GH1 vs. HV40 30 - 20- etc.

Dman17 said:
Wow, I've been struggling with this for a month now. I have 2 HV30 and Olympus E500 and E300 and I just bought a GH1. I bought the GH1 because I'm looking to get out of wedding Videography/Photography as a hobby. I wanted to sell my equipment and get a all in one camera.
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I would not recommend an 'all in one' camera for wedding coverage. When the Wife and I were active in the wedding biz, we usually showed up with Hasselblad and several 35mm cameras. The Hasselblad was for formals, that is things that often get 'blown up' to gigantic proportions... and the 35mm were strictly 'candid' and not recommended for bigger than 8x10 (or really 5x7...) in the album.

We didn't do video... our film budget was quite big... and with our changing over to digital for the 35mm 'candids' our typical number of images shot over 2000-3000 images...

We had thought about 'video as accent' rather than the usual full coverage that a videographer would give. But we sort of moved out of the wedding biz as the customer class we had been getting suffered the stings of the economic down turn. The Wife likes to spend quite a bit of time on 'post-production' image processing (she use to spend it in the darkroom with B&W printing, and that transformed into digital processing with Photoshop...).

At the moment I'd not use the GH1 for the whole wedding coverage, either video or stills. In the case of video, there is a reason why the ENG/Prosumer video cameras have the features they do... in the case of stills, while I can't argue with the price of the GH1... I think one does need a higher pixel density for the 'rare' occasion someone wants something bigger than an 8x10(*).

*Sure people have been doing enlargements from 35mm still fiilm beyone 8x10... but then perhaps they've never seen enlargements from either 6x6 negs... or a contact print from an 8x10 neg... so, some people may be satisfied with the results...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
do they just 'skip' pixels, every so often, or do they average 'groups of pixels'...
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We don't know how they do it on the GH1. We believe we know that Canon does both, skipping and binning groups together. The GH1 (and the Nikons) do it better because they don't end up with rainbow patterns in their moire, but it's all pretty much similar because they all end up with the same level of aliasing.

I've seen mention of 'low pass' filters, perhaps optical filters, to 'minimize' this effect on video cameras.
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And still cameras; still cameras have them too.

Since the GH1 is a still camera, at the afore mentioned spatial resolution, any 'optical' filter would be for that resolution and not for the somehowsubsampled video image.
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Correct, which is why all the still cameras have massive aliasing in their video images. They're built first and foremost as still cameras, with the video function tacked on.

Is there some post-sensor dsp processing to effect the low pass filtering?
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Don't know what they may be doing, but it looks like they just let all the raw unfiltered data through, which causes the massive aliasing we see in all these cameras.
 
Dman17 said:
I really love my tape based camcorders (mini HDV) and my Olympus cameras. I was very disappointed with the GH1. My Olympus picture quality is way better than the GH1 and my HV30 has better video quality than the GH1 in good to descent light areas.
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I don't know the HV30 and will probably look up some samples on the web because you made me curious, but if I understand you correctly, it's miniDV based HDV? In that case are you aware that the resolution is much lower than that of the GH1? Yes on the screen you get to see the same amount of pixels but HDV on tape is stored as 1440 x 1080. So if you look at that alone, the image produced by a GH1 will always be sharper than that of any miniDV based HDV camcorder.
 
But you can't go comparing numbers and expect to come up with any meaningful results unless everything is exactly the same, and in this case everything is most definitely not the same.

I would expect an HV30 to produce at least an equally sharp, if not sharper, image than the GH1. All the DSLRs have compromised resolution because of the way they scan their sensors, and none comes close to the resolution of a 1920x1080 video camera, not anywhere near close. So even though the HV30 is prefiltered down to 1440x1080, I still expect it will be at least as sharp, if not sharper, than a GH1, 7D, 1DMk IV, or 5D Mk 2.
 
J1clark, I wasn't going to use the GH1 for wedding videography. Like I said, I bought the GH1 for a all-in-one camera because I'm getting out of the hobby. If I keep the GH1, I will probably use it, to add a little creativity to highlights.

RieniO, In no ways trust the samples you see on Vimeo or You tube. I looked at almost all of them (also downloaded some to view on HDTV). I took some low
light video footage with kit lens. Once I converted down to another format to upload to the web, I didn't see the faults that I stated earlier. Others had posted on several boards that once uploaded, all of the faults aren't visible. although, I have seen very few video on line that did show the faults.
Yes the HV30 is miniDV based HDV, but like Barry said you can't go comparing numbers.
The 1920x1080 is only in 24p, every other option is 720 or below. Again in 24p the HV30 still blows the GH1 out of the water in regards to quality (my opinion), but not DOF and lowlight. Again in low light you will get a brighter picture, but the patterns that show up in the video, sucks. I prefer the grain and darker video in the HV30 video.
Don't get me wrong I currently still own the GH1, but I don't know for how long. I love the footage when I attach a vivitar 24mm 2.0 lens on it. But I didn't expect this from a $1400 camera.
 
I own both, and I am current editing a job to see if I can easily mix 24p footage shot with a GH1 and a HV20. Should know this weekend when I get to it. But my subjective opinion without having done the test I just mentioned, is that in good light the HV20/30/40 (all the same sensor) puts out equal resolution. The GH1 footage has a different quality, more luminous. Most people like that. Perhaps the HV20 uses NR that hits the luminous channels. I will try to see if there are any frame grabs of similar shots. However, I was shooting under lights so it will not show the superiority of the GH1 in low light. The HV20 falls apart in low light. Any HV20 shooter will laugh when they hear people complain about the controllable artifacts of low light GH1 shooting.
 
Barry_Green said:
But you can't go comparing numbers and expect to come up with any meaningful results unless everything is exactly the same, and in this case everything is most definitely not the same.

I would expect an HV30 to produce at least an equally sharp, if not sharper, image than the GH1. All the DSLRs have compromised resolution because of the way they scan their sensors, and none comes close to the resolution of a 1920x1080 video camera, not anywhere near close. So even though the HV30 is prefiltered down to 1440x1080, I still expect it will be at least as sharp, if not sharper, than a GH1, 7D, 1DMk IV, or 5D Mk 2.
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Just when I think I should get the Gh1 over the HV40 I have you seem to confuse me again. I am for sure not getting "sharp" video from my HV40. Auto settings on stock lense. Capture into a Vegas demo and watch default m2t file in windows media player.

In one post you mentioned how much larger the GH1 sensor is - but then in another you went on to say it does not use the whole sensor anyway. It seems in some posts you say the GH1 is the end all be all but then in others you say the HV series is better. I am not being negative and I appreciate your opinion, it just gets confusing and overwhelming at times. While this forum is great, trying to find qualities everyone agrees on here seems impossible.
 
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Dman17 said:
J1clark, I wasn't going to use the GH1 for wedding videography. Like I said, I bought the GH1 for a all-in-one camera because I'm getting out of the hobby. If I keep the GH1, I will probably use it, to add a little creativity to highlights.

RieniO, In no ways trust the samples you see on Vimeo or You tube. I looked at almost all of them (also downloaded some to view on HDTV). I took some low
light video footage with kit lens. Once I converted down to another format to upload to the web, I didn't see the faults that I stated earlier. Others had posted on several boards that once uploaded, all of the faults aren't visible. although, I have seen very few video on line that did show the faults.
Yes the HV30 is miniDV based HDV, but like Barry said you can't go comparing numbers.
The 1920x1080 is only in 24p, every other option is 720 or below. Again in 24p the HV30 still blows the GH1 out of the water in regards to quality (my opinion), but not DOF and lowlight. Again in low light you will get a brighter picture, but the patterns that show up in the video, sucks. I prefer the grain and darker video in the HV30 video.
Don't get me wrong I currently still own the GH1, but I don't know for how long. I love the footage when I attach a vivitar 24mm 2.0 lens on it. But I didn't expect this from a $1400 camera.
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Dman - I understand you may not see issues on online video - but I cant help but think 80% of the video I see from HV series online looks worse or of a lesser quality than Gh1 footage. Certainly they all cannot be because of the photographer?
 
Martti Ekstrand said:
Short and shallow depth of field focus. Quite a bit better low-light performance with third party lenses.
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Ok, now I would like to hear what the HMC does better.
I looked at your Vimeo basketball footage and it really "sells" the GH1 for action. I commented on stutter issues which I see all over the web and I really need to know if it is the web or the rendering from the NLE?
 
mikecazzx said:
Just when I think I should get the Gh1 over the HV40 I have you seem to confuse me again. I am for sure not getting "sharp" video from my HV40. Auto settings on stock lense. Capture into a Vegas demo and watch default m2t file in windows media player.

In one post you mentioned how much larger the GH1 sensor is - but then in another you went on to say it does not use the whole sensor anyway. It seems in some posts you say the GH1 is the end all be all but then in others you say the HV series is better.
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If it's correct that the HV40 records HDV to mini-DV cassette, the actual resolution is 1440 x 1080, played back as 1920 x 1080, so it can't be sharper as 1440 x 1080, artificially blown up to 1920 x 1080. Then if someone claims that not all pixels of the GH1 are used but for example a larger sensor signal is sized down to 1920 x 1080, the actual resolution is as sharp as 1920 x 1080 pixels. Even if only a 1920 x 1080 pixel part of the sensor is being used, the final image is as sharp as 1920 x 1080 pixels. This is theoretically, but practice confirms it, if I compare image of my Canon XH1 HDV mini-DV camcorder to my GH1, GH1 absolutely produces a sharper, better, more colorful image. Downside is that the GH1 sometimes produces artifacts in fast moving shots in FHD mode which the XH1 doesn't, still I will never use a HDV camcorder again, I trust on Panasonic to fix these minor bugs in the GH2 or I'll get a Canon 7D before that.
 
mikecazzx said:
Ok, now I would like to hear what the HMC does better.
I looked at your Vimeo basketball footage and it really "sells" the GH1 for action. I commented on stutter issues which I see all over the web and I really need to know if it is the web or the rendering from the NLE?
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Martti's GH1 stuff is awesome.

The HMC is easier to work with, has live video- and audio monitoring, XLR input option but what counts most in the end is image quality and that is a matter of personal taste. Go for the camera that produces eye candy for your eyes, after all the first person who should be content with what you shoot, is you. I just love the image of my GH1.
 
mikecazzx said:
I looked at your Vimeo basketball footage and it really "sells" the GH1 for action. I commented on stutter issues which I see all over the web and I really need to know if it is the web or the rendering from the NLE?
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Thanks very much! The lack of stutter there is due to me using ND filters to keep the shutter speed at 1/50 (1/60 with NTSC model) while still having a fairly open aperture. Video needs proper motion blur or it will look stuttery but lot of people, especially those coming in from still photography overlook this. Even some of Panasonic's own early demo clips were shot with insanely short shutter speeds. Short shutter speeds also tax the encoding harder - making 'mud' occurring much easier. Don't get me wrong, sometimes a short shutter speed can be used to good effect but mostly it just look strange.

Ok, now I would like to hear what the HMC does better.
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Big wide deep DOF shots with lots of detail and camera movement / action. Like per example seascapes, forrests or football games on grass fields.
 
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