Is GH4 Good for Pictures?

[lounisproduction]

I bought the GH4 mainly for Video.
I recently tried to do Photography but the quality the picture in low light is quiet bad. very grainy at ISO 1600. any recommendation?

taken with panasonic GH4 aperture 1.7, ISO 1600. shutter speed 1/30

 

[photo1x1.com]

Hi and welcome to the forum.
I´m afraid I don´t know much about the GH4 other than it has a great video reputation. That´s probably why you bought it.
The image you posted is quite small - is that a 100% crop? It is also a rather panoramic format - not actually 16:9, but I still wonder whether that´s a screenshot from a video.

Do you know this page from dpreview? Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4 Review
there you can compare the ISO noise to that of other cameras. It is not bad compared to APS-C sized cameras like the sony a6000 series (6300 & 6500), better than smaller sized sensors, and worse than most full frame sensors, but that is to be expected.
You can best compare the noise in the black/grey pattern area left to the logo in the center of the frame.

 

[lounisproduction]

i did cropped the picture. also the picture has been compressed from 14mb to 2mb but the noise has always been there. also that is not a screenshot from a video. I do use photoshop for color grading which give that cinematic look.

 

[photo1x1.com]

i did cropped the picture. also the picture has been compressed from 14mb to 2mb but the noise has always been there. also that is not a screenshot from a video. I do use photoshop for color grading which give that cinematic look.

Thanks for the info. However, without knowing how much you cropped and what the original size of that crop was, it is very hard to judge. If I safe the file on my computer, it has 68kb and is 960 x 506px.

 

[Solarflare]

The GH4 is a Micro Four Thirds camera.

The sensor of MFT cameras is quite small (13x17.3mm) and the low light performance is accordingly. An APS-C (~24x16mm) or full frame (~36x24mm) camera will have better high ISO performance. The best full frame cameras can right now manage about ISO 6400 will okay quality, but it varies a lot with the picture in question and of course all cameras look best at base ISO.

 

[lounisproduction]

i did cropped the picture. also the picture has been compressed from 14mb to 2mb but the noise has always been there. also that is not a screenshot from a video. I do use photoshop for color grading which give that cinematic look.

Thanks for the info. However, without knowing how much you cropped and what the original size of that crop was, it is very hard to judge. If I safe the file on my computer, it has 68kb and is 960 x 506px.

you can see it in high quality (25MB) in here:
lensfilm

 

[photo1x1.com]

i did cropped the picture. also the picture has been compressed from 14mb to 2mb but the noise has always been there. also that is not a screenshot from a video. I do use photoshop for color grading which give that cinematic look.

Thanks for the info. However, without knowing how much you cropped and what the original size of that crop was, it is very hard to judge. If I safe the file on my computer, it has 68kb and is 960 x 506px.

you can see it in high quality (25MB) in here:
lensfilm

Thanks - hmmmm, this is the kind of noise I´d expect from the GH4 without adding any noise reduction.
It is still a rather strange ratio - did you shoot that in RAW? If no, you really should - at least for the more important shots. And second question: did you use any noise reduction on it? In fact the noise looks rather sharpened than reduced.
As a sidenote: the focus is on the lamp in the front - you probably noticed and wished you fixed that at the time of shooting - but in case you did not: in shots like this you should set the focus to the big ben (right?) and the firework which would probably be infinity. One reason why this could happen is letting the camera choose the focus point - and more often than not it looks for the closest possible object.

 

[goodguy]

Main problem of the GH4 is its sensor size, MFT has lots of advantages and disadvantages, smaller body, smaller lenses but its main Achilles heel is low light performance. Its not bad but not as good as APS-C and definitely not as good as FF sensor.