dpreview - GH2 Full Review Posted

[JamesBenet]

Detail is there be it by over-sharpness in processing or a lower strength OLPF which might be the case. Remember the Canons use very strong OLPF to reduce the moire in stills.

However the dynamic range and less progressive shades is what turns me off the images on the GH2 for professional use. The 12bits capture much less gradations and can withstand much less in RAW adjustments and the chroma noise in shadows with the luma noise ever present make it hard to maintain detail if you want a clean image that can be used in big prints or adds. So it might show more detail in the beginning even with clipped shadows and highlights due to less DR but at the end of the day that detail will be hard to preserve if you want to get rid of the noise.

For 99% of the people the GH2 stills are fine to excellent but I have to present work that competes many times with FF and medium format cameras and the GH2 simply can't get there. On video where 8bits are the most you can get the Gh2 seems to still loose in DR a bit but not by much and wins hands down in detail and no color moire.

However I have had a few images that did surprise me shot on the GH2 but there are just a few; which means either I nail it every time perfectly or I can't use it in critical jobs.

 

[DrDave]

Well, if the detail is there, and the detail is real, which it is, I'm not sure I'm troubled by how they do it. It probably isn't going to be from oversharpening, I think, from raw files, although I suppose one never knows. Supposedly they were all processed the same way from RAW, but there is always the chance of some prefilter in RAW I suppose. I believe the moire is substantially less in the GH2 than the 7D (big difference) so I'm not sure OLPF is the reason either, but of course the architecture is very different.
DPReview was not able to test the DR "officially" but I could totally see that that would be a big issue for some. If I had to trade the moiree improvement against the DR I probobly would have to go for the moiree, but that's a tough one. I do miss the DR in my Panasonic and Olympus m4/3 cams, but I love the results of the old glass. My Rokkor and Leica lenses give me better results than I ever got with film, but maybe I'm a just worse with film. I suspect part of it is using the sweet spot of the lens.