GH1 has disappointing dynamic range / latitude

Solomon Chase

Solomon Chase

Well-known member
In most of the clips I've seen, the dynamic range looks bad, with clipped highlights and crushed blacks. This is especially apparent in night footage. The D90 has a much smoother highlight roll-off, and more apparent latitude.

Any word on custom curves or presets that may be able to fix or alleviate this? I'm afraid it may just be a property of the sensor design. :(
 
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I think your jumping the gun here, look at the pictures attached from GH1 footage. One is with out adjustments and on the other I lifted the blacks to see what was there, The problem looks to be that either the camera is set-up with the contrast too high (which can be dialed down) or you need to lift the blacks and lower the whites in post. Whatever the case is, we will all know shortly.

FYI the old G1 had about 5-6 stops under to black and 3 over to white, so about 8.5 usable stops, this is a new sensor with lower noise so it may be more than that- Not too bad considering the usable dynamic range on the Red is about 9.5 stops.
 

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Pointless thread number two. I thought I was going to be linked to an actual article from an actual person tyt actually had a camera and could actually affirm poor dynamic range performance.

It was actually another DavidNJ thread instead.

Is it that hard to wait until two Dvxusers get their hands on one?
 
Kholi said:
Pointless thread number two. I thought I was going to be linked to an actual article from an actual person tyt actually had a camera and could actually affirm poor dynamic range performance.

It was actually another DavidNJ thread instead.

Is it that hard to wait until two Dvxusers get their hands on one?
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Yes. Much too hard.

Really, the main reason I brought it up in a separate thread... it's a major deal-breaker, at least for me. Was hoping to corroborate info on the image presets and footage so far. (sorry that the thread title sounds like a conclusive statement, I'd edit it if I could)

From hunter's post, it looks like the latitude may be there, just pushed around by a contrasty response curve.
 
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Another GH1 example...

As you can see the blacks just appear to be crushed, there is quite a bit there. The first thing Im going to do with my GH1 is set the contrast level as low as it can go.
 

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first thing is to set eveything to zero and work up.

Indoors at every ISO. Outdoors at every ISo.

Ten bucks says outdoors at 640 ISO produces incredible highs retention with very low s/n ratios!
 
hunter richards said:
Another GH1 example...

As you can see the blacks just appear to be crushed, there is quite a bit there. The first thing Im going to do with my GH1 is set the contrast level as low as it can go.
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Wow. that's a pretty big difference.

I hope you can set the contrast lower in-camera. The problem with doing it in post like you did is the compression schemes tend to turn darker areas into pixely mush, that shows even more once you lift the shadows. :(
 
According to the features in the GH1 promo material at the Panasonic website there are countless settings to control everything from contrast to sharpnesss, etc., etc. It is absolutely pointless to analyze footage to death from people that basically just took the camera in their hands and just started shooting. And that is the beauty of this, based on this first tests you can see the possibilities if handled properly.
 
I must admit I've been really aprehensive looking at the crushed footage on youtube, but I was hopefull that it was just crushed and there would be some settings to aleviate it. Thnx for posting the adjusted footage Hunter.
And Kholi, man I love to see you excited!!!!! I have held up production on my personal projects till I decide between the 5D and GH1, I really hope Kholi and Hunter get some good sh!t out of the GH1, this would be the perfect first gen vDSLR for me.
 
The G1 (and presumably GH1) has an "intelligent exposure" feature that boosts shadow areas before compression. I'm hopeful that this works with video, as it would be a great way of preserving a lot of detail that could be muddied or lost in the compression process. Using this with proper color correction would yield excellent, non-crushed shadow detail.

There's an example of it on the G1 here:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicdmcg1/page21.asp

Can't wait till tomorrow...
 
John Caballero said:
According to the features in the GH1 promo material at the Panasonic website there are countless settings to control everything from contrast to sharpnesss, etc., etc. It is absolutely pointless to analyze footage to death from people that basically just took the camera in their hands and just started shooting. And that is the beauty of this, based on this first tests you can see the possibilities if handled properly.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I already checked the promo site, but still had some questions...

What's the earliest to buy one in the US?
 
Johnny Cola said:
I must admit I've been really aprehensive looking at the crushed footage on youtube, but I was hopefull that it was just crushed and there would be some settings to aleviate it. Thnx for posting the adjusted footage Hunter.
And Kholi, man I love to see you excited!!!!! I have held up production on my personal projects till I decide between the 5D and GH1, I really hope Kholi and Hunter get some good sh!t out of the GH1, this would be the perfect first gen vDSLR for me.
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Absolute understatement. Lol.

Ask Hunter, Isaac, Geoff_R, Weixiang, hell even ask Barry about the creepy PM I sent him. This is THE most exciting camera release EVER. And it's the FUNNEST.

You should read some of Hunter's and mines PMs. Like seven year olds planning to build a Spaceship this summer.

I mean come on, check the hit list:

- AVC-HD 1080/24p, 720/60p, 720/30p, Motion JPEG 720/60p, 720/30p
- Interchangeable Lenses
- Somewhere around RED ONE 4K FOV/DOF
- MANUAL CONTROLS: Aperture and Shutter
- ISO CONTROL: 100 ~ 1600+
- Flip Out and Rotateable LCD
- Auto Functions in Video Mode
- Ability to Adapt nearly ANY LENS to the camera (PL mount is already cookin' over here)
- Light Weight: Under 2lbs for the body alone (whaaat!?!?)
- Early Footage exhibits little Jello effect in comparison to predecessors.

And that's just what I can think of right now.

I was pretty excited about the D90, but I knew before hand it didn't have manual controls so it wouldn't really be my cup of tea. I wanted an MKii but I couldn't justify the expense without manual controls and 24P especially.

Panasonic (of all companies, I wouldn't have EVER thought it) dropped the hot ticket. The footage I'm seeing is promising enough. I consider it the WORSE the camera can perform.

I just can't wait to test all the goodies I started buying for this sucker. I may have went a little overboard.
 
hunter richards said:
I think your jumping the gun here, look at the pictures attached from GH1 footage. One is with out adjustments and on the other I lifted the blacks to see what was there, The problem looks to be that either the camera is set-up with the contrast too high (which can be dialed down) or you need to lift the blacks and lower the whites in post. Whatever the case is, we will all know shortly.

FYI the old G1 had about 5-6 stops under to black and 3 over to white, so about 8.5 usable stops, this is a new sensor with lower noise so it may be more than that- Not too bad considering the usable dynamic range on the Red is about 9.5 stops.
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Sh^t, that's a lot more info. Half that range is considered good, this is even better...
 
Is the ISO selectable in increments. Like 800 to 1000 to 1200. Or does it jump from 800 to 1600 with no in between?

Kholi said:
Absolute understatement. Lol.

- AVC-HD 1080/24p, 720/60p, 720/30p, Motion JPEG 720/60p, 720/30p
- Interchangeable Lenses
- Somewhere around RED ONE 4K FOV/DOF
- MANUAL CONTROLS: Aperture and Shutter
- ISO CONTROL: 100 ~ 1600+
- Flip Out and Rotateable LCD
- Auto Functions in Video Mode
- Ability to Adapt nearly ANY LENS to the camera (PL mount is already cookin' over here)
- Light Weight: Under 2lbs for the body alone (whaaat!?!?)
- Early Footage exhibits little Jello effect in comparison to predecessors.

I just can't wait to test all the goodies I started buying for this sucker. I may have went a little overboard.
Click to expand...
 
one video showed 100. Barrys was at 200 or 400. One was at 800 so I assume incremental. I'll tell you for sure tomorrow afternoon.
 
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