Pros and Cons -- GH1 vs Canon 7d

What is there to compare, other than features?

What is there to compare, other than features?

Frankly I don't understand GH1 Vs 7D comparison.

The GH1 kit lens at B&H is $850, which mean the body is $400. 7d body is $1700.

For <25% of the price, GH1 is an amazing value compared to 7D. GH1 has nothing to prove to 7D & the 7D has everything to prove to justify the price compared to GH1. Where it lags behind 7D, GH1 do not trail by all that much certainly, but for features totally missing like monitoring.
 
Can't say I disagree with you here, but I think it's just that in terms of what the two cameras can do, they are quite similar - but you're right, when you start talking about body-only costs, the GH1 is less expensive than the 7D, it's just that it's not a fully fair comparison since, as far as I know, the GH1 is not available in the USA with a body-only option.
 
can we discuss low light? how is the gh1 for a wedding/event guy? i know the 7d is going to be better but how is nat. lighting?
 
jrod81 said:
can we discuss low light? how is the gh1 for a wedding/event guy? i know the 7d is going to be better but how is nat. lighting?
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Hi;

Long time reader 1st time poster...

I shoot wedding and events for my wife's production company and we recently tested out the GH1 in a large wedding alongside our Canon XHa1's.

In short it performed fantastically compared to what were used to with the a1's...

I know all the issues with the codec, low light banding was my only real worry, we found shooting with fast primes up to ISO800 was cleaner than any video camera has let us go (and FAR more pleasing to our eyes)

I can't compare it to a 7D but I'm not too fussed, I think it's an incredibly versatile tool, with great 720P and 1080P and up to it's critical banding thresh hold is ridiculously great considering it's rapidly decreasing price....

Olly
 
ustein said:
> 24mbit, would greatly improve these mud issues.

I would hope so. It may also not show this much with small sensors as they have less soft out of focus areas.
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totally agree.
i saw this improvement when i moved from the Canon Hg10 (17mbps) to the Panny Hmc150 (24mbps).
 
averan said:
totally agree.
i saw this improvement when i moved from the Canon Hg10 (17mbps) to the Panny Hmc150 (24mbps).
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That will be a tough conclusion to arrive at. The two cameras are of different makes and how each handle the available data bandwidth will have so many variables to it to nail it to just the 8 mbps advantage of the latter.

I wonder if the 17 mbps limit of the GH1 is due to the hardware limitations. I doubt a firmware update can pull off much; certainly an additional 8mbps would seem like a tough act to achieve. But who am I to say it all:)
 
Black_Ste said:
That will be a tough conclusion to arrive at. The two cameras are of different makes and how each handle the available data bandwidth will have so many variables to it to nail it to just the 8 mbps advantage of the latter.

I wonder if the 17 mbps limit of the GH1 is due to the hardware limitations. I doubt a firmware update can pull off much; certainly an additional 8mbps would seem like a tough act to achieve. But who am I to say it all:)
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Engineering is compromise... so, while not knowing any real details, and just conjecturing on what I've read, the 'processing' power is probably fairly close to it's max, given that the battery can supply X power for Y hours... If the 'encoder' is a chip+cpu then the output bit rate is probably fixed in hardware.

My guess on the 'why 60i' for '24p', is there was a nifty chip/algorithm that did the compression, but only did with an output of 60i...

I received my GH1 over the weekend, so I'll be trying to get examples of 'mud', and other artifacts over the next week or so.
 
Black_Ste said:
Frankly I don't understand GH1 Vs 7D comparison.

The GH1 kit lens at B&H is $850, which mean the body is $400. 7d body is $1700.
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Thats not a valid comparison.
In N America we can't get the body only, so we have to be prepared to spend about 1500-2000 dollars.

What fully manual cameras are in that range? The GH1 and 7D.

Thus the comparisons.

And saying the lens is worth 850 is a bit of a joke.... do you really think you could sell it for that much?
 
iHartVideo said:
Thats not a valid comparison.
In N America we can't get the body only, so we have to be prepared to spend about 1500-2000 dollars.

What fully manual cameras are in that range? The GH1 and 7D.

Thus the comparisons.

And saying the lens is worth 850 is a bit of a joke.... do you really think you could sell it for that much?
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Even bigger joke is how all this gets priced outside of USA. Rest of the world normally pays a lot more:cry:

I agree Panasonic must start selling body only in USA and elsewhere, despite the fact the kit lens was the only lens at the time of announcement, optimized for video and it made sense to keep them in a bundle.

Comparisons, feature wise, are inevitable. But not in a way that would suggest GH1 is a lesser camera than 7D. Even if we swap body/lens costs, GH1 body is still HALF the cost of 7D. That still makes such a comparison unfair. That was my point. I am sure GH1 kit lens at US$ 450 would find a lot of takers.

In fact, that GH1 gets favorably compared to 7D is a major achievement for the GH1.
 
Ian-T said:
LOL..please tell me you bought it for reasons other than this. Jk :)
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No, but since people seem to bring that up in conjunction with the 17 Mbs data rate vs. the 45 or so Mbs of the 7D, I thought I'd try to create a artifcated image, so I can then see whether this will be a problem for me... if, according to Barry Green, one has to run around in a forest doing the shakey cam thing, well, I live in So. Cal... all the forest have burnt down... and further, I don't shoot things that really require 'shakey cam' presentation... in fact I want 'glide cam' look with relatively slow moving objects... or at least slo mo on beach babes playing volleyball... hopefully under those conditions, 'mud' will not form on the image...

I was going for the 7D up until the last 'moment'. The deciding factors was price, and the lack of 'monitoring' even to a 'histogram' level without additional stuff hooked on the camera (ok, one can take a 'still' then check the histogram... somewhat of a hassle...). I've never really gotten into the wave form monitoring of video, and the DVX100 as a 'naked' device, only has zebras, which as I recall the 7D didn't have.

I've been using digital SLR's with histogram displays for about 7-8 years. So, I can live with that.
 
if you look at completed listings for the kit lens on ebay, it seems to be going from anywhere from $620 to $740 (used, usually relatively new from a gh1 kit).
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
No, but since people seem to bring that up in conjunction with the 17 Mbs data rate vs. the 45 or so Mbs of the 7D, I thought I'd try to create a artifcated image, so I can then see whether this will be a problem for me... ....
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yeah...just kidding around on my end.

But that's the first thing i did with my cam also...(to see what conditions I had to be in so as to exploit its weaknesses). These are good things to know ....ahead of time.
 
Ian-T said:
yeah...just kidding around on my end.

But that's the first thing i did with my cam also...(to see what conditions I had to be in so as to exploit its weaknesses). These are good things to know ....ahead of time.
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Let's see the positives here. Forest, low light, hand held, awful panning, mud, jello, 1080p...at the least GH1 would make a nice Blair Witch Project sequel camera :2vrolijk_08:
 
iHartVideo said:
In N America we can't get the body only, so we have to be prepared to spend about 1500-2000 dollars.

What fully manual cameras are in that range? The GH1 and 7D.
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7D + 18-135 lens is $1999.
GH1 + 14-140 lens is $1299. That's a pretty huge price difference; the 7D is over 50% more expensive.

If it were available in a body-only configuration, the ratios would hold, the Japanese body-only goes for around US$800, vs. the 7D's body-only at $1699, so again, a bit over 50% more.
 
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