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D-lux 4 video is unique!


twistlick

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I love the D-Lux 4's video recording! I'm a filmmaker & picked up the D-lux 4 because I needed a good point & shoot camera with a wide angle. I was stunned by how interesting the look of the HD video is coming out of this little camera. The crazy wide angle + low light capability + the Photo-Jpeg Codec makes for really unique looking footage. I'd peg it more to between a Super8 & 16mm filmstock.

 

I hope Leica continues to enhance the video capabilities in the next model and include controls for the exposure in video. But please don't switch to the awful AVCHD codec that all the camcorders are switching to these days.

 

Anybody else use the video feature extensively on the D-lux 4?

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I love the D-Lux 4's video recording! I'm a filmmaker & picked up the D-lux 4 because I needed a good point & shoot camera with a wide angle. I was stunned by how interesting the look of the HD video is coming out of this little camera. The crazy wide angle + low light capability + the Photo-Jpeg Codec makes for really unique looking footage. I'd peg it more to between a Super8 & 16mm filmstock.

 

I hope Leica continues to enhance the video capabilities in the next model and include controls for the exposure in video. But please don't switch to the awful AVCHD codec that all the camcorders are switching to these days.

 

Anybody else use the video feature extensively on the D-lux 4?

 

can you or anyone post a link to a youtube clip???

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the quality of your video clips is excellent. they do look somewhat SUPER8 -ish.

 

how large are the file sizes ? .... approximately how many Mb per minute?

 

i made some video clips last week with my beloved D2 and they were horrid!

(they were about 10Mb per minute at 320x240 / 10fps and the image quailty was nowhere near what you have shown)

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A 1 minute HD clip (1280x720) is around 119MB.

 

The image is grungy, saturated & noisy like a Super 8 filmstock. It's not very clean but that's part of what I find makes it look unique. I find I use the Leica more than my dedicated video camera. The downsides are it not having any zoom capability, no exposure control, no mic input.

 

 

how large are the file sizes ? .... approximately how many Mb per minute?

 

i made some video clips last week with my beloved D2 and they were horrid!

(they were about 10Mb per minute at 320x240 / 10fps and the image quailty was nowhere near what you have shown)

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Try this experiment.

 

Play a DVD or Blu-ray disc on your TV, and record a minute or so with the D-Lux 4. Play the resulting mov file using Apple’s QuickTime player on your computer monitor. If you are not impressed with the result, something other than your D-Lux 4 needs an upgrade.

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  • 4 weeks later...
blumenfeld.com all the b/w in this video was shot with the d-lux!! Enjoy.

 

Nice work. Over the weekend I was curious to see how the video looked on a 42" plasma screen. So I burned a DVD of a few clips and WOW the image really holds its own, looks great considering the source....Can't wait to do more with it!

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I have seen a short video made with the D-Lux 4 and played back with QuickTime, and it was impressive. I have no idea why so few people seem to make use of this feature.

I bought a D-Lux 4 purely to take "still" photographs, the fact that it has a video capability (however good it might be) had no influence in my decision. It seems to me that incorporating Video into digital cameras was just a gimmick to boost initial sales... one of those add-ons, like putting a camera of sorts in to a mobile /cell phone :-) No doubt building a telephone into a digital camera will be the next step in this Techno-Crazy world......

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Good to hear people making use of advancements in camera technology rather than decrying it. The GH1's video is also of a very high quality and when in high ISOs in B/W and Vivid colour, looks quite filmic with a touch of grunge. It it does encode AVCHD but computers are their way to being able to edit it much more easily.

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Anybody else use the video feature extensively on the D-lux 4?
Here is 2 clips I shot with the D-Lux 4 in Serbia this past may of my cousin and uncle.
blumenfeld.com all the b/w in this video was shot with the d-lux!! Enjoy.

 

David, Marko, twis, others--

Very interesting stuff. Hadn't thought of using the D-Lux 4 for video, but you're getting me interested.

 

How easy are the files to edit? What editing apps do you recommend? (My platform is Mac, but I'm sure others would also be curious.)

 

Thanks.

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The one frustration that I have with the D-Lux 4 video mode, which I think is excellent, is that it won't play on a Panasonic TV's native video playback (modern Panasonic TV's accept a Secure Digital card and will play video back if recorded on certain cameras) - I believe it may be something to do with the EXIF data, or lack of it.

 

You would think that since the camera has Panasonic roots, it would be something they could fix.

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David, Marko, twis, others--

Very interesting stuff. Hadn't thought of using the D-Lux 4 for video, but you're getting me interested.

 

How easy are the files to edit? What editing apps do you recommend? (My platform is Mac, but I'm sure others would also be curious.)

 

Thanks.

 

Works just great on a Mac; QuickTime plays them right away.

 

Haven´t tried editing, but I presume iMovie can handle them. For just simle cutting out unwanted parts, QuickTimePro does it.

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David, Marko, twis, others--

Very interesting stuff. Hadn't thought of using the D-Lux 4 for video, but you're getting me interested.

 

How easy are the files to edit? What editing apps do you recommend? (My platform is Mac, but I'm sure others would also be curious.)

 

Thanks.

 

I've edited video from the D-Lux4 on my mac with no problems whatsoever. I used iMovie 08 just imported the .mov files and started it was really easy. I also hadn't really thought about using the D-Lux of video until I was in Serbia and I was showing the camera and its features to my uncle. He was like lets shoot some video, and I was ok let do it....We were really amazed what the quality was like. So ever since then I've come up with some ideas on a few little projects to use video with. Yeah, its really limited in terms of not being able to zoom while shooting or manually adjusting exposure. I'm sure that will change in the feature. So its a creative challenge to see what I can do with what I've got, and I'm totally up for that!

 

Marko

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