Panasonic Removable Lens Four Thirds HD AVCHD Camera

DavidNJ said:
Any look at a Canon's image knocks your socks off. Now keep in mind, that Red Scarlet footage is more than professional. All the Red One is professional. There is Canon footage from people who can barely scrap together the money to buy it. Others from people picking it up at B&H on their way to Penn Station. Nearly all of their footage is fantastic. Inside. Outside. Daytime. Nightime.
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That is really the point. I judge images subjectively. I've never been that amazed since I saw the first HVX200 footage. The 5D rocks. The Red One also let me feel that way with the little difference that it was and is out of reach for me for personal use. Actually the only camera I want is the 5D - but that might change very fast depending on the GH1, Scarlet, Nikon D400... there are coming many alternatives. My local canon dealer should hurry up! (Until now no 5D in stock)
 
Due to lens limitations my next camera probably will not be a Nikon. There's just too much glass out there to use and experiment with to stay in the Nikon Camp, sadly.

I may eat my words later on, but that's one big reason that propels me toward Canon and the 4/3" systems, the freedom to adapt other lenses. I'm so tired of talking about this subject, though...

I want ze cameras now. =T
 
I don't find the Canon adequate. It makes it too hard to control your image. Their many good clips, but anyone who put together a good video had to work hard at it.

The first requirement is storage. The Canon's 45Mb/s AVC clearly works, and I image AVC Intra 100 on the HPX300 and almost certainly on the HPX200. Other than than you need an Flash/nanoFlash XDR or some Cineform capture. All things equal, Cineform which is wavelet vs. fixed block DCT at the same data rate would be highly preferred. However the XDR is small, and Cineform requires a computer and if a laptop, someform of ExpressCard interface. If the GH-1 can't do that I doubt its images will impress in comparison.

Second is the sensor. The Canon is oversampled, moving the optical and digital filters out of the final image's spatial frequency range. And those pixels are big, bigger than a 2/3rd video camera. While the Canon and 3 x 1080 cameras have the same number of photo sites, the Canon has twice as green as blue or red, are 50% more than the 2/3rd camera. Forget about 1/3 and 1/2, which are much smaller. And the Canon's, competing with high end still cameras, are high quaility photo sites with crisp micro lenses and color filters, and undoubtly a tight tolerance on the receptivity of the photo diodes. At 1/3rd the price point, I don't think the GH-1 will match. That said, it isn't far behind. Sampling 8M photo sites, it has 2/3rd the photo site area, not the 1/4 the sensor size implies.

The HVX200 with AVC Intra and 3x1080p 1/3" sensors will be an extremely good camera. I have no idea what Canon has coming. If they announce an APS-C sized 8Mp sensor with removable glass and the 45Mb/s or a 100Mb/s CF recording, it could be the new standard.

Nikon, Samsung, others will have new cameras. The wild card may be Sony which shares a bit of techonology between the camera and video lines, and is really looking for a knock out feature to but the A900 successor on top.
 
Guess the camera, this is a frame capture, resized to 1280x720:

1237439472.jpg
 
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joe 1008 said:
That is really the point. I judge images subjectively. I've never been that amazed since I saw the first HVX200 footage. The 5D rocks. The Red One also let me feel that way with the little difference that it was and is out of reach for me for personal use. Actually the only camera I want is the 5D - but that might change very fast depending on the GH1, Scarlet, Nikon D400... there are coming many alternatives. My local canon dealer should hurry up! (Until now no 5D in stock)
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Funny. I feel the same as you regarding the 5D Mark II or the RED ONE. The opposite though, when I saw the 1st HVX footage. I canceled the purchase.
 
Well, let me throw another issue in the pot. Downsizing isn't that simple...or that as simple as I thought yesterday. Apparently downsizing can introduce all sorts of artifacts including high frequency noise. What might be a nice array of pixels at 4k, can become an ugly stair at 2k (say 1920) or 1k (say 720p). The high frequency noise is worse.

There are a variety of algorithms...and it turns out Photoshop doesn't come with any of them. The effects are subtle. Video cameras have had relatively low rez images (1920x1080's 2Mp size was last seen on a still camera in the 1990s) and have had sharpening artifacts all over the place.

Now, down scaling an 8Mp image to 2Mp (or 1Mp in 720p60) we may have different artifacts. I am trying to find out what Canon and Nikon do for their downsized stills and video. Does anyone here know?

This picture is the same as the one above, but down scaled in Lanczos-3 instead of bicubic. Notice that the highlights are aliased here but not on the prior bicubic. Also, Lanczos-3 is generally considered not to be lossless. That would seem to be, from reading I've done so far, 8 and above.

1237437843.jpg
 
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Emanuel said:
Funny. I feel the same as you regarding the 5D Mark II or the RED ONE. The opposite though, when I saw the 1st HVX footage. I canceled the purchase.
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I think I can remember that you weren't happy with the resolution. I was never so keen on razor sharp images - maybe that's the reason for our different points of view.


DavidNJ said:
There are a variety of algorithms...and it turns out Photoshop doesn't come with any of them.
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I downsized many stills in Photoshop and the results were always good. Downsizing might be a different thing with moving images, though.
 
No...it is just you didn't have something to compare it to. Create a 1280x720 picture and load the two pictures in different layers. Zoom on the leafless twig in the middle. Hiding the top layer will make it seem to move. Zoom and poke around. The second file has more anti-aliasing and highlights are aliased that are otherwise blown out with the Photoshop bicubic interpolation filter. Subtle, but not insignificant.
 
Some updates...some bad...

First, Steve Mullen posted a screen shot of the file properties on his Mac of the GH-1 clips. They were 1080p24 at 13.7Mb/s and 720p60 at 17.4Mb/s. That confirms the slow speed. And unfortunately, the 13.7 looks like pulldown to me. 13.7/17.4 is the same as 24/30 within rounding error.

So...a lot hinges on having HDMI. It looks like there may be a relatively inexpensive way to add Cineform HDMI capture to a laptop...relatively being around $1000 including Cineform but requiring an ExpressCard laptop. This is a side-by-side comparison of the SR11 AVCHD to Cineform. The SR11, new at the beginning of 2008 and considered in 2008 one of the best consumer camcorders, records at 17Mb/s.

1237530325.jpg


Finally, this page explains some of the down scaling artifact issues:

http://graphics.cs.msu.ru/en/research/resampling/index.html
 
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Poor GH-1. Gonna die before it even hits the market if it doesn't have that Live HDMI. =T

Oh well...
 
Yes and no. It says there is HDMI and the Venus HD engine outputs HDMI. It doesn't say whether the HDMI is output from the camera or from the recording. On the Canon 5DM2 which also has HDMI, while recording the HDMI is the compressed output with markings of the Liveview monitor. It plays video and photos only from the recording. However, we don't know.

We do know they screwed up the AVCHD. If they don't have HDMI, you'd get better pictures with a HF S10/100. DOF? Add a 35mm adapter.

However, if it has HDMI and either you record within cable length of you PC or you have time and money to configure a portable HDMI capture (Henry has $4k into his, roughly the cost of a nanoFlash XDR) you can have good images. But not for the $1500 cost of the camera.
 
Yes, some soccer moms will be fine with the camera, snatching it off the back seat and playing the clips at home while everyone runs for chips...

If it doesn't have HDMI, because they short changed the recording, it will play second fiddle to a bunch of compact cameras. That it's camera and lens are better will simply be a tree falling in the woods when their wasn't a fast enough AVCHD to hear it fall. :)
 
Let's not go all doomsday yet. Let the thing be released first. No use condemning it without seeing it in action first.
 
My guess is it has HDMI live, in which case adding an intensity card (preferably to Cineform) or nanoFlash XDR will let you get Canon beating images. However, you will have $5k invested before you add lenses or filters.
 
ive seen people make movies off the d90.
i dont think d90 is better in many ways vs. the gh1.
besides, expecting too much from a first gen cam is absurd.
 
One big (i should say small) drawback of the GH1 is its small size. A larger camera such as the 5dMk2 and rumored D400 (let's say it has the same form factor as the D300) would help with stability, balance with large aperture glass, and possibly more storage. Plus a larger camera just looks more professional and feels better in my hands anyways.
 
As I've pointed out, the GH1 has more effective compression bandwidth than the 5D. So the constant harping on its "low" bitrate is ignorant. Its not the 1990s anymore, we're not shooting DV recorded to tape with a constant compression rate.

Some people may choose to shoot compressed video because they like to leave the studio or their budget is less than $5,000. Calling these people "soccer moms" is snide, and quite dishonest.

After the GH1 is out, anyone who goes out and buys a new camcorder only to put a 35mm adapter on the front of it is someone whose been led astray.
 
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i'm getting the GH1 you can count on that. i'm nowhere nearly as professional as some of the guys on the board where mps that and pixel that matter becaus i don't shoot comercially. i'm looking at it for narrative filmmaking. and just from specs and some of the clips, I think it's gonna be up to par...and live hdmi is true, even better. to me the gh1 reminds me of what a 16mm film cam would be if it were digital.
 
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