GH2 Philip Bloom Christmas Shootout

Cory Braun said:
What's your opinion on the FS100? From PB's test it seems to be decently sharp, and has XLRs (but no NDs).
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It is pretty resolute, I actually like the design of the body but there is something weird going on with highlights, banding (it seems more prevalent in FS100 footage than GH2 footage), and aliasing. I could stand to spend more time with it, the lowlight looks pretty sweet, but I'm not really rushing out to do so.

It's a worthwhile option, if it fits your set of trade-offs.
 
Mike@AF said:
I think the advantages of the FS100 are sensor size, lowlight performance, and it appears to be sharper than the AF100 at times. Other than that it's not a better codec in my opinion, no SDI out (though the GH2 doesn't either), and the SxS cards are very expensive. I also don't like the design of the camera body. Seems a bit weird to me.
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I'm pretty sure it uses SD cards.

Kholi said:
It is pretty resolute, I actually like the design of the body but there is something weird going on with highlights, banding (it seems more prevalent in FS100 footage than GH2 footage), and aliasing. I could stand to spend more time with it, the lowlight looks pretty sweet, but I'm not really rushing out to do so.

It's a worthwhile option, if it fits your set of trade-offs.
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Yea, I've been looking at it, but the highlights are what were bothering me.
 
To me, there are a couple of things which make the FS100 attractive: better low-light performance compared to AF100 (though some would argue it's minimal), and smaller size (ditto). But there are always tradeoffs, of course.

As to the GH2 vs AF100, I hate to disagree with Matt, but I stand by my statements. But perhaps I should qualify them a bit, in that I have a very particular use scenario in mind for the GH2 - basically for no/nano-budget narrative work; if you want more of a docu or run'n'gun AF100 will be a bit better (even though it wasn't designed for it anyhow!). Now, with that caveat, responding to the built-in vs screwed on ND, yes, the AF100 is more convenient (as I said), but for narrative work, it's no biggie - I have a few moments to screw on and off, this is not docu or eng work, plus, if you really want to know, some would even say a top of the line grad ND like a Helio gives you even more gradation than the built in ND jumps on the AF100. And as for a monitor like a SmallHD? Well, you know, it's maybe more necessary on a GH2 compared to the AF100, but hey, it's dandy on an AF100 too - if I had the AF100 I would not refuse a good monitor thank you very much, so the advantage is a bit small here.

As to audio, that's just flat out wrong. I especially hate to disagree with Kholi, whom I respect immensely, but it's just ridiculous to equate the on-camera recording with external solutions... not even close, whether by quality or by flexibility of options in complex multi-mic audio situations - if you use an audio team of a mixer and boom man, it's just insane to try to shoehorn everything through the cam... eyeroll! Maybe, you have an argument that it's easier to sync, rather than deal with it in post (and I agree, it's a pain), but again, we're talking about narrative work where you have a bit of time compared to eng, and you can afford to spend time for quality returns. I can't even believe anyone would compromise on audio quality - that's a rookie mistake for indies... you guys should spend a bit more time in the audio section here.

Yeah, that brings up the cost of the GH2 somewhat, but it's still substantially below the AF100.

Bottom line - I'm not slagging off the AF100, or claiming that the GH2 is just as good a video solution than a dedicated cam like the AF100. Obviously, it's not. What I am claiming, is that it gets awfully close all things considered, and much, much closer than we had any right to expect given the price disparity and the fact that AF100 is meant as a pro solution vs the consumer level GH2. Heck, the GH2 is such a deal for what you get, I feel guilty paying Panasonic so little money - I feel like I'm stealing or something.
 
OldCorpse said:
And as for a monitor like a SmallHD? Well, you know, it's maybe more necessary on a GH2 compared to the AF100, but hey, it's dandy on an AF100 too - if I had the AF100 I would not refuse a good monitor thank you very much, so the advantage is a bit small here.
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Personally, I use both a TVLogic 5.6" LCD and a SmallHD DP4-EVF on my AF100. The 5.6" is attached via an Ultralight arm for the 1st AC to be able to focus. The DP4-EVF is for me or if someone else is operating and can be used as an LCD viewfinder or an EVF with the eyecup. This is all because the placement of the AF100 EVF is not good and the AF100 LCD is not in the best place for a balanced shoulder mount set up. I find that I don't use either of the AF100 displays other than for accessing the menus. So if I had only the GH2, I would actually be just fine with needing to use external monitoring.

OldCorpse said:
Bottom line - I'm not slagging off the AF100, or claiming that the GH2 is just as good a video solution than a dedicated cam like the AF100. Obviously, it's not. What I am claiming, is that it gets awfully close all things considered, and much, much closer than we had any right to expect given the price disparity and the fact that AF100 is meant as a pro solution vs the consumer level GH2. Heck, the GH2 is such a deal for what you get, I feel guilty paying Panasonic so little money - I feel like I'm stealing or something.
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Here's the problem that I'm having with the whole situation. The GH2 is $800 typically now, but you can find it for $650. And the less expensive camera has zoom to focus assist, intraframe with the hack, and higher bitrate with the hack. I understand that's not Panasonic's doing, but the communities', but it's still a part of the camera now nevertheless. It makes the AF100 look like a crippled big brother. I can't imagine the circuit boards and processors in the AF100 can't handle intraframe or higher bitrates, or whatever processing would be involved in a zoom to focus assist feature, when the GH2 can handle it. I just don't buy it. None of this seems unreasonable or unrealistic when the GH2 is able to do it. And if it's a ROM chip in the camera that the programming for those is on, and can't be written to with a standard firmware update, I'd gladly pay a reasonable fee to send my camera in for a revision that allows all of that.
 
Mike@AF said:
Personally, I use both a TVLogic 5.6" LCD and a SmallHD DP4-EVF on my AF100. The 5.6" is attached via an Ultralight arm for the 1st AC to be able to focus. The DP4-EVF is for me or if someone else is operating and can be used as an LCD viewfinder or an EVF with the eyecup. This is all because the placement of the AF100 EVF is not good and the AF100 LCD is not in the best place for a balanced shoulder mount set up. I find that I don't use either of the AF100 displays other than for accessing the menus. So if I had only the GH2, I would actually be just fine with needing to use external monitoring.



Here's the problem that I'm having with the whole situation. The GH2 is $800 typically now, but you can find it for $650. And the less expensive camera has zoom to focus assist, intraframe with the hack, and higher bitrate with the hack. I understand that's not Panasonic's doing, but the communities', but it's still a part of the camera now nevertheless. It makes the AF100 look like a crippled big brother. I can't imagine the circuit boards and processors in the AF100 can't handle intraframe or higher bitrates, or whatever processing would be involved in a zoom to focus assist feature, when the GH2 can handle it. I just don't buy it. None of this seems unreasonable or unrealistic when the GH2 is able to do it. And if it's a ROM chip in the camera that the programming for those is on, and can't be written to with a standard firmware update, I'd gladly pay a reasonable fee to send my camera in for a revision that allows all of that.
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You make a good point.
 
The times when you need more audio channels or quality recorded surely you have a sound engineer doing audio that's out of what the camera does. For everything else two channels and the internal quality is just fine.
 
Mike@AF said:
This video may have just answered my question to myself of whether or not I think the GH2 can outperform the AF100 in image quality. I haven't seen any AF100 footage look as good as some of the stuff in this.

http://vimeo.com/33909311
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*Picking jaw off floor*

I don't think my Af100 (which I just sold) could ever get some of those grades. I'm CC a my feature doc with AF100 footage and its pretty hard sometimes. Thats pretty insane for 8bit.
 
The lack of built in ND on the FS100 is something AF100 users will have a hard time with, myself included. Once you've had them, you want them. Also, the WFM in the AF100 is superior to the histogram in the FS100. I also dislike that no body mic is in the FS100 so that if I want to run light, I get no sound. With the AF100, there is a body mic and is GREAT for lining up audio from an external recorder.

The image off the FS100 is sharper and cleaner to me than my AF100 was, and was very much like I saw in the test. I do think the AF100 has more color resolution overall. But that said, I shot with the AF100 on a few projects and I never really felt that the resolution was a huge hinderance. The footage still looked great to me. You can get aliasing on the AF100, but it's REALLY hard. Guitar strings lit from above in a dark room is the only thing I've made it happen on. In actual usage, I've never seen aliasing in my AF100 or FS100 footage.

Rolling shutter performance is the same on both cameras.

The battery life, size and weight of the FS100 are really really good. I think this is where it excels. The controls can be sluggish in changing, like shutter speed, which is annoying. The focus assist zoom is great, and will be better when the 4x 8x is released. I also like that there is no built in EVF (well, except if you use the eyecup thing which I NEVER do) :)

The AF100 will give you incremental FPS which is REALLY nice for fight scenes and people falling. Shooting at 22fps can make a huge difference in the footage. Having sound at 1080p60 on the FS100 is really nice. We shoot fight scenes many times at 1080p60 1/120 and having the sound allows us to use the footage in many different ways. Also, reviewing at speed (60p) in camera is nice when you don't need to see it slomo.

There are things I love about both cameras. Ultimately I went with the FS100 because it was smaller, lighter, had better battery life, and focus zoom. If the AF100 had exceeded the FS100 in those areas, I would have probably kept it. I often miss features of the AF100 when I am shooting the FS100.

To me the highlight/clipping performance is the same on the FS100 and AF100 and is made worse by the saturation that comes default in both cameras, which I think is extreme, and the curves being used. I pointed my FS100 at some colored lights to blow out the scene and went to town adjusting the knee settings. Now I am much happier with them, but, they are NOT perfect. As most will say, it's best to avoid blow-outs if possible in your highlights and just blow it out in post. The AF100 I did the same thing as the saturation out of the box is more than what I saw in front of the camera.

When the AFS-100 comes out, then it will be perfect! :P
 
Mike@AF said:
There's a reason it's still around. External recording = better sound quality. And it's not a small difference in quality either.
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Agreed.
Camcorder and camera manufacturers could easily offer us pro grade, 24 bit multitracking built in to their products, but they do not. And here is how they could do it:
1. Upgrade the cheesy, $2 AD converter to a $6 24 bit converter from AKM or whatever. Or, better,
2. Give us four channels minimum, 24/48 Or, even better,
3. Give us 24 bit surround inputs which could be used as a mixer with a backup track if needed. Even more? Yuppers. And the hiss in your built in mics? Guess what. There is no circuit made these days that is that noisy. Believe it it not, this is a deliberate added noise to make you buy something else. Cheesy by design.
4. Hire Zoom to make your capsules that are built in to the camera if you are so horrible at making them. Or better yet, Neumann. Hello? I can have a high end stereo in my car and I have crap audio in my procam? Are you kidding me?

And the reason we are stuck with this garbage implementation of on board audio is because we don't demand it better, and also not one of the cam companies has "jumped ship" to offer it, causing a domino effect, and they make millions on giving us the $2 parts instead of the $6 dollar parts. They make millions on their crap aftermarket "microphone" which should have been stuck in the camera in the first place.
Their attitude is, "Call it pro, and see if anyone notices" And our attitude is, OK, I give up, I'll buy a flash recorder for minimum $150.
Unacceptable! Just put it in the camcorder, and if you have to supply a breakout cable, fine. Make your money on the cable.
 
greeches said:
Why do you suppose he pulled the video offline? Canon had issues w/ it?
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roei z said:
We'll never know, eh?
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Rick Burnett said:
Which video is gone? Did I miss part 2. I still see part 1 available.
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greeches said:
Looks like he reposted it. Must have been some last minute tweaks!
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Snazzy Flapper said:
Really? Where? I don't see it on his blog.
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Philip Bloom replaced part 1 with a new version, fixing the NEX5N footage because of post workflow issues that were hurting the image drastically.
 
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