This is a long-form video designed to help you build a rig around the Panasonic GH4.
We'll talk about lenses, viewfinders, mounting options, and audio,
trying to find the most affordable way to rig it up to the highest technical standards.
It's been well over a year since the GH4 arrived to market,
and it was pretty revolutionary at the time for shooting 4K video internally
into this compact camera that was built for the masses, but also a real possibility for cinematographers.
I had gotten one of the launch units, and that week I shot and edited the first professional independent short film,
putting it through some challenges in the course of one day running around Chicago, mostly handheld,
putting the camera through a variety of techniques, shooting in 4K.
You'll find a link to the complete video in the caption, and you can try watching it in full 4K at YouTube.
Looking back on this video, it sort of amazes me how well the GH4 has held up after more than a year,
and it seems like it still has a lot more life left, especially with V-LOG finally on the way,
but I've learned a few things and settled on a good rig by now.
It won't necessarily be right for you, but it's a fair place to start.
When you think of building a rig, lenses aren't the first thing that come to mind, but they're certainly the most important.
And with the Micro Four Thirds lens mount of the Panasonic GH4, these three lenses are sort of on the leaderboard
of what you want to have with you at all times.
They are native lenses, not for the value of autofocus, but because all three of them have power OIS,
which is in-lens image stabilization, which is really important if you ever go handheld.
And then these two zoom lenses, the 35-100mm and 12-35mm, they both have continuous F2.8 apertures,
which is important for video because as you zoom, you don't have to change exposure to compensate for a changing aperture.
They're also weather sealed, and they've held up for me under the most extreme conditions.
But between two zoom lenses, you also want to have a solid prime.
And the Leica 42.5mm lens, although very expensive, is a tack-sharp lens all the way open at a very bright F1.2.
But you might also want cinema prime lenses.
These have the value of wide barrels for more accurate focusing, hard stops, and a continuous aperture without clicks.
But the way that the lens mounts work with these cinema prime lenses is that the taller one you see on the right
is with an adapter for micro four thirds.
And the reason is because a micro four thirds lens has a shorter flange distance from the sensor.
What that means is that it needs to be spaced farther out for the optics to focus correctly.
Whereas on the left, it's the exact same 24mm cinema prime lens but made for Canon EF mount.
And the point of all this is to recommend that you always get the Canon EF mount version of a cinema prime lens
because that shorter flange distance gives you more room to adapt to other lens formats.
The reason for this is because Canon mirror DSLRs always had the sensor set farther back.
The other benefit of adapting Canon lenses is that many of them are full frame
and during that process of adapting the different lens mount sizes, you can take advantage of that space to get a focal reducer
which takes a full frame lens and directs more light onto the smaller sensor size of micro four thirds
to increase brightness and enlarge your focal range.
One of the great features of the GH4 is its OLED bright high resolution viewfinder
and that's apart from the touchscreen that flips out below.
This viewfinder had a pretty standard rubber eyepiece that came off pretty easily.
Easy to get lost as this one did.
And I was always looking for something that would have a larger size to add a reasonable third point of contact with the face
but provide enough give so that it would be flexible enough to not absorb all the shock coming from the face.
Someone has finally invented it that fits very snugly on the GH4 without modification
and it's called the G-Cup. Just out in the past month you can order it at a link in the caption.
But to cover all the bases before coming back to it, there was a sort of DIY approach to coming up with an eyepiece
and it involved piecing together a product from Asia that came with a bunch of different adapters
that you could use for different cameras that basically spaced out this small simple eyepiece
farther away from the viewfinder which resulted in some cropping of the image
and just it wasn't an ideal solution.
I mean I made the best of it by finding this hudai eyepiece which was made for Nikon
but you could get any of them and just simply toss the adapter that came with it
and then hook on the adapter that came with the much simpler eyepiece.
Even so it still suffered from the same cropping because it was extending the rubber piece out too far from the viewfinder.
For this sort of thing there's always Zecudo who make great products
and taking the approach of using the larger back panel display as the viewfinder itself.
These Zfinders I found actually suffered from the same problems of cropping
and also being a bit cumbersome to mount every time you wanted to use the specialized viewfinder.
I did try something a little DIY with the Zfinder that's custom made for the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
and that type actually uses an adhesive frame that simply sticks onto the back of the Blackmagic Pocket
and here you can see that it just snaps on instead of requiring a frame and a bracket underneath.
On the GH4 it almost worked but not quite.
After all that rear screen flips out so it's not a stable place to snap so strongly on the Zfinder.
Also you had to do a little carving into the plastic and that's just kind of an uneasy thing with electronics.
So what we were waiting for all this time was something built specifically for the GH4
that would fit perfectly like a glove and not get lost.
This G-Cup actually fits just perfectly along all of the contours of the viewfinder.
It adds that critical point of contact with the face to compliment the hands holding the grip and the lens
but also is flexible enough that it doesn't absorb all of the body movements coming from the face
and since it's custom made to sit close to the lens body itself there's no cropping of the image
which is especially great for eyeglass users who might be farther away.
If you were wondering what those little red discs were hanging off each side of the camera
they're called anchor links and they're sort of like the quick release plate of the camera strap world.
I think this is worth mentioning when we're talking about rigging because cinematography is increasingly mobile.
We're using small cameras sometimes more than one body between the worlds of still photography and videography
and with this system all you need are those little lightweight inexpensive discs hanging off the edges of each of your camera bodies
and then the adapter hooked on to the one strap you want to use with all of them.
I like this heavy leather company and this way I have a really nice strap that I can use on all my cameras.
In a prior video that I'm linking to here I had laid out all of the rigging options with respect to power issues
inclusive of Blackmagic, Sony, and Panasonic cameras, but focusing now just on the GH4.
This is the Atomos power station and it accomplishes several objectives for the GH4
even though the GH4 has great battery life to begin with, but for that extra mile
it not only lets you have continuous power between two batteries mounted here on the back of the unit
that threads underneath the body of the GH4, but also it lets you use Sony L-series batteries
which have more capacity and also are more universal.
You can even swap one out while the other one's still there for continuous power
and the way this is possible is there is a little hole to the side of the battery compartment
and through that hole a wire goes into a dummy battery and then the latch can firmly shut around it
and then this wire terminates in a barrel connector that in turn goes into the back of the power station
delivering power to the GH4 as if the battery were in the unit.
That central thumb screw in the Atomos power station can go into the underbelly of the GH4
that's normally connected to a tripod or tripod plate
or the other option is you could mount it to the top of the GH4.
In the end it's an optional way to ensure that you have continuous power with more capacity
as you use your GH4 perhaps in more studio environments.
You'll find that the display on the GH4 tells you about how much battery power is left
but it won't be as useful as the LED indicators on the power station itself
as this is only estimating what the dummy battery is providing.
One more thing about power is your rig might have accessories that take USB power
and you could use a simple mobile phone charger to provide strong bus power to any of these devices.
This is the DR60D but the DR70D which is the next generation audio recorder
has a micro USB input that can take power to complement its batteries
or even replace them as long as you select bus power from the menus.
We'll get back to audio in a couple of minutes but when it comes to building a rig
I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is this thing.
It's called a cage and the pieces of the cage are what have often been called cheese plates
which is a bunch of screw-in holes that are mounting points for you to mount accessories around your camera.
You're looking at a product by Defocus and it's a U.S. based company
that really sort of nailed it in terms of providing plenty of cutouts
to access all the features of the camera once it's in place.
It's better than other products that I've seen on the market from Verivan or Continio, few factor.
I've added a few accessories that didn't come with the cage
that I felt were necessary including a standard hot shoe mount
and a 15mm rail mounting point.
I've added links to these additional accessories in the caption too.
An important feature here that the other cages don't have
is this pair of insulated posts that not only firmly set your camera into the exact position it needs to be
but also prevents it from twisting in place.
And there's also an integrated HDMI lock on the side of the cage for strain relief.
Pushing the camera into the cage, those two posts tell you where to stop
but there's two more things you have to do
and they involve screws from the bottom and the top of the cage into the camera.
It uses the hot shoe mount of the GH4 itself
and you slide this red bracket into place
and you just screw down so that it solidly connects the camera with the top of the cage
and then at the bottom of the cage it's simpler
because you just simply are screwing the same size screw that you would use on a tripod plate
to connect the cage with the base of the camera.
Once you've caged up the GH4, you still have access to the SD card, all of the ports
and the battery without having to do any disassembly.
The main feature of this so-called D-Cage by Defocus is that you can actually see the mode selector dial
through a hole in the cage, others simply weirdly don't have that.
I added a Z-Rail by Zecudo to the top of the cage
and that is actually a standard NATO rail mount that other manufacturers also make products for
and another essential part of any rig is the ability to hold it from a top handle
for a variety of reasons including sturdiness and mounting points.
So that's what you see here.
This has got to be the tiniest and cheapest tip.
It is basically an end-to-end one-quarter inch, twenty and three-eighths inch screw
that you can use for more mounting options and you see it here on the cage,
but next to it you also see this thing called an articulating arm
which basically has one dial in the middle that ends up controlling the tightness
of all of the joints in the product
and it's an extremely useful way to mount accessories
which takes us to another option that makes use of this fifteen millimeter rod mounting point.
There are a lot of different things that you can use to connect with rods
and of course the GH4 is perfectly paired with the Atomos Shogun
for high-bit rig recording and a high-quality monitor.
So here you see the additional fifteen millimeter rod accessory
with a variety of different angles to mount that.
Another thing that I had recommended with the Blackmagic Pocket's cage
is this product by Tether Tools called the Jerk Stopper
and it just simply complements the HDMI strain relief
that already comes with the Decage
with yet another strain relief for the other types of cables
that you're inevitably going to be having connected to your rig.
And that inevitably includes audio.
So moving on to that, part of your rig,
there's one product that is sort of a luxury item
but I just can't resist recommending it.
I had done a full video review of it
and here's some footage of that paired with the Decage
using that hot shoe mount accessory that I added onto it.
It's the Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro X
and as it turns out the GH4 does seem ideal as sort of a B-camera
for a lot of different types of productions
where you would be wanting to capture more ambient sound
than anything targeted that you would get from a shotgun.
So for that purpose, there's nothing better on the market
for capturing extremely high-quality stereo audio.
You can visit the other video to hear audio samples of it.
But as for the general issue of getting audio into the GH4,
on the Stereo VideoMic Pro X,
there is a gain control setting
where you can basically bump up the preamp output
of any microphone such as this one connected to the GH4
and this becomes important because one flaw of the GH4
is that it's audio preamps are fairly noisy.
So the strategy is to go into the menus as I'm doing here
and to go to your mic level adjustment
and actually to take it all the way down
and start there at least and see whether or not
you can get your gain up to acceptable levels
through the microphone's own output.
If you can do that, then you save yourself a lot of noise.
Here is the Stereo VideoMic Pro X mounted on the entire rig
and you can see that it's a great run-and-gun way
to capture ambience for great B-roll.
But if you do want to have a more professional solution,
there's the Tascam DR70D
and you can actually mount any camera, including this whole rig,
onto the base of the DR70D
and what it ends up providing to your rig
is high-quality, phantom-powered XLR audio inputs.
It even has backup internal microphones.
You could take the Stereo VideoMic Pro X,
put it straight into the DR70D.
You could do dual audio.
You could also do the four tracks on the DR70D.
It simply expands dramatically your options
and what's exciting about this is that it used to be
requiring a much larger form factor than what you see here.
So this combination basically gives you
the audio options that you normally would get
with a professional camera.
You might have to sync and post,
but there's also a slate button on the front panel
of the DR70D that lets you sync things much easier.
Rounding out your rig, after talking about Stereo Capture,
what's even more common is directional audio.
And using an accessory like this,
we can screw down a shock mount,
which is a simple product that basically
suspends any shotgun microphone in rubber bands
so that the movements of the body are insulated
from the microphone itself.
I'm recommending here the Rode NTG-2 or 4
because they have twin capabilities of outputting
high-quality, balanced XLR audio
or into the simple, unbalanced 1 eighth inch input
on the GH4 directly.
You can also directly record audio internally
without having to sync and post.
So wrapping up, this might not necessarily be the rig for you,
but it's a fair place to start.
And yet you might have the question,
why even start if the GH4 is so old?
When Panasonic's V-LOG update arrives in the next few weeks,
the theme is that it's going to reinvigorate
the product into something new.
That remains to be seen,
but what we can say about rigging
is that it's become increasingly modular.
What works for one camera will usually work for another,
so apart from any cage or viewfinder
that's custom made just for the GH4,
I think the theme too is that whatever you do for the GH4,
you can use for the next thing that comes along.
Thanks for your time during this long video.
Please come to the blog at www.focusspulling.com
and also the link there to the GH4 user group
where we share videos with each other
and find out about the latest news in the world of the GH4.
