Is it worth it?

J. Odoms

J. Odoms

Well-known member
Guys I'm thinking about shooting this short film in a couple of months, and it'll most likely be a 3day shoot. My questrion is with ALL the recent developments with the GH13 is it worth it to buy this or possibly rent it or another camera all together.

I've owned the 7D first, shot a music video on it, then later upgraded to the 5D, and was happy, only to then sell it in lieu of what I thought was going to be a not so far off RED Scarlet release. With the recent announcment regarding RED and the BUG I now havce considered shooting this project now instead of waiting.

On ething that intrests me tremendously is the ability to add PL lenses onto the GH13. This opens up some MAJOR glass to me (Master Primes, Super Speeds, RPP, etc.) So my question is what do you guys think about buying one as well as the Hot Rod PL mount kit, inbstead of renting one from say Ablecine.

I'm curious of your opinions.
 
if you have those arsenal of lenses at hand, coupled with buying just the GH1 body i think you will be quite happy with the new and improved results for the price. if you rent one see if they are using the original firmware or patch, its a world of difference with the new patch apparently.
 
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Don't wait on cameras to shoot your film, just rent whatever camera you think is best right now and shoot your project.
 
All valid points, but I'd need to rent the glass no matter which PL's I went with, which isn't exspensive. I found a rental shop with a set of Zeiss Super speeds MKlll's for a day rate of $300. Grab thos puppies on a Friday and you get to keep'em till monday morning, well worth the cost.

I was mainly fodusing on the cost of the camera to rent vs. own.
 
Also, for those who own the GH13 is it easy to reload the manufacturer's Firmware back onto the camera once I'm finished, and will a rental shop be able top tell the hack was applied onto it?
 
Some buddies of mine were hardcore "we're only going to shoot film", I showed them what the GH1 can accomplish and now they are so impressed with it (Pre-Firmware Upgrade), that we're using it to shoot an Indie Feature film.

More than one of my friends have been blown away that it was a video camera, and that was before they saw what kind of images you could get out of it.

As far as image quality per-cost, the GH1 is currently the best thing going at the moment.
 
J. Odoms said:
Also, for those who own the GH13 is it easy to reload the manufacturer's Firmware back onto the camera once I'm finished, and will a rental shop be able top tell the hack was applied onto it?
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You cannot re-load the original firmware, you can only remove all the extra options that you added. Each time the firmware is updated it needs to increment the version number by one. The camera only loads new firmware with a version number greater than the one installed. This is typical of Japanese products.
 
J. Odoms said:
Fail
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not a fail if you own the camera and want to continue enjoying the features that are being unlocked every day by Vitaliy (Tester13), and the good people that help him. seriously....this is cool stuff. i wasn't into video when the DVX100 was released when 24p was turning video upside down, but this is as close to what it must have felt like.
 
i have to amend my previous comment: i was obsessed with video when the DVX100 was released, but i was very poor, and resisted the urge to look into the possibilities, because i was too poor anyway, so there was no sense in getting excited.....

and i realise that this new hack isn't reinventing the wheel with video...it's just unlocking the possibilities of a camera that has limitations that i'm sure Panasonic never anticipated, but surely SOMEONE in the testing phase of the gh1 would have had to shoot trees and sh*t to evaluate bitrate limitations.....and so the story goes...
 
I can reload original firmware after with 3.36d patch. You have to patch it once with a firmware increment higher than original v1.21 (save as v1.2A or higher) or 1.32 using Ptools 3.36d with both version increment and version compare patch ticked and your good to go. i dont have to change versions anymore with the patch either just tick version compare patch and your done. I even leave version increment at 0 so it still registers as v1.32 thats being used. The file name doesnt even have to match the version increment you saved as, for example if you set increment to v1.34 and save as GH1__1.32bin it would still work.

Now if you update to original then the version compare patch won't work anymore and so you have to do the same step over again by patching with an increment higher than v1.32 as I mentioned before. Trick around this is after the patch just create a new v1.32bin with nothing ticked at all except version compare patch if you wan to revert back and forth between original settings for quicker testing. But remember to reload the original v1.32 when returning the camera.

If the hire camera has a lower firmware than 1.32 then they will know it has been patched because you need to use v1.32 for the patch but if it has v1.32 firmware then your sweet to go. Just request they updated before you pick it up.
 
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This thread is frustrating-how much would the original poster pay for a 3 day rental of a GH-1 anyway? The camera can be bought for $1000 on Amazon, asking questions about applying the hack to a rental? then calling it a Fail because it won't be unnoticeable to the rental outfit? C'mon-shoot the project or don't-that Fail statement should be applied to your methodology.
 
BrianBrook said:
This thread is frustrating-how much would the original poster pay for a 3 day rental of a GH-1 anyway? The camera can be bought for $1000 on Amazon, asking questions about applying the hack to a rental? then calling it a Fail because it won't be unnoticeable to the rental outfit? C'mon-shoot the project or don't-that Fail statement should be applied to your methodology.
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+1 - especially when the poster talked about renting glass at $300. Just buy the GH1 and be done.
 
If you have the money, buy it and hack it. 3 days = $900 rental. The camera is $1k, plus another $1k for the hot rod PL mount. Is it really worth renting? Even if you don't use cinema lenses, I think the stock lens is pretty good for what it is.
 
Also that GH1 rental I mentioned (Here) includes the PL adapter which is a $1600+ purchase. Zeiss Super Speeds (Here)are around $40K to buy, only $300/a day. So for only $600 I get that kit (GH1, PL adapter, Zeiss Super Speed SET, 7x batteries, Card, and a couple of other items) That would cost me close to $2800/excluding lenses of course.

So anyone proposing I buy what I was going to rent as if it was a benefical decision is less than observent. But I truthfully do thank you guys for your input because of this conversation I've made my decison.

MR Fanny especially you, extremely helpful info.
 
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