say the screen is pretty good. but when u look on big screen then u admire vitaly work on GH1. to me GH1 got best cinematic colors.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev :) You're a wise man.

As compared to the GH1 you also get much better dynamic range, detail, grading flexibility, and the ability to shoot high-quality 1080p 60 (or not so high 96fps). Zebras and peaking are also a huge plus if you're not using an external monitor. It's really not even close; the GH4 is a much better 1080 machine than any of its predecessors.