GH2: Hack to increase dynamic range?

reem12

reem12

Veteran
I have really been on the fence about owning a gh2 for almost a year now and finally took the plunge due to some of the newer hacks and the unbeatable price drop. Although I have not really delved into the gh2, I'm still not seeing any footage with the hacks that have addressed the issues that deterred me from them before, which is the the low dynamic range and the way the whites clip. Does anyone know of a hack that addresses this issue, or if it is even possible. At his point I am seeing enough image quality to warrant the $699 I paid for the cams but still not satisfied with the hard clipping whites.
 
For one thing the hack does not smear the detail into the shadows. So you can dig more into them in post. So you can underexpose to a certain level preserving more the highlight, then boost the image back in post with a curve so that your highlight does clip or with a smoother transition to white.
 
I think most of the hilight clipping and minimal banding are largely related to the 8-bit recording format. Unless the camera processes the images at a higher bit rate and then down-samples with added noise ( which is what I think some of the Canon cameras are doing ), you have to live with the limitations of the 8-bit color space.
 
Danielvilliers said:
For one thing the hack does not smear the detail into the shadows. So you can dig more into them in post. So you can underexpose to a certain level preserving more the highlight, then boost the image back in post with a curve so that your highlight does clip or with a smoother transition to white.
Click to expand...

This is exactly right. We're now digging stuff out of blacks that would have been possible only on our Red before. So in that sense it's a huge DR increase, because those blacks are gradable now.
 
Cosimo Bullo said:
This is exactly right. We're now digging stuff out of blacks that would have been possible only on our Red before. So in that sense it's a huge DR increase, because those blacks are gradable now.
Click to expand...

Can you shoot some grey-scale charts for us and demonstrate this?

I for one would really welcome a hack that actually increased the dynamic range of my GH2 (10 bit 4:2:2 would be nice too).
 
10 bit 4:2:2 out of the GH2? That would be the phenomenal. If someone does get past that last hurdle do you think Panasonic will finally try to shut them down?
 
I think if we can close enough to 10 bit 4:2:2 data out of this little cam it could pose problems for not just the high end panny gear but a whole host of canon lines as well. I don't think we are far from this imaging, and very well the reason I would hate to spend $16,000 on a cam only to have something like this take place. Please someone find a way to do this.
 
I was joking. But the point I'm making is that people seem to believe that almost anything is possible with a GH2 hack when actually there are some fairly easy to understand physical limits. There is a difference between noise, artifacts, dynamic range and color space.
 
Although there are physical limitations as of now, my hope is one day we could at least get a clean hdmi signal out of this thing to do 4:2:2.
 
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