GH2 official discussion thread

I wonder if it will be possible to turn off all image effects (cinema, smooth, etc. the ones you guys have been talking 'bout) on my upcoming GH2 or does it always shoot in some sort of effects mode.

Ragnar
 
They are not 'effects' per se, but different methods of storing the image data.
For example, Red's redspace is just an interpretation of what is coming off of the sensor; its the same thing.
'Standard' mode is no better than any of the effect-y sounding ones, what matters is which stores the most important data for cinematic color grading. (called dynamic range)
Nostalgic is usually considered to do the best. (though with a yellow tone applied)
 
Sage, have you tried nostalgic with sat at +2 and the custom WB adjustment +4 blu (4 to the right, to where it's at the right edge of the "box")? It gets it closer to the default colors of smooth but with a lighter tone curve and therefore less noise/compression artifacts in the red and blue channels.

You can adjust this on any WB mode on the GH2, even within a certain film setting (you can adjust, say, nostalgic's AWB differently for its Cloudy or Incandescent and it remembers where you left them for each WB setting). I've been tinkering with it tonight and the +4 blue works fairly well under incandescent lighting, it gets rid of much of the yellow cast when used either in AWB or Incandescent mode.

I'll try it outside tomorrow and see what it does (I've always thought of it as more of an indoor setting, at least it was on the GH1; outdoors it used to give me very weak, dull colors. Maybe it's better on the GH2, I'll try)
 
From Mr. Bloom's blog

"my continued infatuation with DSLRs that shoot video, the Gh2 being my latest and it’s awesome!! This weekend I plan on doing a shoot with it as I love it so much, especially with my new Voitglander F.95 25mm…"

I hope Mr. Bloom can try the HDMI output and give us his opinion and a sample! please
 
ok guys you can count me out as your HDMI savior.. the Blackmagic at work gives me trouble and doesn't get the GH2 output.
until it's updated with new drivers and fixed it is out of my hands, sorry.
what about Bloom?
 
richtrav said:
Sage, have you tried nostalgic with sat at +2 and the custom WB adjustment +4 blu (4 to the right, to where it's at the right edge of the "box")? It gets it closer to the default colors of smooth but with a lighter tone curve and therefore less noise/compression artifacts in the red and blue channels.

You can adjust this on any WB mode on the GH2, even within a certain film setting (you can adjust, say, nostalgic's AWB differently for its Cloudy or Incandescent and it remembers where you left them for each WB setting). I've been tinkering with it tonight and the +4 blue works fairly well under incandescent lighting, it gets rid of much of the yellow cast when used either in AWB or Incandescent mode.

I'll try it outside tomorrow and see what it does (I've always thought of it as more of an indoor setting, at least it was on the GH1; outdoors it used to give me very weak, dull colors. Maybe it's better on the GH2, I'll try)
Click to expand...

Excellent!
On the colors being weak or dull, saturation is the culprit. Methinks the colors in nostalgic are already converted to gray scale (desaturated) to the point that with the yellow tone on top and users' normally sane impulse to desaturate, real color data may be lost.
But with sat +2 and wb +4 blue, that should be enough to allow storage of all data. In addition, try it with a tick towards green. (also, have contrast at -2, you probably already do)

I was doing tests with the outdoors pictures when trying to match the modes. The real strong point of the nostalgic roll off towards bright is that you can underexpose a bit and maintain highlights and saturation in the mid tones.
Expose the nostalgic to place skin tone where it would be in smooth (not over bright). The result of this placement of values is much closer to the way 35mm would handle it.
This would be a crazy little trick to get the camera to use the original 8bit 4:2:0 color space storage in the most efficient manner possible to get those rich mid tones and highlights. Very exciting possibilities.
 
Sage said:
Excellent!
On the colors being weak or dull, saturation is the culprit. Methinks the colors in nostalgic are already converted to gray scale (desaturated) to the point that with the yellow tone on top and users' normally sane impulse to desaturate, real color data may be lost.
But with sat +2 and wb +4 blue, that should be enough to allow storage of all data. In addition, try it with a tick towards green. (also, have contrast at -2, you probably already do)

I was doing tests with the outdoors pictures when trying to match the modes. The real strong point of the nostalgic roll off towards bright is that you can underexpose a bit and maintain highlights and saturation in the mid tones.
Expose the nostalgic to place skin tone where it would be in smooth (not over bright). The result of this placement of values is much closer to the way 35mm would handle it.
This would be a crazy little trick to get the camera to use the original 8bit 4:2:0 color space storage in the most efficient manner possible to get those rich mid tones and highlights. Very exciting possibilities.
Click to expand...

seems interesting... so- if all those tests are positive, please put exact instructions on the mode tweaking (currently i'm with smooth but i'll trust your tests as i'm unacknowledged on all those color numbers), thanks.
 
For shooting in incandescent light, I like Nostalgic with Contrast -2, Sharpness 0, Saturation -2, NR +2. What makes it look good to me is a custom White Balance at 2700K with M- 4.
 
marceljuan said:
From Mr. Bloom's blog

"my continued infatuation with DSLRs that shoot video, the Gh2 being my latest and it’s awesome!! This weekend I plan on doing a shoot with it as I love it so much, especially with my new Voitglander F.95 25mm…"
Click to expand...
marceljuan said:


I hope Mr. Bloom can try the HDMI output and give us his opinion and a sample! please
Click to expand...
Mr. Bloom's son [grin] has started posting his initial impressions (and a video) of a GH2 he has on loan from Panasonic.

This GH2 is the 2nd copy he's received from them: The first unit was so defective he couldn't shoot with it, and this 2nd camera has a dead pixel on the left side of the frame. Hopefully these were flukes and not an indication of Panasonic quality control going forward!

He says a full review will be forthcoming, but so far his impressions of the GH2 are overwhelmingly positive:
http://philipbloom.net/2010/11/21/gh2
​
 
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Finally!

Finally!

He just updated that blog reveiling the long expected (great) news:

"Best of all…I have just checked this…the HDMI out is totally clean, no graphics (unless you want them) and the great thing is you can have as many graphics on the GH2 LCD without affecting the clean HDMI. Once caveat. If you use the EVF it for some reason disrupts the HDMI out if you move your eye away from it. To get round this make sure you disable auto EVF/ LCD switching in the menus and it won’t do this…My Marshall says it is outputting 1080i 60i once recording but it certainly looks progressive rather than interlaced. I will connect it up to my Nanoflash tomorrow …we shall see! Great news though as the pre-production version I had two months ago had a record bug and timecode on the HDMI out. I asked Panasonic to remove this as we needed clean HDMI out. I think they may listened to me. Hurrah!"
 
stonebat said:
I hope he can test clean HDMI @720p60 by using Nano.
Click to expand...

Don't think so, my GH2 doesn't even give the option of recording 720@50/60p when an HDMI cable is attached. You can do all the 1080 settings (24p or 60i) but the 720 settings vanish from the menu when an HDMI cable is plugged in, only to come right back when you take it off.
 
richtrav said:
Don't think so, my GH2 doesn't even give the option of recording 720@50/60p when an HDMI cable is attached. You can do all the 1080 settings (24p or 60i) but the 720 settings vanish from the menu when an HDMI cable is plugged in, only to come right back when you take it off.
Click to expand...

They had to leave _something_ for the firmware hacker to improve! :-)
 
Two interesting comments so far on Mr Bloom's blog;

1. The 60i looked progressive.
That might potentionally mean that the interlaced fields are temporally derived from the same 60p capture. Which might mean they can be successfully deinterlaced into true 1080p/29.97

2. Although not relevant to my location, I believe this is the second time he has referred to 25p.
 
I hope the HDMI is outputting 1080i so that my Intensity Pro will accept the signal. A little annoying that it can't be turned down to 720p, but I can deal.
 
roei z said:
ok guys you can count me out as your HDMI savior.. the Blackmagic at work gives me trouble and doesn't get the GH2 output.
until it's updated with new drivers and fixed it is out of my hands, sorry.
what about Bloom?
Click to expand...

Oh jeeze seriously? Why are those cards so damned finicky?!
 
Still sitting on the fence among 60D or Gh2 (in Europe).

If the missing 25p are a problem, what is the process if americans create a dvd for the european market? As this happens it can't be a real hurdle or am I wrong?

What are the problems I run into with sound by using 24p?
 
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