I haven’t bought it yet, but will at some point. The internets are aflame with upset Final Cut editors – “pros” who see FCPX as a dumbing-down of the program. It brings necessary updates (64-bit, background processing of renders etc.), but eliminates crucial pro workflow features (XML, EDL, tape support, dual monitor support, 3rd party hardware support etc).
Fair enough. But really? Since when do pros update on the first day?
Granted, the fact that it can’t even import old projects is pretty crazy. And the way the Mac App Store works isn’t helping, as people can’t try a demo or anything, so some must have paid $300 just to discover a crucial feature is missing. The obvious answer is that FCP 7 still works great, and the solution for now is to use both, whichever one works best for the project at hand. But Apple screwed up by pulling Final Cut Studio from their stores, making it hard for some to do just that.
I’m very happy with the new direction though. Even though the Final Cut we’ve all known and loved for over a decade brought lots of welcome innovations that Avid is still trying to copy, it was nonetheless based on a tape-to-tape / film editing metaphor. That metaphor needed to get chucked – the whole interface needed to be rethought. Who better to do that than Apple?
There is no question in my mind that cameras like this are the future for many of us.
By us I mean those interested in both still and motion picture photography. I’ve been into both fields for a while, both by hobby and trade, and it still blows my little mind to think I could afford a thing like this. It’s been a long, gradual and perhaps predictable time coming, but that doesn’t make it seem any less crazy. When I was in university we shot on VHS, and people were saying Hi-8 video was the future. Then it was the DV “revolution”. I split on a cheap DV handicam with some friends. But you still couldn’t get a nice image with these things – you could imitate video stuff, but never convincingly film. For that you needed to shoot film, which was a mulit-thousand-dollar proposition for camera rental & processing. Soon, we were lucky enough to be able to shoot on early pro HDCAMs like the Sony F900, but that was still a half-million dollar camera. A few short years later, the Red is here at $20,000, which is mind-blowing to anyone in the industry.
And now we have sub-$2,000 video SLRs like the GH1. Cameras with great optics, all-digital workflow, 1080p24, compact size, full manual control. Interchangeable lenses, decent low-light shooting. Total craziness.
These are amazing cameras, but they have kinks. I’m sure in a year or two this category will have stabilized, the feature set will be clear, and choices will be easier. The next iteration of the GH1 (might I guess GH2?) will solve a lot of the problems with this thing. Because yes, there are problems.
no video out – you can put HDMI or composite out when reviewing shots, but not while capturing. This makes it very hard to do a lot of things where the director and camera operator are not the same person.
poor audio support – the GH1 has a surprisingly decent built-in mic, and an optional mountable shotgun mic, but most of the time, I’d want to hook up a wireless lavalier mic. You can do that, but the audio in is a minijack that auto-levels the signal. For best sound, you need to record into a separate audio field recorder and then sync in post. That’s a couple hundred extra and a big pain in the ass.
low bitrate – the camera has great optics, but the files it saves are too low a bitrate. Sometimes this bites you, sometimes it doesn’t.
AVCHD – I find this to be a shitty codec, which causes headaches in post as it must be converted to something Final Cut can use (still haven’t figured out how to get it into the Avid). When you combine AVCHD’s interframe compression with the low bitrate, especially in 1080p24 mode you get compression mud in certain situations, like fast camera movement and/or complex detail (grass, especially). This sucks. There is an MJPEG mode that is mud-free, but it’s only 720p30 and is still low bitrate.
I don’t want to sound complainy here. The GH1 has a lot going for it. Mainly:
I found the still modes to be awesome. I may not be the best judge, not having used a lot of DSLRs, but I’ve gotten some great photos out of this thing.
The flip-out LCD is a lifesaver. Every camera should have this.
the kit lens is impressive. It’s the equivalent of a 28-280mm zoom, which gives you a lot of options. Its silent autofocus is another engineering marvel for an SLR. I really never thought I’d use autofocus, but it’s quite smart.
An advantage of the category in general: these cameras are really small compared to video cameras, and thus really stealth. You can get away with a lot. Except you’ll have to put up with people posing as they wait for the ‘click’.
This is another categorical feature, but one that compares favourably to most video cams, even much more expensive ones: interchangeable lenses. I’ve picked up a fast 50mm FD lens and the results have been really satisfying.All the cameras in this category, which right now includes the Canon 5DMkII and the new 7D, suffer from strange, idiosyncratic drawbacks.
Like I say, I’m figuring in a year or so the dust will have settled, each manufacturer will have figured out the featureset they need, and eliminated the needless problems. Red’s cheaper camera Scarlett will theoretically be on the market, too. No matter how you slice it, it’s a great time to be shooting, and it will continue this way for the forseeable future. Perhaps one day we will simply exhale a fine mist of microscopic flying camera bugs and then let our algorithms cut it together, but until then…
I love the feel of this camera in the hands. I love old school film cameras with all their manual doohickeys and I don’t like bad digital compacts with all the navigating poorly-laid-out on-screen menus. This thing has got old school buttons and levers, and where you need to go into menus, they are very well designed. The flip-out LCD is from heaven. Only thing I don’t like is the absence of focus marks on the lens. Still getting used to manual focusing with this bastard – the autofocus is good, so I’m not complaining too much.
It takes a bit to get used to the video. I got into the stills part right away. As I mentioned I have plenty of experience with shooting stills, and so I saw the improvements a camera like this makes possible right away.
On the video capture side I have few skills, other than general knowledge of photography (well, plus a wealth of skills in post, but that’s anoher matter). Also, this camera’s advantages in cinematography are tricky to unlock.
The post workflow is one thing. For me, it actually takes longer to get my tapeless footage off this camera than it did with tape. That’s because you have to convert at least once from AVCHD -> ProRes if you want Final Cut to be able to digest it (here’s one video task that may actually be better on windows systems). You need to convert again if you want to remove the 30i wrapper from your 24p footage. You can shoot slomo since the camera has a 60p mode, but that involves some trickery again.
Capture has its own challenges. I certainly saw the AVCHD ‘mud’ (compression junk as a result of the codec breaking down) that happens with fast pans. This is disappointing to say the least, and hopefully panasonic can address it in a firmware update, perhaps by upping the bit rate.
I personally needed to get a ND filter for daylight shooting; if you’re looking for ‘film look’ bokeh, you want some filters going. Once I had that I got better-looking footage.
Finally, camera shake is an issue in something this small. It’s okay if you’re shooting slomo. But if not, you either want to stay wide or get some means to stabilize this badboy. I had okay luck with the camera on my lap or otherwise propped against something, but i’m also looking into either a shoulder brace or steadicam-y type thing, and there are many options that I’m still shopping around for.
Once you figure out some of these things, you can get some excellent results. Here’s two vids of test footage. (You can’t watch them in HD through these embeds, so perhaps click through to the vimeo pages.) Here’s an early, not great one:
I’m happy with the footage on our back patio (the girls chatting), but little else. That footage looks great because the camera’s stabilized, I’m able to get some bokeh, in part because it’s not too bright. The footage on queen street in direct sunlight is pre-ND filter and so the aperture is closed down, meaning there’s too much DOF. A lot of it was too shaky to use, too.
Here’s a later vid, with footage from Pride last sunday:
As you can see, the slomo works great. It smooths out the camera jitter awesomely. Also, I had the ND filter by then, and it was cloudy, so backgrounds are all pretty n’ soft. I look at some of these shots, and think I shouldn’t be able to get them, the camera being so cheap, and me being nearly unskilled.
The other nice thing is how people deal with the camera. It’s small and has the body of an SLR. I think at the AlternaQueer tent people thought I was a news photographer. And out on the street there were so many cameras I was more or less invisible. Because of the massive proliferation of cameras these days, the incredible 280mm zoom this thing can do, and the appearance of the camera’s body, I found myself able to go pretty much anywhere and take pics of anything with no problems. That was a nice surprise.
Anyway, I hope to shoot a few more tests this week as there are still things to figure out and questions to answer. Dealing with sound is one of them.
Just got the Panasonic GH1 in. I had pre-ordered at adorama in the US, and at Vistek here in Toronto, and due to a lucky turn, Vistek came through much earlier than I had feared. I know from scouring the forums that many are being told they won’t get their cameras until July.
I’ve only barely used it, but I’m already thrilled. Perhaps much of the thrill would be common to any camera in this price range / category; many entry level DSLRs, as I understand it, would have equivalent picture quality and features. But it’s all new to me – my recent cameras are an ancient film SLR, a crappy five-year-old point & shoot, and the iPhone. I’ve taken good pictures with all of them, but never with the ease I experienced since this new baby came.
Perhaps the most unsettling thing is how frickin’ smart the camera is. The autofocus is fast, and shows you what it’s focusing on. The metering seemed always on point. And more than once we noticed it doing crazy-ass face detection. Apparently it predicts motion too? How long until it becomes self-aware, if it isn’t already?
I’m just scratching the surface of video recording, which of course is the reason I bought this camera. It’s harder to get sorted than it needs to be. If you’re going for a film look thing the right settings are crucial, which would be 1080p (“full HD”) and a shutter rate of 1/50. That means you’re recording in the rather nasty codec AVCHD, which causes workflow problems because Final Cut can’t edit that natively. Getting real 24p also requires deinterlacing the shots after that. To make matters worse, the AVCHD footage can break up and create compression mud on fast pans and tilts.
That said the 720 60p works well, and also presents the opportunity to shoot slow motion. And all in all, for the crazy small amount of money this thing costs, you have an HD, 24p camera with a sensor only a hair smaller than a RED camera.
There’s Pride on the weekend, and then I’m off the next week, with the intention of shooting me some (film? AVCHD? MTS files?), so I’ll have at least some test footage to show before too long.
I find it endlessly fascinating to think about how one medium is going to influence another. Right now, there are so many media spilling into the same pot that it’s hard to imagine how the stew will taste. But in this AV Club year-in-movies retrospective, Tasha Robinson makes an apt observation:
To me, the trend there seems to be less about people filtering the world through their pop-culture experiences—apart from the occasional extreme iconoclast, who in this industry doesn’t?—and more about people filtering the world through camera lenses, seeing every experience as something to be caught on video and shared with a hungry voyeuristic world. I recently watched Martin Scorsese’s 2008 Rolling Stones concert doc Shine A Light, and I laughed at the way Scorsese’s cameras capture people in the process of capturing Mick Jagger’s cavorting on their phones. He’s making his movie—a big, shiny, energetic, polished production—and they’re making their low-fi versions in the middle of it. Or looked at another way, they’re in the front row at a Stones concert… and they’re watching the experience on tiny little screens held up in front of their faces, because capturing it for later is more important than living it.
That attitude has its benefits—for one thing, it gave us Trouble The Water, which rides entirely on the amazing from-the-ground footage two New Orleans residents shot to document their own lives before, during, and after Katrina. I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of that in 2009, as people continue to turn their cameras on themselves and their neighborhoods. Given that so many of our favorite 2008 movies were little lo-fi films about ordinary people rather than the pricey escapist fare, I’m suspecting this might ultimately be a good thing, and I hope it continues.
One of many interesting ideas here is that with so many cameras out there capturing footage, there’s a potential for a new kind of cinema that is both theatrical and collectivist. Imagine a room full of people at an event; you stage something going on in the room, and count on the people there to record it for you. You then sort through the footage from the event and assemble it. Or, you could post all the collective footage for anyone to assemble their own edit. It’s the sort of production that would have been completely inconceivable 15 – 20 years ago.
It’s also the sort of production perpetrated by none other than The Beastie Boys, with their awesomely titled Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That in 2006, the year Google bought YouTube, and conceived well before YouTube opened for business.
I don’t know the moral of this story – it’s ongoing, as they say. Perhaps it’s that the Beasties are awesome.
So, when Bioshock came out everyone went gaga happy crazy yay and I’m so there, like, seriously it’s one of the best times ever on the 360. Then came the “Hey wait…I’ve played this before…” from the older generation of gamers that played a game called System Shock II a few years ago. That lovely and witty Brit Yahtzee really hammered it home in last Wednesday’s Zero Punctuation over at The Escapist. It brought up a point that I think needs to be addressed: Game designers repeating the past – is it so wrong? I for one don’t think so at all. The best example of going back to fix things you’d rather have done better in the first place is what I like to call the Lucasing Process.
Via merlinmann comes a link to this impressive footage taken with a little HDV handicam, the Canon HV20 and an adapter called the Brevis which allows the mounting of 35mm lenses. Thing is, the camera is $1000 US, the adapter another grand. Which is to say CRAZYCHEAP for a full-on 24p bastard that makes images like that. In five years will we all be shooting Imax on our cellphones or what?
