Any ex-canon users disappointed with GH2?

F

flamenco boy

Member
Hi all,

I'm at the moment deciding between buying a Canon (probably 60D cos I like the screen) and a GH2. I've used Canons before on short films and have seen many great looking films shot on Canons because obviously they've been out longer. But my main concern really and I know that we've all been spoiled rotten by these big sensors, is the smaller sensor size- I already own a number a canon lenses (only a 50mm, a 17-70 zoom and Sigma 30mm) and am concerned that they are going to go pretty tele on the GH2 if I get an adapter.

Other concerns are the lack of good 25P and I suppose build quality ( I know I need to go and pick one up).

I've been trawling over over specs and reviews for weeks but could anyone coming off canons tell me if they've been at all disappointed or has the camera won them over completely, I know I'm probably asking the converted and practicality will probably win out- ie. the GH2s lack of moire and higher res.

Cheers FB
 
Try to find a way to put both in your hands long enough to get a feel for them and make your decision then. Even better if you can bring your own SD card and shoot some stuff yourself, then take it home and take a look at it and see which you like better.
 
I haven't used a GH2 yet, but I have used both 60D and GH1(3) and I can tell you exactly what you've probably already read:

60D
The 60D does overheat! I have had one overheat in a freezing cold church many many times over 2 days
It is very well built physically, much tougher and nicer buttons etc.
It does have inferior image with annoying moire aliasing etc.
Record time limit.
The screen looks a touch nicer.
The sound is inferior.
The files are MUCH larger - not better, but 6 times larger!

GH1(3) and GH2
Any manual lenses will work well
Inoffensive degree of moire and aliasing (un-noticeable actually)
EVF is great
Sound is better
Low light is excellent
Camera very small ( I would prefer 5D size personally, as I came from 5D and loved the size) but small can be good
Low light very good indeed
Much sharper images at full resolution viewing

Regarding depth of field, the difference is genuinely negligible. Honestly, you won't tell the difference.

I hope that helps. Oh - bottom line is, I wouldn't buy a Canon 60D - no way! Not even if it were the same price as a GH2, and it ain't close, so...I'm not saying the GH2 is perfect, as it's not, but the shortcomings are not dealbreakers, unlike the Canons.
 
The only thing I've found so far is the mud I've found in 720P video (GH2). I didn't notice it until I had a clip with lots of motion (pebbles with water flowing over in river).

The 24P AVCHD 24Mb stream is great, and I think superior to Canon's 24P implementation.

So if you shoot alot of slowmotion (60P) stuff, I'd stay with the Canon. But that is the only reason I would.

The thing I like most about the GH2 is the fact that you can adapt nearly any lens to it. Really adds a level of creativity that you can't get otherwise.

.02
 
I have a 60D and a GH13. I keep the canon for low-light stuff and stills (I do lots of time-lapse) and use the GH13 for just about everything else.
 
After much deliberation I sold my 7D for a GH2 and I'm very happy with my decision. My favorite things about the GH2 are the amazing improvement in video quality over the Canons, the much improved handling in video (articulating screen and great EVF - which is far better than those dinky LCD loupes), better lens selection than the Canons (yay m4/3!), lightweight so I'm actually happy to carry it around versus the clunky 7D I used to have, and last but not least no overheating or record limit.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if what you do is video, the GH2 is in a class above every other HDSLR, and there is no contest. Period.
 
Thanks all for the great responses, it's good to hear that the depth of field difference is negligible and everyone seems to agree that it's better as a video camera, I'm surprised that greeches says that slow-mo is better on the Canons, I thought I'd read the opposite somewhere, what about the 2x crop?, does anyone feel they are suddenly lacking in the wide end of things?

Cheers all
 
The crop for video purposes is actually less than 2x since the GH2/1 use an oversize multi-aspect sensor. I'd give you the actual figure, but I only know for sure it's less than 2x. At 14mm(28 @ 35mm equivalent)on my GH1 I could easily get a whole view of a pretty large living room standing right next to it. Consider that on any typical video camera the lenses start at around 28/29 which is basically the same as the GH1/2 @ 14mm- it's a pretty wide angle (take into account the 16 x 9 ratio vs a standard photo ratio) Panasonic makes a 7-14 as well....that's PLENTY wide for just about any sky engulfing shot you might want to achieve.
The other cool thing with the Panasonics is that you can take 16 x 9 photos as well - some cameras do not have this. Yes you can crop later, but that native ratio adds to the wide angle you can compose with.
And yes...a lot of people here prefer the Panasonic's 720 to the Canon's- some feel the Canon@ 720p has too much aliasing going on to be usable....but opinions will always vary.
 
For the wide end of things, 14mm is plenty wide enough, and all 3x of the kit lenses go there. There's also the 14mm prime from Lumix, the 7-14mm Ultrawide zoom and the trusty old 11-16mm Tokina f2.8 in Canon or Nikon mount with an aperture enabled adapter.

A point that is important to make is that although m4/3 is a 2x crop from full frame, on GH1 and GH2, they put a larger multi-aspect sensor, so it is actually wider in 16:9 mode than standard m43. Compared to full frame (5D) in 16:9 mode, the width of the frame is actually a 1.85x crop. I've checked this (with Barry Green and others) and it's true! So 14mm is 26mm equivelant on ff.
 
Oh there's one more thing to consider.... for stills, there's no contest - the 60D is a huge class above the GH2. Reverse that for video. Eek!
 
Lucas Adamson said:
Oh there's one more thing to consider.... for stills, there's no contest - the 60D is a huge class above the GH2. Reverse that for video. Eek!
Click to expand...

I'll second this. I'm in the process of selling my T2i (I haven't used it much since getting the GH2), but I will miss its still picture quality and the megapixel LCD.

But I'm primarily interested in video, and for me, the GH2 is the best and most flexible video cam I could find for less than $4000.
 
Lucas Adamson said:
Oh there's one more thing to consider.... for stills, there's no contest - the 60D is a huge class above the GH2.
Click to expand...

Superior handling, yes - I love my 7D for stills, but as for image quality, I would not consider the GH1 inferior by much, I have both. I would certainly not describe the 60D as a "huge class" above the GH1 or GH2.
 
Hallvalla said:
Absolutely, but I've taken a few good pics with the GH2, better quality than I had expected.
Click to expand...

This is true.. I didn't expect much for stills from either the GH13 or GH2, but they actually surprised me. They aren't as good as the cannons, but they are better than most point and shoot cameras.
 
So by how much would ya'll say that the video quality is an improvement over the Canon's? I personally get frustrated every time with the Canon's, I was doing a shoot yesterday that I was sure would deliver a product that was up to 720P in realism, but as always, I got what seemed to be only 540P. I feel like a 540P downrez is the point where the Canon footage starts to look absolutely stunning in clarity (but sometimes it's even lower than that), and I'm hoping that the GH2 really reaches up to 720P - I think expecting full 1080P out of any consumer digital camera is something I realistically don't expect, but I don't believe that I can professionally work with anything that has even a bit lower visual resolution than 720P. I'm not trying to say it's a Canon only thing, I was watching some 720P Olympus Pen native files other day and there was barely 360P worth of resolution coming out of them, but I sure hope Panasonic has improved the whole "digital cameras seem to only deliver half the claimed resolution" rule. And I sure hope it's not a sharpness setting that's just tricking folks into thinking the GH2 looks sharp, I truly hope that the Gh2 can truly deliver at least 720P worth of quality wrapped up in a 1080P file.

But honestly, I wish someone could upload a Gh2 file to somewhere other than Vimeo (which seems to destroy the files), possibly having already exported it in the most non-loss way possible, preferrably something shot with settings equal to the "0 Sharpness/Flat" rule of the Canon's. Simply watching a file speaks more to everyone's specific needs than tons of questions and answers.
 
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Snapper123 said:
And I sure hope it's not a sharpness setting that's just tricking folks into thinking the GH2 looks sharp, I truly hope that the Gh2 can truly deliver at least 720P worth of quality wrapped up in a 1080P file.
Click to expand...

Well I mean realistically my friend these are shooting to H.264 at 4:2:0 color and we are paying under $1000 for them. Five years ago we would have all been thrilled to have solid state SD cameras with large chips and interchangeable lenses for this price. In fact we would have all considered it unthinkable. So consider something has to give. At least we can make cinematic masterpieces that look great on vimeo. lol
 
Almost everybody who has bothered to critically analyse their shots on the Lumix GH cameras has come to the conclusion that both cameras look better with sharpness dialled all the way down. It's not "a sharpness setting that's just tricking folks into thinking the GH2 looks sharp." I am quite certain of that. Sharpening looks ugly as sin.
 
My biggest disappointment with the GH-2 is that Panasonic didn't offer a 1:1 tradein value for my GH-1.

As for Canon... I've often thought that the Canon (just that name alone almost...) + that big lens is just a substitute for... well... bigness where it counts... at least for men... although I have seen a few women whipping that bazooka out...

Which of course leads me to that oft recited phrase... "Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it'...

Which is a frequently enough observed truism to make it a law of the universe...
 
I shot interviews yesterday for a current non profit video project and used my 5DII, 7D and newly acquired GH2. Here's what I think.

The GH2 LCD screen is awful. I can't get it to look like the actual scene it's showing no matter what, the color and contrast on the screen simply do not represent the scene/footage. Now on the flip side the Canon screens are extremely close to the actual color of the scene and footage, you can make judgement calls just from the Canon screens. No chance of judgment calls from the GH2 screen for color, color temp, contrast, whether I need to fill in shadows with extra light, etc.

The GH2 has no way of zooming in to check focus as far as I can tell which I find very necessary. It's a snap on the Canons.

Positives about the GH2:
USA version has no clip limit.
Cinema 24p footage just blows away the Canon footage, no contest.
GH2 has no moire or aliasing when the Canons show a ton in the same scene.
The touch screen works well but still the icons are tiny to touch and the camera's buttons for settings are small and still hard to get a mental grasp for fast adjustments.
GH2 24p footage does quite nicely with color/style treatments in Magic Bullet Looks, better than Canon I feel.
Touchscreen auto focus is nice. Very usable AF during filming is handy in many shooting situations.
Plenty of lens adapters, I have an EOS and C/Y which help a great deal to blend with my current gear.
Articulating function of the screen is AWESOME.

Negatives on GH2:
Body is just too small. It's made for hobbits.
There should be a camera body with the GH2 sensor that fits between the AF100 and GH2 with features that fit mid way as well.
EVF is OK, but again no idea if manually focusing lenses is really hitting their marks.
Menu system is just nuts.
1080p at 30p footage is OK but nothing that impresses me to be better then the Canons. (24p on the GH2 is a must to bleed the quality out)
The selection of M43 lenses, especially zooms with faster apertures, is simply not expansive enough.
Accessories and batteries in short supply only to get worse for a while I'm sure.
The SD card file structure is down right silly. Sure I copy the whole thing and Log and Transfer but really, is all that necessary. All I need from a Canon is a .mov file.
Onboard audio is weak. I set it to the minimum (just for scratch audio) from the many suggestions that the mics are very sensitive but I have clips where you can barely hear a thing to sync to external audio tracks. I'll accept as my fault and adjust for the future.

I will hang on to the GH2 and hone my skills specific to that camera's needs. I already SEE the benefit looking at the footage, the usability just is not quite there, not near as easy in all shooting scenarios as the Canons.
 
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