Panasonic Removable Lens Four Thirds HD AVCHD Camera

slight personal attacks are useless liza.. even why david seems more knowledgeable on his posts than you on your g1 propaganda.. you're comparing apples to oranges.. a FF35 is beyond an inferior format.. have you ever heard the word glass by any chance?.. it is not bottle of wine.. and please do not mention that thing about adaptors or anyone can conclude you have no idea about the meaning of a lens on a camera.
 
There are two positives at this time. One, that this latest footage looks very promising. Number two is that if at the end of the day you don't want to buy this camera or any other camera that you believe doesn't suit your needs then move along get something more to your liking and stop criticizing everything that comes our way without real facts and time to analyze them. There will be plenty of people buying and using it. I say thanks Panasonic, I am glad you entered the revolution.
 
LizaWitz said:
Apparently video compression is a technology sufficiently advanced enough to seem like magic to you.
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Your claim isn't that it is video compression, but that Panasonic's digital camera division is staffed with geniuses that avoided Canon's digital camera division. A very hard case to make.

Both are implementing slightly different variations of the same flavor: MPEG-4 Part 10 High Profile @ Level 4.1. You are claiming that parameters at on an unseen 17Mb/s stream of that protocol can make it exceed the quality of a 40-45 Mb/s stream (what I've measured on downloaded clips).

A 40-45Mb/s stream that we have seen match 100Mb/s Cineform on a comparison of equivalent camera units (SR11/HV20 vs. SX1). A stream were we have seen game changing results on the 5DM2, with low frequency contrast (picture sharpness) and mid frequency sharpness and resolution (texture detail) previously unseen in any device near its price range.

You don't have any data on the protocol used other than the bit rate. You know they paid attention to the processor power. However, since the Canon can overheat, you don't know if that was for quality or reliablity. You know Panasonic has used CABAC in the HMC150. However you don't know if it was used in this camera and if it was, it is worth at most a 10-20% gain, far less than the bandwidth difference.

The clips released have been few and rather bland. If they thought they had something, why not have a stand to take pictures with it? Casio had UNLV cheerleaders present to show of their high speed (60fps 6Mp still, 210fps video) cameras.

Where would it end up? Well, 17Mb/s, with maybe a slight quality boost over existing 17Mb/s (say equivalent to 21Mb/s, 10-20% less than an HMC150) would make its images roughly equivalent to the XDCAM EX PMW-EX1/EX3 Sonys.

The lenses from Panasonic are probably roughly the quality of the standard Fujinon on the Sony. The bokeh is undoubtly better than the Sony and the picture quality better than the Sony with a 35mm adapter. Better lenses are less expensive than the equivalent Canon lenses for the Sony.

It probably shares the 4GB file size limitation that the Sony doesn't have and we still don't know if allows uncompressed output. If it does, the cost of the Nano XDR will be twice the cost of the camera with two lenses.
 
LizaWitz said:
I'm calling it here first. The GH1 makes the 5D obsolete. In fact, it makes every camera and camcorder on the market right now for under $5,000 obsolete.
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So Panny's business plan is to cannibalize the HMC 150 after just releasing it. Not very likely and I have not seen anything that would lead me to believe that it will make the 5D obsolete and don't forget, it takes great stills.
 
Banding is still an issue, but if the release date is around June then there's a lot that can potentially change by then.

I can understand Liza's excitement, though. The lack of horrible jello effect immediately made me exclaim out loud "nice!". It's there! But it doesn't look like it's 5D bad or even better, Nikon D90 bad. The features on the camera? Nice. We still have a lot to wonder about, as David keeps stating: HDMI?? But, still, it's looking pretty promising.

As far as cannibalizing their camera line, well who knows what will come along. Just last year the idea of an HPX300 was laughable: CMOS from Panasonic? Get a life!

Yeah, well, HPX300 is here. If this technology fits into an HVX/DVX sized body and someone out there is listening, Panasonic or whoever jumps on it could really eat up this niche-in-a-niche market.

Everyone should just calm down, there's a long wait until June!!! Who knows what may be announced and even released by the.
 
I agree that its too early to make any definitive proclamation about Panny's new offering; however, I think history tells us a lot on how these camera manufacturers operate. Having said that...this year will be very interesting and hopefully Nikon takes a better stab at this niche market.
 
Kholi said:
...as David keeps stating: HDMI??
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With only that little feature added you could pimp up a GH1 to a serious Scarlet competitor straight out of the box. A very easy way to go for Panasonic and to sell more numbers of their P2 AVCiNTRA recorder.
 
Absolutely...that little feature would make this the killer camera. I would present that live HDMI could put it ahead of the small RED sensors or small SI2K sensor. especially if it matches their dynamic range. It would also put it ahead of the Canon, and be good enough in capture to see the difference between standard, very good, and excellent glass (all those who think Panasonic's fast contrast autofocus 14-140mm zoom standard with camera for $1500 will qualify as great glass for uncompressed capture to Cineform please raise your hands.)

Stock, with a 17Mb/s AVCHD capture it will probably be just a hair behind the PMW-EX1 capturing to XDCAM EX, and may even be ahead in some instances.

With a Canon equivalent capture, it would probably be just a hair or a few behind, depending on the glass used. With equivalent glass, probably very, very close. With HDMI, it would put the hurt on every camera with a smaller sensor.

The prosumer market is already populated by the walking dead. The days of undersampling sensors is come and gone. As has MPEG2 storage (DVCProHD, XDCAM EX, HDV, etc.). The next generation of US$3-5k cameras, probably with announcements at NAB, will probably signal a major shift. If not this year next.
 
Here's to hopin for what David calls "Live" HDMI being present in this GH-1 camera. While he's thinking Cineform, I'm thinking something more mobile like the nanoFlash unit recording to CF Media.

It's not say a "bad" thing, at 1500.00 or less, to have the camera perform like an EX-1 image wise. Especially considering the good you get out of an interchangeable lens system, the flip-out LCD (which looks totally bad-ass, like... my favorite feature ALREADY), the amount of skew present in comparison to ther systems etc.

Here's the good thing: Every time one is released it seems like there's one more step closer to the proper camera. Panasonic gives us Manual Shutter and Aperture, what looks like the opposite of radical skew/jello effects, and the ability to choose your glass with mount adapters.

The next iteration may see Manual ISO selection (That will be really killer), and more of what we want.

David, I notice that you've been on the boards for a while but seemed to have just started posting on the technology. Your knowledge is helpful! Thanks for contributing so much and keeping us up to speed.
 
I drift in an out depending on what I'm doing...now I'm buying a camera :).

The nanoFlash XDR is nice and most important portable, but expensive at $3500 and using MPEG2. Still 3x the bandwidth of a similar protocol XDCAM EX. And records I-frames at 160Mb/s.

Blackmagic Designs Intensity to a computer is $250-350 and Cineform is $500-750 (to capture directly). My guess is Cineform will also store a somewhat better image. To make Cineform portable you'd needs a battery powered PCIe to ExpressCard expansion chassis (I only know of a plug in model for $750 and a laptop with two disks and a fast processor...someplace between $1000 and $2000. Not that much different than the nanoFlash XDR. Then, they aren't shipping the nanoFlash XDR.

This is SR11 footage captured via an Intensity card to Cineform: http://vimeo.com/1082016.

Now imagine that with a bigger, better sensor and much better glass.
 
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I am buying this cam if it is anything less than $1500. I don't know anything about Panasonic SLR division but if pana has a higher end slr it would make sense for them to add hdmi out and higher compression to that version. I really think panasonic just put a stop on alot of under 5k camera purchases. I was going to buy a scarlet but I don't think I will need it.

So for someone like me who has a hv20 I didn't want to buy a camera that had 1/3 chip. I just didn't want to pay 3k or more for that. So only option was EX1. Great camera but higher priced. I knew I would just wait for the scarlet for that 2/3 chip depth of field. Or any new low cost 2/3 chip cam. Now this GH1

Record to Card
Better than 2/3 chip DOF
Better than HDV compression
interchangeable lenses
cheap recording media
Better Low Light
oh and throw in a G1 SLR

This thing really reads like a wish list not a real camera. If this camera does 4 out of the 7 items from my list I will have to hold off on that Scarlet.
 
filmmaker's gang said:
slight personal attacks are useless liza..
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Of course, the above is a personal attack, and dishonest to boot. DavidNJ dishonestly characterized my previous statements as invoking "magic" and I merely pointed out that it was advanced technology.

At any rate, you then continued to do what you criticized me for:
filmmaker's gang said:
for this quote liza already won her 2009 razzie award.. march 2009 razzie award more exactly.. :D
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and
even why david seems more knowledgeable on his posts than you on your g1 propaganda..
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I'm not surprised, it seems in any forum where you talk about any non-canon camera, you get a few fanatics telling you the canon is better, and when you hit them with facts they respond with assertion and denigration as you and DavidNJ have here.

DavidNJ said:
Your claim isn't that it is video compression, but that Panasonic's digital camera division is staffed with geniuses that avoided Canon's digital camera division.
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Ah, I see you've resorted to outright lying now. Please, show me exactly where I made this claim. If you're going to (again) make a dishonest claim about what I've said, do us all the courtesy of quoting me making that claim. Otherwise people might get the idea a you're just lying to trying and make me look bad

Fact of the matter is that I pointed out that the canon lacks the horsepower to do heavy compression as it uses an older CPU, while the GH1 uses a newer dual-core CPU. I also pointed out that H.264 allows quite a bit of choice in how you compress it and that canon chose to use more bandwith while panasonic chose to use additional cpu to compress the video more highly. Not once did I ever charascterize the engineers at either company as smarter than the other.

Frankly, lacking any facts or argument to make, characterization is YOUR mode of operation, not mine.

A very hard case to make.
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Which is why you lied and said I made it. Because you obviously are incapable of responding to the arguments I did make.

Since the facts and arguments I've laid out have not been disputed, and no reasoning has been given for an alternative view, and the opposition is just continuing to repeat assertions already refuted, while getting increasingly into personal attack mode, I can see where this is going. Time for me to rest my case.
 
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Good people...good people....it's only a camera discussion. I think everyone here has something interesting to say so I appreciate all points of view. Let's not get out of hand and just agree on disagreeing. Please...no more pointing fingers.

But I do share you enthusiasm Liza.
 
Not sure this is right, but I tried running some DOF calculations. It looks like the GH1 offers shallower DOF than the 5D:

With a 40mm lens, f1.7, and subject distance of 10 feet:
Model: DOF, Range of acceptable sharpness in feet
5D: 1.91, 9.13-11
GH1: 0.95 9.55-10.5

40mm lens, f1.7, subject distance of 4 feet:
5D: 0.3, 3.86 - 4.15
GH1: 0.15, 3.93- 4.08

20mm lens, f1.7, subject of 10 feet:
5D: 8.94, 7.24-16.2
GH1: 3.96, 8.4-12.4

20mm lens, f1.7, subject 4 feet:
5D: 1.24, 3.47-4.71
GH1: 0.61, 3.72-4.33

Calculations from: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
 
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LizaWitz said:
Not sure this is right, but I tried running some DOF calculations. It looks like the GH1 offers shallower DOF than the 5D:

With a 40mm lens, f1.7, and subject distance of 10 feet:
Model: DOF, Range of acceptable sharpness in feet
5D: 1.91, 9.13-11
GH1: 0.95 9.55-10.5

40mm lens, f1.7, subject distance of 4 feet:
5D: 0.3, 3.86 - 4.15
GH1: 0.15, 3.93- 4.08

20mm lens, f1.7, subject of 10 feet:
5D: 8.94, 7.24-16.2
GH1: 3.96, 8.4-12.4

20mm lens, f1.7, subject 4 feet:
5D: 1.24, 3.47-4.71
GH1: 0.61, 3.72-4.33

Calculations from: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
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That doesn't seem sensible. That's because the GH-1 is sharper than the MK II?
 
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