How hard would it be for Panasonic to repackage the GH1 into a larger body allowing for proper audio and more physical controls etc? Or Canon or Sony? There's can't be any technical obstacles. It's the obvious thing to do now. Will they continue to release highish priced models with fixed lenses and small sensors when everyone has seen what can be done in a humble DSLR?
7D... No need to abandon ship
- Thread starter commanderspike
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studio1972
Well-known member
It depends, if they just keep the optics and sensors the same as a GH1 then it is fairly simple. But ideally, wouldn't it be better to cut down the pixel count and have better low light performance? Also a selection of lenses would need to be designed with better controls for video, unless you intend to attach still camera lenses? It's not insurmountable of course, but I don't think it is as trivial as you make out.
John Caballero
Veteran
I don't think many independent filmmakers will go for a 1/3 camera anymore. Panasonic should have no problem on implementing a 4/3 sensor on a HPX170 system. That should be a no brainer. Will they do it? They better, because that is the next most logical step if they want to maintain their sales on the sub $10K video camera market. The same goes with Canon.
Barry_Green
Moderator
That's an easy thing to say, but is it really "no problem"? Stuart points out a huge problem -- what about a lens? The GH1's lens isn't exactly up to traditional video camera standards, what with no power zoom option. And if they go with a 4/3 sensor, that rules out *all* broadcast lenses; none of them cover a chip that big!
Yes, it seems obvious that the "GHX100" is the way we'd all love them to go in. But is it so easy to get there from here? We'll see.
Yes, it seems obvious that the "GHX100" is the way we'd all love them to go in. But is it so easy to get there from here? We'll see.
studio1972
Well-known member
Maybe not the 170, but many many 150s are sold to event videographers. These cameras have a 13x zoom and are excellent in low light. They are also ergonomic and light weight. It would be very difficult to produce a 4/3 camera with all these features at anywhere near the same cost. I suspect that 1/3 3 chip cameras will be with us for many years yet. Panasonic have only just bought out a 1/4 chip camera!
Here's something to think about. If it's that easy to do 4/3 video cameras, why didn't they do it years ago?
John Caballero
Veteran
????
???? Sorry, but that question makes no sense whatsoever.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Not understanding where the gap in understanding is? A 4/3 video camera hasn't been easy to do, therefore it wasn't done years ago. I mean, Stuart's right on the money here.
A video camera that had a still-camera lens is going to be a pretty tough sell to anyone who wants a video camera experience. And still-camera lenses are the only lenses out there with a big enough circle of illumination to cover the whole frame. Well, those, and 35mm cinema lenses -- and if you've priced those recently you'll know that they're astonishingly expensive to even be thinking about.
People are expecting Canon to just go and stick a big sensor in the XLH1a and "boom" -- there you have it. But what are they going to do for a lens? You can't use XL glass, it would barely cover the central 1/8 of the image, you'd have a frame that's 90% black with a tiny circle of image in the center! You can't use 2/3" glass, that'd result in a frame that's 75% black with a circle in the center 25%. So if they do a 4/3 camera, they're going to have to -- what, repackage still camera lenses? Introduce a new camera with no power zoom, maybe even no autofocus? (well, now that we think about it, that's pretty much what they did with the 7D, isn't it?) Now, fortunately, Canon is a lens designer/manufacturer, so they could overcome the problem, but will they? And if so, how soon?
It isn't a case of "just pull out the prism assembly and stick in a 4/3 chip instead"...
A video camera that had a still-camera lens is going to be a pretty tough sell to anyone who wants a video camera experience. And still-camera lenses are the only lenses out there with a big enough circle of illumination to cover the whole frame. Well, those, and 35mm cinema lenses -- and if you've priced those recently you'll know that they're astonishingly expensive to even be thinking about.
People are expecting Canon to just go and stick a big sensor in the XLH1a and "boom" -- there you have it. But what are they going to do for a lens? You can't use XL glass, it would barely cover the central 1/8 of the image, you'd have a frame that's 90% black with a tiny circle of image in the center! You can't use 2/3" glass, that'd result in a frame that's 75% black with a circle in the center 25%. So if they do a 4/3 camera, they're going to have to -- what, repackage still camera lenses? Introduce a new camera with no power zoom, maybe even no autofocus? (well, now that we think about it, that's pretty much what they did with the 7D, isn't it?) Now, fortunately, Canon is a lens designer/manufacturer, so they could overcome the problem, but will they? And if so, how soon?
It isn't a case of "just pull out the prism assembly and stick in a 4/3 chip instead"...
Well, I did ask 'where's the problem' and it seems chiefly to do with power zoom. And yet without power zoom we're all pretty stoked about the GH1 (and the 5D and the 7D etc). Maybe if the manual zoom could be made a better experience we'd learn to live with it (I've just put my Canon A2 Hi in the dustbin, noting as I did so the nice manual zoom lever and manual focus ring - those were the days! And noting the sort-of SLR format which proved to be somewhat ahead of its time).
I guess if you took a poll of the people here and asked whether they'd go for GH1-like features in a normal video cam format vs power zoom and loss of autofocus on some lenses, they'd go for the former. Now all we have to do is convince the manufacturers!
Mr. Brody
Mr. Brody
You mentioned earlier in the thread about pulldown issues with the GH1. I certainly agree that this step in post would be nice to not have to do.
However, you said that you had issues with Voltaic....I think the issue primarily is too lossy an end product after pulldown with my experience, but, I'm having some great success with Neoscene.
Can you be more specific about the issues that you had and then how they were resolved with pulldown removal from 1080p/24 GH1 footage?
Just want to make sure I haven't missed anything.
Thanks.
Mr. Brody
You mentioned earlier in the thread about pulldown issues with the GH1. I certainly agree that this step in post would be nice to not have to do.
However, you said that you had issues with Voltaic....I think the issue primarily is too lossy an end product after pulldown with my experience, but, I'm having some great success with Neoscene.
Can you be more specific about the issues that you had and then how they were resolved with pulldown removal from 1080p/24 GH1 footage?
Just want to make sure I haven't missed anything.
Thanks.
You've basically summed up my experience. Voltaic is visually lossy, and I found neoscene a better choice. However, neoscene on Mac is very buggy, or was when I last tried it about a month ago. The workflow for removing pulldown is problematic on the Mac since Final Cut doesn't properly remove it. The PC side seems to work much better than the Mac workflow for GH1 footage. Premiere allows you native editing but that's dependent on your graphics card. I tried it and was getting sluggish playback. I hear Edius is flawless but I'm pretty much all Mac these days and really don't want to make any big switches. Though with final cut forcing you to ingest everything to Prores I might just have to bite the bullet and head back to Windows. I didn't even touch the Avid workflow though I use Avid quite a bit. Avid's not that different than final cut in that everything is ingested into its own proprietary format.
Neoscene is as smooth as you're going to get on the Mac side, but if you want to avoid and smooth out some 4:2:0 banding artifacts you'll want to run your footage through After Effects and encode to 32BPC photojpeg 75 percent. It does help with GH1 footage. I just don't think it's worth the pain in the ass to do this though. I just don't want to fight with my footage. It's a bad sign when you spend more time trying to get your NLE to play nice with your footage instead of editing.
Ben_B
Veteran
Seems like another good time to shove this in there.
Honestly I wouldn't mind the 2x crop factor if it meant I didn't have to drop a couple thousand on a good 35mm adapter and if I wasn't bogged down by using rails and everything when I don't want to be.
As for zoom...well we're not using the zoom feature when we put prime lenses on the thing anyway...maybe package it with a lens that is capable of doing servo zoom through the interface with the camera,
and find a way to squeeze an ND filter between the sensor and the lens without adding a huge amount of flange distance (probably the problem there.)
This photoshop job is really sort of a "here this is what we want" joke...note the extra space used by the lens inside the camera that doesn't need to be there....I suppose you could streamline the body or just use the extra space for something.
The other thought that's waaaaaay out there on the wild end of things would be to have an enclosed system wherein you opened it up, installed a lens, adjusted a servo based zoom "follow focus" and a manual one to the camera's zoom ring...and then had an adjustable ND in the front sort of like a mattebox....but oh yes that would be totally crazy to build, use, and maintain...so forget it...just a fun idea.
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ydgmdlu
Veteran
The GH1's stills performance is much improved over the G1. So there is, in fact, a reason to buy it purely for stills, if you're just entering the world of Micro Four-Thirds, and you're trying to decide between the G1 and GH1. Video on the GH1 is a bonus.