Panning 'mud' workarounds

commanderspike

commanderspike

Carbonite Member
Well, I think by now we've confirmed the GH1 has a problem. But I've seen enough test footage and used my GH1 enough now to be able to offer some useful (I hope) info:

- Mud is worse at high shutter speeds, bright light, detailed scenes (especially with fine detail such as grass or stone / pavements).
- Mud also appears in 720p AVCHD but this mode is less susceptible.
- Nothing to do with the lens (EDIT, Oct 2009: through general observations backed up by various forum members, mud does seem less severe when using manual prime lenses in place of the kit lens)

Workarounds:

- Use 720p MJPEG mode, it's mud free.
- You can get away with 720p AVCHD for most stuff - it's more robust but far from perfect
- 1080i 24p is best for static shots, but badly needs a firmware fix
- AVCHD is a pain to edit and playback, the need to improve the software, Final Cut Pro including.
- If you have to use Full HD mode use a slow shutter speed, 1/30, low ISO and manual aperture to lower the risk of mud affected footage. 1/30 in full HD mode is the best 1080 you'll get from the GH1.
- Run and gun docu style shooting or fast action? Use 720p with high shutter speed. AF is much faster like this. At 1/30 in full HD it slows to a crawl.
- Not 100% confirmed but I think a slow memory card can make the problem worse. Use as fast a memory card as possible, seems to have a small positive affect in lessening the number of times a shot degrades and it's duration.

Happy shooting!

Remember this is still a great camera, footage looks awesome most of the time and the mud effect is less noticeable on a plasma / LCD TV than on still frames while editing.

Having said that and dwelled on the positives (for a change!) it IS a serious and purchase adverse bug, and I urge Panasonic to fix it ASAP!!
 
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I think the best workaround, apart from all you said, is to spread on the web the GH1 bug to get panasonic correct it.


anyway, it will be funny after the gh1 starts shipping widely on USA and Europe... we'll see the web full of reviews talking about the mud problem. Exactly like the videos from imaging-resource, the GH1 video is one of the worse of all this reviews... and this is a photo site!! all videos there are taken from photo cameras which offer video as a plus... and performs a lot better than the panasonic GH1 which cost $1500, $700 more than similar range canon and nikon, cause it supposedly is a real hybrid photo-video cam...
 
I would have no problem shooting in 720/60, except that I found that after iMovie import, the file size is 2x of that of 1080/24, which I am not quite sure why.
 
I've been shooting 1080p at 24p at 1/60th of a shutter, and MUD is no longer an issue. I did pretty fast pans in a car, shot out of a car, had the camera hand held and running--not really any mud at all. If I crank the shutter to a higher speed the MUD is pretty obvious, which is crummy, but not really a big deal. I'm shooting 1080p exclusively now.
 
Revsta said:
I've been shooting 1080p at 24p at 1/60th of a shutter, and MUD is no longer an issue. I did pretty fast pans in a car, shot out of a car, had the camera hand held and running--not really any mud at all. If I crank the shutter to a higher speed the MUD is pretty obvious, which is crummy, but not really a big deal. I'm shooting 1080p exclusively now.
Click to expand...

Hum, this simplifies thing for me now as 1080/24 files are also smaller.
 
I think this is an extremely useful post, but still has a lot of speculations which are being contradicted recently. Would love some confirmations tested and stickied.
 
Themartist - The best confirmation and the best test is to go and shoot with it yourself. I just post what I see in my own usage. My mind changes over time when presented with new info. For example, we now know after many months of using the GH1 that mud does seem to be influenced somewhat by the kit lens and in my post above made in June, it says that it's nothing to do with the lens.

Pinning down the facts is a difficult job because of testing methodologies and personal shooting methods often differ.

For that reason, I personally won't be doing any more tests regarding mud and will simply say 'go and shoot, find out what works best for YOU'.
 
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