GH1 or GH2

I am with you on this lpowell I agree the live monitoring slows things way down BUT I do WANT the option of having it for certain very critical shots it would be way better to set up your frame in a big monitor and focus. But - my brain is pretty good at knowing what I'll get even with the small lcd monitor as my only monitor while shooting and like you, I need merely hot swap cards to view on a full HD monitor. I am director and DP on most shoots I hire my self out as a full service production company and then I hire everyone and pay everyone else rather than just being hired to DP. I have found this to be both more profitable and way less of a headache than freelancing as a director or DP. In truth, I'm really an actor / storyteller at heart so when I do my own films and I obviously can't DP because I'm in it, I get another DP, but someone who is very smooth and knowledgeable with the GH13 and gets the advantages of the faster / cheaper workflow yet still wants the absolute best image quality.
 
Well I use a crane quite a bit, so not having monitoring always made the GH1(3) useless for me. I don't care how good you are, trying to point a camera 12 feet in the air at a subject from above is going to be wrong 99% of the time if you are at the back of the crane :)

I've also looked at footage online shot with the GH13 and the GH2 and I don't see this massive difference. Even if I take a fast moving shot and look at the frame grabs of either camera in the motion, they both look like crap, as does the Canon cameras. Yet, in motion, I don't see that at all. Properly shot footage on both the GH13 and the GH2 looks great. For all the same reasons Barry has stated, I actually am thinking of picking up a GH2 as a B cam to my AF100 (mainly for ETC) because the tests I have seen show that the GH2 excels to me.

And not being able to view footage I shot on set to make sure something was nailed is crazy talk. Sometimes stunts are very complex and I'd really hate to have a problem that wasn't seen when watching that I only see later when I view it. No thanks.
 
^^^exactly! being able to take an HDMI out and monitor focus and framing on a 23" 1920x1080 LCD (for $200) is incredibly beneficial even on locked down "wide" shots. we are using these cams with 70-210 2.8 glass filming indoor events at 2.8 and usually at the long end and they just kill anything in prosumer arena.
 
I faced this GH1 or GH2 question some weeks ago when I decided to dive into this dv pool. It was the proven GH13 performance that had attracted me in the first place, so a hackable GH1 had a big head start in the consideration stakes. Once I found out (on this site) where I could buy a new, hackable GH1 for 500 quid less than the still relatively unknown GH2, it was an easy decision.

Even factoring in a degree of "rationalising my choice to my ego", I honestly don't regret not holding out for the GH2. Frankly, I'd probably still be sitting here with no camera, trying to justify the upfront cost to myself. Sure I'd love to have the new features (especially the ETC) but since they aren't part of what made me want to jump in originally (outstanding video quality from a tiny, flexible and cheap camera), they're fairly easy to get over.

For enthusiasts on a tight budget, the GH1(3) still makes a lot of sense (especially if you already own one). For those with more money to spend, who want to play it safe and just get on and shoot video (+ new toys!) the GH2 is hard to argue with.
 
The monitoring aspect of this discussion is interesting and amusing. It makes you wonder how they produced all those fantastic movies for decades without so much as a grotty, b&w video cam sharing the viewfinder to check for wayward microphones. Of course, that's not to say that we shouldn't take advantage of new technologies; and the ability to see on set or on location what the camera is about to record and what it has just recorded must be a major boon on the whole.

Mind you, Lucas had massive live screens on his last Star Wars shoot and he still didn't notice that his players had no chemistry and that Darth Vader was raised up with silly pansy wrists (he had to reshoot or digitally correct that for later releases). Pixel-peeping plasma prevents piss-poor performance? Perhaps not.
 
Well they also used cranes (and still do) where the camera man is up ON the top of the crane :) I just cannot afford that!
 
PJF said:
The monitoring aspect of this discussion is interesting and amusing. It makes you wonder how they produced all those fantastic movies for decades without so much as a grotty, b&w video cam sharing the viewfinder to check for wayward microphones. Of course, that's not to say that we shouldn't take advantage of new technologies; and the ability to see on set or on location what the camera is about to record and what it has just recorded must be a major boon on the whole.

Mind you, Lucas had massive live screens on his last Star Wars shoot and he still didn't notice that his players had no chemistry and that Darth Vader was raised up with silly pansy wrists (he had to reshoot or digitally correct that for later releases). Pixel-peeping plasma prevents piss-poor performance? Perhaps not.
Click to expand...

+42 on this comment.

I don't NEED live monitoring - it would be a nice feature.

I again can check my takes in two seconds by popping out the card and boom - there are my instant digital dailies playing WITHOUT conversion (mac... uck.. I know.. toast) on a laptop on 1080p or out to any screen I want. The monitoring is a NICE feature but not absolutely needed and films were made without it for a very very long time so I think I'll be ok.

The Star Wars PREQUELS are absolutely one of the hugest TURDS ever created in the history of turdism! I mean, George Lucas LITERALLY might as well have just taken a shat for two hours and called it STAR TURD! It would have been better... Did you guys ever see this one dudes 70 MINUTE critique where he RIPS the Phantom Menace to absolute hell and back? 70 minutes! I kid you not. I though to myself - "70 minutes!!! Geeze," this guy must have something really wrong with him to waste 70 minutes ripping on a movie that was so bad it's not even worth talking about because it's not even bad enough to be campy or funny - like "Batman The Movie" with Adam West. Watch that again and TRY not to laugh... but I tell you, just our of curiosity I put on the first 10 minute segment (out of 7 segments) and it was so spot on accurate and funny about how awful - and just a good primer on films lately in general... that I COULD NOT turn it off:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI
 
Monitoring exists to make your life easier, as people make mistakes. Why in the hell would someone want to carry around a laptop to view footage on?!? Just because you do it the hard way doesn't make your method any more special. You sound like the DJs that complain no one uses records anymore when they mix. Sure, newer methods make it easier to mix music, but you still have to understand what sounds good together. I mean, we can make the same arguments about how they practiced medicine for the last 100 years and I guarantee you no one wants to go back to any of those methods, even if they worked SOMETIMES.

People used to do a lot of things that were inefficient, backwards or even non-sensical to use now, but if you want to push your cart with the square wheels up the hill, be my guest :) I'll use the circular wheel.
 
(and PS, that I've seen those videos, they are AWESOME and a good watch for anyone striving to NEVER make something as bad as the Phantom Menace)
 
so I am back in again for GH1, if I understood it, its for those who are prepared to work around the GH13 ...professionally and with patience to get those settings attuned to your visual expectations.I actually enjoy the GH13; it was a journey on its own and it is just naturally that when you go through that road there is binding thing , a spirit of sorts to that journey that you had built with your camera....i guess thats the philosophy behind or beyond the camera itself that makes it special, some notion that overrides all technical considerations...in the end technology conforms with you and not the other way around; for after all there must be joy to everything we do. Right? Long Live Ipowell!
 
Last edited:
Rick Burnett said:
Monitoring exists to make your life easier, as people make mistakes. Why in the hell would someone want to carry around a laptop to view footage on?!? Just because you do it the hard way doesn't make your method any more special. You sound like the DJs that complain no one uses records anymore when they mix. Sure, newer methods make it easier to mix music, but you still have to understand what sounds good together. I mean, we can make the same arguments about how they practiced medicine for the last 100 years and I guarantee you no one wants to go back to any of those methods, even if they worked SOMETIMES.

People used to do a lot of things that were inefficient, backwards or even non-sensical to use now, but if you want to push your cart with the square wheels up the hill, be my guest :) I'll use the circular wheel.
Click to expand...

See - I am saying the same argument about monitoring that you are about a laptop.... if you are hdmi out-ing to one of those cheapy LCD monitors on the camera well that's NOT much better than the viewfinder on the camera ANYWAY... and if you are going to a high end monitor then you are connected or linked and lugging around something BIGGER than my laptop for every setup! I don't not use monitoring because I want life to be harder, I find it easier and faster to not have to deal with it sometimes (note - sometimes.. not all the time.. many times as I said - I WOULD like it).. but I was jumping back and forth moving three cameras on three angles and then moving those angles and shooting again POP BAM POW! no time for live monitors and hdmi cables! the flip out LCD was good enough.. now I was using a lot of kit lens and 1.7 pancake so I could just bam... pop a spot focus and lock... shoot... bam.. repaeat.. bam.. change angles.. bam.. repeat... and I got the face tracking thing working perfectly! No AC needed to pull focus! BAM.. done.. moving on...

I'm not fighting you on your comments I want live monitoring sometimes...... I would like a wireless hdmi out... one time I used my 20 foot boom pole as a crane... I put the gh1 in a portabrace and rigged it so it faced straight down and set focus to infinity and I got some amazing stuff! No crane.. no monitors.. no idea if it would work.. but WOW, it did!

Look ma no hands!
 
I'm using a DP6 set to 1:1 with a battery that lasts about 4 hours and the display is actually 720p. It's 5.6" and works beautifully, never had an issue setting focus on it. Best of all I can stick it anywhere, so when I am riding the camera up on the crane, I can move around and do all sorts of nice shots because I can see what I am doing. Believe me, using this LCD is NOT like using a laptop. I've used a laptop before.

Maybe it's just different environments of shooting. Yes, when I shoot music videos we do a bunch of takes of the song from multiple cameras and it's easy to overshoot and make sure you have enough good coverage. But when I am working on narrative work, we shoot at most two cameras, and we do some pretty tricky shots at times that require really good monitoring to make sure everything worked out right. We use stunt people and while they are amazing, I'd rather have the ability to nail everything easier if I am running around with the camera.

I used a 7D for a year and was pretty happy with the LCD, but when I've got my camera hanging from over the ceiling like this:

http://www.beatdownboogie.com/archives/312

(scroll down to see me with a monopod over a doorway)

even having a flipout screen is just not going to be that great that far away. Now with my AF100, I don't use the LCD in EVERY scenario as I agree with you, the built in displays on most cameras are pretty good, and can be used effectively. But when you want your camera way up in the air, or riding down on the floor facing up, I want to get that display closer to me, and it just makes shooting easier and more predictable.

I think having a working HDMI out on the GH2 + having the ability to look at your footage in camera is a HUGE plus. If an actor says "I think I screwed this up" or someone on set thinks the boom mic got in the way, I can check in seconds on set and not waste time. Your method requires you to pop the card, mount the card, look at the footage, eject the card, reload the card, and then get back to shooting. With complicated shots with MANY extras and lots of equipment in the scene, mistakes happen.

But, at the end of the day, these are just our opinions :)
 
Now that we have the GH2 for comparison, I've devised a GH1 patch that produces the highest peak bitrates the camera can handle reliably. I used a short-GOP frame structure to increase the occurrence of key-frames by 50%, significantly improving the codec's ability to track moving objects. Full details along with a downloadable PTool INI file can be found in this link:

75Mbps GH1 Peak Performance Patch
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?235523-75Mbps-GH1-Peak-Performance-Patch
 
Yeah Rick you are correct I am doing mostly music video work now cause that's where the money's at in order to raise money for my first feature which as it appears now will be shot with all panny stuff. GH13, two AF-100s, maybe a gh2.... unless tech changes again by the time I'm ready to shoot and there is something better, but when I go to shoot my DESTINY ORIGIN & ORIGIN DESTINY (c) features... I'll want the live monitoring for sure because they will be slower meticulous shoots and on those I want everything perfect to a T - not just tons of coverage. But I'll be lead acting / directing in that so I will NEED the monitor to make sure my DP is obeying my mind control.

mind_control.gif
 
lpowell said:
Now that we have the GH2 for comparison, I've devised a GH1 patch that produces the highest peak bitrates the camera can handle reliably. I used a short-GOP frame structure to increase the occurrence of key-frames by 50%, significantly improving the codec's ability to track moving objects. Full details along with a downloadable PTool INI file can be found in this link:

75Mbps GH1 Peak Performance Patch
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?235523-75Mbps-GH1-Peak-Performance-Patch
Click to expand...

Holy crapsticks batman now you're going to force me to buy that damn sandisx extreme ultra trubo powered with octo blades for film smoothness sd card... GOD DAMN YOU...
 
It's funny, but you are right about one thing, there is a lot of money in music videos. I paid for my 7D with music videos, two of which will be running on CMT soon. I'm NOT a fan of country music, but this particular artist was awesome to work with and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. The experience was worth it.
 
Music videos are currently my full bread and butter, and the butter even has some honey in it. Indie film people mostly don't have the proper money to do their shoots however much I love them and I have gotten involved too many times where I tried to help a struggling artist out with a lowball price and then they siuddenly turned into dracula and tried to suck everything they could get out of me without paying me what I'm worth. i am done with that. It was fine for a little bit as you learn a new cam or a new style or you are getting something in return...


Rappers can mug grandmas and sell some krunk and I get paid for the work instead of begged into a % of a back end of a thing that never happens - and it's a 5 minute edit rather than a 15 to 90 minute thing.

Bring on the krunk, and I'll do my own movies... not others.
 
Hey guys. First post here in this excellent forum. I've been lurking for several months, since reading about the upcoming GH2. Been saving up for that camera, but now that I see the current Panny deal for the GH1 with kit lense for $375, I wonder what is best for me and thought I'd ask for everyone's opinions.

I am a film-maker, but usually hire a DP and let him handle all the gear rental issues, since I'm not at all a camera-man or very skilled at cinematography, but I've been thinking it would be great to have an affordable but decent quality video camera for when inspiration strikes. Additionally, my wife is tired of her point-and-shoot and looking for something better for snapping pictures of the kids, and I'd love for it to also have the ability to take nice videos during family outings. So a Panasonic micro-4/3 camera seems to be the "all-in-one" solution for me.

I am currently saving up for the GH2, but could afford to grab the GH1 right now at this price (I can get the EPP $375 deal). It seems that even if I still want the GH2 down the line, I'm only $225 down, as the lense would cost me $150 anyway. Heck, I could probably keep the lense, sell the GH1 body for more than $225 and earn more towards the GH2 and the better lenses I'd eventually like to own.

Would you do the same if in my situation (i.e. not using the camera for any business purposes, so need to keep costs down -- family stills/video and the odd short film now and then)? I was thinking the 720p60 mode would be great for family videos, and then using the 1080i mode, transcoding to ProRes and removing the pulldown to get true 24p to edit in FCP, would be the way to go for my films.

Basically, I can order the GH1 today with the special deal. Or wait 2 or 3 months and order the GH2.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And thanks to all the regular posters on this board for the wealth of information you have provided me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top