napilopez
Contributing Editor
The results may surprise you =]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up8K_xd_iwU
Spoilers:
To supplement the video with some of my own thoughts, and as I mention in my review thread, the GH4 supports live view during burst shooting if you set it to medium speed (which will still deliver the max 7ish fps for AFC), something it inexplicably doesn't at the high speed setting. That alone ultimately makes the shooting experience that much more DSLR like than the with X-T1 and A6000 (and I think the E-M1 as well, though I don't have one of those on me). That plus the added AF zone options of the GH4 make it by far the most versatile of the tested cameras.
I found the results of the E-M1 vs A6000 for S-AF a little surprising, as I generally find the A6000 to be a teensy bit slower than my even older E-M5 when I test it--might simply be a matter of lens choices and environments. Either way, they're both super fast and it's probably a negligible comparison in the real world.
The X-T1 is a bit of a finicky action camera. It performs excellently in certain scenarios, and poorly in others. On one hand the predictive AF is probably the best of any of these cameras when an object is running straight at you. On the other hand that only works for approximately the central 1/9th of the image frame. Also, as mentioned, the slow/uncertain initial focus often makes changing from subject to subject a bit of a pain, and the evf freezes momentarily when acquiring focus. But most of the time, it's very fast.
And as I keep saying over and over again, the GH4 deserves to be regarded as just as exciting for stills camera as it is for video. But the most important part of the video is Chris' takeaway: all these cameras now match or better DSLRs in their price brackets for action shooting (arguable, but they're competitive at the very least). All mirrorless users win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up8K_xd_iwU
Spoilers:
To supplement the video with some of my own thoughts, and as I mention in my review thread, the GH4 supports live view during burst shooting if you set it to medium speed (which will still deliver the max 7ish fps for AFC), something it inexplicably doesn't at the high speed setting. That alone ultimately makes the shooting experience that much more DSLR like than the with X-T1 and A6000 (and I think the E-M1 as well, though I don't have one of those on me). That plus the added AF zone options of the GH4 make it by far the most versatile of the tested cameras.
I found the results of the E-M1 vs A6000 for S-AF a little surprising, as I generally find the A6000 to be a teensy bit slower than my even older E-M5 when I test it--might simply be a matter of lens choices and environments. Either way, they're both super fast and it's probably a negligible comparison in the real world.
The X-T1 is a bit of a finicky action camera. It performs excellently in certain scenarios, and poorly in others. On one hand the predictive AF is probably the best of any of these cameras when an object is running straight at you. On the other hand that only works for approximately the central 1/9th of the image frame. Also, as mentioned, the slow/uncertain initial focus often makes changing from subject to subject a bit of a pain, and the evf freezes momentarily when acquiring focus. But most of the time, it's very fast.
And as I keep saying over and over again, the GH4 deserves to be regarded as just as exciting for stills camera as it is for video. But the most important part of the video is Chris' takeaway: all these cameras now match or better DSLRs in their price brackets for action shooting (arguable, but they're competitive at the very least). All mirrorless users win.