Panasonic GH3 Users thread
- Thread starter Droider
- Start date
jfro
Aerial Fun
There is more than just this thread on their website. This is the home of the original gh2/gh3 hack. Some good stuff, but you might have to read a lot of posts....
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/7091/gh3-best-video-settings
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/7091/gh3-best-video-settings
stevemaller
Heavy Lifter
Right now it’s in an X8 config, but I’m not sure it’ll stay that way. Feels like I’m losing too much power vs. a flat 8.
And the gimbal is direct-drive in both pitch and roll (GBM5108 PRO on both) using BrushlessGimbals.com hardware.
stevemaller
Heavy Lifter
It does, but it’s not worth the trouble. The GH3 has a built-in intervalometer, and that’s what I use. Why waste time triggering the shutter? You can just delete the 100 or so photos you don’t want when you land.
Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
shooting in continuous mode gives a more rapid release of the shutter so your shots can be turned on and off using a higher frame rate to catch what you actually want. hold a position, fire off fifteen or twenty shots in a 5 to 10 second burst then move on to the next position. also, from what i've seen, when actually shooting a photo the camera will black out the live feed so interval shooting basically blanks the view the entire flight. how does the GH3 handle the live feed when shooting photos?
thanks for the answer.
bart
Javajack
Java Post Aerial Photo
I really like our GH3 and we have been flying for professional aerial photography all of 2013. Check out Java Post aerial photography at www.javapost.ca. We use an 8mm, 14mm and 20mm prime lenses. I like the 20mm best and so do most DP's I pilot for. The 20 has a more natural perspective and 14 begins to look wide and forced perspective, not quite GoPro fisheye wide but still pretty wide. The GH3 is wonderful on organic images, landscapes, trees, fields but the biggest problem with the GH3 is the moire on bricks, shingles, metal siding, etc. We've tried everything but there simply isn't a solution for this as all large sensor cameras do line dropping when recording HD images. This causes the moire and while it can be softened with on camera or post filtering, it will never be perfect. We tried out a BlackMagic pocket camera that shoots actual HD and there is no moire or line dropping so this will be our choice in the future if we can get a gimbal built for it.
Carapau
Tek care, lambs ont road, MRF Moderator
Hi Dave, I have the 14-42 IOS lens on the camera which has been fantastic. I have also put a filter on it and use the modified GH2 Zenmuse. There is actually a bit more room to tweak the Zen than is often thought. For instance, to get my camera balanced correctly with the filter I had to stick on a couple of washers at the back and it has worked flawlessly all this year.
As with most things there are usually reasons for that.
I "believe" wide angle lenses are used generally for landscape photography because it is much easier to get "everything" in focus compared to longer lenses.
Again for high altitude shots there is not such a problem of getting everything in focus unless you are up close to the subject as everything is about the same distance away when you are high in the air.
Lenses have different magnification and the closer you get to 1x magnification the closer it will look to what the human sees as "normal"
Wide angles don't give normal views, they try and get as much in the picture as possible.
Apparently 43mm full frame lens is very close to "normal".
Your 20mm on the GH3 is equivalent to a 40mm lens on full frame which is very close to "normal" that's why people like the look more compared to wide angle as its more natural.
The hard part comes when you start to get close to things and focusing becomes much more important.
This is where things like the Tomahawk from Paralinx is going to really come into its own in the near future as then you can pull focus in HD on close subjects in real time.
I have a GH2 which I hate for photos, but its good for video, that's why I am looking forward to seeing what a 5D can do in the air especially with the 3x crop that Magic Lantern can do in RAW, that I find amazing on its own.
The GH2 has 2x "optical" zoom, but its not as good as the 5D (not sure if the GH3 still has this)
I may be talking crap, but that's my own personal take on things, now just to get a camera in the air to find out and not do "normal" things
stevemaller
Heavy Lifter
There are two issues with live view from the GH3 in stills mode.
- The viewfinder does blank out when the camera takes a picture if you’re using the HDMI video out (with a converter) through a video TX
- More seriously, the camera seems to switch to 16:9 mode when using an HDMI cable in stills mode. I consider this a bug, but they don’t. What this means is that you lose a lot of pixels from the top and bottom of the frame (16:9 vs 4:3) on your RAW files. That’s a bummer.
Javajack
Java Post Aerial Photo
You're correct about the 20mm being like a 40mm lens on a full sensor 35mm camera, so less distortion, less fisheye sort of look unless you are going for an effect, horror movie or the like. Even with a 20mm there is little issue with focus. Under sunny conditions you usually have an ND filter in place because shooting at the correct shutter speed will not allow you to stop down enough to avoid blowing out highlights such as clouds, etc. At f11 or so everything is in focus from within a couple of feet of the lens to infinity. The GH3 does have the teleconverter mode of which you speaks, which does crop in on the sensor for a pixel for pixel capture and display. I had great hopes for this mode as it gets rid of the line dropping or moire problem caused by using the large sensor for HD capture. The problem is that the image is soft, even though Panasonic claims it to be lossless. On a large broadcast monitor it definitely displays a softer resolution image.
For anyone who doesn't have a clue what we are talking about here is a good page describing what is going on..
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/panasonic_gh2_11_mode_revealed.shtml
Also I know this next link is the 5d mk3 doing 3x, if you have not already seen it, it is a REALLY good read on how Magic Lantern does the same thing but it is done over the whole sensor in RAW (unbelievable option for this kind of camera, just a pity the option was not there when not using RAW).
http://blog.planet5d.com/2013/06/ma...le-every-lens-in-your-bag-new-demo-shows-how/
Javajack
Java Post Aerial Photo
That's a good article. Thanks for posting it. The interpolation, line dropping, whatever you want to call it is a huge deal and corrupts so much footage. We have a Black Magic Pocket camera which has an excellent image, full sensor is 1920x1080 so no line dropping or interpolation going on but we can't mount it on our Zenmuse gimbal. We can mount GH2 and GH3 with an adaptor plate. Might have to change to a different copter or gimbal system. I really want to be shooting 4K by summer, hopefully Black Magic Cinema with global shutter. This is another issue of rolling shutter cameras which cause a jelly effect in the image. GoPros are really bad for it but it exists in all rolling shutter cameras. Here's an article for people who don't understand this issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter
There is a bloke on these forums doing just that..try a search for Alpine Aerials..
http://www.multirotorforums.com/sho...imbal-with-new-firmware-and-Blackmagic-Pocket
Droider
Drone Enthusiast
Excellent info here.
For the less technacally minded of us what woulf be the optimum settings for shooting video?
I am sure the lens trype will play a part here but as a starter I would be good to get the expert opinions. I am hopefull going to be flying mine next week on my G-Lock AV200 with the 14/140 lens I got to start with.
Reading the posts would a 20mm prime be a good second lens for flying?
With the brushless conversion on the AV200 I am hoping I wont be as restricted to what I can fly.
Will the lenses for the GH3 fit on the Black Magic pocket camera?
Dave
For the less technacally minded of us what woulf be the optimum settings for shooting video?
I am sure the lens trype will play a part here but as a starter I would be good to get the expert opinions. I am hopefull going to be flying mine next week on my G-Lock AV200 with the 14/140 lens I got to start with.
Reading the posts would a 20mm prime be a good second lens for flying?
With the brushless conversion on the AV200 I am hoping I wont be as restricted to what I can fly.
Will the lenses for the GH3 fit on the Black Magic pocket camera?
Dave
Depends what the weather is going to be like and how much light around.
Have a play and see what works best, but start off with 24/25 fps or 50fps if you want to do a bit of slow motion too.
Shutter Speed, this will depend on whether you have an ND filter or not.
Ideally you want to be properly exposed with as little ISO as possible, so if you can use 160 then great.
The correct shutter speed you should be using is 1/50th but you may be far too overexposed at this (This is where the ND filters help to reach that setting)
If you don't have an ND filter then up your shutter speed to multiples of 50 until you get a nice exposure like 1/100, 1.200 etc
The aperture (F-Stop) comes into play also with your focus.
The more open your aperture (lower number) the more light you let in and the (higher number) the aperture the less light, but the higher the number the easier it is also to have everything in focus.
What you are suppose to do with a lens is get its hyperfocal distance for whatever settings you have set, however its not really possible on Panasonic lenses as they don't have markings on them.
So depending on what you are shooting and how close you are to them will be a big influence on where you set your F-Stop (aperture)
Taking a 20mm lens as an example at 20mm the hyperfocal distance @ F5.6 is 15.5ft
This means that everything from half of 15.5ft to infinity will be in focus (as best as possible) sharp
If you set it to F11 then the hyperfocal distance is 7.8ft, again everything from half of that distance to infinity will be as sharp as possible.
Problem is like mentioned above panasonic lenses don't have measurements on the lens for you to be able to focus on 15.5 or 7.8ft so you would have to measure out the distance, focus on it then set your lens to manual so it doesn't move.
This is the proper way you are supposed to do it, if you want the best results, a lot of people don't do it this way and just focus on infinity, but it wont be as sharp.
It may be very confusing at the start, but once you learn the rule it will makes things much easier in the future, and you can just get a simple phone app to tell you the hyperfocal distance search for one called "field tools" but remember different cameras have different Hyperfocus distances, but the ones above are for a 4/3 camera like yours, but not for the bmpcc which is different.
Your lens will work on the BMPCC but, this camera has a crop factor of 3, so whatever your lens says you multiply it by 3 to get the same "full fame camera" perspective, a 20mm will be like a 60mm, not so wide.
I'm sure a lot of people don't do it like this, but this is the way I will be doing it, if I ever get my Gimbal through, these principles have been used for years, and I see no reason why they should be any different in the air
Alternatively set it all into Auto and youll probably not notice much difference
Have a play and see what works best, but start off with 24/25 fps or 50fps if you want to do a bit of slow motion too.
Shutter Speed, this will depend on whether you have an ND filter or not.
Ideally you want to be properly exposed with as little ISO as possible, so if you can use 160 then great.
The correct shutter speed you should be using is 1/50th but you may be far too overexposed at this (This is where the ND filters help to reach that setting)
If you don't have an ND filter then up your shutter speed to multiples of 50 until you get a nice exposure like 1/100, 1.200 etc
The aperture (F-Stop) comes into play also with your focus.
The more open your aperture (lower number) the more light you let in and the (higher number) the aperture the less light, but the higher the number the easier it is also to have everything in focus.
What you are suppose to do with a lens is get its hyperfocal distance for whatever settings you have set, however its not really possible on Panasonic lenses as they don't have markings on them.
So depending on what you are shooting and how close you are to them will be a big influence on where you set your F-Stop (aperture)
Taking a 20mm lens as an example at 20mm the hyperfocal distance @ F5.6 is 15.5ft
This means that everything from half of 15.5ft to infinity will be in focus (as best as possible) sharp
If you set it to F11 then the hyperfocal distance is 7.8ft, again everything from half of that distance to infinity will be as sharp as possible.
Problem is like mentioned above panasonic lenses don't have measurements on the lens for you to be able to focus on 15.5 or 7.8ft so you would have to measure out the distance, focus on it then set your lens to manual so it doesn't move.
This is the proper way you are supposed to do it, if you want the best results, a lot of people don't do it this way and just focus on infinity, but it wont be as sharp.
It may be very confusing at the start, but once you learn the rule it will makes things much easier in the future, and you can just get a simple phone app to tell you the hyperfocal distance search for one called "field tools" but remember different cameras have different Hyperfocus distances, but the ones above are for a 4/3 camera like yours, but not for the bmpcc which is different.
Your lens will work on the BMPCC but, this camera has a crop factor of 3, so whatever your lens says you multiply it by 3 to get the same "full fame camera" perspective, a 20mm will be like a 60mm, not so wide.
I'm sure a lot of people don't do it like this, but this is the way I will be doing it, if I ever get my Gimbal through, these principles have been used for years, and I see no reason why they should be any different in the air
Alternatively set it all into Auto and youll probably not notice much difference
Last edited by a moderator:
Droider
Drone Enthusiast
Aye Up Quinton. Thanks for taking the time to write a very detailed and clear reply. Its chucking it down here in the Lakes (UK). was supposed to be flying and biking the chrimbo and last nights excess off but looks like the rest of the day will be researching more info, which usually means more money!
U in the UK by any chance?
Dave
U in the UK by any chance?
Dave
kloner
Aerial DP
we like the 14-35 i think it is, nd to happiness, CP on just about everything and jst running that lens and focal to taste gets almost every shot were after. however nice primes are money so I've been buying all the micro 4/3 lenses out primarily video based....7-14 lumix, rokinon cinema 16mm t-2.2, voightlander .95 17.5mm, lumix 14-140 and ground only 100-300 lumix.
That voigtlander at about 2.2-2.8 with a really nice nd and cp in the sun is money, way money...... the rockinon is on par with the lumix glass IMO, super wish the lumix 7-14 had a way to thread filters to it. only problem with both is they are mega heavy for m43, couple pounds a piece, ones metal cased, other is chuck full of 77mm type glass
They all are compatible with BMPC, and i'm praying with gh4 due very very soon. I'm not behind the scenes, but a red killer is on the horizon, should know all about it here after ces
That voigtlander at about 2.2-2.8 with a really nice nd and cp in the sun is money, way money...... the rockinon is on par with the lumix glass IMO, super wish the lumix 7-14 had a way to thread filters to it. only problem with both is they are mega heavy for m43, couple pounds a piece, ones metal cased, other is chuck full of 77mm type glass
They all are compatible with BMPC, and i'm praying with gh4 due very very soon. I'm not behind the scenes, but a red killer is on the horizon, should know all about it here after ces