Capturing movies in Full HD is so passé, or at least it appears to be, with Panasonic announcing a mirror-less interchangeable that can capture movies in 4K Ultra HD.
Likely to be the flagship for the year, Panasonic’s Lumix GH4 will grab attention for a top feature, a world first for a single lens mirror-less digital: the ability to capture 4K movies at 100Mbps, while Full HD movies can be captured at twice the bandwidth in 200Mbps.
Support for the 4K video is supported at “Cinema 4K” (4096×2160) with 24 frames per second, while the 4K version formatted for 16:9 TVs known as Quad Full HD or “QFHD” (3840×2160), which is used across pretty much every Ultra HD TV, will be recordable up to 30 frames per second.
“Panasonic has achieved a new milestone for the Lumix G Series with this camera,” said Doug Campbell, Product Marketing Manager for the Lumix brand at Panasonic Australia.
“The Lumix DMC-GH4 offers a raft of enhancements that surpass the capabilities of the previous DMC-GH3 to deliver best-in-class performance.”
Beyond the impressive support for 4K video, which is something we haven’t yet seen in many cameras not geared at professional filmmakers, the GH4 also offers a 16 megapixel LiveMOS sensor, OLED displays, and support for editing RAW photos directly in the camera.
Shooting speeds for images has been pushed to 12 frames per second for the single-frame autofocus, and we’re told the shutter has been designed to withstand a “a lifespan of up to 200,000 releases,” so you’ll be able to keep shooting for a while.
Pricing or availability hasn’t quite been detailed yet, but hopefully we’ll know more soon.
