GH2 How do you handle the over-sharpening on the GH2?

3

3hats

Well-known member
The hacks are great but how do you all deal with the over sharpening the GH2 lends to everything? Anything slightly wide for me is riddled with artifacts from too much sharpening. I have done what I can do in terms of -2 sharpening on all the scene files. Any sharp, small details shimmer and buzz from this. I know the GH2 is valued for it's apparent resolution but it's just too artificial. I keep thinking it has gotten worse since I bumped up to the new firmware and the Rocket patch, but I am probably just imagining that. Any thoughts about about how to tame this, either in camera or post.
thanks
Bill
 
True, this will bypass the lens distortion correction that the GH2 uses with the Panasonic lens.... but, they look damn good! Especially the 20mm f1.7
 
the 20mm seems less problematic than the others. I use it quite often. My 14-45, which is a great lens, looks too sharpened. you can also tape over the contact, but I don't advise it. Just put a nice old lens on it.
 
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Thanks so much. I am guilty on several fronts. I have been using Panasonic lenses- the 14-50 2.8 (shows a great deal of aliasing), the 7-14 ( of course, artifacts are very apparent on the 7mm end), and the 20 1.7 (the cleanest of the group)
The Voightlander 25 is the cleanest lens I have for the GH2. So, there is an amplification of artifacts with using Panasonic lenses- what is happening? Just curious. Does it engage some internal processing?
And, I have been using the Smooth setting as well. Kohli, I gather you are a fan of Standard. Is Smooth, contrary to its name, adding more unwanted processing? I will test this out. You were so spot on on about 5dtoRGB. Thanks to all, I will jump back into this GH2 thing.
Bill
 
Smooth and Dynamic both have excessive sharpening added in the picture profiles.

Cinema and Standard look like the least amount.

I stick to Standard now but still wondering about Cinema.
 
Just did a quick round of tests with a range of lenses from Zeiss to Nikon to Panasonic with the Standard image profile. Everything seems a bit on the over sharpened side, small details look very crunchy.
Standard profile over-saturates and crushes blacks (reds go really crazy). I'll look at Cinema again.
Is it possible to go backward on the Firmware, from 1.1 to 1.0? Doubt it. It's probably a non-issue anyway. I keep thinking that I was not getting this degree of aliasing with the earlier firmware. Am I crazy?
thanks
Bill
 
I'm not getting the same results, maybe it's whatever hack you're using? Standard -2 -2 -2 -2 is probably the most linear setting you can drop on the camera.

I'm on Quantum X V2 and I pixel-peeped the heck out of it last night, if there's a difference between the two (V9b) I can't tell.

Also, can you post some stills of what you're seeing? That may help as well.

You can go back to V1.0 hacks at any time.
 
I am using the same hack you are, I doubt that it is causing any of my problems. Cinema setting helps a bit. I think I have just begun to expect more than what I should from this camera.

Getting back to the Panasonic lens question, is there some edge enhancement circuitry being engaged when a Panasonic lens is used?
And, is anyone working on hacking the scene files? Is that not a possibility?
 
If I recall there's definitely some in-camera processing happening with the Panasonic lenses - not sure about sharpening but definitely some barrel distortion correction that might be exacerbating the over-sharpened feel. This was confirmed by doing before/after tests on lenses with the electronic contacts taped over.
 
From what I understand when you use a Panasonic lens that requires distortion correction (Like the 14-140 kit lens) the camera always adds a sharpening effect to offset the correction. This was shown in a test recently. That's why the kit lens looks so "video-like" and "contrast(y)." Part of Panas correction process is definitely sharpening (according to some literature someone posted about it a while back). The 20mm/f1.7 is not as wide as the kit lens so I don't think there is much correction going on there (just a hunch). But when you use manual lens you don't see any sharpening artifacts (Thank God).
 
@kholi I think one of the possible improvements of Quantum X v2 over 9vb is just that there is variable bit rate encoding, which allows the codec to be more efficient in using bits. If that's true, you should be able to get the same quality from X v2 as 9vb with less of a hit to your storage space. (But I'm not 100% sure that there is vbr encoding in the newest version).

One thing that was revealing to me was to shoot a test of a surface with texture that has a significant spectrum of light fall-off. I noticed that cinema captures more detail in the midtones vs standard or smooth, but a bit less detail in the highlight and (possibly) shadows. This matches the tests done on the dpreview site of the different film modes. That plus the color rendition sold me on cinema. But it's definitely a taste and preference thing!

Filmmodes were being looked at by Chris and Vitaliy... they both say it's incredibly complicated and haven't had much success on it yet... I wouldn't hold out for this.
 
Panasonic Micro 4/3rds lenses are definitely over-sharpened to compensate for the softening effect of the firmware distortion correction. This emphasizes the aliasing artifacts on sharp edges so much that you can actually see the moire patterns shimmer on the LCD as the lens locks into focus. It also forces the AVCHD encoder to overload its bitrate with edge details, and can undermine the reliability of high-bitrate patches. I had to make stability adjustments in Flow Motion v1.11 specifically designed to handle Panasonic zooms in a failsafe manner. In addition, I'd recommend using a mild diffusion filter with these lenses, my favorite is the Tiffen Black Diffusion FX 3.
 
I've had good results with lpowell's flow motion and Cinema with the Olly 45mm and the Vivitar 55mm
 
lpowell said:
Panasonic Micro 4/3rds lenses are definitely over-sharpened to compensate for the softening effect of the firmware distortion correction. This emphasizes the aliasing artifacts on sharp edges so much that you can actually see the moire patterns shimmer on the LCD as the lens locks into focus. It also forces the AVCHD encoder to overload its bitrate with edge details, and can undermine the reliability of high-bitrate patches. I had to make stability adjustments in Flow Motion v1.11 specifically designed to handle Panasonic zooms in a failsafe manner. In addition, I'd recommend using a mild diffusion filter with these lenses, my favorite is the Tiffen Black Diffusion FX 3.
Click to expand...

THANK YOU for stating this so clearly.

QUESTION: The Tiffen B.D. FX 3 - seems like a lot of diffusion at 3, does it add any significant glow or mist effects? Or does their "3" stay less 'visible' as it softens the edge issues?
I'm very interested in the diffusion abilities of these filters on my Panasonic lenses, but I am not looking for any significant 'mist' or 'glow' effects. I was about to get their "2"...but maybe the "3" will work better for this purpose.

Thanks~
 
DPStewart said:
THANK YOU for stating this so clearly.

QUESTION: The Tiffen B.D. FX 3 - seems like a lot of diffusion at 3, does it add any significant glow or mist effects? Or does their "3" stay less 'visible' as it softens the edge issues?
I'm very interested in the diffusion abilities of these filters on my Panasonic lenses, but I am not looking for any significant 'mist' or 'glow' effects. I was about to get their "2"...but maybe the "3" will work better for this purpose.

Thanks~
Click to expand...


http://vimeo.com/37401780

Video says Promist but it's BD 3

Haven't noticed any crazy halo glow effects, and this was still with the actual taking elements wide open (which introduces a lot of CA).
 
DPStewart said:
THANK YOU for stating this so clearly.

QUESTION: The Tiffen B.D. FX 3 - seems like a lot of diffusion at 3, does it add any significant glow or mist effects? Or does their "3" stay less 'visible' as it softens the edge issues?
I'm very interested in the diffusion abilities of these filters on my Panasonic lenses, but I am not looking for any significant 'mist' or 'glow' effects. I was about to get their "2"...but maybe the "3" will work better for this purpose.

Thanks~
Click to expand...

No Black Diff (Click for PNG)



77mm Black Diff 3
 
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