GH2 official discussion thread

grimepoch said:
Nope, because the single biggest problem that Canon sensors exhibit is rainbow moire and this change does nothing to affect that. The difference in aliasing and moire compared to ANY Canon DSLR to any Panasonic DSLR is night and day. And I say this as a 7D owner who does not have a GH1 or 2. If it wasn't for the AF100 I've already ordered, the GH2 would be next on my list. I've examined A LOT of GH2 footage that has been posted and I've been pretty impressed with areas where the Canons would have had moire failure horribly.
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Yep. I had a 7D and the two biggest problems for me was the rainbow moire and the excessive aliasing. A higher bitrate won't improve that, it will probably just make that more apparent. The GH1/2 doesn't suffer from that rainbow moire and I find the aliasing much less noticeable compared to the Canon's.
 
I was not promoting the 5D. Just that Magic Lantern bested the GH-13 (GH-2) hack. Magic Lantern is the leading hack at the moment for performance and pushing the technology.Who knows, Panasonic may eventually catch up in the bitrate wars.
 
Picturequest said:
I was not promoting the 5D. Just that Magic Lantern bested the GH-13 (GH-2) hack. Magic Lantern is the leading hack at the moment for performance and pushing the technology.Who knows, Panasonic may eventually catch up in the bitrate wars.
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That's the point though, the 7D/5D have never had a compression quality issue for me outside of 4:2:0 which none of this solves. The GH1 had a serious issue with mud which was why the bitrate enhancement was needed. I've compared the footage between the higher bit rate images from the 5D, and I agree that the noise floor looked VERY slightly better, it still doesn't fix the biggest problem with the 5D (or 7D, or t2i or 60D). You can shoot at 5000GBps and you still have to deal with the moire/aliasing which is where the real issue is. The pushing of the technology is already limited by characteristics which will more than likely look worse. The GH1+2 already lead the pack with moire/aliasing so the 5D hack really doesn't do anything to move it within the 'pushing the technology' area. I'd still buy a GH2 over a 5D without hesitation. That's the bottom line.
 
But other than the expensive HDMI trick with the GH-2. The latest GH-2 is limited to 24mbs, while the 5D and am guessing the 7D and maybe 60D will have 3 times the bitrate, making that line the leader of the pack for now. I've seen some AMAZING 5d 7d videos.
 
Picturequest said:
But other than the expensive HDMI trick with the GH-2. The latest GH-2 is limited to 24mbs, while the 5D and am guessing the 7D and maybe 60D will have 3 times the bitrate, making that line the leader of the pack for now. I've seen some AMAZING 5d 7d videos.
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Who cares about that bitrate? As long as their is moire and plenty of aliasing, I am not buying a Canon... even if they up the bitrate to like 100mbs. It doesn't fix any of the Canon's shortcomings.

Canon is still the best with regards to stills, but they lost the video wars... for now. I am sure they will strike back someday with a new Digic engine, i.e. quad-core or something.
 
There's a good chance that the GH2 will get a higher bitrate with a hack. And possibly sufficiently high.
Newbie here, and curious: how often in an average shoot will aliasing and moire ruin the work?
I'm deciding between GH2 and 5D.

- Robert
 
Picturequest said:
But other than the expensive HDMI trick with the GH-2. The latest GH-2 is limited to 24mbs, while the 5D and am guessing the 7D and maybe 60D will have 3 times the bitrate, making that line the leader of the pack for now. I've seen some AMAZING 5d 7d videos.
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The 7D is not hackable at the moment, they've tried but it is more secure than any of the others. In addition, bitrate, as has been described EVERYWHERE on this site is not the whole story. One of the SIGNIFICANT factors is how the frames are encoded and what types of options in encoding they use. Codec plays a huge role. The 5D and 7D videos I've used in my productions look great. For me even if a higher bit rate existed for the 7D I would not use it as I don't have a problem with what I get from the 7D. The limitations I deal with, as I said, are Moire (rainbowed), aliasing, and color contamination with 4:2:0 since I do a lot of VFX work as well.

The reason I am even on this thread is because I wanted to learn more about the GH2 as a B camera to the AF100. I've followed the GH1+3, GH2, AF100 and all Canon cameras VERY closely. I shoot with a 7D on a regular basis, and have shot with the 5D, 1D, t2i as well. The Canon cameras cannot pull ahead until they deal with the rainbow. It's that simple. I've lost MANY shots because the worst part about the moire in 1080p is that you cannot see it in camera. And no filters remove it all the time. I've tried them, and had very unpredictable results. (Caprock).

It's not to say you cannot shoot very awesome footage with the Canon cameras, I still use one, but the limitations and lost shots that you have to deal with are frustrating. I shoot a lot of urban scenes and bricks, grills, AC fins, fences, window sills, they all get rainbows in them. When you are shooting wide shots, it is hard to try and deal with a moving camera and multiple locations of possible moire all the time. Not to mention, we also shoot with military vests and their straps typically cause moire as the actors are moving around during fight scenes and such. Trying to remove the moire coloring in post is PAINFUL.

With the GH2, I've downloaded and looked at moving footage. I've compared that footage to what my 7D produces. I've also compared GH1 footage moire/aliasing wise to 7D and 5D footage. If someone comes to me looking for a DSLR with video, I have no option but to suggest the GH2. The chances of producing more usable footage seems apparent to me. Now if they want a full frame, obviously the 5D is the only choice, but I prefer closer to S35 size. I like the feel it's the best size to work with.

Not to mention, we've still not had a good test of rolling shutter. That as well is important. I plan on testing the 7D to the AF100, however, if I can get my hands on a GH2 I will test that as well. (The local camera stores where I am at do not have Panasonic. I am going to try and convince them to start carrying them with some AF100 demonstrations at their store).
 
I wouldn´t care if the 5D had billion mbps. It costs almost twice the GH2 price and it doesn´t have twice the overall performacne of a GH2 (for video at least)...

Yes, low light performance of 5D is nice, but really, "let´s go shoot at night with no extra lighting" is not very likely to happen in professional use nad even if, I can survive with some noise. And prosumer cameras are unusable in very low light (JVCs at least).

Just listen to vintage guitar amps, single coil stratocasters... they have hum and noise all over the place, but who cares :) they sound so sweet. That should the point of every creative device - capture your ideas, not destroy all the noise.
 
Have you seen the videos of the GH2 at ISO3200? They were certainly cleaner looking to me than my 7D at ISO2000 for many of them. I've used the 5D and I can say, the low-light gain in performance DID NOT justify the price difference for me. In fact, here is our silly 7D low light performance test where we just ran around downtown and recorded ourselves in various situations:

http://vimeo.com/8391499

(I am the one with the sunglasses). I was EXTREMELY happy with the performance. The GH2 looks to even be a bit better than the 7D at low light from what I have seen so far.

(And pertaining to single coil stratocasters, that is why they invented the lace sensor pickups. I play a strat and I cannot stand the hum of an old single coil like in a tele. Bought a tele and sold it within a month it was so bad. I also replaced one of my fender lace sensor pickups with a hummbucker that fits in a single size space, sounds GREAT. 60Hz hum is not creative, it is annoying! :) )
 
The 5D will have .... 3 times the bitrate, making that line the leader of the pack among people who aren't bothered by excessive moire and aliasing.

There, fixed that for you.
 
grimepoch:
Indeed, 7D´s lowlight would be enogh for me.
Damn, I wish I could at least try the GH2 at a shop, but they still don´t import here :( Internet shops only. Can´t wait

Warning, OffTopic: :D
Glad to find a fellow musician here ;)
I have 3 Seymour Duncan railroad pickups (mini humbacker, switchable to single coils) on a strat-like Cort and I sort of miss the sweet classic single coil sound. Mini HB are very flexible but not as sparkling as the classic single coil. The noise is very little even with one coil, compared to classic single coils but it´s always going to be a compromise in tone vs noise/hum.
There are many famous artists who still use the oldest pickups and they would not change it for anything, even when they do make a lot of noise (the unwanted kind one :D ).
I believe it´s the same with old cameras.

BTW sorry for OT once again :D
 
Yeah, I wanted to rent a GH1 or GH2 so I started looking around. Mainly because I wanted to get a feel for the new sensor size that I'll be using. I guess I could rent online somewhere, but it seems like the cost wouldn't be worth the hassle for anyone since the cameras are so inexpensive. The same problem is going to be true for lenses as well. I can rent Nikon, Canon and Zeiss lenses all over the place here. Again, I will be trying to convince them of what they are missing with my AF100. I think the big issue, and both local camera shops seem to have hinted at this, is that they are getting a lot more people asking about video in a DSLR now, and they aren't always the best to ask since they focus on photos mostly. I try to educate as much as I can as I told them, they could have a good market of people looking for local gear being that the prices aren't out of the world.

(Music, like motion picture, is so subjective, I totally understand where you are coming from. People love the retro camera apps on the iPhone and Android because sometimes you don't want to capture real life, you live that!) :)
 
kainekainekaine said:
I think there advertising is vague regarding the autotracking working in video mode in the translation. You can read certain things into the wording. It says touch af to a point but not that it will follow the object around the scene just that it will af to the area touched on LCD or you could read it other ways I agree.
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No. At leaston the german Panasonc site is it very clar:

Here in the description of the GH2 it says:

Ein einfaches Antippen des Monitors reicht, um per Touch-AF den Autofokus auf das wichtigste Motivdetail zu konzentrieren. Diese Funktion steht sogar während der Videoaufnahme zur Verfügung. Bewegt sich das Objekt, folgt ihm die GH2 dank AF-Tracking mit der Entfernungseinstellung.

Translation:
A simple touch on the monitor is enough, to concentrate the auto-focus via Touch-AF to an important detail of the motive. This function is available, even when you record a video. And if the object is moving, the GH2 follows thanks to AF-Tracking with the distance adjustment.

But its pretty clear in the manual that it doesent work in video mode. I think its just poorly written advertising. It looks like its a perfectly possible function though shame they left it out. I know a few people read the leaked manual a while back and were disappointed that it said the autotracking didnt work while recording movies.
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I agree. But this makes me angry. Saying one thing, even when you ask for this very feature, and the this feature s not there.
GRRR.
 
Picturequest said:
But other than the expensive HDMI trick with the GH-2. The latest GH-2 is limited to 24mbs, while the 5D and am guessing the 7D and maybe 60D will have 3 times the bitrate, making that line the leader of the pack for now. I've seen some AMAZING 5d 7d videos.
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Your comments belong in the 5D forum. Please keep the matches away from this thread. And everyone, please ignore the temptation to turn this into a 5D vs GH1/2 thread.

Just a preemptive friendly warning. :)
 
AKED said:
Translation:
A simple touch on the monitor is enough, to concentrate the auto-focus via Touch-AF to an important detail of the motive. This function is available, even when you record a video. And if the object is moving, the GH2 follows thanks to AF-Tracking with the distance adjustment.
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Ah, You missed the final bit of the translation from your previous post. This sounds much clearer.
 
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Daniel, why don't you just import one and if you don't like it, you sell it again to someone else in your country? If it's that hard to buy one in the shops over there it must be easy to sell it on eBay or something like that. Many people prefer to buy over the web from a source in their own country instead of importing. Or buy a second-hand hackable GH1.
 
Canon 60D vs Panasonic GH2 vs Panasonic GH1:
MUSIC - Blush Response, Bladerunner OST.

No transcoding, natively edited direct from card in Premiere CS5, this is a short head-to-head revealing what to expect from each camera in terms of image quality.

I have also done a illustration of the hacked GH1's biggest flaw - banding in low light on under exposed surfaces. Fixed pattern noise has thankfully been fixed on the GH2 so that it's hardly ever an issue, though you can still see some at ISO 6400 on stills.

The GH2 wins for resolution, has natural colour and the best high ISO performance, very clean at ISO 1600.

I feel the Canon 60D does well for colour (sometimes a bit too over-saturated even) but has a lot of false colour moire, aliasing and poor resolution.

The GH1 shows less contrast, less detail, and colour drops off significantly at higher ISOs which also show a lot of fixed pattern banding and higher noise than both the 60D and GH2. But it still a great camera.

The GH1 was in hacked AVCHD 44Mbit mode.
GH2 in 24p cinema mode
Canon 60D was in faithful picture profile, 1080/25p.
All full HD 1080p.
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