some design flaws in the gh2 (compared with Nikon d7000, eos 50d, and sony a55)

The gh2 has IQ that is pretty close to the D3, you would have to pixel peep to tell the difference and the intelligent metering on it is superb probably due to the 3 core processor. It also shoots in high iso with ease.. So what is so hard to beleive about that? How many processors does the d3 have?

In anycase the main photographer is an excellent photographer and looking at the photos I find that the gh2 does a consistently better job of metering.

This should not surprise u considering the d3 is 4 years old, and 12 megapixel. I would suspect that d7000 would crush it as well.
 
dustinash said:
hey ben do you have examples of video shot with your 7-14?
Click to expand...


Shot a big chunk of this film with it. That starting overhead shot, the master two shot in the next location (computer room) the reverse shot of everything in the computer room, the dolly out in the dark room (and later two-shots with a similar angle), the first shot in the city (low shot with the plane flyover), the long shot in the abandoned building (where he kicks the door in and it racks focus slightly to the photo he picks it up,) and the diegetic webcam shot. Think that covers it, some of these shots were repeated. For this film (with the exception of a few shots) i used only the 7-14mm, the 20mm f/1.7, and my Olympus 38mm f/1.8. I would not have been able to make this film the way I wanted to make it without the 7-14mm. The computer room location would've been too cramped, the shot from above would've been too tight (crane only went so high, I had to edit out the tripod and part of the arm from the shot in post it was so wide), etc. Great lens, and a valuable asset. I love the bokeh from the Olympus and used it for almost all closeups in the film, and I used the 20mm f/1.7 for most of the medium shots and a few long shots. Used 20mm f/1.7 at night for that shot where he walks up to the church and was able to, after a few tries, get the camera movement and rack focus correct operating the camera solo with no follow focus or rigging.
 
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Very impressive. I can see you producing a great movie. Gripping story, beautiful cinimetography. tasteful and apt use of fx.

As for the 7-14... I was expecting a much more pronounced fish eye effect instead it is seems almost like an ultrawide zoom. Would love to see the footage without vimeo compression.. is it available for download? The thought of putting an anamorphic adaptor on it makes me feel faint.

I am not at this calibre of filmmaking yet. This kind of work takes a lot of organization, patience and extra gear. None of which I have. But you have opened my eyes to a great lens and I thank you for that. Knowledge is worth more then gold and is sweeter and more intoxicating then wine.

I have a few questions about film making with this camera. One is.. do you ever rely on its autofocus and if so how did the 7-14 perform? I found the kit lens focuses like a champ and the 20mm f1.7 is fairly untrustworthy in high dynamic range. Another issue I had was with low light or mid to high contrast photography. In low light even at fairly high isos the camera produces a lot of chroma noise. But just a bit of high lighting clears it. Yet your opening scene is just such a scene, low light with mostly absent high lighting with low dynamic range.. how did the camera deal with this? th 7-14 is a slow lens.. so I expect the iso was 800+, what was it, how did the cam handle it?

I also wanted to know whether you get blue banding when you have scenes that have a strong edge with one side very dark and the other side light.. how did you deal with this if so?

Also what were your iso settings like in general? In bright light, mid light and low light?

what lens did you use at 3:36-3:40ish and 5:05 - 5:09 is this the 50mm, 20mm, or 38mm?

what lens at 4:17- 4:30.. its gorgeous. Reminded me of return of the jedi. I actually got giddy at that point, even with the damn scary computer guy coming.

By the way props for nailing the rack focus without a rig. Again, its obvious that in the hands of a competent shooter the GH2 pulls.

What im wondering about the most is the sensor issues.. the blue banding, sometimes black banding. and high chroma noise... Maybe this is just instances of people mis-using the camera and pushing its sensor to hard? Maybe some have superior sensors to others? i would appreciate your thoughts on this.
 
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dustinash said:
The gh2 has IQ that is pretty close to the D3, you would have to pixel peep to tell the difference and the intelligent metering on it is superb probably due to the 3 core processor. It also shoots in high iso with ease.. So what is so hard to beleive about that? How many processors does the d3 have?

In anycase the main photographer is an excellent photographer and looking at the photos I find that the gh2 does a consistently better job of metering.

This should not surprise u considering the d3 is 4 years old, and 12 megapixel. I would suspect that d7000 would crush it as well.
Click to expand...

Im not trying to boast about anything I dont know or to support another brand.
I own a GH2 and love the camera. I stated earlier that its the camera to beat on the video end.
My experience in the business of photography has allowed me a view/pixel peep of what most main stream cameras CAN do.
Our company used mostly Canons, but always the Nikon D3/D700/D3s/D3x could out shoot anything with regards to Photos.
Believe me, the Nikons will ALWAYS have deeper blacks, richer colors, and better tones in every shot.... starting with the D3. It wasn't given the label "License to shoot in the dark" for nothing.
Lastly, NEVER...NEVER compare Mega Pixel. The D3 can out-resolve the 5D (21Mp) in color detail/accuracy in most circumstances..."Very good High ISO performance, almost as good as Nikon D700 / D3"

Screen%20shot%202011-05-04%20at%201.41.14%20PM.jpg


D3:
• 51 point Phase-detection AF with 15 cross-type sensors and 3D tracking
• ISO 25600
• Pixel pitch 8.4 µm (Think of pitch as the size of its eye ball...8 being a tiger in the night)
• Bits per pixel 14

GH2:
• 23-Area-Focusing
• ISO 12800
• Pixel pitch 3.63 µm (probably closer to that of a normal older person seeing at night)
• Bits per pixel 12

D7000:
• 39-point AF system with 3D tracking
• ISO 25,600
• Pixel pitch 4.73 µm (a younger person's vision)
• Bits per pixel 14

Screen%20shot%202011-05-04%20at%203.04.38%20PM.jpg


"while it bests its Micro Four Thirds peers, the GH2's continuous AF performance isn't quite up there with the phase-detection systems of competitive DSLRs."
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/PanasonicDMCGH2/page9.asp

Just was odd to hear someone comparing a hybrid car to a 4 door V8 sedan. Each has their limitations, but also they are entirely different vehicles to transport you somewhere.

I commented about your main P, since we use a D700 for the Main P (which is basically the same camera as the D3).
I can tell you hands down, I wouldn't ever consider the GH2 a main PHOTOGRAPHER's camera...especially for indoor and wedding photography... At least in the price range we charge for doing weddings.
 
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dustinash said:
Very impressive. I can see you producing a great movie. Gripping story, beautiful cinimetography. tasteful and apt use of fx.

As for the 7-14... I was expecting a much more pronounced fish eye effect instead it is seems almost like an ultrawide zoom. Would love to see the footage without vimeo compression.. is it available for download? The thought of putting an anamorphic adaptor on it makes me feel faint.

I am not at this calibre of filmmaking yet. This kind of work takes a lot of organization, patience and extra gear. None of which I have. But you have opened my eyes to a great lens and I thank you for that. Knowledge is worth more then gold and is sweeter and more intoxicating then wine.

I have a few questions about film making with this camera. One is.. do you ever rely on its autofocus and if so how did the 7-14 perform? I found the kit lens focuses like a champ and the 20mm f1.7 is fairly untrustworthy in high dynamic range. Another issue I had was with low light or mid to high contrast photography. In low light even at fairly high isos the camera produces a lot of chroma noise. But just a bit of high lighting clears it. Yet your opening scene is just such a scene, low light with mostly absent high lighting with low dynamic range.. how did the camera deal with this? th 7-14 is a slow lens.. so I expect the iso was 800+, what was it, how did the cam handle it?

I also wanted to know whether you get blue banding when you have scenes that have a strong edge with one side very dark and the other side light.. how did you deal with this if so?

Also what were your iso settings like in general? In bright light, mid light and low light?

what lens did you use at 3:36-3:40ish and 5:05 - 5:09 is this the 50mm, 20mm, or 38mm?

what lens at 4:17- 4:30.. its gorgeous. Reminded me of return of the jedi. I actually got giddy at that point, even with the damn scary computer guy coming.

By the way props for nailing the rack focus without a rig. Again, its obvious that in the hands of a competent shooter the GH2 pulls.

What im wondering about the most is the sensor issues.. the blue banding, sometimes black banding. and high chroma noise... Maybe this is just instances of people mis-using the camera and pushing its sensor to hard? Maybe some have superior sensors to others? i would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Yeah the 7-14mm is rectilinear, there is some distortion from the fact that it's so wide but depending on how you compose your shot lines can look pretty straight. A video file is available to download off vimeo, it is compressed but should look better than vimeo version.

I do use autofocus a bit but mainly for focusing the shot initially, not for changing focus during the shot. I usually double check everything with manual focus anyway. The 7-14mm focuses very well because well, there's so little focusing to be done since the DOF is so deep (though not infinite, I did have to rack focus it for that looong shot where he kicks the door and walks in. I was trying to do hyperfocal but couldn't quite get it without changing my framing to something I didn't want, so I went ahead with the rack focus and actually like it now.) I also like the focus ring and how light a touch it needs.

The thing about that first scene is that it's actually lit. It's relatively dark for f/4 so I was probably at ISO 400 or 800. The thing is though that the noise wasn't a big problem, but the codec was. It made things kind of blocky and icky in the shadows in that wide shot, not just noisy. Could've maybe used the GH13 for that shot (I have one as well) but I didn't want to change things up too much like that, and it looked pretty good on the monitor. Hopefully we get the hack soon, should fix this.

I've seen that blue band pop up once or twice but never when actually filming something, always when intentionally pushing the camera past the edge. In those settings there are also stuck pixels, that high chroma noise you were mentioning, and other problems. Just avoid it. For a narrative filmmaker the most important thing is to use lighting! The scene in the dark room and in the computer room were both lit. Computer room was lit with two lowel caselights (sort of cheaper versions of Kinoflos, with two fluorescent tubes in a mirrored box. The dark room was lit with an arri 1k open-faced light as key light, and a 650 open faced arri as fill. Both were veerrrrrry high up on their stands, about as high as they would go. I punched up the contrast in post a bit to really hide darkness, which was generated by a large black curtain. I pushed the computer room shots in post a bit too to get more darkness and more contrast. I think this is a good way to approach these scenes: get the lighting how you want it, but know you have the ability to change stuff in post, and know your own capabilities, and those of your software and camera.

Probably were usually 160, 320, 400 or 800. 800 would be for the stuff at night in the city (which was lit with the ambient lighting there and also with a portable LED worklamp that I bought for $40 online, that I placed a large orange gel in front of,) and maybe the indoor abandoned building shot with the 7-14mm.

3:36-3:40 and 5:05-5:09 were my Olympus F. Zuiko 38mm f1/.8, designed for the Olympus PEN F system and used with an adaptor. I believe the 4:17-4:30 shot was that as well, I switched to the 50mm f/1.4 at first but think I went back to the 38mm for that shot.

dustinash said:
Oh and most importantly.. do you run -2,-1,-,+1, +2 for noise reduction?
Click to expand...

-2. I had some noisy footage but I like the way the noise looks on the GH2 is reasonable circumstances. Plus if your final output is the web you probably aren't going to see it.
 
dustinash said:
As for the 7-14... I was expecting a much more pronounced fish eye effect instead it is seems almost like an ultrawide zoom. Would love to see the footage without vimeo compression.. is it available for download? The thought of putting an anamorphic adaptor on it makes me feel faint.
Click to expand...
That's what's great about the 7-14. There's no fisheye at all. It's a totally rectilinear, ultra-ultrawide zoom.
 
dustinash said:
As for the 7-14... I was expecting a much more pronounced fish eye effect instead it is seems almost like an ultrawide zoom.
Click to expand...

SlrGear.com Test : Panasonic 7-14mm f/4 ASPH LUMIX

Distortion
The Panasonic 7-14mm produced some raised eyebrows for us when we looked at the distortion chart. Distortion is extremely well-controlled in this lens, with practically no distortion between 8-12mm, very slight barrel distortion at 7mm and very slight pincushion distortion at 14mm.
Click to expand...
 
Worth noting that if you use this lens on an Olympus body there is more distortion than when used on a Panasonic body.
 
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