Well,well,well.I have had my eye on this puppy for a while.It promises to be the most revolutionary camera of the decade in my humble opinion.Yes the RED one is miles ahead in many regards such as frame rate options,time lapse,RAW codecs etc but for once the indie filmaker has a few things on his side in one camera.Affordable price,portability,a huge sensor,( hopefully great low light performance), interchangeable lenses,( including Leica lenses – yum yum ), DOF control,24p and HDMI output.Panasonic have put quite a bit of thought into this camera and if it offers uncompressed HDMI output then I am sold.I was down to buy a Canon 5D Mark II until I realised that Canon had deliberately crippled the camera.No manual control,uncompressde HDMI or 24p.I cancelled my pre-order.
Well as for Panasonic I wrote to them in January and enquired about the possiblity to test the GH1 HD.They turned me down he he.Not enough clout I suppose….
Self contained and portable
Spent an afternoon working with the Magma chassis and a briefcase.Lots of soldering,taping,glueing and binding but managed to get it all in.Laptop,battery,invertor,power supplies,cables – all of it and it works great.Great thing about the magma chassis is that it actually can take pretty much any pci express card out there.HD-SDI,HDMI even camera link.
I went and saw this film with my wife and father in law at a special screening at the Princesss Anne theatre.It was very,very moving and highlights the problems that Zimbabwe has with its leadership and how the problem of racism is not only in one direction in Zimbabwe.
May positive change come soon and may God be with Ben and Laura Freeth and along with Michael and Angela Campbell and the rest of the family in this difficult time.Our prayers and thoughts are with them and also all the nameless faces of the many farm workers they employ who have likewise suffered at the hands of such a terrible tyranny.
As I am going into short films myself I have a few observations from a techincal viewpoint – of course I may be wrong. It was shot as a documentary and as such one could get away with shaky archive footage and blown highlights etc. appeared to have an expensive camera look from the bokeh and depth of field but not sure what was used.Most of it was shot covertly so it would have had to have been small.It had I think a six blade aperture so it was a professional camera.There was a bit of aliasing from scaling so am not sure if it was shot in HD or whether an interlaced camera was used.I am not sure whether it was projected digitally but if it was transferred to film then then would have added an extra step,cost and loss of some resolution.At the end of the day – content is king and even though there were isssues with the picture I hardly cared as the movie was so moving.
Well this baby arrived on time and I have had it for a wee while now.In a word – it is a beast.This was a shoot I did the other day when I went for a stroll in my local borough.Man the image is sharp.Love it,love it, love it!!!
I have been capturing HDMI from my consumer camcorders now for a while and as I get asked quite a bit about how I do it I thought I would make a short tutorial as to how I go about it.
Hope this helps.
