Finally saw GH2 footage first hand.. I am not upgrading. Staying with GH1.3

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Ian-T said:
(sigh)....I'm not afraid of anything...typically. But I am afraid of giving an opinion in this forum sometimes...like now.
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Ha ha...know what you mean!

After 4 great weeks shooting underwater in Indonesia with my GH13's my mind is at peace enough to once again brave this forum...
 
Uwe Lansing said:
Thank you richtrav! No mud at all. I suppose we´ll see some telling comparisons between GH1, GH13 and GH2 in a couple of weeks. What I saw so far: the 1080i50/60 mode has quite a lot of artifacts and mud. It seems that panny didnt´really change it. But the 1080p24p footage with 24mbps is definitely beating the GH1 and perhaps on par with the Gh13 - but without doubt we need more really good footage shot by guys who know what they are doing and of course with the right in-camera settings...
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That palm fronds "downloaded MTS clip" shows terrible artifacts with dancing blocks in the shadows and lower light parts. And this is plain daylight. In my view this is unusable as a quality camera. The detail is there in well illuminated parts, and it was so encouraging, but...

I was so hoping for the GH2 to really stretch the quality and at least be on par with the Canons. Even when the moire and aliasing is much much less and detail higher, this low light area problem I've seen in several MTS clips makes it a very restrained camera to use. You need perfect lighting and even illumination just to get by without codec breakup.

I'm sure in shallow DoF it performs great but other cameras also do that, the point was getting moire and aliasing reduced to a point where you could comfortably use this as a B cam with little worry.

Lets hope things improve with firmware or some magic settings/hacks in the future!
 
tflak said:
Hey Blackout - slap this up on your 14' screen and start lusting after an AF100 :)

Just posted by Barry Green. http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...ge...please!&p=2154385&viewfull=1#post2154385
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Ok I downloaded it..and it is nice.... but I'm not that impressed with it truthfully. I actually thought the Neduinja Shrine GH2 footage far more impressive. Si is the AF-100 $3700 nicer? There is some codec noise breakup in the mans face and a lot of noise in his purple shirt. and this is not low light. Highlights are badly blown out.

And there is the same amount of aliasing on the leaf edges as with the GH1.3 or GH2.

Also, what's the the weird focus hunting? I guess it was Barry just playing around... there was strange double jump of leaf focus.

I have clips, shot on the GH1.3, with a lot less noise in the people's faces with a closeup like that. Will upload them. I don't know what iso he was shootign but I image very low in that bright light yet the man's face looked like he was shooting at a higher iso.. so did his purple shirt.
 
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Blackout said:
a lot of noise in his purple shirt. and this is not low light. Highlights are badly blown out.
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This is not a low light scene but its one with great dynamic range. The camera is obviously exposing for the leaves so they don't clip and its raising the iso in the man's area making it look less dark. At least I guess so...
But anyhow, my GH1 would never preserve so much detail in both highlights and shadows. And the focus hunt if I noticed correctly happens when he un-zooms.
 
It was a good clip... but it didn't 'blow me away'. Might have just been the shot though. Maybe if it was a deep DoF image of a landscape, it would have shown what it can do a little better.

Codec seems excellent for 24Mbps. They should have gone with something with a bit more space for the data, imo though. 40Mbps properly encoded AVCHD sounds great for acquisition, and I don't think professionals would care that it doesn't match that blasted Blu Ray spec...

Blackout said:
I have clips, shot on the GH1.3, with a lot less noise in the people's faces with a closeup like that. Will upload them. I don't know what iso he was shootign but I image very low in that bright light yet the man's face looked like he was shooting at a higher iso.. so did his purple shirt.
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Oooo, please upload them ASAP. :D Raw MTS clips from the GH13 are rather hard to find.
 
Blackout said:
Ok I downloaded it..and it is nice.... but I'm not that impressed with it truthfully. I actually thought the Neduinja Shrine GH2 footage far more impressive. Si is the AF-100 $3700 nicer? There is some codec noise breakup in the mans face and a lot of noise in his purple shirt. and this is not low light. Highlights are badly blown out.

And there is the same amount of aliasing on the leaf edges as with the GH1.3 or GH2.

Also, what's the the weird focus hunting? I guess it was Barry just playing around... there was strange double jump of leaf focus.

I have clips, shot on the GH1.3, with a lot less noise in the people's faces with a closeup like that. Will upload them. I don't know what iso he was shootign but I image very low in that bright light yet the man's face looked like he was shooting at a higher iso.. so did his purple shirt.
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Well, I was concentrating on the high contrast, high detail nature of the overall shot and how it held the fine detail in the herringbone jacket and the pants. Especially considering it was only a monopod stabilized shot. So admittedly didn't notice the other things you've noted. I sometimes have a tendency to get carried away with specific aspects which show a vast improvement and fail to inspect the overall as closely as a more experienced observer would.

As far as the $3,700 nicer question, there's a lot more involved here in terms of ease of use and overall functionality. However, I suspect that the differences in the image aspects will become clear as more footage is released - especially once the AF100 has been fully tweaked in the final production model.

Bloom has just posted his video (with review to follow) http://philipbloom.net/2010/11/11/japanaf101/ -- his Vimeo source file is still available for download. Not too shabby.

Didn't mean to hijack this thread since it's about the GH2 and GH13, not the AF100. So I apologize for going off topic. But I'm going to go out on a limb and good-naturedly predict that by March (if not sooner) you will be lusting for an AF100. In the meantime, I'm guessing we'll all be treated to a vigorous, sometimes tortured, but always thoroughly entertaining series of posts; possibly reminiscent of your classic 7D drama days. :)
 
I don't see how that's ironic. :P When I was 16 I bought an HF100 with the money that I earned over summer. I worked hard for it. Maybe he has too (though for all we know it could be his dad's or something).
 
Vitaliy Kiselev said:
All I can say is that all your posts are BS.
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There's an old portuguese saying which translates to english roughly as this: in a blind-men's land, who has an eye is king.

You excelled and gained reputation on a filmmakers forum; should this be an electronics one, you would be thought a fool!
All you did was claim as your own an old hacking strategy largely discussed on other cameras brands, get the bytecode and change some constants. You did manage to achieve some very noticeable practical results by applying this simple approach, I grant you that!

Have you changed anything whatsoever regarding algorithm? Have you tried to make your own?

Well, I'm a newbie here and you're a God. My point is given, and so is my advice. You very cleverly managed to not give your own opinion on my recommendation, undoubtedly because you would have to agree with it. Time will prove me right!

This ends my participation on this thread.
 
Actually, I thought that was pretty much a statement of fact, rather than rude. Vitaliy did provide a thoughful reply to the guy the first time, but wasn't listened to.
 
GrahamH said:
Actually, I thought that was pretty much a statement of fact, rather than rude. Vitaliy did provide a thoughful reply to the guy the first time, but wasn't listened to.
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No. This is untrue. Vitaliy was rude in his first reply, using words like BS and manifestly sneering at mapombo.
 
Ok some pretty good high detail native hack clips:

NOTE: my blackout.com server has a high load right now so these may take a while to DL:

High contrast dynamic range scenario:

http://blackout.com/gh13hack/00024-freakytime_marilynshot-blackout_c2010.MTS

Very hard day to shoot... high sun and dark shadow areas... this was just b-roll and I was forced to shutter higher than I wanted to cause even with a ND on the kit lens it was too hot in the sun areas and I only had so much diffuser... but anyway... call me crazy but I see NO image breakup in any of the high detail, none on the faces of people, and none on the crazy detailed wall, where as on this same shot, I would see that on the GH2. This clip was on hacked GH1.3 jobless D settings and ironically only hits a top of 30mbit.


http://blackout.com/clients/top-of-ghostbusters-building.MTS

Just a neat shot of the city on top of the Ghostbusters building...

more coming.. still uploading
 
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trez said:
All I can say is that you're the rudest person on this forum... This is shame. Where are the mods? Afraid of Mr Vitaliy?
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I thought Vitaliy nailed it cuz... I thought the other guy was talking out of his... arse. When I read Vitaliy's response, I was ROFL.
 
Hope is still alive for GH2... if we stop asking too much. Contrarian thinking. I think we have much higher chance of getting it if we don't ask for any as no one had expected a hack out of GH1. Time will tell. First and foremost GH2 gotta be sold a lot. I can't imagine unpopular model being hacked. Let Blackout "clan" preach their GH1.3 girlfriends for now. Thanks to those who claim they can't create good footage out of unhacked GH2 but can with GH13. I don't wanna waste my time on watching their works.
 
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Thanks for posting those clips Blackout. I knew the GH13 was good, but not THIS good. Might give the GH2 a pass...

To be fair, there are a couple of artifacts, but the kind that you can only see when treated as a still image. Whereas the artifacts on the GH2 are visible when the shot's in motion. Also, there wasn't LOADS of motion. Not the codec killing tree-in-wind type motion, anyway.

Still, I think the Pentax K-5 has the best compression. 50Mbps MJPEG 1080p. Looks great, from the sole sample I've seen (compression wise... I think overall the GH1/2 would beat it in regards to image quality, but I've not seen any shots that would say this for certain yet). Only an uneducated opinion though.


Although compression wise the GH2 falls short of the GH13, it's important to look at it from a whole camera perspective. There are a couple of things with the GH2 that just make it...

1) 100% reliable, no chance of loosing clips.
2) A different look, almost sharper and more detailed when there's not much motion.
3) Super fast focus.
4) A couple of nice user-interface tweaks.
5) Better low light, and a lot less banding.
6) Far better 720p in terms of sharpness.
7) Full HDMI out.
8) Tele crop.
9) ...Probably some more, but I can't think of any right now.

Basically, the GH2 beats the GH13 on EVERY front, except framerates and compression. The trouble is, those two things are VERY important from a film-maker's perspective. So, massive fail on Panasonic's part. Hopefully it'll be hacked in the future, lol... but I doubt that.
 
My preliminary conclusion is that GH2 is in every way superior to GH13, EXCEPT when you start moving the camera or you have a finely detailed mise-en-scene. So if you are into dolly shots or steadicam or handheld, a high-bitrate GH13 just might be a better option... Or if you are filming extremely detailed wide shots and landscapes with infinite focus. This needs investigating of course. IQ wise, at first glance the GH2 and AF100 seem to be very similar. No major aliasing or moire for either - such a relief! Very interested in finding out more about the 1:1 Crop mode. Any footage?
 
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