First real test for the Panasonic GH4

In a previous blog I have written about my experience using micro four thirds or "mirrorless" camera systems for wildlife photography. Last year I used my Panasonic GH3 to good effect mainly for video. Whilst the GH3 is a capable stills camera, for me what was lacking was a viable telephoto lens option to match Canon and Nikon glass specific to wildlife photography. What Panasonic misses is a telephoto zoom lens in the region of 120-300mm or 200-400mm with a constant aperture (f2.8) or a decent variable aperture (3.5-5.6). As the system is based on a micro four thirds sensor, there is a crop factor to apply. You must multiple the mice four thirds lenses by a factor of 2 for the comparable full frame lens equivalents. So for example I have the 100-300mm f3.5-5.6 lens for the Panasonic micro four thirds system, but as the sensor has a 2X crop factor this translates to 200-600mm equivalent for a full frame camera. As a wildlife photographer, you'd be pretty excited to have that focal length right? Well, yes and no. In my previous blog on the subject I expressed my disappointment in this lens, especially at the long end, it is too soft. The lack of a lens support ring from Panasonic to mount the lens to the tripod rather than the camera is also an oversight from Panasonic. This opens up the possibility of lens shake whilst in use. And despite the lens having IS, I have seen issues with this. The lens has a plastic construction and is generally inferior compared to the excellent 12-35 f2.8 and 35-100 f2.8 lenses. It is therefore inherently less robust than its counterparts.

The micro four thirds system is versatile lens mount. There are many adaptors out there to allow use of other lenses. However Canon lens owners have been frustrated due to no active adaptor being available. This has recently changed with the release of both an active adapter and a speed booster from company Metabones that allows certain Canon EF lenses to be connected to a micro four thirds mount. In theory this would allow me to add my Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens or my Sigma 120-300mm f2.8 lens to my GH3 body. However, whilst the active electronic mount allows aperture control from the camera (one of the main flaws of a passive adaptor ring), the adaptors still don't allow for real time auto focusing. You can more or less live with this in video mode. But auto focus control is a must have for wildlife photography. It is a real pity Panasonic haven't completed their line up with a 100-300mm lens of comparable quality to the 12-35 and 35-100 f2.8 counterparts, because the whole system is small, light and compact and would be ideal for long haul travelling. And whilst I am on the subject of Panasonic lenses...please Panasonic include an infinity focus marker on your lenses in the future!!!

The Canon L 70-200mm f2.8 is my favourite lens - quality that delivers. But it is heavy. The Panasonic "equivalent" is the excellent 35-100mm f2.8. Panasonic need to up there game in the 100-300mm lens category to be a series contender for wildlife and sports photography pros.

Since my last blog I have upgraded to what many are calling "4K for the masses" the Panasonic GH4. It was a no brainer for me really given I had the GH3 and lenses already. So far in the 3 or 4 videos I have shot with the camera I have been hugely impressed. Panasonic continue to push the boundaries with video-enabled mirrorless cameras. The GH4 is packed with tons of pro features from focus peaking and zebras all the way through to full 4K shooting with flat cinema profiles. In video mode it has been a joy to use and reignited my passion for shooting video on DSLRs which faded with my 7D and Canon's lack of ambition to enhance their own models for video shooters. 

GH4's have been hard to come by as they are in such high demand. I got lucky thanks to connections!

In August I took my summer vacation in the South West of France and decided to revisit the issue of long lens stills work with a micro four thirds system. This time with GH4 in hand I hit the beaches of Lacanau-Ocean during the Sooruz Lacanau Pro surf contest. Once upon a time I used to surf, and surf seriously, most of my life choices were based around surfing. So it wasn't the first time I'd been on the surf contest circuit. But it was the first time I'd had some high end photographic gear to shoot with.

A very young me when I was a surfer with 4 times world champion Lisa Anderson at Hossegor 2002.

So the question I wanted answering was how would the GH4 fair as a stills camera and could I get over some of the issues I'd faced with the 100-300mm f3.5-.6 lens. Well first off, just like wildlife photography, in sports photography you need to work at very fast shutter speeds. The GH3 shoots at a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000 of a second, and here is where the first improvement comes into play on the GH4. The GH4 shoots at 1/8000 of a second. That's a huge step up! The GH3 has a burst rate of 4 frames per second. The GH4 nearly doubles that to 7 frames per second. So from the camera side the GH4 specifications are seriously impressive.

So one morning I went to the beach with GH4 and GH3 in hand.

I started shooting the surf competition with the GH4 and I was seriously impressed. The fast burst rate combined with an incredible write speed meant I had no problems shooting off 10-15 shot sequences in combined JPEG and RAW mode. The EVF is also a joy to use. You really do see what you are shooting through the much improved viewfinder and eye cup. If only Canon understood the benefits of this technology to their DSLR consumer base! I then switched to my GH3 and it felt like things immediately ground to a halt. Slower burst rates, and slower right speeds. As I hit the shutter button the first few shots were rapid then you could hear the camera slow down. So I switched back to the GH4 and kept on shooting. The advantage I had is that as I used to surf, I really was able to anticipate the shots based on my reading of the waves and the surfers position. There is a real similarity between photographing surfing and wildlife photography where anticipation and knowledge play as much a role as technical skills with the camera itself.

Here are a selection of the results:

All of these images were JPEGs. At the time when I took the photographs I was still running Lightroom 4 and it would not import the GH4 RAW images. Once I returned from vacation I upgraded to Lightroom 5 in order to be able have GH4 RAW compatibility. So these images could be better by editing the RAW file. On the surface these images don't look too bad. I have shown them to friends and family who all "ooooh and aaaaah" and said I should quit my day job and become a sports photographer. They are all too kind :-)

I do plan on adding these images once the RAWs are processed, over time on my portfolio section of my website. 

If you look closer you see the same issues I faced before with the GH3, and again they are all related to the lens. These images are the ones that were sharp. I have some imaged where the 100-300mm lens just could not keep up with the auto focus mechanism on the camera. But even when sharp there is a really soft feel to the image. So when you sharpen in Lightroom that induces grain and you compensate for that with noise reduction which induces softness. You are back to where you started!!! All technical issues aside with this lens (which there are many), the bottom line for me is that even when the camera tracks focus the lens is optically too soft. Add to that the poor IS and fragility of motion blur in the image because of lens construction and camera mounting, you have to be very skilled to use the lens and have a huge degree of patience. 

Given it's 4K video shooting capability, light weight and compact size would I pack a small bag with the Panasonic GH4 as an A cam and GH3 as B cam for my next African Safari?

The only other Pro at the beach that day. Canon body and a very beaten up 200-400mm f2.8 lens. 

The answer unfortunately is "no".

For quality stills I have to fall back to my now ageing but trusty 7D, the 70-200mm f2.8 with 1.4X extender or my 120-300mm f2.8 Sigma lenses. I know that this system will deliver a hit rate of >90% for me, and the remaining 10% will be down to my errors not the cameras ability. 

With the Panasonic system I have every confidence the GH4 can deliver. I have no confidence in the 100-300mm f3.5-5.6 lens. This is a lens that even when locked down solid on a tripod, with a lightweight camera body and IS, it just cannot deliver. And this is hugely frustrating...

My camera bag for Africa will always have two bodies. Preferable the same system bodies i.e. two Canon's - just in case one fails in the field I have a back up. Yet none of the Canon DSLRs (with the exception of the C series 1DC) have 4K shooting mode in video. The whole idea of having a DSLR that shoots video is that you take one camera and shoot stills and video. Yet Canon's reluctance to give still shooters quality video features has left us resigned to the fact that the video function on our DSLRs is redundant. I no longer shoot video on my 7D. 3 years ago I was regularly shooting video with the 7D. I haven't shot video on my 7D for 18 months. Today my go-to video camera is the GH4. Being able to shoot in 4K gives me the option to crop with minimal loss of resolution and compensate for the lack of a quality telephoto zoom lens. But I still need that optical quality for stills. And today, that is a huge gap Panasonic have yet to address. Even other micro four thirds manufacturers like Olympus lack a lens of that quality in that focal length range. There are no options for the serious wildlife photographer today.

So in the future I will be resigned to trying to having to have two different camera body systems; one to shoot stills and one to shoot video for wildlife. And that pretty much defeats the whole objective of having video enable DSLR systems! The GH4 ticks almost all the boxes, but the achilles heal with the micro four thirds systems is it lenses. If there aren't pro quality lenses forthcoming this system will always be limited by pro users.

The GH4 has such huge potential as both a pro-end stills camera and video in 4K, but it desperately needs some micro four thirds lens additions for sports/nature and wildlife photography