All tests were done with the following settings (-2,-2,0,-2) except Vibrant (-2,-2-1,-2), using a gray card, my hand as skin tone, a piece of skin tone colored felt, and color swatches consisting of primary colors, black and white, sky blue, and earth tones. Attached are stills from one of the Skin tone tests

Cinema - while it does render pleasing midtones, and really handles white highlights very well, skin tone highlights turn greenish and blow out very quickly. Shadows falloff very quickly. The result is a very cinematic look in the midrange but leaves you a very small tolerance in terms of DR. If shooting a flat 2:1 style scene this may actually work very well for you.

Vibrant - Terrible shadow response. Even with the saturation set to negative 1, the boost in color vibrance is nothing that can't be reproduced in post with less chroma smearing shooting Smooth which has a better shadow response. Vibrant stretches it's highlights, and compresses it's midtones in a way that is very hard to undo in post. Everything Vibrant has to offer can be achieved in post shooting with Smooth.

Smooth - The most even response curve of the bunch, handles shadows and highlights very well, no chromatic aberrations above 75% like some of the other modes, low grain in shadows down to 20%. Best overall shooting mode.

Nostalgic - GREAT Shadow response. Stretches shadows and mids evenly, very decent skin tone, but begins to break down above 70%, heavy highlight compression. Very warm, but this can be compensated for in the white balance by adding blue, and a little green.

----more to come.

1. how the GH2 performs in these conditions (extreme contrast, auto exposure)
2. 720p 50fps - any issues I should be aware of? (I shoot all the real estate stuff at 720 so I can do a little slo mo when needed). For instance does it play nice with premiere pro 5?

thanks

How do you know whether you've got the PAL or NTSC version? I'm in South Africa, which is PAL; however there is no guarantee that the shop has given me a PAL GH2 (this is Africa). I really need to check this.

Secondly, I have installed the 1.1 firmware successfully, but I can't find the recorded 25p high bitrate movie files anywhere. They are present on the camera itself, when I go to playback mode, but when I connect the camera to the PC the video clips are nowhere to be found. The DCIM folder is empty... When I record with the ntsc frame rates, like the cinema mode, manual movie, etc. I can access the 30p movie files on my computer without a problem

Thirdly, is there any way to change the aspect ratio to 4:3 and the resolution to standard definition (720 x 567) or standard high definition when recording in 25p? Or is 25p only available in 16:9 and 1080 x 1920 resolution?

Please could anyone help me with these three questions? I feel like I've bought a very expensive cat in the sack. (I'm a first year film student and needed a camera because the university does not lend cameras to first year students.)

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

My near three years old GF1 collected some dust on the sensor that I'm not able to blow out with my Giotto blower. I have searched the web for viable solutions (other than sending the camera for service) and learned something about the so called "Wet method" sensor cleaning technique based on Eclipse, swabs and PEC-PADs.

But during my research I have read somewhere that in the Panasonic bodies there is a dust protective membrane (part of the anti dust system) placed over the low pass filter of the sensor, preventing the direct access to the low pass filter surface and I don't know if this is true or not.

I guess that you, by dismantling some panasonic body, looked at the sensor many times and coud give me some advice regarding this issue: do you ever noticed that the exposed sensor is covered by a sort of dust membrane or something else? Because if there is such a membrane I think that it is not possible to directly clean the sensor without damaging the membrane and/or the sensor. And more in general, do you have some experience regarding this issue?

Any comment/suggestion is welcome and will be highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance for the attention.

Ciao :)

for 8 bit (total of 265 tonal values)

brightest stop 128 tonal values

next stop 64
next stop 32
next stop 16
next stop 8
next stop 4
next stop 2
next stop 1

That's 8 stops total (about what the GH2 is capable of)

I mainly see the moire on the widest setting at around f5.6. It's driving me mad, but can't work out why it's doing this.

Is it the lens/hack/optical stablisation? Any hints would be greatly appreciated, as I don't want to retreat to factory firmware settings!

Cheers.

At last, I'm going to be getting my hands on an NTSC GH2. It'll be my first DSLR camera I've ever used (Coming from a Kodak Zi8/Flip Video) and I was wondering what I needed to know to get the most out of it. Basic starter stuff as I have no plans to hack it yet. :p

For example, what speed/model SDHC card will I need?

I saw a thread that had different "settings" which can make the video look gorgeous, how do I use these and what would be best for indoor low light shooting? (http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/953/gh2-settings-vault-most-popular-settings-in-one-place/p1)

How do I get the best quality video out of it?

Is the stock lens (14-142mm) worth using at all?

Those are just a few questions. Anything else you guys can tell me would be wonderful. I love this place!

Film modes like smooth, nostalgic and even standard seem to have a stop extra in the blacks, which you can see here: (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/PanasonicDMCGH2/page12.asp)

I think the sensor of the GH2 isn't capable of giving this dynamic range naturally; I think the image processor does some kind of a shadow pull inside the camera with banding and other ugly artifacts as result.

So, when lighting a scene indoors (especially low-key scenes), I think it is best to use the dynamic film mode because it gives up a stop in the blacks. This means that it shouldn't (in theory) do the shadow pull like with the other film modes and thus it should give less banding and other shitty artifacts.

So imo, it is smarter to accept the fact that the GH2 isn't a dynamic range beast and work with the dynamic film mode, giving up that extra stop. If you do this, then you can forget about worrying about noise, artifacts and banding in the -3 stops zone and concentrate fully on making sure you light the scene the best way you can while having the low dynamic range quality of the camera in mind. If you light it well, no one will notice the fact that you're only using 7 or 8 stops dynamic range in stead of 9 or 10, but it will make the footage look a lot better without the ugly artifacts. Your underexposed areas of the frame will be clean, just like the correctly exposed parts of the frame.

I haven't been able to test this theory but when I get a hold of some good lights to test with, I'll do some serious testing.

REMEMBER:

Back in the day when film was still young they also had dynamic ranges of 6,7 or 8 stops, but the photographers of that time knew their 'limitations' and where thus able to light for it and still get amazing looking results!

When filming outdoor you can use smooth or nostalgic because there won't be so much underexposed parts because when the sun makes a shadow, it will always look black, whether you have 7 or 9 stops DR, it won't matter.

Any thoughts on this? Am I making a bit of sense here?

My budget is too small for anything except a GF2 or G2. I am in the UK, so will probably be restricted to buying European models. If I buy a new G2, my friend who has an old G2 may be willing to swap it for my new one because he doesn't care about being able to hack his camera. If I get a GF2, I'd probably be on the lookout for a secondhand EVF or other compact solution (angled screen loupe?) to let me frame shots from angles that don't let me see the camera's back.

I hope to be able to do most of my work with the camera without having to own more than one compatible zoom lens (with stabilisation) and one compatible prime lens.

I care more about flexibility & convenience than about whether the camera gives 1080p/1080i. For instance: - ability to use 3rd party batteries - not having a video length limit - low light performance, especially in video mode - ability to get "film-like" video (other than by using low DOF & other such cinematographic techniques), e.g. anamorphic video. - manual control options - ease with which settings can be changed, including transition from video mode to stills mode and back again - ability to frame shots from above rather than behind the camera, using an inexpensive (<£100) add-on if necessary.

On each of these counts, how do the (hacked) GF2 and G2 compare?

I've googled extensively before asking the above, but I'm still uncertain. Please feel free to post relevant links instead of answering my question directly :)

A friend of mine and myself are having the same problem. I am using driftwood Mysteron and he is using Cake v 2.1 - and we both get the GH2 hanging up during recording (frame freezes, no buttons react, doesnt shut off, have to remove battery, file is 0 kilobytes). I noticed that Canis Majoris Day was even worse and hung up even more often. Is that problem known?

I have an extrememory sd card 32gb, which never gave me any problems with driftwood up until last month.. he is using some cheap card, but then again, its only cake he's using.

Any help on the matter will be greatly appreciated.

Does anyone know the fix for this?

Thanks

tbx

I posted this in the offtopic, because it is about the stills now. I experienced some strange noise patterns on the still pictures taken at night with long exposures. It is like red, green and blue dots on the entire image. If I open the raw files in Adobe Brige (or in the camera), they are very disturbing, but when they loaded in Camera Raw, most of them are gone, but not all. I took exactly the same pictures with my Nikon D40X as well, which usually generates more noise than the GH2 in poor lighting, but the images from the Nikon were totally clear right after shooting. Things go even worse when I stop down it to a smaller aperture in the GH2, but in the Nikon, they still remain clear. My question is: is this normal, is it the characteristic of the NMOS sensor in the GH2 or something is wrong with this? If so, am I mistaking something or my camera has some problem?

Thank You in advance, Tom

I recently purchased the GH2 and must say that despite all the great features and quality I am somewhat disappointed by not only battery performance but also the crippled Bulb mode.

At this point I am evaluating the camera and trying to throw it into my 'real world' tests as much as I can. One of thie things I set out to do this year will or should involve long time exposures. Now, I have the feeling that I might not need 6hr exposures, but even the missing more than 2min exposures setting is a bit troubling.

I have read through various forums, guide, etc. but have only found a few references to bulb mode exposures for STILL photography. While it seems that you cannot change the firmware to allow for longer exposures, I often see a mention of using external remotes, but it seems often a 'should work scenario' answer.

Has anyone used a specific remote (maybe the one available from Panasonic) to do a longer exposure maybe over 10min or even longer? A) what gear did you use and B) how did you work with the GH2, and C) would you mind sharing an example of such a shot?

I'd hate to return the DH2 just to get a bigger DSRL for a feature that should be included in a camera of this price range and performance level.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks

Some of what he's saying I don't get...ok most of what he's saying. ^_^ But has anybody tried maxing out the bitrate at 60i? Is it possible to get more out of the GH1 than 100mb Max Lat? I tried some of what he's talking about and I get this in some of my footage when I try to go low GOP and 60i. This pic is at GOP3 1080i, when I tried messing around with peak reliability hack. That pic is unwrapped with cineform.

Possible to get more than 100mb at 60i?

EDIT: Those blocks/errors happen at fast pans.