GH2 Canon mod trying out GH2.

M. Gilden

M. Gilden

Canon DSLR Moderator
Hey GH users.

Some of you have probably seen me moderating the Canon and general DSLR section. I've seen some great footage coming from the GH2, and decided it really is a shame that I don't have more first hand experience with one (especially during those times that I'm worried about moire and aliasing).

That being said, I've got one in the mail (thanks to an Adorama.com sale) with the smaller kit lens (14-42mm, I think). And I'm suddenly realizing just how much I don't know about this camera!

Here's the thing- I don't want to invest too much into camera-specific accessories because I'm still mostly a Canon guy and not sure if I'll be keeping this long term. In fact, when the Digic5 cameras come out, I'll probably have to sell it. But in the mean time, I'd like to at least be able to substitute it for one of my canons.

I understand the crop is a hair tighter on this versus the Canon, so I'll have to back up a bit more with the same lenses. And since most of my lenses are vintage primes, I just need some new affordable ring adapters.
But what about using native EOS glass? My go-to wide angle lens is a Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8 EOS. Without that, I'm afraid the GH2 won't handle my wide low-light shots, and I'm not willing to invest in a new wide lens just for this yet. So, I'm reaching out to the community for suggestions and advice.
What say you, loyal GH users?
 
don't have a lot of info, besides that i bought an FD ring mount and uses the vintage FD's, cause that's what i wanted in the first place.
i bet you could get any mount you need for a 20$ and use most of your lens.
 
Of the vendors I've tried, Fotodiox makes the widest range of decent vintage adapters, all relatively cheap ($20-$70). Red Rock makes a powered EOS lens adapter that allows full iris control (around $400?), or you can set the iris with a Canon body and then put it onto a cheaper "dumb" adapter.If the RedRock livelens works for you, I might recommend springing for a Tokina 11-16... Its an all-round good wide lens.
 
LOL- for $400 I might as well get a different lens. That's exactly what I'm NOT looking to do, but thanks for the suggestion!

I suppose for the kind of shoots I'd be doing, the aperture won't change- so I could set it on the canon, then turn it off and flip it over to the GH2 with a "dumb" fotodiox adapter. Annoying and less than ideal, but it will do for now. Wait... I'm actually not 100% certain that the aperture stays when you turn the camera off, come to think of it. It might reset. Are we sure that's how it works?

That Tokina is a great lens, I've been eyeing it for a while. But it isn't available for the m4/3rds mount, is it? See, that kind of lens selection is what kills my buzz for the GH2.
 
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I came to the GH2 from the Canon 7D, and find GH2 video usable at 3200ISO. The 7D was questionable beyond 800ISO. You may find the GH2 kit lens at 14mm sufficient for wide angle low-light.

Good luck with your GH2 adventure.
 
I have the tamron 17- 50 2,8 best zoom lens for the gh2! Not many gh2 use this suprb lens dont know why, its much better the the kit lens
 
I bought the kipon eos to m4/3 adapter, with the built in iris. Not recommended. Awaiting a simpler adapter from ebay, which I'll review when it arrives. The panny lenses (I have the 14-140 and the 100-300) are great in good light, but I'd like to use some of my eos glass in low light, in combination with a variND if I need to. Also have a 50mm 1.4 FD prime and adapter. I have the Tamron (non vc) but I'm under the impression it's an ef-s lens, and I haven't seen any adapters for that so far.
 
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ingoandfloyd said:
I have the tamron 17- 50 2,8 best zoom lens for the gh2! Not many gh2 use this suprb lens dont know why, its much better the the kit lens
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I use it too all the time! Great lens! The stock Panny lenses just look awful to me. I don't understand why people are still using them...
 
mr bill said:
I have the Tamron (non vc) but I'm under the impression it's an ef-s lens, and I haven't seen any adapters for that so far.
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Yes, I believe it is an EF-S lens (at least, the one I have is). Does that make a difference when working with a ring adapter? I'm under the impression that you can't use EF-S lenses on EF mount cameras because the mirror could collide with the glass, but when using an adapter on a smaller sensor size (and mirrorless to boot), why would it still make a difference?

As far as shooting with higher ISO on the kit lens instead of choosing a lower aperture option... That might work for low light, but I'll lose the narrow DOF. Also, I like using the Tamron to zoom during video (thanks to constant aperture). Most of my multi-camera shoots are live events, and require at least one to be on a zoom.

For now (since I'm only experimenting), I guess I could leave one of my Canons on the wide shot with the Tamron, and my vintage primes on the GH2. But the wide shots are the ones that stand to benefit most from the cleaner moire/aliasing image. Close ups with shallow DOF are hardly a problem with the Canon. Seems like a shame.

If this indeed works, my best option with available hardware might be to stop down the Tamron to the desired level first attached to the Canon, then attach it to the GH2 for wide angle zoom shots, and my Canon for the tight ones.

On that note- has anyone had any experience combining footage between a Canon and the GH2? I'm expecting the footage and coloring to look a bit different, but hoping it won't be too difficult to match in post.
 
I've combined GH1 and 60D footage with reasonable success, but the Canon's colours were VERY over-saturated by comparison. That said, I didn't do any experimentation with settings matching.

My main GH2 advice is to turn both NR and especially sharpening to -2, whatever else you do. Leave saturation and contrast on 0 or dial them down for better grading potential. The next one is to buy a couple of Canon FDs (the 50, 1.4 is cheap and excellent) and the 24mm or 28mm for a "normal" lens (preferably f2, but 2.8 will do if skint).
 
M. Gilden said:
On that note- has anyone had any experience combining footage between a Canon and the GH2? I'm expecting the footage and coloring to look a bit different, but hoping it won't be too difficult to match in post.
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I just got a GH2 and will be shooting 2 jobs with it and a T2i this week, so I'll post my experiences here.
 
Welcome to the gh fold!

I used to use the 7 and 5d, but not only is the gh2 a fraction of the price, IMO it gives a much sharper image - the 7d/5d can look a bit "soft" in comparison. Don't take my word for it, check out Kholi's and Barry's posts on the matter.

The ability to monitor HDMI out while also having the viewfinder active is an emormous plus.

A 2.8 lens really isn't making the most of the incredible ISO performance of the hacked gh2 (you MUST hack it!). As someone noted, you can shoot 3200 ISO on the gh2 and with the hack, the noise (very little) looks like fine film grain. It really is amazing for shooting indoors with practicals.

I'd definitely recommend the pancake 20mm 1.7 lens, wonderful, wonderful, and a canon fd 50mm 1.4. These are really the only 2 lenses you need if shooting drama.

The only downside of the gh2 is the 2X crop factor, slightly more than the 1.6X of the 7d, so not hugely noticable, but if you're used to the 5d it was nice to be able to go wider. But as long as you don't shoot in lockers or coffins (planning on remaking BURIED?), you can just move back as you say.

I love the lack of moire, aliasing and no overheating as well.

Truly a remarkable camera.

I bet you don't end up selling it. I bet ;)
 
hahaha, bring on the fanboys! ;)

Seriously- thanks for the helpful posts so far, guys. Some of it has been very informative.

A couple of things to note:
1) I already own a set of vintage primes (all Nikon F-mount), so while I appreciate the FD lens advice, keep in mind that I'm coming into this with my trusted arsenal beautiful glass. I asked about EOS lenses because a wide constant aperture zoom is far more difficult to find in non-native glass.

2) The crop size of the GH2 when taking video is not really much different than the Canons, if I understand correctly. When the Canons shoot video, the aspect ratio cuts off the top and bottom (letterbox), making the 1.6x frame crop closer to a 1.8x crop. I have been told that the GH2 actually has a rectangular sensor that is already the appropriate dimensions for widescreen video, and it is actually the photo mode that cuts off the sides instead of vice versa. I may be mistaken about all this, but I'm under the impression that the GH2 is somewhere around a 1.89 crop already (we round it up to 2x when talking specs), and so it is perhaps fractions of a decimal point more cropped than the Canon's APS-C are.

3) Not that this was the topic of the thread, but those of you who are discussing price of the camera being so low, keep in mind that the Rebel T2i is currently my most recommended choice in Canons to shoot video. Magic Lantern gives it the feature set of a full blown camera (include manual audio control complete with headphone monitoring), with IQ on par with the 7D, and through Canon's loyalty program they are $500 and change with a kit lens. So, just to put it into some perspective, the GH2 is actually more expensive.

4) There is very good explanation for the Canons "soft" video. It has to do with the way the Digic4 chip resolves sensor data- it actually has to skip lines and upconvert to 1080p, likely because it is 4 years old and underpowered for the job. The GH2 has the horsepower to actually downsample the entire sensor image, which results in a clean and sharp picture. This is why I am interested in it for now. However, Digic5 chips are expected to change that, and are rumored to land in the next few months. This is why I am hesitant to go "all in" with the Panasonic for now.

5) Pumping up the ISO is nice, but it won't replace my Tamron 2.8 zoom for 2 reasons: 1) I use the constant aperture zoom for live event shots 2) shallow DOF.

That being said, between the impending digic5 and the occasional photography gig (which the Canons are better suited for), I don't plan to give up and sell my Canons anytime soon. Ok maybe one of them, but I'm still keeping at least the other. ;)
I do intend to hack the GH2 and get the most out of it in the mean time though.
 
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Eh, I don't like shooting anything at anything wider than f/2.8. My main motivation in trying out the GH2 was to see if I could pump up the ISO and shoot at f/8.
 
M. Gilden - you can get m43 to nikon f mount with aperture controllers for modern nikon G and dx lenses
 
J Davis said:
M. Gilden - you can get m43 to nikon f mount with aperture controllers for modern nikon G and dx lenses
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That would require me to purchase modern Nikon lenses. Good to know that's an option if eventually switch full time to Panasonic- but I'm trying to be as cross-platform between my EOS as possible. Besides, from what I understand, there appears to be some (rather expensive) Canon EOS to M4/3 adapters that support aperture control as well. Are the Nikon ones cheaper/better?
 
The modern nikon lenses that don't have an aperture ring are still mechanical, not electronic like the canons. Instead of an aperture ring there is a tiny lever that moves in circular grove around the rear element. The m43 to F mount adapters with aperture control are not electronic they simply give you access to moving the lever. Some use a ring built into the adapter, the older ones use a bolt. Here is a shot of the first ever bolt version m43 to f on my nikon tokina 11-16 LINK, the shot is a little dark but you get the idea. The later designs with the ring are cheaper and more elegant. Because the canon lenses are fully electronic only the very expensive birger adapter will control it properly, the much cheaper kippon adapters use a 2nd iris within the adapter. Every EOS lens defaults to open aperture so it doesn't shadow the kippon iris. When I was shooting my gh1 back in the day I mostly collected nikon ai's because I knew they could migrate to canon as well. Their color can match pretty well with modern glass including the nikon tokina (which you could always rent).

edit: going wide on micro 4/3rds is tough. Your best bet is to get a proper m43 wide lens like the 20mm f1.7 pancake, or go with a nikon mount tokina. There is also the vintage nikon ai 20mm f2.8 and 24mm f2.8 (avoid the ais 24/2 as it has bad ghosts)
 
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