GH2 af100 or gh2 and better lenses?

S

Stephen Michael

Member
Hello all, seeing as how I'm terrible at making decisions, I figured I'd gather up some advice on here about what camera I should next buy. I've had the af100 for a year now, and while I'm generally happy with it, I think there are better options out there for me. My plan is to sell the af100 in order to afford a friend's hacked gh2 (with 20mm pancake and 12-60 oly zuiko zoom for a good deal), or a 60D, a few zeiss zf.2 primes (or maybe another zeiss and a nokton 25mm if I go the gh2 route), and a beachtek xlr adapter for when I cannot shoot dual-system. I also have a used canon t2i that has done fairly well for me, but the lack of a flip-out LCD/1080 hdmi out has always bugged me. Could end up selling that as well (or should I keep the t2i around if I go gh2?).

Just for some background - I shoot a lot of promotional videos for charities and various organizations of the like, and am beginning to market myself for weddings and events of that sort of well. Those are the events that I get paid for, but I also plan to do a lot of narrative work with the next camera I buy.

I know that oftentimes these issues come down to personal preference, but I am trying to gather as many opinions in order to make the most educated decision I can. Basically what I'm asking is how these other cameras compare to the af100 at this point in time. Thanks in advance, any advice is much appreciated.
 
I own a GH2 and have used an AF100.
While I do miss XLR on the GH2 for corporate stuff, other than that and the form factor, it's a much superior camera to the AF100. The picture and DR from it is much better, which is especially good during harder to control lighting (the AF100 has very ugly highlights, a big no-no!). But with a Beachtek it seems like a good choice.
I'll also drop one for Lomo lenses... Amazing lenses, I've changed all mine to them and is never looking back (except maybe if I find some other cine lenses).
 
I don't know if I'd want to choose a hacked GH2 over an AF100 when getting into the kind of work that you're doing. I'd rather have a video camera with more features and a reliable codec than a stills camera with a bad form factor and the potential to crash or have banding issues when working on something as important as a wedding. The image quality is certainly better out of the GH2, moreso when you add nice glass on top of that. However, I think you'll have to balance out ease of use for client work and image quality. For narrative work, I'd always pick the GH2. There's enough control there to plan for its shortcomings. So what's more important to you? The client work or the narrative stuff?
 
As a AF100 and GH2 owner, IMO, the value of what you're selling is greater than the value of what you plan to buy. Even a full set of Zeiss lenses will never make the GH2 shoot decent 60i or 60p slow mo or record good sync sound.
 
The AF100 is a solid camera- this is what I would do:

1./ Keep the AF100- master the camera and work on your craft
2./ Make money with your AF100 (should pay for itself after a few gigs)
3./ Buy cheap used GH2 in 6 months with the money you made

I own a GH2 and it's great but it's no substitute for a workhorse cam like the AF
 
I've been considering that as well...but what would you suggest for lenses? My thinking (or what I'm wondering) is that if there is not a huge dropoff from the af100 to the gh2, then I can use the capital from selling the af100 to acquire things like lenses/a monitor/other accessories that I don't have. Renting is always an option, but I like the idea of having lenses for whenever I need them.

The priority is narrative/documentary-style work on little/no budget...
 
Right now I only have my tamron 17-50 2.8 that I bought for my t2i (not ideal...no manual iris control because of the adapter I have), and a 50mm 1.4 used zeiss prime that I bought for $300 (a steal!). For narrative work I've been renting lenses.

Since zeiss primes are so expensive, I'm also looking into buying a set of three or so nikon ais primes used and doing the cine mod from duclos so I can spend that extra money on other things like a monitor/decent zoom lens, etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top