GH1 / 5D Mark II Comparison

jshaw300 said:
Interesting. I have to say, now I have a 7D and a GH1, I weirdly appreciate how good the GH1 is. I'm not saying one is better than the other - just that the GH1 is really an out and out consumer camera - but it really punches above its weight. And when you hear about the 7D overheating, you think about the GH1 happily shooting until the card is full with no problem - (albeit with an inferior codec)
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I think what's gonna happen is that many will get their first taste of the action on a GH1 or 7D as these are more affordable than the 5D. I am really grateful for that, just so long as we all realise that come next January there may be some interesting replacements about to come on the market.

Mark IV with it's DIGIC V video CPU will be first, probably and most certainly very expensive.

Then I can't wait to see what Panasonic do with the GH2 come the Jan / Feb trade shows. I am sure they'll have an announcement one year on from the GH1.

7D is great but I'd prefer to wait for a bigger leap.

The GH1 may be much better to handle than the 5D but this got me thinking... both cameras need such careful handling to get the best results out of them, that it kinda makes the GH1's ease of use a bit of a none-issue.

I was gonna stick with the GH1 for it's small size and c-mount lenses too. But I just wasn't expecting what I just witnessed at ISO 800 on the big screen... GH1's colours are 40% less saturated and the dynamic range & resulting contrast is almost 50% flatter than the 5D's.

Here are some frame grabs from FCP 7.0 of my footage shot in France. All F4, 1/30, ISO800. GH1 was with kit lens. 5D was with Sigma 17-35mm EX F2.8 stopped down to F4. Both at 28mm fov.

GH1
traingh1.jpg


5D
train5d.jpg


The 5D is a lot more vibrant here. Canon's white balance gives a VERY warm cast to indoor lighting so I changed the GH1's WB to compensate. The auto-WB GH1 shot was a lot colder, almost grey.

GH1
treegh1.jpg


5D
tree5d.jpg


The 5D shot almost looks like it was lit from below whilst the GH1 shot is in natural light. In fact the lighting is the same on both, from flood lights below the tree. The GH1 does a rubbish job here, frankly.

Look at the sky. It was blue, just after sunset. The GH1 renders it completely grey as if it was cloudy while the 5D has a vibrant range of tones all round.

But how I loved my GH1. It was like a second girlfriend. It's such a great camera to use, so much cheaper than the 5D, so much nicer to look at and to have on you, and so much fun. Damn!!
 
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Andrew, the GH1 AWB only works when the color temperature is between 3000K (incandescent bulb) and 8000K (cloudy sky). Based on my limited experience photographing low light environments with the GH1, I suspect the colors in your airplane photo would be much improved if you manually set the WB.
 
Plus isn't there no doubt that the Canon is better in low-light? With a faster lens the GH1 image probably would have been closer on both, or am I off base?

Until I get my hands on an adapter (two weeks) I too am pushing my kit lens, and the results are interesting, but think the double sized sensor of the MKII would obviously be better at the same f-stop.
 
actually sensor size doesnt matter.

well it does in a sense as pixels size blah blah, but the same F2.8 lens projecting on a piece of 400ISO film thats FF size, and S16mm Sized will recieve the same exposure. the 16mm sized piece of film will just recieve the center portion of the projection circle. (and the best sharpest section of the image too!)


Electronics aside, the size of a sensor doesn't* matter for exposure.
 
Wow! The GH1 stuff there looks so much better that I thought I read the labels wrong!

Nice work.
 
Kellar42 said:
Plus isn't there no doubt that the Canon is better in low-light? With a faster lens the GH1 image probably would have been closer on both, or am I off base?

Until I get my hands on an adapter (two weeks) I too am pushing my kit lens, and the results are interesting, but think the double sized sensor of the MKII would obviously be better at the same f-stop.
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With a faster lens, the GH1 would be improved if you could set the ISO to 100. Both cameras were set to F4, ISO 800. The colour washout at ISO 800 did disturb me. The Canon is a lot more vibrant. I.e. the sky on the tree one is actually blue. Look at the contrast between the lit branches and the sky compared to the GH1 shot, which is 3 or 4 shades of brown and grey!

At the same aperture, whether it's F1.4 or F4, the 5D does have a considerable advantage in terms of colour, contrast, dynamic range, detail & noise (in that order). Same goes for the photos mode.

But yeah, IQ is it's ONLY advantage over the GH1. So bear that in mind, for both modes not just video, the GH1 handles better IMO.

IQ is quite disturbing on the GH1 at times. Yeah it's capable of nice work but it falls short by a LONG way at times. I imagine the music video, shadow-play, night market vids I did would have a lot more colour & sparkle if I'd shot them with the 5D. The only issue is having to hold the camera at eye level to see what it's recording. I may get some kind of 3 inch LCD, mount it on the hotshoe pointing upwards and hook it up to the HDMI or composite video out. That would be sweet.

Something small and thin like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Ramos-T12-5-s...ca62da4d5&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14#ht_3624wt_1167

Just needs to support video input & I'd glue it to a tiny little hinged hotshoe adapter with 40 degrees of tilt.
 
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Yes, the sky is blue with GH1 too, your wb is way off

Yes, the sky is blue with GH1 too, your wb is way off

treegh1.jpg
 
Thank you for filling me in, Timur. May I ask then why my 1/2" video camera that will do F1.8 doesn't perform better than a GH1 with a fast lens in low-light? I mean at some point does sensor size affect things? Or since these aren't film sensors, there is more going on here? I'd have thought less pixels would make for a better low-light image, but there is no doubt with the right lens, my larger sensor, 12 megapixel GH1 blows away smaller cameras.

That White Balance correct definitely seems to improve the color. I've been filming in a theater over the last week, and haven't risked going over ISO 640. True, the stage lighting helps in most cases, but at times, when it gets dark, one definitely starts to push the kit lens. I seem to be losing a detail in the face although that isn't apparent playing this as video. My White Balance may be wrong too, it was hard with the changing colors of stage lighting. Still, it could be a heck of a lot worse:

1254839554.jpg
 
Kellar42 said:
I seem to be losing a detail in the face although that isn't apparent playing this as video.
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You're going to lose detail in shots like that because the dominant lighting in that shot is red. These cameras use 4:2:0 color sampling, which means that the resolution in red is 1/4 as much as normal. So when something is primarily red, the most the camera can resolve is 1/4 as much as it could in a full-color scene.
 
Always set your wb with digital cameras

Always set your wb with digital cameras

with a video mode, otherwise they will hunt and change the wb constantly. This is the issue with many digicams with an auto wb, pointed at tungsten light they will do one thing then in a different room location still with tungsten light do another. Lock your wb all the time, good practice. You should be able to run a wb adjust anyway in post, but not on the same clip unless you cut it up where the wb varies, just as easy to set wb, and your done.
 
Adventsam said:
with a video mode, otherwise they will hunt and change the wb constantly. This is the issue with many digicams with an auto wb, pointed at tungsten light they will do one thing then in a different room location still with tungsten light do another. Lock your wb all the time, good practice. You should be able to run a wb adjust anyway in post, but not on the same clip unless you cut it up where the wb varies, just as easy to set wb, and your done.
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I must say that your post production work on my JPEG frame was quite impressive :)

I didn't realise it had so much room for colour correction left.

What software did you use?
 
That was just Powerdirector 7

That was just Powerdirector 7

Magic clean, adjusts everything, wb/saturation/proper wb picker as well. Would hope that cs4 is more sophisticated! these are just amateur video editors, although pd7 does well with avc files, could well be one of the best! although it couldnt do the 720p50, I believe they may have tried to sort it in the new release 8, havent tried yet but will this week.

Most still editing packages too easily fixed that wb, its std stuff for stills.
 
>using PhotoMotion and PhotoMotion Producer, make integrating and using stills viable.

Very nice tool. But here the 5D2 outperforms the GH1 because the stills have more resolution to create moving stills (Ken Burns Effect).
 
To me the question is not relative ranking of the Canons and the GH1 but which ones meet the minimum standard for either movie theater projection or broadcast. If one camera falls below that standard then it does not really matter if it is close to its nearest competitor, it cannot be used - period - if that is your goal. So, let us use real world tests in our comparisons.

Was anyone at the DVExpo last month where they showed the GH1 and the 5d on large theater screens? I believe it was Illya that was talking about that showing before it happened.

I also believe that the 5d has been used for some broadcast work. Would the 7d or GH1 qualify? I know there are varying standards from channel to channel. And if the GH1, by some miracle, qualifies is that at 720p or 1080p?

So do any of these cameras meet these minimum standards?
 
>So do any of these cameras meet these minimum standards?

Is this really the point? Wim Wenders used in his movie "The Buona Vista Social Club" small Sony Mini DV cameras. Don't think these cameras qualify but the movie was very,very good.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0186508/

Uwe
 
I loved The Buena Vista Social Club but it had totally blown highlights. Could never get it past TV engineers. That is my point. Do we limit our potential outlets, if lightening should strike - and my case that is what it would take, by our choice of cameras among these three choices? This is a question, not a statement. I really want to know what you experts think.
 
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>but it had totally blown highlights.

I hate them in photos but there I am more of a gourmet in terms of image quality. I watch movies just for the content and not much a good judge on image quality. Tonight: Ken Burns National Parks.
 
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