GH4 advice... Shooting sports?!?

[mschubb]

Except for pictures of my daughter, I never had much interest in shooting sports, but I've been "volunteered" to regularly shoot her high school varsity volleyball games.  The gyms typically have dingy low light levels and my first shoot yesterday was complete crap.  Better gear is required but I am on the fence about what to buy.  I own a GH2 -- which has been great for my professional work shooting both video and stills, most of which ends up in online training.  Before this assignment came up, I was planning to upgrade to the GH4.  

Already have a significant investment in good glass and love the format, but the only decent shots from yesterday were crops from shots with the Panasonic/Leica 25mm @ f1.4.  (Perfect lens -- if I could shoot everything from inside the middle of the court!)  At F2.8, I couldn't get much more than 1/100 sec with the Panasonic 12-35mm.  My longer F4-5.6 zoom was too slow to use at all.  And I couldn't manually focus quick enough w/ fast Nikon primes on an adapter...  

Would love to hear from anyone who knows these cameras.  Will the GH4 be much improvement for shooting sports action??   Are the GH4 improvements to ISO and focus speed a dramatic upgrade from the GH2?  Or is it just ridiculous to try to shoot indoor sports with an M4/3 camera?

Appreciate any thoughts or advice...  

Thanks,

Mark

[deejjjaaaa]

GH4 gains vs GH2

1) ~1 stop more in DR
2) CDAF @ EV-4 
3) DFD with panasonic lenses = faster Single-AF CDAF
4) can drive lenses like 35-100/2.8 & 12-35/2.8 faster than GH2 (claims 480/sec CDAF readouts vs 120/sec CDAF readouts in GH2), with DFD even better.
5) burst 12fps vs 3fps

but by no means it can approach 1Dx  in AF tracking department...  if you know the game and can predict/prefocus you shall have no issues (people were shooting that w/ mf lenses & film cameras)

[Ken Bennett]

You don't mention what ISO you were using. Our local high school volleyball gym gives me 1/250 at f/5.6 at ISO 6400. I don't think it's particularly bright. I choose f/5.6 since none of the high school student photographers have anything close to an f/2.8 lens -- they are all using cheap variable aperture zooms that are, at best, f/5.6 at the long end.

I don't think any of the m4/3 or other contrast-detect AF system cameras can handle fast action very well, even with "phase detect pixels" embedded in the sensor. That said, much of volleyball photography is very quick focus acquisition when you see where the ball is going and focus on who is going to hit it. Some of the m4/3 cameras can single focus very quickly, not sure about that in poor light though.

You might be better off shooting with the 25mm/1.4 from the sidelines and cropping the final results. You'll need to move around a lot, and focus on one kind of photo in each location (so, for example, sit near the net and focus on your team as they dig and set, then move halfway down the baseline toward the other end and focus on the net as they spike or block facing you.)

Finally, the Olympus 45mm and 75mm lenses are excellent and fast. Not sure about focus speed, but you can rent them for a trial. We still have some of the m4/3 primes, and I'd be using those two every day if I hadn't moved to Fuji for my compact system. (Which I would never in a million years use for volleyball )

[deejjjaaaa]

Finally, the Olympus 45mm and 75mm lenses are excellent and fast.

if he is to use GH4 - he needs panasonic lenses supporting DFD and fast CDAF drive - and that will be 35-100/2.8 and 12-35/2.8... 45 & 75 are too slow (not aperture vise) vs those.

[mschubb]

Thanks for your posts.  Very helpful.   

d j -- do I understand you correctly to mean that the 45 and 75mm don't focus quickly?  because they are not pany lenses that can use DFD?

k b -- what camera are you using in that gym? GH4?  I'd be delighted to get 1/250 at F5.6 at 6400.  Even though it's by far my least favorite lens, I could use the 14-140mm with image stabilization.  If I had usable 6400, exposure wouldn't be problem.

For stills, my GH2 is pretty noisy above 800.  I can push it to 1250, but 1600 doesn't clean up well, especially when I have to crop.  And in this gym that has lights on a very high ceiling -- bowl-shaped fixtures that each hold multiple CFL bulbs -- the best I get with the 12-35mm F2.8 at ISO 1250 is maybe 1/100 to 1/125 sec.   With the 25mm at F1.4 maybe 200-250 sec. 

At one point, I was very tempted to get the 42.5mm F1.2... but at that crazy price, doesn't it seem even more crazy to not be upgrading my aging GH2 first? 

[deejjjaaaa]

Thanks for your posts.  Very helpful.  

d j -- do I understand you correctly to mean that the 45 and 75mm don't focus quickly?  because they are not pany lenses that can use DFD?

they are not focusing as quick as those P lenses on P body... DFD is a function of CDAF algorithms implemented by P in their bodies, intended to skip enough initial CDAF iterations when focusing using characteristics of aberrations/bokeh/whatever in defocused areas specific for each lens model (that's why you need P lenses on P body) and those lenses have a proper optical design/linear motors, etc to respond more quickly to commands from a body... it is not that 75/1.8 is focusing slow by itself - it is that 35-100/2.8 will focus faster, more so with DFD enabled GH4 body.

PS: Nikon 1 will be focusing even faster - it is still the king of all mirrorless systems focus wise, albeit again smaller sensor

[Ken Bennett]

Not a gh4. I don't have any more m4/3 cameras. I was shooting with my 5D3 and the students with various digital rebels and old Nikon bodies.

I got usable (for me) images at 3200 from my GH2. Not great, but usable. You might just have to lower your expectations of what the final images will look like I do a lot of shooting in dark gyms, as do my news colleagues, and I'm just amazed that I can get anything compared to the old days of pushing Fujicolor 800 color neg film three or four stops in the Helbertronic.

All that said, I still don't think m4/3 will provide satisfactory results with indoor sports. You can try the GH4 since you want that anyway for video. It's supposed to be better than the GH2 at high ISO values.

Good luck.

Edit: when I say I got good photos at 3200 with my GH2, I do not mean volleyball. I never used it for sports.

[mschubb]

Thanks again for the advice and discussion. 

Yes, I agree you can get usable images from the GH2 at higher ISOs.  But for this gym, I needed the extra stops of the Panasonic 25mm F1.4... so most shots were cropped 50% or more, making noise much more problematic.  Then add in fluorescent lights with very bad CRI, and GH2 image quality really suffered above ISO640.   

But you're also right about relaxing my expectations... players and parents completely loved some very ugly pictures!

Bottom line -- I ordered the Gh4 and should be shooting games with it next week.  Hopefully, it will let me shoot @250 sec with my slower zooms, reduce my shooting ratio and get shots that need less work in LR.   

Will report back... 

[wsalopek]

Please let us know how you did with indoor volleyball and the GH4.

I use a D600 and 70-200 2.8, and while I am pleased with the IQ, I would love to be able to use something smaller, and be able to pull pics from 4K video.

--

Bill

 

[mschubb]

Sorry to be so slow in getting back to post an update.  (A big work project/deadline dropped in my lap.)   Here's my report....

Over the last month, I've found the GH4 to be a HUGE improvement over my much-loved GH2: Much better noise performance at higher ISOs. Crazy faster autofocus with good lenses.  And faster shutter release, more frames per second and great RAW buffer performance.   

There's been more of a learning curve than I expected...  The ergonomics are different, with a lot more fingertip control.  Definitely better, but took a few weeks to feel on top of everything.  ONLY LAST WEEK I discovered - by accident -- that in Auto-Focus Face Detection Mode, I can trigger the DIRECT FOCUS AREA BOX with a touch of the control dial.  Very helpful for how I've been shooting volleyball!   (Maybe everyone knows this... was it already a feature on the GH3?)

I shoot game action mostly using the Focus Area Box... face detection just doesn't work.  But during a coach conversation or a team huddle, I kept hitting Fn3 to switch to FACE DETECT and then back again.  Now I can just stay in FACE DETECT.  When there's no face, it defaults to MULTI-ZONE AUTO FOCUS.  BUT as soon as I have an action moment to frame up, my thumb can activate the DIRECT FOCUS BOX, which my thumb can also reposition pretty quickly.  (And it stays in that BOX MODE until you hit menu to release it.)   

My other big volleyball focus revelation was -- for certain pictures -- put the focus box near the bottom of the frame!  On legs, not faces.  Awesome for shooting through the net... if the legs below are sharp, the face behind the net is too.  The camera also seems to find focus a hair more quickly seeing legs against the bland gym floor versus upper bodies and heads with other players, spectators or bleachers in the background.

I should also report, that as much as I like my 12-35mm F2.8, even though I can get an okay shutter speed at 6400 ISO, I liked the action pictures I was getting with the 25mm F1.4 on the GH4 so much more that I stopped using the zoom.  The F1.4 lets me shoot at both lower ISO and faster shutter speeds.  And that lens just looks great.   

SOOOOOOOO.... I bit the bullet and ordered the uber-pricey 42.5mm F1.2.  After I did it, I had some serious regrets... big mistake.  At least, until the lens arrived and I started shooting.  It's amazing.  Love this lens.  Has that same yummy Leica skin and eyes thing that I like about portraits w/ the 25mm, only maybe more so with shallower depth of field from the longer focal length.  And very good for volleyball... so I'm shooting lots of frames that don't need major cropping.   

Biggest GH4 downside so far is that the quick shutter and large buffer have me shooting A LOT MORE FRAMES than I did with the GH2. Several hundred frames per game, hoping for a handful of keepers.  So my time in LightRoom flagging deletes has more than doubled.  But as I get to know the camera and lenses better, my confidence about "getting the moment" is improving, so I think I will begin shooting less.  (Meaning fewer long "I hope I get something" multiple frame bursts.)

One other expense to report: had to update LR4 to LR5 to get GH4 raw support -- even though my CS6 camera raw had the GH4 update.  Adobe, arrgggh...

Thanks to all here for the good advice!   Very happy about these upgrades.  (Just not the American Express bill.)

[wsalopek]

Thanks very much for all that...sounds like a very nice setup.

Couple questions:

1)  Did you try shooting 4k video and then capturing a frame?  How does that look?

2)  Could you post a couple/few pics you took, esp at higher ISO's (6400 and above?)?

3)  What kind of shutter/F-stop/ISO were you using?

Thanks...

Bill

[Remo Nonaz]

I, too, have a GH2 and am aware of the same camera limitations that you experience. For the most part, I've been able to overcome any indoor speed shortcomings by pushing ISO to 1600 and using a reasonably fast lens. But this is not a fix - it is a work around.

I've been going though a similar thought process for an upgrade and my decision is to wait. I think within a year we are going to see another leap in the technology that will provide the m43 format with better high ISOs and possibly more detail. The recent announcements from Sony about a non-Bayer chip, http://petapixel.com/2014/11/12/sony-plans-wants-take-dynamic-range-incredible-heights-active-pixel-color-sampling-sensors/ are of particular interest.

I don't know if Panasonic or Olympus will adopt this or other new technology, but it would be nice to preserve my m43 kit and not have to make a wholesale change to something entirely different like a Sony A7r or its successor.

[tnargs]

Great report chubb, much appreciated. GH4 is some power tool! See what happens if you shoot a little 4k video and use the 'still frame extraction' tool. Has the potential to be a new way of getting exactly the right action pose, and the 8 MP video frames are pretty good resolution....

@Remo, don't wait for the new sensor technology that Sony mention, it will be years before it turns up on our type of camera. Probably we will see a Panasonic organic sensor earlier on MFT cameras -- and don't wait for that either! My tip: get a GH4! 

[eronald]

Great report chubb, much appreciated. GH4 is some power tool! See what happens if you shoot a little 4k video and use the 'still frame extraction' tool. Has the potential to be a new way of getting exactly the right action pose, and the 8 MP video frames are pretty good resolution....

@Remo, don't wait for the new sensor technology that Sony mention, it will be years before it turns up on our type of camera. Probably we will see a Panasonic organic sensor earlier on MFT cameras -- and don't wait for that either! My tip: get a GH4!  

I got a GH4 for video.
What would be really nice would be new firmware with a log space, and if possible raw video recording, even to an external recorder - it's hard to get the wb right.
I'm not going to complain about the GH4; it's decent at anything that can be required of a camera. The perfect swiss army knife.

Edmund