I am going to do some real estate videos shooting mostly indoors. I need the best combination for shooting wide, with minimum distortion in available light indoors. I would prefer to not add additional lighting.
First the lens.
The Lumix 7-14, f4 is the perfect range. It's distortion compensation does away with the majority of fish eye distortion but it is only f4. Would a full frame lens and a speed booster do a better job? If so which combination would be recommended?
Camera settings?
What would be the recommendations for the Photo Style? CNED? 4K I assume on a 1080 timeline. Format MOV, Highlights/Shadows at 0 & 0, i.dynamic and i.Resolution (off), Master Pedestal at 0, and Luminance Levels at 0-255. Shoot at the lowest iso the situation will allow and add a little sharpening, Neat noise reduction and color grading in post. The end result needn't win an Oscar just be quick and presentable.
I have seen some very good low light segments from the GH4 on the internet but try as I may I can't come up with an acceptable combination.
Thanks for you input.

Olympus will be coming out soon with a "Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO" lens, not cheap but the widest and fastest zoomlens for m4/3, another option if you would get a prime is a Samyang 10mm f2.8 (in combination with a speedbooster?) or a olympus 12mm f2.0. Also bear in mind that in 4K the cropfactor is larger.

Thanks Noa,
I think I will wait for the Olympus 7-14.
Any suggestions for camera setups? I have seen some great GH4 low light footage on the internet but never do they give their settings. I have tested to infintium with no acceptable results. Bought Reed's e-book, tried Miller's settings etc. and everything is noisy and of poor quality.

Life is good, challenging
Kent

I agree with what Noa suggested, mainly because i have exactly that! The Samyang 10mm 2.8 with the Metabones speed booster. I went that way because it was way cheaper than the Panasonic 7-14, plus it was a faster lens, that when used with the speed booster becomes a way faster lens. There is virtually no barrel distortion at all which i am super happy with. While i haven't used the Panasonic 7-14, for indoor stuff, i would have to say if you can live without the zoom to 14mm, the Samyang is the way to go.
Bryce

When you put the 10mm samyang on a speedbooster I think it becomes a 8mm? This is already very wide so you might want to get the 12mm f2.0 from Olympus as well which is also an excellent lens just to have a extra focal length to choose from.

I have shot below video with my gh4 and with below setting (only slight colourgrading in post)
cine-d profile with contrast -1, sharpness -5 and saturation -1 and I had the luminance level set to 16-255

De Blauwe Vogel on Vimeo

Noa;
Very well done promo. From what I see I need this lens with the SpeedBooster. Which mount do you prefer?
I will try those camera settings. Thanks for sharing.
Bryce, thank you for your input.

That promo was shot with a 12-35 f2.8 and 2 shots (during that dark presentation) with a olympus 12 f2.0 and 75 f1.8 lens, all my lenses are m4/3 so don't have a separate mount.

Your work always inspires me, Noa :)

Kent, one cheaper lens you can try that is still fairly wide is the recent Panasonic 15mm f/1.7. I would trade my 14mm f/2.5 for it in a heartbeat.

Coming soon.... the Voigtlander 10mm f0.95. Wide and fast, though not AF, not cheap and not light. I guess you can't have it all ;)

Your work always inspires me, Noa :)

Kent, one cheaper lens you can try that is still fairly wide is the recent Panasonic 15mm f/1.7. I would trade my 14mm f/2.5 for it in a heartbeat.

Thx :) If you plan to shoot 4K on the gh4 a 15mm lens is somewhat limiting in narrow spaces because of the extra cropfactor, that 10mm f0.95 though looks like a awesome lens, I personally prefer autofocus lenses, my 12mm f2.0 allows me to quickly autofocus and have it in focus everytime, if you would shoot at f0.95 focussing will become very tricky on that Olympus lens, especially because it's such a wide lens.

Thanks for all the input. I need all the help I can get.

I appreciate your generosity

Kent

I use a Tokina 11-16/f2.8 on a Nikon-mount Speedbooster, making it an effective 8-12/f2 rectilinear lens. It's worked well enough for my needs.

Another lens I've tried is the Sigma 10-20/f3.5 (boosted, 7-14/f2.5) which also worked well.

Naturally none of these are auto anything, but autofocus with ultrawides is silly anyway since they focus so deep, even wide open.

Naturally none of these are auto anything, but autofocus with ultrawides is silly anyway since they focus so deep, even wide open.

That's not my experience and it depends on the size of the sensor your camera has, the closer the subject is to your camera with superwide lenses, the more critical focus becomes if you are shooting at f2.0

That's not my experience and it depends on the size of the sensor your camera has, the closer the subject is to your camera with superwide lenses, the more critical focus becomes if you are shooting at f2.0

I agree. You can get away with simple zone focusing for subjects that are not close, especially shooting at f8 in good light, but wide open such as f2 and certainly f0.95, you need to be pretty much spot on and zone focusing will only get you so far.

I agree with Noa, even with my 14mm f/2.5 I still need to pay close attention to focus when I film people who are somewhat close to me.

By the way, does the crop factor increase on the GH4 when you film in 4k, or why do you say that the 15mm is not going to be wide enough?

Yes, there is a larger cropfactor in 4k, I currently shoot with my gh3 with a 12mm lens on a steadicam and I find that lens just wide enough, 15mm on the gh4 in 4K would not be wide enough for my use.

Yes the crop factor in 4K is 2.3x, so a 15mm lens has roughly a 34.5mm field of view (in 35mm terms.)

The crop factor in 4K UHD is actually 2.49x as has been spoken about often on many of the forums.

I use a 17mm f/1.8 on a stabilizer quite often and like Noa says, it's very difficult to use with it's 42mm equivalent field of view in 4K. I will often switch back to 1080-60p just to get that little bit wider. I definitely need to pick up a fast 10 or 12mm for stabilizer work so that it is much simpler to keep the subject in frame and the camera movements to a minimum.

Cheers,
Pete

Well this is a bit of a disappointment. I've watched quite a few youtube vids on the GH4 and nobody pointed this out as far as I can remember. I'm guessing the 8k on the GH5 will crop even more then? :)

It was not exactly a secret that the gh4 had a cropfactor in 4K, a 12mm is a good wide focal length in 4K though in very tight spots you will need the 7-14mm f4.0, only that's too slow for weddings unless you get the new olympus 7-14mm f2.8 but I find f2.8 still to slow for most of my work as I need least f2.0 and faster lenses to get the job done. I also need autofocus to quickly lock focus before I start shooting so then a 12mm f2.0 is the fastest and widest you can get.

that is my EXACT feeling, Noa! just regarding the 12-35mm f/2.8 from Panasonic. I have a friend here who's been filming weddings since the 90s and keeps telling me to get that lens because it will help me a lot... and I'm sure it will, up until the reception where there is no more daylight and in some situations the ISO will stay at 3200 or higher with my 14mm f/2.5.

So f/2.8 is definitely NOT ok for that part. The 15mm f/1.7 would be a dream, and a cheaper dream than that Olympus 12mm... but, like you said, might not be wide enough in some cases...

Great footage and promo Noa! Beautiful shots! What slider did you use in the shots? Nice and smooth!

I don't want to make another thread so I'll just post in here since it's relevant.

I recently acquired a camera stabilizer and noticed that my Panasonic 14mm lens is not nearly wide enough to make that steadycam footage look GOOD. Therefore, my next purchase has to be a wider lens.

Because most videographers I know love to use a 14mm lens (full frame 14mm), I am considering the Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fish-eye. Yes, it is a fisheye lens but apparently you can de-fisheye the footage, like this guy has:

Lens review: 7.5mm Fish-eye for MFT Samyang / Rokinon / Bower / Walimex Pro - YouTube

Budget is not that high ($400 max), so if you guys think I'd be better off with something else at this sort of price, please let me know. I am concerned that f/3.5 is going to be kind of unusable for wedding receptions, but the Oly 12mm f/2.0 is not wide enough and too expensive. The new Voigtlander 10.5mm f/0.95 would be both wide enough and definitely fast enough... but I doubt I'll be able to afford it *sigh*

Thanks again.

I don't like the rokinon 7,5mm as it's soft in comparison with my panasonic and olympus lenses, I do use it for a very select type of shots, usually gets used just once during a wedding.

Another cheap option is the Olympus 9-18mm but it' also is not a fast lens but other then that there are no more cheap and fast super wide angles lenses availabale for m4/3

If you would be interested, I"m selling my samyang 7,5mm with m4/3 mount for about half it's newprice: 150 euro excl sendingcosts. Will be putting some more gear up for sale by the end of the week but this lens will be a part of it.

Noa I will definitely want to buy that if you're selling it. The only problem is that I have 2 events at the end of next month, and no money until then since I just bought a steadycam. You have my email, let me know what else you are selling, I might be interested. And thank you :)

PS: your Samyang can't be worse than the full frame 14mm Samyang that a friend of mine uses on his 5D, that one is just bad at everything... color accuracy, sharpness, ugly distortion.