GH1 firmware research volunteers required

[svecher]

Yes.
But it looks astonishing.
Camera without mirror and all related difficulties with sensors is not able to fire flash correctly.
I'll try experiment with "Lens not attached" hardware error setting later.

I haven't used built-in flash on GH1 extensively, but in the few cases I did I haven't had a problem with signficant overexposure or underexposure in stills. These are your typical "social" snaps with very dark (not interesting) background or foreground fill in (darker foreground and brighter background, both interesting).

I do recall having blowouts when mounting an old Pentax AF-330FTZ flash. It will always fire at full power and GH1 seems incapable of adjusting exposure parameters on the fly in either program or manual modes. It would be nice if we could either measure "peak" exposure when flash is fired (so you could then set it manually) or even better, enable TTL mode. You are a Pentax hacker after all, so you may actually have the know how and interest in such "aerobatics."

[Cavemandude]

You may want to go to one of the photo forums to figure out what you need to do. Here is a recent GH1 thread on using manual lenses with a flash.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=35375449

I attached some flash pics below shot with my GH1 using the 14-140mm kit lens. I haven't shot any flash pics with my manual lenses yet.

Randy

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

You may want to go to one of the photo forums to figure out what you need to do. Here is a recent thread on using manual lenses with the built-in flash.

OK I'll see v1.32 improvements as soon as charger arrives.
But generally people think that flash do not work normal with manual lenses.
Flash is generally hard for software developers to figure out, as I see constant flash related problems across many brands.
I use dedicated Pentax PTTL flash normally, not build-in one.
I'll test how it works in manual mode on Panasonic.

[Kholi]

Can someone please summarize what the progress is thus far???

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

Can someone please summarize what the progress is thus far???

Try to read first page, please.
All progress is in first post.

[Kholi]

Thanks, Tester.

So the 1080/24 now has bypassed pulldown? Meaning I don't have to do that in post?

[rundavids]

If I red correctly, there is no pulldown for 24p but cannot playback clip in camera or it will freeze and need to remove battery for reboot. Is a solution being worked on to playback clips in camera?

[Isaac_Brody]

Copied from the first post. Perhaps it might make sense to put this first in the post since it keeps coming up.

Major issues for today are:

Time limit for PAL cameras (done)
50/60fps PAL/NTSC switchable (done)
Audio Encoding bitrate low (done)
24p/25p native (done)
Third-party battery (done)

720p24 (720p25, so, partially working)
MJPEG 720p24 (skip frames)
1080p mud (have partially tested patch)
AGC for audio (research stage)
Video monitoring (research stage)

[Ozpeter]

Isaac, you need to label the first post "Top secret - strictly private and confidential - on no account must you read this". That'll get it some attention.

[PappasArts]

No pulldown required.....Yep, none required, but can't payback videos in camera.

Can you see/scroll through the thumbnails at least?



Pappas
http://www.pbase.com/Arrfilms

[Park Edwards]

You can't see thumbnails in video, soon as you do it freezes the cam.

For those who aren't in the "now", just d/l the ptool and load the firmware and read the descriptions each patch. They're labeled if they're working.

[Vitaliy Kiselev]

Here is photo of my small rig with GH1.




Our next target will be MJPEG compression.
It is useful and it really allows to test top SD card write speed.
I hope to buy today two speedy SD cards (Sandisk Ultra and other Class 10 card).
As soon as AC will be recieved I'll start testing.

Also very interesting is that all MN controllers are debugged and communicated using so called USB JIG.
This is just ordinary USB connection, but using special driver and special software to communicated.
Service software for GH1 uses same mode.
Having this software can save us amazing amount of time as we could rewrite small parts to just set values from USB.
Other possibility is to use file stored on SD card as we know almost all necessary functions.

[Tameside]

Looking good!

Nice rig.

[e-steve]

Perhaps this has been asked already... why on earth was there no battery and charger sent with the camera itself?!

Get this man something he can work with!

Just curious.

[Path]

Here is photo of my small rig with GH1.
interesting is that all MN controllers are debugged and communicated using so called USB JIG.
This is just ordinary USB connection, but using special driver and special software to communicated.
Service software for GH1 uses same mode.

I have seen references to this for other Panasonic cameras. Not sure if I included this link in my button pressing madness, but this guy found such software for a different older model:

http://www.inweb.ch/foto/lumixfun.html#docn

Nice rig tester! You deserve the camera, and I hope you can do all your testing without damaging the camera so you can enjoy it!