So I bough a Panasonic LX100 to dabble into 4k (and get a nice travel camera). I record my daughters' dance and theater performances, figure I can pan and crop in post production without needing to carefully follow the performers as they move across the stage. Let me tell you that the resulting quality, and ease, exceed my expectations.
I recorded the same performance in a well lit arena with my LX100 and a Sony HDR-PJ540 camcorder. With the camcorder, I carefully followed the performers and panned and zoomed. It is stressful, you aren't enjoying watching the performance on a small screen. For the LX100 I positioned it on a tripod, zoomed to capture the entire stage, chose the manual settings and pressed record at the right time. In post production, I set my pan and crop points in about 10 minutes. At times I cropped up to about 2300 pixels wide (so threw away 2/3 of the image recorded).
The results? Everything is of course as smooth as can be. In the resulting video, the view magically knows exactly where the performer's feet are going to be seconds in advance and gradually moves to always just include them. Plus, even after throwing away so much picture, the color and detail is phenomenal compared to the HDR-PJ540 or my Canon 70D. I am a convert, I'll never go back.
I recorded the same performance in a well lit arena with my LX100 and a Sony HDR-PJ540 camcorder. With the camcorder, I carefully followed the performers and panned and zoomed. It is stressful, you aren't enjoying watching the performance on a small screen. For the LX100 I positioned it on a tripod, zoomed to capture the entire stage, chose the manual settings and pressed record at the right time. In post production, I set my pan and crop points in about 10 minutes. At times I cropped up to about 2300 pixels wide (so threw away 2/3 of the image recorded).
The results? Everything is of course as smooth as can be. In the resulting video, the view magically knows exactly where the performer's feet are going to be seconds in advance and gradually moves to always just include them. Plus, even after throwing away so much picture, the color and detail is phenomenal compared to the HDR-PJ540 or my Canon 70D. I am a convert, I'll never go back.
