Panasonic LUMIX GH4 Body 4K Mirrorless Camera, 16 Megapixels, 3 Inch Touch LCD, DMC-GH4KBODY (USA Black)
Panasonic LUMIX GH4 Body 4K Mirrorless Camera, 16 Megapixels, 3 Inch Touch LCD, DMC-GH4KBODY (USA Black)
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- Professional photo performance with exceptional moiré suppression
- Operating temperature:0 degree to 40 degree (32 degree F to 104 degree F); 4K 24p cinematic video (4096x2160), plus 4K 3840x2160 30p/24p
- High speed 49 area auto focusing in photo or video, perfect for hybrid photography
- Durable magnesium alloy body and exceptional shutter life meets the demands of professional use
Brand : Panasonic
Category : Electronics,Camera & Photo,Digital Cameras,Mirrorless Cameras
Rating : 4.5
Review Count : 255
Panasonic LUMIX GH4 Body 4K Mirrorless Camera, 16 Megapixels, 3 Inch Touch LCD, DMC-GH4KBODY (USA Black)
- Housekeeping/Bias/Reviewer HistoryFirst off, I am most interested in video and short films. I am also into photography, and have shot with Nikons and Canons, but have always preferred Panasonic for video (No record length limit is critical for events). Canon video is nice, owing mainly to sensor size, but I\'ve always felt all the way back to the GH1 that Panasonic video was superior, though I felt the stills capabilities were drastically unimpressive. The GH2 was a massive improvement for video, and a small still upgrade, but still nowhere near a Nikon or Canon. I skipped the GH3 because the video of the GH2 was so good I really didn\'t see a need to upgrade. I\'ve been missing a good stills camera, and though I have always preferred Nikon, their late tendency to increase MP size has left me incredibly unimpressed with ISO performance. Canon\'s tendency to keep MP constant with new generations of sensors is REALLY attractive, because that means the ISO performance and noise is getting better (One can either make smaller pixels with less sensitivity or keep the pixel count steady and increase the sensitivity). I was set to buy a Canon 6D when I heard rumblings of the GH4. I waited, and everything seemed to be pointing to leaps and bounds in performance... new engine, same MP count, etc. I\'m VERY glad I did.The Body/Control LayoutHaving not had a GH3, I\'m not sure of the changes, but over the GH2, it\'s an incredible difference. It IS a little larger, in all three dimensions, but the weight is not noticeable. It\'s noted as \"splashproof\"... a claim I have no intention of testing, but I do like the ergonomics better. One of the BEST improvements of the GH4 is the layouts. I\'m used to having buttons (from the Pro Nikon and Canon worlds), but on the GH1 and 2, there was only one forward dial, and it required a button push to switch from SS to A settings. This is remedied. There is a FORWARD dial, a REAR dial and an additional wheel dial on the control pad by the LCD. There are BUTTONS for ISO, WB, Exposure Compensation. While these might sound like non-issues, The control layout is EXCELLENT. I recently had to shoot with a Nikon D5200 and I couldn\'t believe how piss-poor the layout was for the dials. OOPS, DIAL, singular. It made the shooting experience miserable and I couldn\'t believe THIS was a NIKON and how far the mighty had fallen. I was shocked at having pulled the GH4 out and shot a few simple test pictures. The quality of the stills are a massive improvement over the 1 and 2... does it compete with a Canon 6D? Doubtful, but they are good enough I\'m not worrying about getting a 6D anymore...The LCDMuch has been made of Panasonic DOUBLING the resolution of the LCD. It seem like a small thing, but it really is a gorgeous screen. When you add in some of the touch features and how responsive they are, I no longer miss having a through the lens system instead of an LCD viewfinder. I HATED it in the GH1 and 2, and was a major reason I despised the Pannies for stills. The touchscreen functionality is incredibly responsive too, and when you are in focus, you are IN focus... it\'s razor sharp and the additional features really take advantage.VideoWow. I haven\'t tried 4K, but let\'s be absolutely clear about this: VFR is CLEARLY going to become an overused function in the future. Why? Because it is GORGEOUS in this camera. GORGEOUS. Here are the breakdowns of available modes:AVCHD:24Mbit/30p: 2, 15, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 45, 6024Mbit/24p: 2, 12, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, 60MP4 or MOV:100Mbit/30p: 2, 15, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 45, 60, 75, 90, 96100Mbit/24p: 2, 12, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, !!!96!!!Personally, I do not understand why anyone would choose to shoot in anything but 24fps... but I am a filmmaker at heart. I don\'t shoot sports. I want everything to look as much like a film as possible. Having said that, following the 180shutter rule as closely as you can and shooting in 96fps MP424fps is GLORIOUS. What\'s more is the fact that it is instantaneous. You set the VFR, you record the footage (it will tell you \"25%\" on the viewfinder), you hit record, you stop recording, you hit play and you get to see unbelievably high quality sharp, full 1080 HD slow motion. It\'s incredible. Slower Frame Rates (Time Lapse) will require some time to compose the image, but Slow Motion is instant, Crisp, Fluid, and incredibly impressive.The rest of the video is also improved. It\'s actually mindblowing how good it looks, but the VFR is reason enough to buy this camera. It\'s a gamechanger for anyone who shoots anything. This is the NUMBER ONE reason to buy this camera, I\'d argue a bigger advance than the 4K. As impressive as the ability to shoot 4K is, there are other cameras on the market (albeit at a higher price point) that shoot 4K. Slow motion of this quality is an incredibly useful tool. Note that you can\'t use the VFR in the 200Mbit settings. This is not even approaching the reasonable limits of a downside. 100Mbit at this quality is incredible.ToolsThere are a variety of features that deeply improve the shooting experience. Focus peaking is brilliantly used, and it also makes the LCD sharpness that much more apparent. Zebra Levels are also available in all modes. Hitting the display button will toggle through modes of the LCD, including a built in tilt and level sensor. Manual focus assist is also massively improved, allowing you to select the size of the magnified area and where it appears on screen. Working in concert with the focus peaking makes manual shooting like I prefer top notch. The modes and ability of the AutoFocus is also impressive, but like 4K is so over-reviewed that I do not wish to beat that particular horse. The AF is great, but the takeaway is that the MF features are equally improved.Additionally, there are options for Luminance, Pedestal, SS -> Shutter Angle, CineD (Increased Dynamic Range) and CineV (Increased contrast), and a lot of other settings that I\'m just not going to cover at this point. The larger point behind it is what\'s critical: There have been MASSIVE upgrades to the ability to tweak your video, and it\'s a very capable and impressive piece of hardware.BatteriesThis is an oversight to a lot of people/companies, but this vital to people like me. I am used to having to buy AC adapters and power couplers to shoot events, as with the GH1 and 2 you couldn\'t feel too confident after an hour... but last night I shot a band with a GH1, 2 gh2\'s and my GH4. I was unable to procure an AC10 adapter for the GH4. After shooting 2 hours and 44 minutes without stop, I noticed the battery level indicator still had 3 bars. I had bought Third Party batteries (Wasabi BTR-BLF19-JWP) beforehand to have spares, and figured the power level indication just didn\'t work. I paused the recording between songs and started immediately again, figuring I\'d rather not lose it all if the battery suddenly died. I recorded an additional 48 minutes and still had 3 bars. I went to a pizza place and was recording some stuff for slomo and low light and after 20 minutes of that, the battery dropped to 2 bars. I was SHOCKED. So apparently, you can shoot roughly FOUR HOURS before the battery drops a SINGLE bar. This makes me want to sell every other camera I own and buy several of these. I never have to look for another outlet to shoot events or long time lapse shots (which can now also be done in camera).The Memory CardsI am shooting with the Sandisk 95MB/s ExtremePro\'s. I have not shot 4K yet, but have shot a good bit of MP4 (24fps, 100 Mbit) and have had NO issues, even running at 96fps. 4K may be the decider, but if you are shooting HD this seems to be a non-issue.Wifi Too?Yep. If you have an android or iPhone, the camera has an app that works incredibly well... so if you want to shoot from a crane or bucket truck or remote control vehicle, you can, and retain recording control as well as focus. Wonderful addition.Overall.It\'s simple. It\'s as if the Wright brothers got done with the flight at Kitty Hawk, went back to the drawing board, and rolled out a P51 Mustang 3 years later. It\'s difficult to overstate the difference in value this camera represents over previous versions, which were themselves great values for the video capabilities. It\'s as if Chevy decided to give free upgrades on Cobalts to Corvettes.
- I had intended to \"upgrade\" my Olympus E-M1 with the Panasonic GH4, but it didn\'t quite turn out that way.My main reasons for wanting to switch to the GH4 were:1) For my style of shooting, a fully articulated LCD is more useful2) The new firmware update gave the GH4 the 4K video/photo modeThe truth is, right after I got the E-M1, the GH4 came out and I\'ve off and on wondered if I got the right camera. So after almost a year of using the E-M1 (which I actually really like, except for a few things such as the lack of control during video recording such as exposure compensation, shutter, aperture, etc, and lack of fully articulated LCD), finally pulled the trigger and got a GH4 (with the 12-35mm f/2.8 Power O.I.S.).Although I knew Panasonic\'s Power O.I.S. isn\'t as good as the IBIS of Olympus, I wasn\'t prepared for the vast difference I saw between the videos I shot with both cameras. The E-M1 videos are so much better stabilized in comparison to the jittery and shaky video from the GH4. And yes, I did check to see if the Power O.I.S. was indeed working (by turning it off and comparing the result), and with it turned off, it\'s far worse, so the O.I.S. is definitely working, just not nearly as well as IBIS. This is the biggest deal breaker for me at the moment.The reason why this is a deal breaker for me, is because I shoot a lot of casual/home videos of my wife, and it\'s all done in run and gun style, such as us walking around while out shopping, or me following her around the house as she goes about her day being her adorkable self. With this style of shooting, I need excellent image stabilization or else the videos end up being too shaky and uncomfortable to watch (headache-inducing). I do not want to use any kind of steady-cam rig because that defeats the purpose of having a MFT camera as the light-weight and smaller complement to my bulky and heavy 5D Mark III.I wanted the GH4 for a couple of other reasons--fully articulated LCD, and the ability to control exposure compensation during video recording. And yes, I do like those features on the GH4, although it\'s a little disappointing that exposure compensation only works when you switch the dial to Creative Movie shooting mode and is not available in the other modes. That means if I\'m shooting photos and then want to shoot a video, I have to remember to switch to the Creative Movie mode in order to access exposure compensation during video recording, and if I forget to do that and just press the red record button, I\'ll have to stop and switch mode and then restart recording. So considering that, I don\'t know if it\'s actually much better than me using the E-M1 and changing the metering mode to center-weighted metering or spot-metering before pressing the record button (which gives me a similar result as using exposure compensation, when the subject walks in front of a brightly lit window or doorway and I need the expose the subject correctly).As for the fully articulated LCD, I find that when we\'re out walking around, the tilting LCD of the E-M1 is good enough, because if I flip it up into horizontal position and holding it at roughly shoulder height, I can see it pretty well when I\'m walking next to her and shooting her with the camera pointed to the side and me walking forward, or even me walking in front of her and pointing the camera behind me at her. It\'s really only in very specific circumstances where I have to be in the shot that a fully articulated LCD becomes necessary. Situations like that are quite rare, and it\'s definitely not as important as having good image stabilization. And when at home, if we need to record videos that have both of us in the shot, I\'d rather just use the Panasonic X920 camcorder for situations like that (though it\'s not as convenient to have to grab another camera for specific needs).Another reason I wanted the GH4 was to use its 4K photo mode feature, but it turned out that it not as easy to use as I had hoped. First of all, having to go through the video and find usable frames is extra work that\'s much more tedious than going through photos, because so many frames are extremely similar, and slight motion blur might make one specific frame sharper than the others, and the process of finding that ideal frame is very time-consuming. Then, there\'s the issue of only getting a JPG from the frame instead of the more robust and and flexible RAW file. And finally, the 4K files are massive and fills up hard drives quickly (if you shoot a lot of them). I suppose you can extract the stills you want from them and then convert to 1080p, but that\'s yet another extra step, and once you do that, you can\'t go back, and in the future when everything\'s 4K, you\'ll miss those 4K files.In comparison to shooting 4K photo mode, shooting high-speed continuous stills will end up taking up a lot less storage space, since you can find the shots you want and delete the rest, but you don\'t end up with a video you can keep though, and must shoot the video separately, which means it\'ll be extremely difficult to decide whether a special moment should be recorded with video or photos. I just don\'t know if it\'s better to shoot the videos separate from photos but potentially miss shots of footage, or just don\'t think about it and shoot 4K video by default and then deal with extracting stills and large file sizes and not having RAW files to work with.Another thing I noticed with 4K photo mode on the GH4, is that its usefulness is only limited to situations where the needs of good photos and good videos intersect, and it\'s more common to have those situations in professional photography than casual home video/photo--especially when so much of home video/photos are in low-light environments. The video compression and extracted jpg\'s just have this brittle look compared to RAW files when the ISO is higher. In very well-lit environments, the 4K photos look much better--as good as the RAW files. I think in brightly lit studio shoots, or sports, kids and pets playing in sunny daytime, is where the 4K photo mode will be really useful.In the end, I decided to return the GH4 and continue to use the E-M1 (along with my Canon 5D Mark III and Panasonic X920 camcorder), since the disappointing image stabilization of the GH4 during video isn\'t something that will be fixed in a firmware update, and I shoot just as much video as photos nowadays, and they\'re all run and gun styled home videos. The E-M1 is just so much better at image stabilization, and I don\'t need broadcast quality for home videos, so GH4\'s superior image quality and video features don\'t really mean much for my needs. With thasaid, if I were to shoot a professional project, then I would definitely pick the GH4 over the E-M1.
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