NO BS! Buyers guide 60D/GH2

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METALFACEIX

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Hello long time background viewer first time joiner upper and poster....

I am a student filmmaker and have shot on various formats (Panasonic dvx100, 7d, bolex, 16mm to name a few)

and feel the time is right to buy my own camera after various means of research and painless vimeo and youtube watching i have narrowed my search down.....

Canon 60D + EF 24-70mm L + Tonika 11-16 + EF 50mm 1.4

Or

Panasonic GH2 + 14-140mm kit lens + 20mm 1.7 Pancake + Panasonic 7-14mm 4.0

Which camera would you recommend?? i realise that the GH2 is fairly new so its full potential probably has not been fully realised in the vimeo world but any users who have experience in both a retrospective would be awsome.... i will mainly be using them for narrative shorts and the most filmic look is important to me (i like the look of the 7d when i worked with it altho sometimes i feel canon skin tones can be a bit orange or contrasty? maybe was the settings) and a tiny bit of documentary work...

What would be the best for me, which one do you feel would be the better investment and last the longer and are the lenses correct for me i like to to go wide when i can so a wideangle lens is a must and then i guess a zoom and a nifty prime would be the best option under a budget and then i can build up my collection of primes as i go.... any help would be appreciated.
 
For video I tried a 60d, a d7000, and a55 and a gh2. The 60d was by far the worst the gh2 was the best. both the 7000 and a55 being close seconds and sownright superior in stills.

Why?

Because the GH2 is a ballin film maker. Its minimized moire and has very little aliasing. I can attest.. there is still moire in low light with the 14-140.. but its gorgeous to work with, It has rack focusing and is light and in near future will have tracking autofocus. These are amazing helps if you are running without a dedicated rig for focusing etc.

Its light, its got telecrop video at 4x magnification with no quality loss, its silent, fast, doesnt overheat, has fully manual settings, can use any optics more optics then any cannon. Its solid, better buidl quality then the cannon. way less bulky. Has solid and sensible buttons.

There are only a few things I really dont like about the camera:

1) big god awful wheel on top that makes you spin through a million useless buttons to switch from video to proper photography modes. GODAWFUL. As an artist this makes me want to gouge out my third eye. And you cant even set MASP modes in custom settings :( what a horrible waste.

2)Lack of full time autofocus. This would have been an amazing supplement to the "shutter press to focus" mode in video. MF in between shutter presses would litteraly help me sleep at night. Cannon has this but they lack any real autofocus so... ill go gh2 thnx

3)Curenttly the GH2s autotracking in video mode is disabled. It was enabled on earlier models but has been removed from the firmware, hopefully this is not a corporate ploy to resell currently possible technology with new camera bodies and will be just implemented. The focusing is still only 50 of what a great manual focusing videographer can do but 1000% better then a complete noob. Video is about artistic cutting. Anyways.. panasonic.. re-enable this feature at once. as well as 3d video.

4)Touch screen makes me feel like a sadomasochist. It actually requires signficant pressure. I dont like this. I miss my iphone screen with all its intelligent little waves reaching out. But hey its a touch screen. You cannot realize this delight until you try it on a camera. This is a major plus, plus in the end it gives you a feeling of faith and durability about the camera.

5) build is excellent and tight, clearances seem great on shell, would not doubt its light splash resistant. Did not like 60d body at all. It had a big ridge between handle and body that flexed with kit lens. And kit lens ugh. big beast. The gh2s kit lens will out resolve it, outfocus it and silently. The 60ds sensor will then proceed to pull weight and outresolve the gh2s... for stills.

For video the game pulls a lot more even. Some people seem to think canon is more mythically filmic. Check out Hunter's GH2 footage using soft settings with cannon lens and youll see no difference, except for no aliasing and less moire.. and a very ninja videographer... did i mentio the OIS in the kit lens?! I can litereally pan like a video tripod when my hands are steady. It demos every sysem I tried, (nikon d7000 w/kit, a55, a55 w/ sigma, cannon 60d w/kit) literally you can jitter and it does a rock solid flowing pan.

I can only describe this camera as akin to my katana. It is a work of art, blend of soft and hard with a gorgeous hamon. I liked the 60d, it made me feel like "A PHOTOGRAPHER", but the GH2 made me feel like an artist. Its worth the extra money. Amazing tool, i love it. make sure to get a varible ND filter and make use of manual mode
 
No body has done better justice to this camera then Hunter Hampton Richards. Amazing videographer.

His work with GH1/GH2 but mostly canon lens (prepare for a treat):


http://vimeo.com/13524883 wow. This tops some great shots in multimillion dollar movies
http://vimeo.com/12626420 I get a sense of the poverty of both the east and the west. the similarity between capitalism and communism. Gritty moving footage.
http://vimeo.com/17472698 Demonstrating an cinemetographic effect.

Note he uses the lens he likes not just standard panasonic lens. But panasonic lens are gorgeous. The kit you picked out, while expensive would give you a very wide choice of solid focused shots. Panasonics zooms are a treat to use and the pncake lens is.. to me.. the holy grail of lens. Fast, tiny, sharp and .. what else is there? no stabalization.. but.. its fast. so.
 
wow i love the final link, that look is astonishing for in camera... i think im going to go for the gh2 still not 100% but from what ive seen... (still want to do a bit more research as a student want to make the right choice as its a huge dent in my finances) i prefer the look of the gh2, i find the canon's well the 7d only one ive really played with (briefly) and it gives some nice images but i wouldnt call them really filmic, sometimes it seems a bit tooo sharp and stark not sure if im making sense lol but especially on the wide end anyway and ive seen a lot of videos online to have almost an over contrasty look... and i dislike the skintones... maybe people just play around tooo much with magic bullet and go for the 'city of god' look but the GH2 seems a bit more i dunno nice lol.

is the kit lens good then as well most are useless, how does it perform in lower light... altho i will have the pancake for that i guess... im not sure about gettin the panny zoom wide, does have a bit of a price tag... but i do love going wide! recommend anything else... i do read its quite popular to use the older canon FD lenses... guess ebay would be the place for those.
 
Dont be too harsh on the Canons... That doesnt justify them (60D / t2i / 7D and 5D)

You can make beautfiul footage with them, even with the kit lens. But of course my advice is to buy the body only (60D is this case) and some nice lens(es) on top of it. Its the first time I read someone didnt like the body of the 60D and prefered the much smaller, plasticy GH2 in stead. As you can see it is all a matter of taste.

The GH2 however does have less aliasing problems and that is a huge benefit! The Canons have larger sensors and larger bodies, which is their benefit.

For the rest, the both give a different 'look' and it is a matter of taste I think. I have watched many comparison videos and honestly have trouble spotting the difference in sharpness between two nicely shot videos by people who know what they're doing, on my computer monitor.

So although the GH2 maybe the better camera specswise, dont forget that the Canons not became so ****ing populair for good reasons!
 
14-140 lens looks like video, if you're a filmmaker get rid of it, OS is crap too compared to other manufacturers (aka Canon)

Since the line skipping on the GH cams are worse than Canon (which is already at a tipping point IMO) i've exluded GH2 purshade myself, also i prefer the canon estetics to the image (although GH when used right can look more "filmic"; however, the general audience will still think Canon looks fantastic/better)

GH2 is the macro nerds wet dream though, x2 crop on fullframe glass & amazing sensor 1080p crop.

Stab said:
So although the GH2 maybe the better camera specswise, dont forget that the Canons not became so poo pooing populair for good reasons!
Click to expand...

yup yup, can't be stated enough in times when "certain" people are certain about Panasonic's new M43's being God's new gift to mankind. lol

METALFACEIX said:
7D sometimes it seems a bit tooo sharp
Click to expand...

nah that's just people using Zeiss primes on a camera that shoots in x1680 incorrect sensor scaling to x1080. GH2 has WAY higher resolution & clean image (and if that's a good or bad thing, well, kind of subjective)
 
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Went for the 60d in the end... for me the gh2's lack of a fast wide angle at a non-extortionate price was the killer and after a bit of playing around in a camera store and watching more vimeo videos then is healthy for ones self (why are there so many test footages of random bull crap! test it buy making films arhhhhhhh lol!) i felt that the canon look was more to my style im not going to say more filmic as i believe they both have a great look but i was just more pleased by the canons and felt that in the up and coming 5dmkiii will probably kick the **** out of the gh2 and investing in some nice canon glass and getting used to the 60d for now would be more future proof.... (of course i could be totally wrong) the tokina 11-16mm is beautiful! i also got me the sigma 30mm 1.4, canon 50mm 1.4 and canon 85 1.8 and im pretty happy with myself! and think ive gotten a great start up kit :) hope to be posting some stuff that isnt just random shallow DoF test shots of flowers and dark city streets sooon!
 
I own both of these cameras. Here is my summation of PROs and CONs from another DVXUSER thread:

Thread Title: "Keep the GH2 or get a 60D"

...The 4/3 Rumors site ( www.43rumors.com ) indicates that Olympus and Panasonic have some new lenses coming out this Spring ( Olympus 17mm f/2.0 or faster, Panasonic 12-50mm f/2.8-3.3 zoom, Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 ) and Olympus may have a pro micro 4/3 body. Depending on how much of this comes true, I may end up ditching my Canon 60D this Spring.

Also, the Canon Rumors site ( www.canonrumors.com ) pegs the Canon 5D MK3 release date as November / December 2011, which is kind of far away right now. I honestly don't know why Canon is taking so long to release the next generation of their DSLR technology, which is a drag, as a more video capable 5D MK3 body would convince me to keep my Canon gear.
 
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