GH2 Gh2 stopped working in middle of shoot !

downsouthstudio

downsouthstudio

Active member
My trusted GH2 stopped working in the middle of a shoot last night...! panic time.:Drogar-Shock(DBG):
I need to know if this has happened to anyone else and what your problem was. Here's a indepth picture of what happened...

Camera setup..
GH2...flowmotion hack 2, set to HBR 30P, 2 Lumix batteries in battery grip, 32gig extreme pro SD card, 7"monitor attached, 14-140 kit lens.

Shooting style:...shooting closeup clips, starting and stopping cam in between adjusting zoom. Switched several times between auto, and manual focus while shooting.

Problem: Camera froze, power stayed on, last scene stayed on monitor and lcd. Tried to turn cam OFF...but switch did not work, tried switch several times, pushed every button on cam, still camera did not shut off. Had to man cam b and continue shooting...luckily it was a XA-10 with zoom.

Camera was still ON when I got back to the studio. Took out batteries from the grip, camera of course powered down. Re installed the "same" batteries, and the camera on/off switch now works.

Please let me know if any of you have experienced this. Dont know if its a camera problem or a software problem with FM2. I have another similar shoot Wednesday, and need to be able to TRUST my GH2 rig.

Thanks in advance for your troubleshooting tips...
Jeff
 
Uninstall Flow motion hack and use Sanity 5 or just revert back to Stock or have another camera on hand. If you are doing paid shoots you should ALWAYS have two cameras. GH2 cost $650 new, at that price no reason not to have two.

Hacks can work great, but the TRUTH is they are NOT 100% reliable.
 
The battery out then back in option is the best. I usually execute the action quickly and resume.

While it's rare, it's happened before, not just with the Gh2 hacked (not flowmotion, but with some of the earlier unstable hacks - in my experience, flowmotion is pretty well battle tested with the non lumix lenses - I do get the occasional recording is stopped message with the lumix lenses), but my Canon t2i also, when I had it.
 
i get it once in a while depending on which patch i use. like berylium, i have mastered the quick draw battery ejection protocol. you dont need to take it completeley out, as long as tehre is enough roome to press the release latch inside the battery bay thats enough to reset. downside is you lose the last shot and it reverts back to the last saved setting.
 
THANKS..... glad to hear Im not the only one who had this happen. Had camera on rig, and could not get to battery pack....will make sure I change the config of the rig.

As afterthought.....I think I will use stock firmware from now on on "events"...save hacks for controlled shoots...too nerve racking on live events.
jeff
 
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Glad you were able to unfreeze the camera, Jeff. Providentially, this hasn't happened to my 2 year old stock GH2, which is in daily use. But it's good to know that a battery reset will fix it if it does.

I do love the image quality you can get from high bit rate hacks, and a lot of people trust them - but this is part of the reason I didn't hack the GH2 and why I bought a GH3 with factory high bit rate modes.

Cheers,

Bill
 
brunerww said:
Glad you were able to unfreeze the camera, Jeff. Providentially, this hasn't happened to my 2 year old stock GH2, which is in daily use. But it's good to know that a battery reset will fix it if it does.

I do love the image quality you can get from high bit rate hacks, and a lot of people trust them - but this is part of the reason I didn't hack the GH2 and why I bought a GH3 with factory high bit rate modes.

Cheers,

Bill
Click to expand...

Good move Bill...I too like the HB mode quality. This problem may not have happened had I let the cam run continuously. I think maybe my starting,stopping,hitting shutter focus, may have contributed to confusing the hack....anyway Ive learned a good lesson. I did have the XA-10 running throughout the performance wide...so I have enough footage. I was using the GH2 HBR for extreme closeups, and what I have looks great. Have audio from both the XA-10 and a ZOOM mounted on stage.

I purchased another GH2, (just came in the same day,still in box), and will most likely get a GH3 next year...unless the GH3 doesnt live up to the hype.

Ya gotta love this forum.....the folks here have helped me dozens of times....thanks to you all.
Jeff
 
downsouthstudio said:
My trusted GH2 stopped working in the middle of a shoot last night...
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear you had a lock-up using Flow Motion v2. While I have tested the patch successfully in a wide variety of circumstances, the nature of hacking makes it impractical to guarantee 100% reliability under all potential shooting conditions. As you discovered, it may be necessary to pop out the battery to reset the camera when it locks up. I've done this literally thousands of times in the course of developing GH1 and GH2 patches, and have never seen a case where the camera failed to recover after powering on again.

Unfortunately, reverting back to stock GH2 firmware will not guarantee reliable recordings either. In highly detailed scenes that require more bitrate than the stock firmware can deliver, Panasonic designed the GH2 to revert to a low-quality "Fallback Mode" that can produce severe image degradation. What's alarming is that the camera can do this surreptitiously at any time, without warning the user in any way. To eliminate this hazard, I designed Flow Motion v2 to disable Fallback Mode, insuring that all successfully completed takes have been recorded at the intended image quality. As a result, a shot may fail explicitly on rare occasions where the stock firmware would have continued to record a degraded image instead. This type of fail-safe operation is how I prefer a camera to perform in staged shooting situations where bad takes occur routinely for any number of reasons. For one-take event shooting, however, I rely on FM2's 60Mbps 24L, FSH, or H modes for their ability to reliably span across multiple 4GB MTS files.
 
Had that happen once too, at an awkward moment of course... Now carry two GH2's and shoot unhacked. Less worries, and content with the results.
 
To: LPowell

Thanks so much for taking time to explain. I love FM2 and will continue using it. Great to know I have a choice of settings for "event" shoots.

Jeff Hinson
 
Both my Gh2's are powered by flowmotion 2, and I've not hesitated in taking them to high stress shoots. Flowmotion 2 has been very reliable, even with my generic class 10 cards (Duracell). The image quality is excellent and the file sizes are not excissively large. Flowmotion is pretty well the last patch I'll be using.
 
Flowmotion for me too.
Used it to shoot a 6 hour conference the other day and didn't let me down - shooting for up to 1 hour and 20 mins at a time.
 
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