Panasonic Removable Lens Four Thirds HD AVCHD Camera

I'm not about to sit and scrutinize the footage that Barry took and posted himself saying that he had no idea how to work the camera. If this is just milling around getting some shots then I'm beyond sold.

AT it's worse, on a computer LCD it looks better than the D90 already, and on an actual Television none of this stuff even surfaces. It looks friggin' fantastic.

Do yourself a favor and grab an SD card, find a friend with a PS3 and go and watch it on a screen.

It's not MKii (yet) but it's solid.
 
Ok...got it (PE7 trial)...

They seemed to do what Panasonic did on the FH1, a form of smoothing, especially in the chroma. While I don't have the time to play with this now, on the Sanyo it seems to give a good contrast to about 180lp/ph (about three pixels). Below that that, on the FH1, the contrast get weak very quickly. However, 180-200 lp/ph is still a pleasing video image. For comparison, the Canon 5DM2 seems to hold high contrast (horizontally) past 400lp/ph (beyond a 720p's max of 360lp/ph).

What makes the footage on the FH1 seem very good is smoothing must be using a very slick algorithm (here also) that says "this is getting compressed so much the detail will be lost, let me use the detail I have to reduce the noise at a lower resolution reducing the number of high frequency elements to compress."

In Lab Mode in Photoshop, this is very apparent. This is a blow up of some hair detail. Count the pixels of the smallest resolved detail.

1240588762.jpg
 
Yeah i just threw it up on my ps3 as well. Pretty sick. Will save my judgement til the footage really starts rolling in but so far I'm impressed. Especially considering this is not even footage Barry was happy with. Barry do your remember how zoomed in this shot was (relatively)? It's not shakey footage but there is some kind of minor shake to it. Either that or something about her movement is jumpy, its hard to describe. I'll watch it again and see if I can put my thumb on it.

More please! Somebody... anybody...



BTW, I didn't know Jan from "The Office" was at NAB... :)
 
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The June release date here in the States bums me out. I've got a month long video project that starts on June 12th.

I wonder if Panasonic will push up the release date if this thing builds up enough of a groundswell?

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Hunter & Kholi - please, lots of low light and DOF tests! :)
 
Hunter and I both have a list of things we're going to test. we got you covered!!!

I'm ordering my Contax and Nikon adapters right now and trying to see if the G1 and GH1 use the same batteries. Need to grab another one or two of those.
 
That's most likely because the 24p is wrapped in 60i. When you remove pulldown it will retain all of its 23.98fps.

Edit: ha...mico you got me.
 
Wanted to comment on this, from the other *now closed* thread. I apologize if its seems off-topic...

squig said:
http://www.pbase.com/viztyger/image/109862819/original
Click to expand...
squig said:
I have to say Isaac I've read conflicting reports on the GH1 sensor size/area. There's also this-
http://fourthirds-user.com/2009/04/t...sensor_yet.php

Instead of talking 2x and 1.5x crop as filmmakers we're really talking more like 1.17x horizontal crop. That's close enough for me.

comparing 35mm film and stills frame sizes-
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/35_mm_film
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/tech/dof.html
Click to expand...

The discrepancies between the two sources is that fourthirds-user.com uses 18x13.5mm while Bjørn uses 17.3x13mm for the 4:3 size. They are both correct. 18x13.5mm is the 4/3rds sensor's nominal size, 17.3x13mm is the effective pixel size. So you/Bjørn are right, the 16:9 is 18.8 x 10.6mm.

Assuming the diagram from Panasonic is to scale we can calculate the actual size of the GH-1 sensor:
Source: http://panasonic.jp/dc/gh1/photo_function.html
Source D90, T1i sensor size: http://www.neutralday.com/canon-eos-rebel-t1i-500d-vs-nikon-d90-prosumer-battle/
image38.gif


Assuming the 4:3 is 17.3x13mm, we can measure the pixels of the grey-area which represents the size of the GH-1 sensor measures to 20.2 x 15.1mm, and is a 4:3 sensor.

Comparison:

Nominal sensor size:
Canon 5D Mark II: 36 x 24mm (3:2 sensor diag. dist. 43.2mm) 1.0
Nikon D90: 23.6 x 15.8mm (3:2 sensor diag. dist. 28.4mm) 1.5 crop
Canon T1i: 22.3 x 14.3mm (3:2 sensor diag. dist. 26.5mm) 1.6 crop
Panasonic GH1: 20.2 x 15.1mm (4:3 sensor diag. dist. 25.4mm) 1.7 crop

However, the entire GH-1 sensor isn't usable, and the D90 and Canon T1i are 3:2 sensors, hence will need to be cropped to make 4:3 or 16:9. Comparing the the sensor to actual effective usable area we will have:

3:2:
 Canon 5D Mark II: 36 x 24mm (diag. dist. 43.2mm) 1.0
Nikon D90: 23.6 x 15.8mm (diag. dist. 28.4mm) 1.5 crop
Canon T1i: 22.3 x 14.3mm (diag. dist. 26.5mm) 1.6 crop
Panasonic GH1: 17.9 x 11.9mm (diag. dist. 21.5mm 2.0 crop

16:9:
Canon 5D Mark II: 36 x 20.2mm (diag. dist. 41mm) 1.0
Nikon D90: 23.6 x 13.2mm (diag. dist. 27mm) 1.51 crop
Canon T1i: 22.3 x 12.6mm (diag. dist. 25.6mm) 1.6 crop
Panasonic GH1: 18.8 x 10.6mm (diag. dist. 21.5mm) 1.9 crop
 
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Finster said:
The June release date here in the States bums me out. I've got a month long video project that starts on June 12th.

I wonder if Panasonic will push up the release date if this thing builds up enough of a groundswell?

-----------

Hunter & Kholi - please, lots of low light and DOF tests! :)
Click to expand...

The only reason Panasonic released their camera mid-April, and the reason why Nikon and Canon are also rushing to release the T1i and D5000, is because Golden Week in coming up in Japan.

Golden Week is the single biggest holiday season for Japan, and people buy cameras to take on their vacation. This is an important window-of-opportunity for camera makers. I'm sure all initial inventory will be focused on their domestic market.
 
Golden Week, eh? Veeeeeeery interesting.

Don't they know about Mother's Day here in the States? Isn't that when most Americans buy DSLR's for their moms?

:happy:
 
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