I dont get it

A

AlexD

Active member
If the GH1 is so crippled with codec and whatnot, why is it's footage so much better looking than canon's? I realize that the codec on a canon is better than Lumix's, but everything I see from the gh1 looks amazing.

The 17mbps supposedly gives you very little grading options, really? Everything looks so good! (and obviously heavily graded)

I just see this camera getting a lot of flack, but it amazes me every time.
 
You're not alone, Alex! The camera can obviously capture some amazing images, just as the Canons and Nikon can. I personally think it's the best overall camera in its class when it comes to capturing motion images (I hesitate to call it video...what DO we call it now?). Obviously, the Canons blow it away in the still department, and there are certainly situations where the 7D or 5D would be preferable, but if I had to choose one for shooting motion images at this point, it's the Panasonic. In fact, that is the choice I have made at this point. I'm thinking about getting the 550D as well, but time and money will tell!

That being said, the GH1 has some serious issues that we all hope are rectified in its successor. The codec is not that bad, but it seems like there's no reason not to beef it up. The audio AGC and lack of monitoring is a pain. And the lack of HDMI for monitoring or recording before the compression is, I think, the worst aspect of the camera.

On the flip side, the ability to bring new life to all this old fast glass is a pure joy.

Ron
 
hmmm, every review i have seen has not felt this way.

From watching personally this is how i rank the footage looks

7D/5DmkII --->D90 ---> GH1

From a versatility standpoint i would rank them

7D/5DMKII ----> GH1 ----> D90

from an ergonomics standpoint

GH1 ----> 7D/5DMKII -----> D90

Ive jsut never thought the footage of the GH1 compared, sometimes even against the nikon footage. I think one reason we may see amazing footage is the migration of talented users. For a while the GH1 was tops, and SOOO the most talented people were using it and getting the best results. This is shifting to the canons, and who knows wehre it will shift from there. Remember its mostly in the hands of the shooter not the equipment.

George Lucas obviously prefers the canons, and i tend to take his opinion more heavily than most.

jon
 
Well, don't believe everything you hear. Look at stuff shot by people that know what they are doing and decide by yourself. That whole crippled codec stuff is not the whole story. I am very happy with my GH1. It it is from Panasonic after all and they know a thing or two about video cameras.
 
Ehh, i guess since i have more of a photography background i tend to want to stay with the big 2 for my cameras (nikon/canon), and tend not to like the shortcommings still wise of the panny. Personally just as a viewer of short films i dont tend to see a whole lot on the GH1 that stands out to me (granted there are some truly amazing beautiful stuff on them, just doesnt seem to be as much)

Also i think this also is how many photographers feel who are venturing to video. Photographers already know a lot of the basic principles behind composition etc... so that may be a reason that we so so many great things on the canons, just by virtue of the skill of the people using them.

It may also not be fair, the GH1 was really more of a 1.5 gen video DSLR.

The 7D/5D are really more 2nd gen (while the D90 was 1st gen)

When they release a GH2, that is 2nd gen (or 2.5 gen), it will likely be the best out there, just hasnt happened yet.

Im wondering if panasonic is intentionally dragging their feet though, so as to not cut into their DVX sales.

I will say this, a local director working on a project im DPing for was in the studio coparing the XL H1A to my 7D, and he was amazed at how the 7D looked. He shoots with an HVX200 with redrock adapter and he was like man, this looks just as good as the HVX.

jon
 
jonE5 said:
hmmm, every review i have seen has not felt this way.
I think one reason we may see amazing footage is the migration of talented users. For a while the GH1 was tops, and SOOO the most talented people were using it and getting the best results. This is shifting to the canons, and who knows wehre it will shift from there. Remember its mostly in the hands of the shooter not the equipment.

George Lucas obviously prefers the canons, and i tend to take his opinion more heavily than most.

jon
Click to expand...

This is the most WTF statement I've read in a long time.
 
jonE5 said:
From watching personally this is how i rank the footage looks

7D/5DmkII --->D90 ---> GH1
Click to expand...

Umm... you seem to be a Stockholm Syndrome victim of attachment to electronically over sharpened images - and you can trust me on this because, unlike George Lucas, I live in Stockholm.
 
This thread is going down a slippery slope, and I don't want to push it any quicker, but...

Each of these cameras has its strengths/weaknesses. The VDSLR or whatever you call it is in its infancy. Things will change quickly and get better, stronger, faster, cheaper.

But all this "so and so said this" hoopla doesn't really win any arguments. Great George Lucas likes the Canons. Other people like Nikon. Others still like the Panasonic. Lots of filmmakers who are actually using them have multiple and use each for what works best. We could start a whole thread just on the merits of George Lucas, but I will refrain from such due to my kind nature!

I personally like the GH1 because of its small size/light weight, beautiful filmic image (yes, it does make nice images), ability to mount almost any lens to the camera and its lack of limitation on shot lengths.

If something comes along that makes more sense for me that I can afford, I'll happily get that camera. For now, I'm having fun collecting lenses. Coming from a video, not a still, background that is all new to me.
 
Who said the GH1 has a crippled codec? thats nonsense

The GH1 codec is not crippled, its just a pain in the ass to work with. Actually when I look at Barry Greens zone charts that compare the 7D to the GH1, in my opinion the GH1's codec does better. At least the GH1 renders a black and white chart as black and white. The 7D put a great big splotch of color on it.

I've owned both cams and the GH1 as a camera has a whole lot of great functionality that the 7D doesn't have. Mainly articulated LCD, live histos, more useful flange distance.

7D wins only because its easier to get gigs with it. No producer pays to be handed footage with pulldown.
 
I'm not trying to start anything. Just trying to get people to look at the image and not the numbers. Plus I want to buy a m4/3s camera to use my old bolex lenses. I don't think this would be as easy on a canon, but everyone tells me to get a canon while it has a bunch of shortcomings I don't like. Just getting other opinions
 
Before anyone talks about codecs please look at these charts
GH1 on the left, 7D on the right

look for the big colored splotch everyone

Barry_Green said:
I have my GH1 back, and am now able to start duplicating some of the tests the 7D got put through.

First up, is the DSC Labs MegaTrumpets 12 res chart. For those who didn't follow the other thread, basically the MegaTrumpets 12 is designed to handle up to 4K cameras like the Red One or Dalsa Origin. My older res chart topped out at 700 lines, not nearly enough to show what these cameras can do, so I got the MegaTrumpets 12. It's great because its highly precise and it shows resolution trumpets not just on the horizontal and vertical, but also at many different angles.

As expected, there are mixed results, and the overall results show the same basic kinds of patterns that the 7D exhibited. Here's the chart, side by side with an extraction of the 7D's chart:


GH1-7D-1080-Trumpets.jpg



I've gone through and marked some areas of special interest on the chart. At first glance, the GH1's chart looks a lot better than the 7D's, because the GH1 doesn't have the bizarre color mush that the 7D exhibits. However, other than that particular anomoly, they're fairly comparable.

In spot "A", the Canon looks like it's actually rendering cleaner than the Panasonic. There's not much horizontal resolution here, about 700 lines on the Canon, and maybe 600 on the Panasonic before the aliasing renders it moot to look further.

In spot "B", that's where the Canon just pukes in an alarming fashion, turning a pure black & white chart into a mishmash of purple and green. The Panasonic does much better. The Canon doesn't even resolve 500 lines cleanly, it's already heavily aliased even at the start, whereas the Panasonic gets to probably 550 before the aliases blur the res completely. As far as detail extinguish, the Canon gives up at about 850 lines, whereas the GH1 is still rendering aliased detail until about 1100. This is not actually good, it'd be good if there was clean rendering until 1100 lines! The actual and legitimate detail is higher on the GH1 than the 7D vertically, and higher on the 7D than the GH1 horizontally, by probably about the same margin. Based on that, I predict both cameras will deliver images that are about the same actual sharpness. The color patterns are disturbing on the Canon however; I suspect it will cause problems on greenscreening that the GH1 wouldn't have.

In spot "C" there's some interesting things happening. On the Panasonic side there's a tiny bit of purple color contamination, never a good thing. Nothing compared to the Canon's color contamination in "B" or "D", but still, it's there and it shouldn't be. Look at the pattern of lines on the Canon side in "C" -- they're actually sweeping fully horizontally! Once you see the pattern on the Canon, look at the Panasonic side and you can see that it's doing it too. That's bizarre, and that's why aliasing is so bad. It makes you think you're seeing something, but it really isn't there! The charts consist of straight lines from the outside to the inside, straight nearly-parallel lines that converge at the center of the chart. So it looks like the Canon and Panasonic are rendering sideways lines, but it's supposed to be perfectly straight lines! What looks like detail here is "false detail", it's contamination in the picture. A lot of the perceived sharpness in the GH1 and 7D and 5D can be directly attributed to this kind of false detail.

I mean, let's look at the HMC40's trumpet so you can see what a trumpet is supposed to look like:
CleanHorzTrumpetWedge.jpg


That's what it's supposed to look like. Clean line separation until the lines blur together into mush. And once they blur together, they should stay together. All the wedges should look like this. The way the 7D and GH1 are performing, there's all sorts of false detail being rendered. That false detail is a just plain wrong representation of the picture!

Okay, moving on, to "D" you can see the Canon again exhibiting some bizarre aliasing and color mushing. Keep in mind that there should be 15 thin black & white line pairs in this image, and only 15 thin black & white line pairs. Where did it come up with four purple & green lines? This is not image detail, this is contamination.

On "E" you can see a reasonably well-behaved trumpet from the GH1. Clean detail, little aliasing, nice and cleanly rendered down to detail extinguishing at about 900 lines. But -- then what happens? We get a return of some bogus false detail afterwards... sigh.

On "F" you can see really bad examples of this bogus false detail. After the image has completely exceeded the sensor's ability to render it (the complete detail extinguish point), then some "detail" returns, and we see more lines. These lines are fake. They are wrong. There should be 15 lines there, not four. And they should converge inwards, not outwards. These fake alias lines are bending away from the converge point, not towards it. The GH1 does it too, just not as bad. This is pollution in the image. It can actually make the image look sharper, but it's cheating, an ideal camera design would filter all that stuff out.

Net conclusions? The GH1 and the 7D (and the 5D) don't display true high-def images. The GH1 and 7D look like they probably have about the same amount of real detail in 1080p mode, which would be the amount of detail you could expect from a 720p camera. They do, however, render a much sharper-looking image because of all the false detail they let through. Even though their overall true detail might be comparable, the GH1 is clearly much better behaved on the charts, showing less aliasing and less bothersome color contamination.

Both cameras are capable of truly astonishing imagery. But both of them are resorting to smoke and mirrors to make it.



As for 720p, it's no contest -- while they both have aliasing, the GH1's chart just looks much better. Substantially higher res in the vertical; the 7D is well into the green/purple mush where the chart even begins, whereas the GH1 looks to be clean to 550 lines or more. The 7D's horizontal resolution is strangely well behaved, compared to all the other trumpets... odd.
GH1-7D-720-Trumpets.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Alex, who knew you'd open up such a can of worms!

Just take in the pros/cons and figure out what works best for your needs. Honestly, you'll be fine either way and you'll want the Next Big Thing a few months after you buy anyway!

To me, the GH1 has made shooting fun again. Because of it's small size, I'm more likely to take it with me. I'm sure it's the same with the 7D or the 550D (just a little bigger).
 
Ehh, i guess since i have more of a photography background i tend to want to stay with the big 2 for my cameras (nikon/canon),
Click to expand...

I've been a photographer for 38 years and my decisions on the vdslrs have nothing to do with that.
 
The bottom line is ... if you are getting paid gigs, get a 7D because no producer wants to be handed pulldown

if you are shooting for yourself and want to have fun, get a GH1
 
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So are the Canon's getting more play because it is easier to hand footage over to clients without transcoding? It makes sense, I'm just wondering if that is a main deciding factor. Obviously not EVERYONE on here gets gigs, so I'm just wondering what pushed them to Canon over Lumix.
 
I do not plan on doing gigs any time soon, and if i do i plan on editing them myself anyway so thats not a factor to me.

After my research, the canon footage just looked the best to me aside from all other reasons. Maybe in your research you found differently, but i watch a lot of short films. Probably 10 or so a week, and ive seen hundreds shot on DSLR's of all kinds. The canons just had more of the type of footage I wanted to shoot, and more beginners that were able to achieve the look without to much post processing.

I also for my budget have the need to consolodate my still and video camera to one, and that was another reason i went canon.

I mean i have been a nikon person since basically before i was born. TO make the switch to canon was not easy, but the proof was in the pudding.

If you find other cameras to be better for other reasons then go for it, afterall everyones requirements are slightly different.

I didnt liek the extra weight at first (the 7D is noticebly heavier than my D90), but after using it, it actually allows for much more stable handheld footage.

7D is also sturdier, and weather sealed so not as much problems about worrying about the elements.

I do really wish it had the pop out screen like the Gh1 has, but cant have everything.

But if you want to look at it in a non-subjective manner just think about this.

The GH1 is older than the canon, the canon takes advantages of a few different things (better codec, etc...) that are simply due to the fact that its a newer model. As i said before, the Gh2 may very well be the best vid DSLR to date when it comes out, its just not here yet.
 
It is important to understand how a codec works. And its function in a middle of an acquisition flow. The bitrate is not everything and can mean nothing.

There are a lot of variables such as shooting style, subject, etc. Beyond a certain minimum, you can have as same quality as a superior device or media (RED, 35mm film for example). The GH1 offers a certain sort of (random :-) standard. That's why these small cameras are a true revolution too.

With the due handling care, who can guess it is an inferior format if the codec will not embarass the shooter or this one will know how to not be embarassed by the codec's limitations? ;-)
 
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