So first off, my biggest opinion is that this is one contrasty camera.
Basically, with my Canon, one huge advantage is that there is the picture styles (my favorite so far, CineStyle) that plain out bring the light equality to darn near human-eye layout. You can even add tons of contrast in post before the image begins to look like the "typical" contrasty looks seen from digital cameras. And to be honest, with Arri Alexa filmmakers using "Log C" out the butt, it's a pretty big point that both in the professional world and just when playing around with the camera, people want that type of realism and possibility. Plain out, for what it's worth, I think picture styles like Cinestyle are pretty revolutional.
Now, with the Gh2, right away I notice that when I dial down Smooth to as flat as it will go, it looks possibly more contrasty than Canon's Standard picture style. I've seen some miraculous footage with the Gh2, namely Hills Green and some other official productions, but what I really haven't seen before I bought this camera is how well it reacts to a normal, every-day room - it really seems to suck. It has some extremely weird colorations (greens, reds, ect ect) and the white balance even changes drastically after I take the picture (even with the LCD set to "constant preview", it hardly ever accurately displays what the picture is going to look like.)
Some other problems so far is that the LCD screen and viewfinder are plain out awful, I don't see how anyone uses them. Canon's real-life viewfinder is so extremely helpful in dark situations where you need to manually focus, and even the LCD screen is pristine in quality, and always right on the pin in terms of exposure and white balance (though it always displays things a bit more contrasty than the files are once you get them on the computer.) However, the GH2's screens look like a childrens toy - I've seen better LCD's on a $50 camera. I'm also dissapointed that there's no "silent shutter" option (that works) because I do a lot of extremely sound-sensitive shooting.
So far, I'm just not sure. I totally love the body of this camera, and once I get my pancake lens, I have a feeling I'd carry this camera around everywhere - it's simply so much smaller than even my T2i. But downright and honest, unless I'm totally missing something (maybe a feature that cuts the contrast a MEGA lot.), I'm just not sure I can use the camera for my style of productions - chances are I could get the same product in post as I could shooting CineStyle on the Canon, but the advantage of the Canon's are that you can truly see what you're doing on the screen during production, you know the product you'll get, you'll know the light equality achievable. With the Gh2, I feel like the screen displays something that is anyone's guess.
I don't know. Hopefully someone can point out to me what I may be missing, but honestly, so far, I'm feeling as though moire and aliasing aren't worth the trade - I may trade in for a 60D, which has pretty much all the same features and even has a couple knick-knacks I already fell in love with at the store. I mean, I also tried an Olympus Pen, and in the hand and in terms of visibility, I almost feel like the Pen gives more in reliability than the GH2 does in terms of LCD and exposure. I'm really trying to like my GH2 because I've wanted to shoot with it for a very long time (and already I can tell it seems to produce very good skin tones and it also seems to have much better highlight roll-off) but meh... for the price, it seems like it will be a VERY hard camera to work with. It seems like a very complex children's contrasty toy camera, and I'm not saying that because of the body, because the body is what I love most about this camera.
Basically, with my Canon, one huge advantage is that there is the picture styles (my favorite so far, CineStyle) that plain out bring the light equality to darn near human-eye layout. You can even add tons of contrast in post before the image begins to look like the "typical" contrasty looks seen from digital cameras. And to be honest, with Arri Alexa filmmakers using "Log C" out the butt, it's a pretty big point that both in the professional world and just when playing around with the camera, people want that type of realism and possibility. Plain out, for what it's worth, I think picture styles like Cinestyle are pretty revolutional.
Now, with the Gh2, right away I notice that when I dial down Smooth to as flat as it will go, it looks possibly more contrasty than Canon's Standard picture style. I've seen some miraculous footage with the Gh2, namely Hills Green and some other official productions, but what I really haven't seen before I bought this camera is how well it reacts to a normal, every-day room - it really seems to suck. It has some extremely weird colorations (greens, reds, ect ect) and the white balance even changes drastically after I take the picture (even with the LCD set to "constant preview", it hardly ever accurately displays what the picture is going to look like.)
Some other problems so far is that the LCD screen and viewfinder are plain out awful, I don't see how anyone uses them. Canon's real-life viewfinder is so extremely helpful in dark situations where you need to manually focus, and even the LCD screen is pristine in quality, and always right on the pin in terms of exposure and white balance (though it always displays things a bit more contrasty than the files are once you get them on the computer.) However, the GH2's screens look like a childrens toy - I've seen better LCD's on a $50 camera. I'm also dissapointed that there's no "silent shutter" option (that works) because I do a lot of extremely sound-sensitive shooting.
So far, I'm just not sure. I totally love the body of this camera, and once I get my pancake lens, I have a feeling I'd carry this camera around everywhere - it's simply so much smaller than even my T2i. But downright and honest, unless I'm totally missing something (maybe a feature that cuts the contrast a MEGA lot.), I'm just not sure I can use the camera for my style of productions - chances are I could get the same product in post as I could shooting CineStyle on the Canon, but the advantage of the Canon's are that you can truly see what you're doing on the screen during production, you know the product you'll get, you'll know the light equality achievable. With the Gh2, I feel like the screen displays something that is anyone's guess.
I don't know. Hopefully someone can point out to me what I may be missing, but honestly, so far, I'm feeling as though moire and aliasing aren't worth the trade - I may trade in for a 60D, which has pretty much all the same features and even has a couple knick-knacks I already fell in love with at the store. I mean, I also tried an Olympus Pen, and in the hand and in terms of visibility, I almost feel like the Pen gives more in reliability than the GH2 does in terms of LCD and exposure. I'm really trying to like my GH2 because I've wanted to shoot with it for a very long time (and already I can tell it seems to produce very good skin tones and it also seems to have much better highlight roll-off) but meh... for the price, it seems like it will be a VERY hard camera to work with. It seems like a very complex children's contrasty toy camera, and I'm not saying that because of the body, because the body is what I love most about this camera.
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