Zombie Kickball, What could be more fun to film? Filmed on GH2 and 60D

[Mark_In_Maine]

Each year a dedicated group of zombies get together to hold the annual Zombie Kickball game here in Portland Maine. With a spray of Zombiegone I was ready to go down and film their game. Here is the result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsIlOCfARPA

PS: I tried the YouTube embedding and it didn't work it gives me that box with the "Agree" button that does not work. Sorry about that.

Cheers,

Mark

[flinty]

Nice video what percentage each,Do you own the 60D and GH2 if so whats your take on them color peformance wise and all round come to that.

[Mark_In_Maine]

I do own both and like aspects of each. That said I still find that if I just want to go shoot something I would tend to grab the GH2. While the GH2's low light performance has been dramatically improved compared to the GH1 I still may grab the 60D if I need to dive deep into the dark. Regardless of the ISO setting however I use Neat Video to clean a lot of my footage up. With Neat Video I don't really worry about using the GH2 at 1600 or 3200. In both cameras I love the swing out LCD for off axis viewing. I love to do steadycam shots and having the ability to see the composition when the camera is either low or high is a big plus on a hand held steadycam rig. I love that the GH2 has a true HD HDMI output however leave it to Panasonic to cripple that just enough to be annoying. I like to check focus before I start a take and I use the magnify view all the time with the LCD/EVF. As you know this function is disabled when using the HDMI output on the GH2. Granted the 60D HDMI is actually pretty poor in comparison so I'm not sure that the 60D with its ability to magnify should be given a big lead on that ground alone.

Another aspect of the GH2 that I like is the ability to adapt a wide range of lenses to the camera. I actually only own one Panasonic lens, the 14-140. Everything else I use is old Canon FD manual lenses or C_Mount lenses using the ETC function to crop into the image circle of the lens.

One down side for the GH2 is battery life. I know it may be a factor of how much I use the LCD or image stabilization on the 14-140 but in general the life is just too short. I typically only get about one hour and forty five minutes of record time. Granted this is not a true run down test as I review footage often so there are a lot of factors I'm sure. I have built my own power adapter that allows me to run the GH2 off of a Sony F970 camcorder battery. When I am doing something stationary like an event I use this power adapter which gives me about Seven(7) hours of operation. That a lot of run time in a given day.

Additional things I like about the GH2 are those little extra elements of creativity like the in camera over and under crank, the ability to use a slow shutter speed down to 1/2, and the ETC. I like using the ETC with my Canon FD 50mm 1.4. Its like having a 100mm and 260mm 1.4 lens. Thats great for Shallow DOF street stuff. Which is what I used in the Zombie video. unfortunately I did not have my Fader ND with me so the shutter speeds were crazy in that video. Luckily not too many spinning wheels to see the stroboscopic effect.

Here is another video my friend and I made recently with Scott Kelby of Photoshop World fame. Scott Kelby comes to Maine each summer and for the last few years he calls my friend Scott Eccelston of the Weekly Photo Tips blog to come shoot with him. Last year He did a video tip on HDR for us. This time he has done a tip for long exposures in day light. I shot this completely on the GH2 using the 50mm 1.4. For Scott Kelby's segment the audio was captured to a secondary recorder. On both the Intro and Extro where Sciott Eccleston si speaking to his viewers I used the audio directly from the GH2. To be honest though I did use an external preamp to boost the mic input while keeping the hiss to a minimum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_dKH2mLt0c

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Cheers,

Mark

[Mark_In_Maine]

Ok I gotta know, what the heck am I doing wrong that I can not embedded the video in these post. I am using the yt ##### /yt format, with the []. I keep getting the box above with the "Important Notice".

Mark

[flinty]

Thanks for that detailed reply,i only use four third lenses i have the olympus 9-18mm panas 14 and 20mm and the panas 45-200 and 14-140mm i do a fair bit of outdoor wildlife,one thing i find is i get what seems to me fairly good battery life but thinking about it its what you are getting but i have 4 batteries so manage ok.


Another aspect of the GH2 that I like is the ability to adapt a wide range of lenses to the camera. I actually only own one Panasonic lens, the 14-140. Everything else I use is old Canon FD manual lenses or C_Mount lenses using the ETC function to crop into the image circle of the lens.

i found that interesting what adaptor do you use ,regarding the video it was vg what gain was there recording to another recorder.Cheers Chris