GH7 vs $100,000 Arri Alexa on a REAL Production

so there's a lot of controversy right now about this new Lumix gh7 about how it can supposedly be a new Ari Alexa now whether or not that's true I'm not totally sold on it but I want to talk personally on it because I've shot two projects now where a camera has been the AR Alexa mini LF and the B camera has been the gh7 and I just wanted to talk about it because there's a lot of things that I actually like about it surprisingly so because in the beginning I was pretty skeptical but I want to start before getting into anything by saying that this video is not sponsored by Lumix they did not pay me they did not even tell me to do this I shot one project with my crater crew uh uh on a film called No Good Legends where that was the be camera and then I was actually quite impressed with it so I asked them if I could borrow it for one other project so no sponsorships involved in this at all it's just me wanting to speak on the topic because I've shot a couple of projects on it and I'm actually pretty impressed with it but there is a sponsor for this video today and that is audio but we'll get to that down the line now like I said there's two different projects that I shot this on and I want to just talk through my my use case scenario I guess you could call it what I liked about it some things I might not like about it who this could be for it's not a tech review it's not getting into the tech specs there's videos about that I just want to say that I use this camera A and B camera setup and and I was impressed and that's how we will'll start with and as far as footage goes I'm going to try to show you the most footage I can as possible one of them is pretty Hush Hush until it actually goes live and the other one uh it's kind of the same because it's going going through some Festival runs so I'm going to show you what I can to be able to display to you the examples uh that I'm really talking about now why why are if you're new to the game why are people talking about this being the new Ari Alexa it's because Lumix teamed up with Ari in some sort of way I don't know the technical insides of it but pretty much they got the licensing to be able to use AR log 3 which is the exact color profile that is use on the Alexa mini and the Alexa mini LF and probably a couple other of their cameras so going into the first film that we were shooting on it it was the be camera and I was like yeah I don't know it probably doesn't have the dynamic range and it probably doesn't look this or it doesn't look that I was really skeptical because I didn't know I didn't look into it but I was like all right I'll give it the benefit of the doubt let's see how it looks there's a turning point where I was looking at the monitor on the film and I was like wait a second this looks nice this looks really good yes it's through a monitor I'm not making any final opinions on it but it's impressive and I'm curious to play with it more so that kind of went by and we shot the rest of the project on it and it wasn't until I went home with the footage and I just opened it up blindly I was like all right let's let's see where I can push this Etc and I started to put the clips next to each other with the a camera of the mini and the the B camera is the gh7 and I copied over the grades that I did and I was like wo that's when things started to shift for me and that's when I kind of started to realize that this could actually be a really helpful tool to work with the the colors I'm not a colorist but I I like to sound pretty competent coloring the skin tones retained really nicely the colors carried over almost identical to it there was some slight gamma shifting that I needed to do and maybe a little bit of saturation that I had to dial back but these are like minuscule minuscule things and for the most part I was very impressed with going through it for the first time for my first impressions to it editor Brady here I just want to say as I've been going through the footage and playing around with it a little bit more I found the gh7 just to be continuously a little bit magenta now that could have come from the ND filters because the Min or the Alexa has built in ND but we had to add on to the gh7 so I think there was a magenta cast coming from that but I'm not 100% sure if it's that or color science thing but in the color grades I just found myself pulling the gh7 a little bit less magenta back into that Greener World where the LF is sitting so I just wanted to make note of that just subtle tweaks here that I'm just going to pre- adjust all of the footage you see just know that it's kind of got a subtle green shift in the grade just to match up a little bit more I think that's one of the biggest things is when you've got multiple cameras especially on quick turnaround projects you need something where the color profile matches up almost identically that's why I love my fx6 and my fx3 combo because it just copies over really fast and easy so that's kind of what we're starting to hint at here is that it really does have this Alexa look I'm not going to lie of course sensor size if we get into that you're looking at micro 43s vers LF like large format sensor for what case I was using it in but you're going to lose a few things with this smaller sensor which is why I'm going to jump in now and say this is not a replacement it is not made in lumic's eyes or in the consumer's eyes to replace the Alexa I just don't think that it serves that purpose and I don't want it to come off like I'm saying it replaces it because it doesn't but there are cases where it can replace it in a sense of say we don't have a budget for two Alexa minis obviously not they're freaking expensive I'm lucky enough to get one on my projects so say this example or these last two shoots we've got one Alexa mini LF but we need a two camera setup or even a three camera setup but we can't afford that but we need them to match up well you've got the other option of going with a cheaper camera system like a couple of Reds or something like that but if you need Alexa you now are introduced with this option as a b camera being the gh7 and having those profiles matched up together which to me is a huge benefit would I buy it I'm not quite sure but now is the time to take a little break and just talk about the sponsor for today who I mentioned is audio now audio is a music licensing platform is actually as of recently become more and more familiar to to me and that's because it's always kind of saving the day I'm always looking around on all the different platforms and there's a lot of times where I'm like I can't find anything or I've already used those or whatever and I go over to audio and I'll punch in what I think I need and I find it very very quickly now their selection of artists are fantastic but one feature that really sticks out to me is the link match AI feature that they've got so pretty much in a nutshell say I use Spotify I'm listening to my music I'm out and about I love The Vibes of it I'm like this would fit in my project I go to Spotify I take that song and I cop C the link of it like I'm going to share it with you but instead I bring it into audio and drop it in and then it just uses AI to analyze whatever the insides of it is and we'll give you a large selection of a lot of different songs that are very very similar to that and that to me whoever thought of that it saves me a ton of time because I hate culling through genres when I barely know genres audio has been a great platform for me the artists are fantastic artist they're real artists and they work with them in a really fun way and a very artist friendly way I met with with them a little while back and I was like wow I love how you guys take care of your artists and that speaks a lot to me being an artist of film if you are curious of audio go check it out I'm going to leave all the info right here and you can get 70% off your first year of audio Pro getting you unlimited music sound effects and access to their AI tools for just $59 if you use code Brady 70 but let's go back to talking about camera fun stuff would I buy it I'm not quite sure I think for me I would see this beneficial as a unit that I'm renting very very frequently on a project where I'm also renting Alexa from so that's not me saying I don't like it I won't buy it it's me saying I rent a lot of cameras for projects and that's when I see it being the most used for me and then I mentioned a little bit the dynamic range I think they're rated at just over 13 stops and I want to say the Alexa's like 15 or 16 stops so there's a difference there that you might want to account for that I noticed a little bit of pinching on like Skylight and background light as opposed to the shadows and it just not being as dynamic as Alexa but again you're paying 2,000 something doll instead of $50,000 something dollar so that's something to kind of keep into account as a trade-off as well and then there's also some other use case scenarios that I think would strive with this is like special shots or uh tight shots say you're sticking something in an oven or top down shots where you don't want to rig out a whole big Cinema build overhead or any of these just like fly cams like throwing it on a drone specials crash cams anything where you're putting a camera either somewhere tight or you need to be moving very fast with your camera that's where I think this could Thrive because you're not going to be doing it with a whole mini it's just too big it just doesn't make sense but if you've got a second camera that you can throw in a corner that to me sounds like a benefit and then also when we on no good Legends we had a lot of long shots now I know we say micro 4/3 it's a crop sensor it's super tiny you can't get the wide shots out of it but we never talk about when we need more length the lenses we were using on that were Atlas Mercury and I think the longest we had was like a 136 so there were some times when we needed long shots and I was like let's just throw it on the gh7 because a 136 is immediately now like a 240 or something like that so you're doubling that and actually getting a lot more reach out of it to where you might not on the mini so I don't know if that's like an actual reason to like or prefer this camera I think it could have been a special to use to where it worked on this project but really I just wanted to shine light on what use this would work for me and just talk on the gh7 in a very unorganized fashion and a very untechnical fashion as to how this would work and how this has worked for me so to recap it's not at all in any way a direct replacement of the Ari Alexa but it is a tool that can enhance that workflow of if you're shooting with arri say you got a day where you're going out for half day ryal house will still charge you full day just rent the cheaper camera and get the pickup shots so do the meat of the days on Alexa and then do those pickup days on a smaller camera that still matches up I don't know I'm just coming up with ideas on the spot but I think that it's a good tool I'm really impressed with what Lumix is doing with this and all in all I don't I don't have many bad things to say because I haven't pushed this camera to its limits quite honestly I've just used it and seen where it thrives and that's where I'm at for right now so I apologize if you thought this was a techy review and a breakdown of what's right and what's wrong that's where I'm going to leave it at before I just bore you with random facts and start talking about my life or something like that but yeah the gh7 is impressive I liked it I will work with it again anyway I will get going cuz I'm here on vacation obviously kind of shows but I love you guys and I'll talk to you soon

Channel: Brady Bessette

Views: 17,243

Keywords: lumix, lumix gh7, gh7 arri, arri alexa, alexa mini, alexa, mini lf, arri alexa mini, lumix arri log, arri log 3, panasonic, s5ii, s5iix, hollywood, filmmaking, cinematography, budget filmmaking, budget, indie film, indy film, film school, low budget, short film, gh camera, gh6, gh, lumix gh7 review, gh7 vs arri alexa, lumix gh7 use, for beginners, production, film set, hollywood film, real, real film, real world, panasonic gh7, gh7 filmmaking

Id: 0YR1V2o1lqw

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2024