ETC mode and noise...

Rolf Silber

Rolf Silber

Veteran
Okay, this probably has been asked before, so I apologize in advance:

Just got my GH2 and am about to play with the ETC mode a bit, especially with my macro.

Am getting more noise than I want with higher ISOs. Is this normal?

Still a great feature with lower ISOs. What is your experience?
 
Yes. Tried some shots with the Voigtlaender 25 mm and will see what it does with the Zeiss 100 Macro. ETC is really nice though. Am under the impression that it stresses lenses, especially adapted photo lenses, to the physical limits. "Old fashioned" things like glass quality become a factor.

Wanted to use it for some special night shots with a Nikon 400 mm 2.8 and fumbled around with ISO 400 to 800 which was.... you know: A bit grainy.... ;-)

Okay, there are also the rules of physics and economics and I don't complain a bit. Thanks for the input.
 
I did try the ECT yesterday a bit more and made some shots inside a small church. Did use between 400 and 800 ISO, it was a bit underexposed but the noise was strong and I got some banding. Didnt look that great and was more or less unusable out of cam, seems like you have to expose it correctly (0 on the metering) to avoid this. Overall ETC is really great, love it.
 
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moxrox said:
I did try the ECT yesterday a bit more and made some shots inside a small church. Did use between 400 and 800 ISO, it was a bit underexposed but the noise was strong and I got some banding. Didnt look that great and was more or less unusable out of cam, seems like you have to expose it correctly (0 on the metering) to avoid this. Overall ETC is really great, love it.
Click to expand...

Actually it was one of the reasons I bought the GH2 ... nice camera still. May search for a nice set of fast old 16 mm lenses now.
 
When you magnify the pixels, you will magnify the noise. I typically stay under ISO 320 with 1080p ETC videos and ISO 640 is really the absolute usable limit for me. I would decrease the shutter speed before I would increase the ISO with ETC. 1080p @ 24 FPS with a 1/25th shutter speed will work well with most of the prime lenses including the legacy ones.

The Panasonic 25mm F1.4 will be cool to use with this feature. However, I am really excited about the prospects of a 7-14mm with IS for ETC videos. If the new 7-14mm is parfocal it will become the zoom to have. Well at least until the 12-50mm F2.3-3.3 comes out.
 
Coming from a red MX I find ETC totally unuseable, and I can only tolerate 320 iso at max unless there is a severe need for more exposure...

That being said...

Still like my little gh2...

Also multiples of 160 will work better than the inbeteeen iso's.

160
320
640
1250

Are cleaner than 200,400,500,800,1000 etc.
 
Dan_Kanes said:
Coming from a red MX I find ETC totally unuseable, and I can only tolerate 320 iso at max unless there is a severe need for more exposure...

That being said...

Still like my little gh2...

Also multiples of 160 will work better than the inbeteeen iso's.

160
320
640
1250

Are cleaner than 200,400,500,800,1000 etc.
Click to expand...

What I couldn't tolerate is the price difference between a Red and my little GH2. I find regular video to be usable up to ISO 3200. ETC video is only good for about ISO 320.
 
From what I have seen ETC is noisy in all iso's. I have been through 2 GH2 in the past 3 month and they both add allot of noise. Too bad I really like the options it could have provided. Right now its just not as clean as it should be for me.
 
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