Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera vs Panasonic GH3 vs Nikon D7100

Additionally, I wrote this blog entry because I felt a lot of people were confused about the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera's intent.

I think this is a question on the minds of many people: What's best for video at around US$1000?

• Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
• Panasonic GH3
• Nikon D7100

The question is more complicated, though.  Do you want to be a film maker or just make videos?

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera should be great for the film maker in training, as well as those already in the business.  However, it is not a stills camera.  You can extract a still frame from your video files but it's just not a camera body for stills photography.  The sensor is optimized for great video capture but it's a bit small for stills, especially given that it's using micro Four-Thirds lenses including those lovely Carl Zeiss Cine lenses up to US$20,000 each.

If you're still with me, you probably don't want to invest in cine lenses or make films.

Your video choice is easy from here: the Panasonic GH3 is much better at video than the D7100.  The GH3 is likely as good as the Canon 5DMkIII but even if it's not, you can buy almost 3 GH3 bodies for the price of a Canon 5DMkIII.

I wouldn't say that the available lenses for micro Four-Thirds are amazing (except for the very high priced fixed focal length lenses), I would say that they work very well for video.  What's more, you can use Four-Thirds lenses, Leica M lenses, Leica R lenses, and more with adapters.  You'll find the Olympus ZD 7-14mm f/4.0, ZD 14-35mm f/2.0, 35-100mm f/2.0, and 90-250mm f/2.8 some of the best lenses--ever.

Given that the video and film industry grew bits and pieces to make the Panasonic GH2 body work for them, it's amazing to see them adapt to the GH3.

As for the Nikon D7100--it's the finest APS-C sized sensor-based camera body out there right now for stills.  It's up-to-date in 2013 with some great pieces from the D300s but with a great sensor and missing an anti-aliasing/low pass filter for better sharpness at the risk of moiré (like mwah-ray, American English speakers) patterns.  Professional raw development software should help you lessen any moiré which might intrude into your photos.  In many ways, the D7100 is better than the budget D600, which is also closely based on the D7000 but without the bits from the D300s.  Sure, the FX size (135 format) sensor is bigger but the D600 is a budget camera body.  Plus, because of the sensor size, that 70-200mm is just 70-200mm but you get that extra boost in the D7100 as it becomes an effective 105-300mm lens.  The only real drawback you'll see is in the buffer size.  When they increased the pixel count, they should have used a buffer size that was much bigger.  Giving it most of the D300s' pieces but leaving the buffer size too small was not the greatest idea, especially without a D400.

Update: The D600/D610 are available are based on the D7000, which was sufficient but not good at video, and certainly no better than the D7100.   Equally, the Canon 70D and below have been updated but they're only really competition for the Nikon D7100 and below.  The Panasonic GH3 would easily be a better choice, especially with the articulated rear display and multiple file formats and bit rates, as would the "hacked" firmware version of the GH2.

Update 2014.03.21: This situation hasn't changed completely.  The Pocket Cinema Camera had a rough start but seems to be fine now.  The D7100 is still available without change, but the GH3 is being replaced with the GH4.  Does 4K video change the argument between buying the Pocket Cinema Camera and the GH4?  Yes.  US$1699.99 vs US$999.99 gets you 4K and 4K Cinema video in a powerful package made for almost any use considered.  Panasonic even added motion picture industry-related terminology to the GH4 menus, courtesy of the AG-AF100/AF105.

Digital photo noise--subjective, not objective

I happened to see the latest Popular Photography issue at the store today.  I've never given much thought to the magazine since the first time I look at it during the days of film and laughed at their conclusions.

In the current issue, they were reviewing the Panasonic DMC-GH3, a camera body I recently bought.  They had a bar graph for noise at each ISO sensitivity setting.  First, they had ISO 100, which isn't a setting in the GH3.  I guess they couldn't be bothered to put the actual number in their graph, although in the same area of the review, they had ISO 125.

Concerning noise, they had ISO 1600 and up as unacceptable.  I'm not sure how they can tell what is acceptable or not.  When I worked with film, ASA(ISO for digital) 400 film was usually acceptable, especially with the later formulations, and it is horribly worse than most digital sensors of the past few years.  Whether it's the grain of black and white, incorrect pigment of color, or digital noise, who can say definitively what is acceptable?

Other reviews have said that at ISO 800 on the GH3 (and I believe, the Olympus E-M5), noise is creeping into the photos.  That makes sense since that number was where the problem really started with the E-1.  My own experience tells me that the images I'm getting at ISO 1600 are very clean and the images at ISO 3200 are reasonable, but not beautiful.  After that, don't expect much of anything positive.  Yes, I've seen people claim to get really good photos at 12,800 but I don't believe it's likely unless they're working with a Nikon D4.

Still, for someone to put a wall up saying "unacceptable" seems unacceptable in itself.  It's difficult to quantify and impossible to generalize that all photos fit into one category.  I would agree that a photo is likely to be more noisy at a certain ISO sensitivity but to be unacceptably noisy?  It's like comparing different technologies and using numbers that don't mean the same thing.  I've been reading that camera makers have implemented film-like noise somehow.  This is certainly better than the banding we've seen in certain situations but it's the chroma (color) noise that makes the biggest problems.

I've printed indoor E-1 (using flash) photos on 13x19 paper and found them to be quite acceptable, as are the outdoor photos.  Are they exquisite and flawless?  No.  The noise is not really visible and I can only guess that the combination of photo processing and printing evened out the noise so that it isn't noticeable.  For that matter, how would a 14 MP point-and-shoot compact have good 8x10 or bigger output?  The TV shopping channels almost always have huge prints from so-so point-and-shoot cameras, so something has to be happening.

I believe that there is a point where the noise will be so visible that it's unacceptable to everyone.  In certain industries, almost any photo noise is too much, which is why fashion uses medium format and studio lighting.  I've even seen shoots where they use lighting during daylight.  Even the E-5 has amazing image quality with studio lighting.  I'm sure Popular Photography would disagree.

Viewfinder cameras and enthusiasts

When I was little, I took my mum's Kodak Brownie Hawkeye in hand, looked through the viewfinder on the top of the camera, moved back and forth and side to side to frame my upside-down image.  Once perfect, I pressed the gray shutter release to hear a click, and proceeded to advance the 620 format film to the next shot.  Thankfully for me, there was no focusing and I didn't get any medium format quality images from the very plastic camera, even though the film was quite large.

That kind of camera doesn't work in the current, instant-gratification-seeking world.  We don't want to think about the image, we just point and shoot.  Indeed, that's what made Polaroid's instant photography more than an indulgence, and how digital photography (however bad, has wiped out film photography.

However, there is a market for enthusiasts' cameras and FujiFilm is up to their third model in the X line with the X-Pro1.  It's a compact rangefinder camera with a total of 3 available lenses.

The great thing about rangefinder cameras was that you could get amazing image quality, at some high equipment cost, once you were able to guess correctly.

Yes, i said "guess".  As with viewfinder cameras, you could never be certain you had things in focus.  You could use a tape measure to get the distance and set the lens accordingly and that worked fine for portraits.  Remember the photographer at your school having you sit on a chair or a box and he pulled the tape measure to you?

So, this lovely FujiFilm X-Pro1 is the type of camera that involves you in the process of photography, which is why it's an enthusiasts' camera.  No one just taking snapshots would want to deal with the mess.  It has auto focus but their X-series auto focus hasn't been all that reliable.  When it is, you're golden.  When it's not, you're wondering why you spent so much money.  You're probably wondering how to make better guesses in order to do the focusing yourself.

I found myself thinking about such cameras and the nostalgia.  I thought about the Mamiya 645 small medium format camera and can remember when it had an SLR-like viewfinder and fast shutter speed.  Time has passed and digital versions of medium format cameras start roughly at US$10,000, which considering what's below them, they might not be so expensive, although the market has changed recently.

However, more people seem to be entering the enthusiasts' market, thanks to mirror-less camera bodies, and some sharp lenses needing adapters.  Since the lenses don't have electronic contacts, they don't work closely with your camera and you have to be involved in almost every aspect of your photography.

I'm seeing people, who would normally just pick up a dSLR with the kit lens and take a shot, thinking about the shot.  Using fixed-focal (not zoom) lenses, they have to walk forward and backward until they frame the shot.  Then, they have to adjust the exposure and they're thinking about the depth of field and they're really enthusiastic in a way that the dSLR in auto everything mode never pushed them.

It's amazing to me and hopefully, the prices will decrease once these higher quality cameras reach commodity status.  We had 135 format point-and-shoot cameras way back when in the 1980s and 1990s.  For US$50, you could get good quality shots that surpassed the 126 format and 110 format film from years ago, mainly because of the size of the negative, but they found other ways to make the experience inexpensive, even with disposables.

I'm hoping that all these pseudo-professionals carrying a dSLR and kit lens will become enthusiasts and actually become engaged in the photography.  Is it really fun if you just let the camera do everything but point?  FujiFilm, with their X-Pro1, is inadvertently pushing their enthusiasts a bit further and that's a good thing.