Panasonic, Voigtlander, and the birth of the travel film

[Archiver]

YouTube today is full of videos by people who create 'cinematic travel videos', usually with a Sony A7 or FX variant, and increasingly with Panasonic S5 variants. But today's YouTubers are largely unaware of the quiet revolution in travel video that took place in the early 2010s, and it really kicked off with Panasonic's micro four thirds cameras.

The Nikon D90 (2008) and Canon 5D Mark II (2009) were the first DSLR's to offer video, and many entered video production with the Canon. Suddenly, you could produce a high quality full HD video with great colours and the immense range of Canon lenses. Canon saw the uptake and developed their C series cinema line of cameras like the C100, C300 and C500 in 2012. The C300 became the mainstay of a lot of news gathering, music videos and lower budget cinema production. 'Blue Is The Warmest Color' was shot on the C300, and much of the early Vice news content was, too.

But at the same time, Panasonic pushed into the larger sensor video market with the GH1 mirrorless camera and the AF100 micro four thirds cinema camera, in 2009 and 2010 respectively. The martial arts action hit The Raid was shot on the AF100. Not too shabby.



The GH2 was where things began to take off in the consumer market. The GH2 was light and compact, offered excellent full HD video file quality, and had a reasonable range of native lenses. People began to document their daily lives and travels with the GH1 and GH2, with French film maker Seb Farges producing many videos of daily life and travel with his partner and daughter, often opting for adapted C-mount lenses from Angenieux, Fujinon and Nikkor. Until the GH1, there was no way to capture reasonable quality large sensor video in such a small package.



High ISO was the main problem of the GH2 and other micro four thirds cameras of that time, which required as fast a lens as possible. Enter Voigtlander. In 2010, they released the Nokton 25mm f0.95 for micro four thirds, followed by the 17.5 and 42.5 in the next few years. The 25mm Nokton was a revelation - until then, the fastest lens one could get for micro four thirds was f1.4, so being able to shoot at f0.95 was a revelation. With the Voigtlander lenses, a quiet revolution in short 'slice of life' and travel films took place, with videos like A Journey To Vietnam by Leon Visser becoming crazily popular in the video niche.



In the early 2010s, there was a considerable trend for young and not so young film makers to use a GH2 with Voigtlander lenses. If you look at flickr, almost all of the photo taken with the Voigtlander Noktons for m43 were shot in the early 2010s, like 2012 and 2013. I have the first three f0.95 Noktons and used them intensively for about seven or eight years, mainly for video production on the GH3 and GH4. Photographers like British photojournalist Edmond Terakopian favoured the Noktons for their ability to practically see in the dark.

The GH line became a solid part of low budget and independent video production, with the GH3, GH4 and GH5 gaining a considerable foothold. The independent movie Upstream Color was shot in 2012 on a GH2 that had been hacked to produce a much higher bitrate file. Director Shane Carruth used the Voigtlander Nokton 25mm and the adapted Samyang 85mm f1.4.

Upstream Color Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Shane Carruth Movie HD

In 2015, the wildly popular Watchtower of Turkey was shot with the GH3 and just three Panasonic lenses.

Watchtower of Turkey

Watchtower of Turkey introduced people to a very novel editing style involving rapid cuts, match cuts, and deeply layered sound design. It inspired countless imitations and a whole generation of people attempting to mimic his style with varying levels of success. This lead to the 'cinematic travel films' you see today.

 

[JoeV]

Great post! I’ve shot m4/3 for my YouTube channel exclusive up until early this year when I got the S5ii, but I still use a G7 or GH3 for B-roll.

What got me into the L-mount was I wanted to upgrade to a newer camera and the G9ii had the same body size as the fullframe S5 series of cameras.

I could have gotten into the GH7 but I think the S5ii was cheaper!

I got the original G1 in December 2008 and used it for many years.

I still think Panasonic lost the script and should’ve made more really small cameras, especially considering how Sony was able to miniaturize full-frame cameras.

Joe Van Cleave

Joe is interested in film photography, manual typewriters, writing technology and a host of other subjects. He's been creating videos since the 1980s.

www.youtube.com

 

[Archiver]

Great post! I’ve shot m4/3 for my YouTube channel exclusive up until early this year when I got the S5ii, but I still use a G7 or GH3 for B-roll.

What got me into the L-mount was I wanted to upgrade to a newer camera and the G9ii had the same body size as the fullframe S5 series of cameras.

I could have gotten into the GH7 but I think the S5ii was cheaper!

I got the original G1 in December 2008 and used it for many years.

I still think Panasonic lost the script and should’ve made more really small cameras, especially considering how Sony was able to miniaturize full-frame cameras.

Joe Van Cleave

Joe is interested in film photography, manual typewriters, writing technology and a host of other subjects. He's been creating videos since the 1980s.

www.youtube.com

That's a really cool channel, and it's so cool to know most of it was created with micro four thirds cameras. The GH1 was a bit of a game changer for many people, but it didn't get the attention it deserved because of the common 'stigma' of the four thirds sensor vs full frame.

Panasonic used to make some amazing smaller cameras, like the GF1, GX1, GX7/85/9, and the tiny GM1 and GM5. The GM1 used to be my everyday camera for a couple of years, then the GX85 because of the IBIS and longer battery life. I still use the GM1 when I want something extra small that retains high image quality.

I think Panasonic made their flagship cameras larger and larger because they were seeing a lot of professional use, and working pros need robust gear. Hence their first full frame cameras, the S1, S1R and S1H being a similar size and weight to Nikon and Canon flagship DSLR bodies. The Blackmagic Pocket Camera was too small and fiddly to be of real use on a professional set or freestyle situation, which lead them to make much larger bodies like the Pocket 4K and 6K/Pro. Panasonic downscaled the S line after the success of the S5, as evidenced by the S1R II and S1 II being based on the same body type as the S5, so it looks like they are finding a balance between smaller body size and professional grade robustness and function.

But I'd still love to see Panasonic come back with at least an upgraded GX9, or a proper rangefinder style full frame body like a S9 with EVF and mechanical shutter. Heck, bring back the GM series, I'd definitely buy one of those!

The GM1 could shoot some amazing footage, with more accurate and pleasing colour than the GH3, as shown by Martin Wallgren with the Voigtlander Nokton 25mm:

 

[Larry H-L]

Really good post.
Video is exactly how I got into m4/3. I’ve done several short commercial videos with the gear, usually shooting in 4K and delivering it in full HD.

The Voigtlander f0.95 lenses render a great image and the build quality is fantastic. Click or clickless aperture settings. The Sirui anamorphic lenses are also excellent and very affordable.

The newer Panasonic bodies de-squeeze anamorphics while shooting and offer anamorphic IBIS and open gate capture. Simply amazing capability for an affordable price tag.

 

[DownUnder]

An interesting thread, this. A few observations from me now - I'll try for directly related to the topic, but well, you know me. Nikon Nomad all the way, forever wandering...

The Nikon D90 was the camera that sold me on digital. I bought one of the very early ones, back in 2009 when these were first sold in the Melbourne camera shops. The video facility was all but useless to me, but over the years - yes, we still have that D90 and it's often used, for local events, on bush walks, to illustrate stuff I want to sell and of course our collection of cats. My SO has made and still does make videos with it, which now and then I've edited and tightened up as befits one of my past avatars as a script writer for TV and documentary films.

I now recall that I did use the D90 one time for a video. We were attending a weekend show of classic cars in one of the regional towns of Victoria. Cars on the whole fail to interest me, and I was somewhat bored with this event until I decided to amuse myself by putting the Nikon on a tripod and filming what was going on. This was about 12-13 years ago but the results were good enough that a friend who worked for a local TV station saw and grabbed my video for an on-air presentation, which went okay, a few people commented (after being told I did the filming) but the station never paid me for the work. So a lesson learned here. I've never been a commercial photographer anyway and videos don't have much of a market with stock image purchasers, so I've not bothered much with digital video since that time, except to sit through a few productions my friends (and my SO) have made, usually with a drink in hand and silently hoping the presentation will end so I can refill my glass. Obviously my interests here lie elsewhere - not exactly a digital video fanatic, I am, or am not...

The clarity of the videos that D90 produces never cease to amaze me. For now-ancient technology it's about as good as it gets (or maybe more to the point as it ever got in its time) with digital video. Of course most newer cameras do this easier and more efficiently, but as we've found there is very little most new gear can do, can be easily duplicated in an almost as good end result as with a 16 year old Nikon. Old technology well applied can do wonders in the right hands, and my SO has those hands.

The Voigtlander lenses are stellar performers but my SO uses the 18-55 kit lens and says the trick here is to learn the lens's limits and work within those. I own only one of these lenses, a 1950s Color Skopar on a Perkeo I folder I now and then use on bush walks. For its age it's a truly fantastic piece of optics, and if I was a Leica photographer I wouldn't hesitate to invest in those lenses, admittedly nothing will surpass a Summicron 50/2.0 for just about everything but the Voigtlanders mean money well invested in optics the to me look as good as the Leitzes.

By way of common-sense advice I would offer a few tips. For best results I would use a tripod, watch the light with great are, and avoid jiggling pan shots which basically only put off your audience and give a neglectful amateur look to the end results. With a little practice it's easy to not make visual productions that look static. Think Hitchcock...

Anyway, so much good advice and information here and I'll see to it that someone at home will be reading this entire thread with interest. Many thanks to the OP for having started it.