Panasonic Lumix GH4

The Panasonic Lumix GH4 flexes some serious video muscle

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It might not look that different from the GH3, but the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4 has some features that will impress professional shooters working in both stills and video.

First and foremost, the GH4 is the first digital single lens mirrorless camera to record 4K video. The small, lightweight micro four-thirds camera captures Cinema 4K (4096 x 2160) at 24 fps and 4K (3840 x 2160) at 24, 25 or 30 fps. For those who don’t want to leave the realm of Full HD, the GH4 can also capture at the ultra-high bit-rate of 200 Mbps at 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60 fps, giving absolute global adjustability. In fact, the through-put of data is so extraordinary that shooters will need to upgrade to the new generation U3 SD cards as well.

Designed as the camera for a travelling professional, the GH4 has settings for any international television standard, and display preferences usually reserved for full blown video cameras—zebra patterns and focus peaking for instance; marking areas of 70 per cent luminosity to perfectly expose skin tones, and aide in high-definition fine focus, respectively. Then there’s synchro-scan—to suppress flicker on monitors or from fluorescent lights when shooting indoors—and the darling of sports and adventure shooters, variable frame rate, allowing the shooter to record as fast as 96 fps and as slow as 2 fps for smooth slow motion and time-lapse sequences in Full HD.

The improvements in the recording resolution have necessitated corresponding advances in the screens incorporated into the live viewfinder (now nearly 2.4MP) and free-angle rear monitor (now over 1MP). Both have 100 per cent field of view and better contrast and colour reproduction than its predecessor, ensuring that what you’re seeing on the back of the camera is a fair representation of what’s being recorded on the card. Also upgraded is a new Venus Engine image processor with a quad-core CPU to keep up with the massive volume of data flowing from the sensor.

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The GH4 also sports impressive stills capabilities. Action and wildlife photographer Bence Máté has been using the camera in the Kiskunsag National Park, Hungary to make incredibly detailed and elegant images of birdlife in the snow from a specially built hide. In this application, says Máté, the improvements to the focusing system are as important as bump in resolution.

The autofocus system has received a significant upgrade with the integration of Depth-From-Defocus (DFD) autofocus (in which the camera uses image blur to judge distance) into the standard AF system to achieve a fast autofocus time of approximately 0.07 seconds. This allows for burst-shooting of 12 fps (or 7 fps in continuous auto-focus mode) to capture fast-moving subjects. The new AF system also features 49 points and covers the entire field of view rather than just a central section, with the ability to freely select which blocks to focus out of the 49 possible focusing areas. “This is the only equipment that allows you to select the auto-focus point in any variation, manually, within the whole viewfinder, which gives you a lot of freedom,” says Máté.

A new 16-megapixel sensor improves resolution, colour reproduction and sensitivity (max ISO 25,600) and reads at approximately twice the rate as the GH3’s sensor.

With its magnesium alloy body and splash and dust-proof construction, the GH4 is small and light compared to a DSLR, but still ruggedly built (including a more durable shutter unit tested for 200,000 releases). Ultimately, the GH4 is for those professional stills and video adventurers who are working in the field with demanding standards for high definition acquisition.

See more at: panasonic.co.nz