GH2: Blue horizontal banding?

roei z said:
does it matter? what can you do?
just keep using it and hope for an improvement..
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i do wanna buy gh2 asap... but i'm trying my best to get busy with other stuffs. sound recording, hdmi monitoring, music playing, mobile app developing, etc. 6 months can pass quickly. meanwhile i can borrow my friends' gears. 5d mark ii, nex-5, t2i, etc.
 
mojo43 said:
I don't think so... The band is visible in one location and does not move with the sun. I have pointed my GH13 at the sun and have never seen anything like this before...
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Huh? Are you talking about the darkened horizontal streak? It moves exactly with the sun....

Edit: During the day you won't see it. At dawn/dusk when you have the sensitivity of the sensor turned up, you're more likely to see this. I have on my GH1 before, unfortunately I'm travelling and don't have any examples with me.
 
Jalad said:
This is not noise banding. It's caused by the sun being too bright relative to the settings (light sensitivity) you have dialled in. The GH1, or any other similar sensor will have the same issue.
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You are saying a fixed black band across the frame is the expected result of pointing a digital camera at the sun? Not so sure about that. I have many hours of similar footage from the GH1, shot with all different settings, and the result is just what I would expect: bright overexposure. Maybe there is some GH1 footage online somewhere that shows a black band in sunlight, but I sure haven't seen it.
 
Jalad said:
Huh? Are you talking about the darkened horizontal streak? It moves exactly with the sun....

Edit: During the day you won't see it. At dawn/dusk when you have the sensitivity of the sensor turned up, you're more likely to see this. I have on my GH1 before, unfortunately I'm travelling and don't have any examples with me.
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It is fixed relative to the frame. If it had something to do with the sun then it would move with the sun.
 
Lame

Lame

I received my GH2 yesterday, and wouldn't you know it... I too have the same LAME horizontal band issue. I called Panasonic and they've agreed to send me out a shipping label to send it directly back to them for repair. Should I expect anything good from them? Ugh... dumb. I had to fight for the shipping label as well.

I hope this is just a glitch. I know other people have experienced this. I hope Panasonic does something about it.
 
kainekainekaine said:
Just got word back from an engineer from Panasonic about the line issue. Sounds like he took the issue as serious as he could from a discussion I had with him. He said he FTP uploaded the footage to the manufacturing that produced the GH2, contacted various people and they have all looked at the footage from the MTS from my camera. Also looked at a few other discussion sites and vimeo clips, and found that its within the limitations of this type of technology. He was adamant about a firmware fix not coming, he asked the manufacturers and this came down from someone manufacturing the camera high up. Also different batches of camera arent any better than others. Pretty much answered everything I wanted to know without me asking anything, so he was well up on the subject. Said the cameras better than a GH1 but just not perfect a technology yet. Sounds like its definately not gonna be fixed, so if the GH2 image quality issues your having bother you dont be holding out for a firmware fix or looking at different manufacture dates, is the official word from Panasonic. I think I was the first person to have this problem and they wanted to get to the bottom of it for future calls about it at the UK service centre. The manufacturer had also told him best to shoot a shutter as close to framerate as possible to avoid it, which is what I discovered gets rid of the line. He mentioned Pixel refresh and sensor cleaning but hadnt tried it at there service centre on there models yet. Its weird how these quirks just seem to effect the GH line whilst there other G cameras seem fine albeit noisier.
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Ugh... just saw this post. Think I might just get my money back. DISSAPOINTED
 
I've just learned to shoot around it at this point. I never see it in low light if I shoot 1/30th, and in any decent light, it's not there or next to unnoticeable. Not enough of an issue for me to give up everything else that's great about this camera at this point. I'll likely try and get it fixed a little ways down the road while it's still under warranty. Maybe sometime in the summer once productions been going for a while.
 
memphishills said:
I've just learned to shoot around it at this point. I never see it in low light if I shoot 1/30th, and in any decent light, it's not there or next to unnoticeable. Not enough of an issue for me to give up everything else that's great about this camera at this point. I'll likely try and get it fixed a little ways down the road while it's still under warranty. Maybe sometime in the summer once productions been going for a while.
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That's actually a good idea... Maybe I'll just hang on to my shipping label until I don't NEED to use it... avoid shooting in low light and/or go to 1/30... Won't I have issues shooting at 24p with 1/30 though? Do you shoot at 24p mostly when you're shooting 1/30? I have read that you always want to be on 1/50, but I don't totally understand the reasons for it. Thanks for the reply.
 
aaronsternke said:
That's actually a good idea... Maybe I'll just hang on to my shipping label until I don't NEED to use it... avoid shooting in low light and/or go to 1/30... Won't I have issues shooting at 24p with 1/30 though? Do you shoot at 24p mostly when you're shooting 1/30? I have read that you always want to be on 1/50, but I don't totally understand the reasons for it. Thanks for the reply.
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I shoot only on 24p. You get a bit more motion blur using 1/30th of a second, but its hard to notice, especially if you aren't filming fast action. I thus far haven't really felt my footage was worse off because of 1/30th over 1/50th. But I would definitely shoot 1/50th when I can just to crispen things up a bit.
 
memphishills said:
I shoot only on 24p. You get a bit more motion blur using 1/30th of a second, but its hard to notice, especially if you aren't filming fast action. I thus far haven't really felt my footage was worse off because of 1/30th over 1/50th. But I would definitely shoot 1/50th when I can just to crispen things up a bit.
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Shoot 1/60th in NTSC countries to avoid strobing or moving bands under various lighting sources.
 
Does anyone have any footage online of something shot in 24p at a shutter speed of 1/30? I'm not sure exactly what people mean by smearing motion. Do you think this banding issue is a big enough problem for me to consider getting a t2i especially for my low light scenes? Then I'd probably have issues matching the GH2 and T2i footage!
 
1/30th just adds motion blur, that's all. I use it all the time in low-light...I only have one specific clip I can show but it doesn't have much movement in it...but shows it's possible to shoot nice footage in low-light with the GH2. The only light for this scene is the lighter...there is a distant streetlight but this is on a bikepath at night that isn't lit and without the lighter would've been pitch black.

 
Thanks, Ben. It certainly holds up well in low light in 30p by the looks of things. I just wondered about the cause of the horizontal smear across the flame. I notice it diagonally on your moon timelapse too. Is this related to the shutter speed or just a CMOS thing?
 
While I don' t approve completely how the OP stance sounded a bit at the start and technical choice of iso 1000 shooting in the sun (he explained a lot of things since then) I smell some sense of redusser fanboism in the way many reacted here. I could feel the man-up type of you know 'we Af-100 grown up use the proper $ 5000 and don' t dare to compare it to the $ 900 toy). Those that think that there af-100 image quality will be leaps and bound better than the GH2 are really fooling them-self. In terms of functionality, form factor, build quality and moire and aliasing (much better on the gh2 but still present in extreme cases) the af-100 will warrant its price tag. Even if they are not the same I am sure that those two sensors share a lot of technology. Corporations are not fool, we see rationalism to cover r&d cost everywhere, in the photo and now video world. Sony Nx-cam hd competitor to the af-100 will have the $ 13 000 Sony f3 sensor. They will differentiate in terms of form factor and functionality

For those that are dishing the gh2 look here http://vimeo.com/18155086 better images that I have seen from any af-100 footage until now. Fantastic skin tones, same lighting than the Sony f3 film in London that lots rave about. Does the GH2 pale compared to them, for me the answer is no. More so that it was I would call semi run and gun because he was also benefiting from the set lighting of the red mx and Alexa. Apart from some shot that I think where a little overexposed by the shooter. On his french blog he is very enthusiastic about the GH2 and is teasing

Pasterns are the same it is just at what level you are. Hey man-up to a red... I hope the next won' t be 'Hey man up to the af-100'.
 
Some of my GH2 footage clearly shows banding lines in Premiere Pro. I was shooting little figurines in Ex.Tele for Macro close-ups. I had 3 tiny little LED lights and one 20watt incandescent bulb. Most of the footage looks really good. I went back and did a test to try to recreate those few banding clips I got.
No banding with ISO320 with 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed.
No banding with ISO400 with 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed.
Banding showed up with ISO640 with 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed.

These are the only conditions I've seen the banding issue, during my Macro tests with little bits of light on the subject for creative shadows. My outdoor stuff looks good to me but all of that was ISO320 or less.

I guess I will do a full ISO from bottom to top with just 1/30 and 1/60 shutter speeds just to satisfy my curiousity, but I'm thinking one just has to know the GH2's limits, write them down and remember them as I'm doing in my shooting notebook.

I wish there was a way to see the banding on the 3" LCD as it's happening, that way I could try to fix it right then and there by tweaking the ISO, changing my lighting, and or my shutter speed or all three. I wonder if I had a nice big 8" 720p external monitor attached to my GH2 via the hdmi cable if it would be easier to see banding while I'm shooting. That'd be nice.

Anyway, my 2 cents. Yes, I've gotten the banding but I think it was because of how I was lighting my objects and the settings on my GH2 at that moment. More testing will tell.

Ragnar
 
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