The Panasonic G1HD | GH-1 Video Mode : A Real Video Mode

Eddy Robinson said:
Are you sure about that? PM or email me at angibrowl -at - gmail if you want, it needn't be that expensive. Rode mics are from Australia if I recall correctly, and their NTG series is both good and affordable.

You might do much better to cast around for a decent sound person with good equipment than buy it all yourself and not be able to make the best use of it; and if equipment is a must-buy for whatever reason, there are still lots of options. You don't need Lectrosonics, for example; for about a quarter of the price you can get some Sennheiser wireless mics that'll give you 95% of the same results.
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What I was reffering to was not being able to lock the gain, but - er- what's the name of the company - the one that makes all those XLR little on cam mixers - makes a little box that takes XLR in and emits a high frequency inaudbile tone that fools the camera into keeping its gain at a constant level.

So not to get into a debate about a sound man or any of that, but IF you want on - cam audio you can get a couple of hundred dollar box that will orveride the gain and take XLR in. It was designd specifcially for SLR cameras, namely the Mark II.

EDIT: Beachtek.
http://www.beachtek.com/dxa5d.html
But yeah, there's an audio thread so that's the best place to discuss, but that's what I was referring to.
Actually don't know on the price. If it's $400 like some of their stuff, I'll be looking at an iriver or something equally lame.
 
Kholi said:
Dummy Folder won't work without the rest of the files. =T He had to actually just shoot exactly what he wanted to show and upload the Private in a Zip.

That's what I've been doing. Otherwise it won't work right.
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Lesson learn't. Next set of tests will be contained inside the private folder. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
EDIT: Beachtek.
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Yeah, them. But I have to say that...

a) I can't stand those things
b) mixing is a pain in the ass when they're mounted under the camera
c) I hear the noise, but that's just me
d) I have my doubts about the science, because high-frequncy sounds have low energy so you could still get swamped by wind howl and the like and the AGC kicks in.

I replied to squig on the audio thread if you want to pick it up there. I'll just say that I can think of a lot better ways to spend my hard-fought budget than on one of those things.
 
Eddy Robinson said:
Yeah, them. But I have to say that...

a) I can't stand those things
b) mixing is a pain in the ass when they're mounted under the camera
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you don't have to mount it there.
Eddy Robinson said:
c) I hear the noise, but that's just me
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Huh - are these even out yet?
Eddy Robinson said:
d) I have my doubts about the science, because high-frequncy sounds have low energy so you could still get swamped by wind howl and the like and the AGC kicks in.
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Unless the way it works is to kick it in at the highest level, then it doesn't matter what you add to it.
 
i might have missed it in the 83 pages of this thread.... but what is this florescents issue????

90% of households here in Australia have switched over to CFL's.....
 
It has some scrolling wave issues with older fluoro's and sodium vapour street lights. Not sure how it handles 50hz CFL's. Maybe Philip can enlighten us when he returns to sunny england.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Huh - are these even out yet?
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No, but they had similar features on boxes designed for camcorders.

Unless the way it works is to kick it in at the highest level, then it doesn't matter what you add to it.
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Kinda depends on how the gain control works, but the laws of physics mean that a high frequency sound always has lower energy than a low frequency one. If the the onboard limiting uses a specific threshold level it might work but if it has a knee I'm not so sure.

I don't want to sound like I'm hating on Beachtek, I just think these kind of solutions are a terrible fudge. For the same price you could buy a pretty decent solid-state recorder and just clip it to your belt. If you're using gear like this, you're shooting for love rather than money so the extra couple of hours to sync up the video and audio aren't going to involve a producer screaming about broadcast deadlines.
 
Kholi said:
Facial Recognition certainly works in Video. IN Addition, there's a tracking option that lets you pinpoint, almost literally, a certain object to track that's in the frame.

It can be relatively tiny, so if you find a dog, say, and you set the focus mark to its collar, it'll track that collar as long as it's in the frame.
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This is so awesome that I am wanting this camera NOW! Thanks for the whole thread Kholi, I´ve been reading on and off for 2 days now and am positive, this is my new cam before and after the maybe scarlet turns from paper into reality. And it will remain my photo cam for a long while too. Well done Panasonic! I am pre ordering my PAL version tomorrow!
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
This camera is basically the adapter killer. It has DOF simillar to RED which is a little less than 35mm
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the red has a s35 sized sensor, thus slightly larger than standard academy 35. the gh1 is about the same as academy. (yeah i know you meant "full frame" 35 mm, aka still format, aka 24x36, aka just 35mm, but in a video context the "film" 35mm seems like a better reference)

/matt
 
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timbook2 said:
This is so awesome that I am wanting this camera NOW! Thanks for the whole thread Kholi, I´ve been reading on and off for 2 days now and am positive, this is my new cam before and after the maybe scarlet turns from paper into reality. And it will remain my photo cam for a long while too. Well done Panasonic! I am pre ordering my PAL version tomorrow!
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According to Panasonic's literature tracking AF shouldn't work in video mode but if it works in reality - wow.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Not really. It has a smaller sensor. Scarlet shoots 2k (theoritcally) and would be a real professional quality cam with out some of the compromises and issues people are willing to work around here. They're willing to work around them for reasons I'll get to in a minute but the draw backs are - some weird alliasing in 1080 24p, you're locked into 24fps in 1080, and 60p in 720, you can't monitor your video accept on the LCD. You wouldn't deal with that stuff with the Scarlet.


This camera is basically the adapter killer. It has DOF simillar to RED which is a little less than 35mm but more than 16mm or 2/3rd chip cameras, so it would have a shallower DOF than the 2/3rd chip version of the Scarlet as well. And you can change lenses, use the lenses made for it or with some kind of conversion ring you can use nikons and canons just like with a 35mm adaptor. But you don't need an adaptor - anothr $1500 piece of gear and you don't loose all that light.

So what this camera has that no other camera has so far (We think, it's still early)

  • Less than $1500 price tag
  • Shallow DOF
  • Interchangeable lenses
  • 1080 24p
  • Minimal Jello / rolling shutter esp in 720 60p
  • Face detection auto focus in video mode (nobody has that)
  • Much better low light performance than anything with an adapter
  • It shoots to insanelt cheap media. Not even comparible to the new P2 cards. Way way way cheaper.
  • For slomo, it even sort of hold its own with the HVX. HVX only does variable frames in 720. So already we've been doing all our slomo stuff in 720. With the GH1 you can shoot 720 60p for slow mo, much the same way you'd shoot 60fps for slomow in 720 on the HVX, difference being it won't happen in camera, and you can't review it on set, but the result will be identical.
Some Drawbacks

  • "Some" Jello visio, but already there's a work around - for your crazy action scene shoot 720 60p and drop frames down to 24p in post, edit it in with the rest of your 1080 shots.
  • the aliasing in 1080 24p may be an issue, maybe there'll be a work around. Some theorize that getting a PAL version and shooting 25p might help.
  • no way to monitor your footage on set except LCD (hopefully someone will figure out a good hack or video tap)
  • no way to turn off audio gain, but there are hardware work arounds for this in the $300 range.
  • Harder to deal with footage in post
  • less professionally reconized codec / not as good for color grading
But basically if you want to control your DOF, have an inexepensive, lightweight run and gun camera that shoots HD 24p and is decent in low light on low cost media - there really is no other camera like that at any pricepoint let a lone less than $1500. It's better in low light than HVX without an adapter. And it's less glass / fuss / lightloss than anything with an adapter.
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Ah! Many thanks for clarifying Jack. Exactly what I was looking for. As a Redrock user with an HVX I hate the light loss, this looks to be an excellent tool to add the tool belt.

cheers,
JP
 
squig said:
It has some scrolling wave issues with older fluoro's and sodium vapour street lights. Not sure how it handles 50hz CFL's. Maybe Philip can enlighten us when he returns to sunny england.
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so is it something like the issue with flash photography... the rolling shutter is out of sync with the fluctuating light flouros have?

hopefully the fact were 25p 1/50th shutter and our power is 50hz makes us immune to the issue...
 
Well the D90 rolling shutter is worse but I can lock it on a 1/50 shutter and stop the scrolling waves under CFLs so hopefully it won't be a problem.
 
capice said:
The most important things I´ve got so far.

the good:

- full manual control of shutter speed, aperture, and iso
- AF with the kit lens works excellent
- noise in lowlight shots is barely or not at all existent (even with the kit lens)
- lowlight footage with 1600 iso looks still relatively good
- skew + jello in a very minor degree - comparable with RED cameras

the bad:

- some aliasing + stair stepping (more in 1080/24p than in 720/60p)
- waves, stripes under fluorescent light - you can´t get rid of it (in 720/60p it exist not as strongly as in 1080/24p)
- crushing blacks
- in some shots banding is pretty obvious - mainly when the cam pans
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I must confess, I'm still on the fence regarding the GH1 vs. 5D2. Thus, I'm wondering ... does the 5D2 have a lot of these same issues: aliasing, waves, rolling shutter, crushed blacks, banding, etc.???

The only "issues" I ever read about concerning the 5D2 is its lack of manual control and no 24p.

Just curious.
 
Add "17 Mb/sec data rate" to the "Cons" list Even the cheap new Canon Vixias that cost half of what this costs do 24 Mb/sec. Wonder why Panasonic wouldn't kick that data rate up on a fancier (for consumer level) camera?

That just means it is easier to break this codec and could also be tied into the aliasing possibly. Probably not a deal breaker for most who are reading this, but it could have been better.

Dan
 
17mbps isn't that bad (remember it's h264, not mpeg2) and handle most of the situation better than HDV; it only breaks with fast action, use 720p60 for that purpose.
 
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