ENG cameras are going to be 60i footage for broadcast anyway, we already have bitrate hacks that make the GF2 put out really nice quality 1080, if the sensor is a bit smaller, we eliminate or lessen the edge corner distortion of the ENG lens doubler..

So, if your lucky with ebay for about $700 - $900 total you get a used 2/3" ENG lens with doubler, constant F from 16-300mm (lens dependent, most are 8-140mm range), a GF2 body, and the b4 lens adapter, add a LCDVF and a cowboy studio sholder rig, rig up power to the zoom on the ENG lens and you have a full HD ENG camera, and I bet would hold up well or beat out the lower end ENG style cameras on the market like Pani's low priced ENG style camcorders ($2500 range). Still lacking integrated sound with XLR ect, but segregated sound isn't a big deal.

Most of these used ENG lenses are from SD cameras, but are very high quality lenses.. new they went new for 7k+ each... There are a few really nice samples online of these lenses on GHx bodies.. Some have the corner distortion others don't.. If we figure out manual controls on the GF line we could have a great ENG replacement on our hands with this combo... for next to nothing dollar wise.. smaller physical size and weight too.. And not to mention the lens can be swapped to primes for those special shots that require loads of bokeh or super low light etc. This small sensor size difference got me pretty excited about the little GF2 and GF3 camera line.

Any one have direct experiance with the B4 lenses on GH or GF cameras..

Can any one confirm the GF2 and GF3 sensor is indeed, a bit smaller?

I've taken this out of page 6 the GF2 Stable settings Thread http://personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2321/gf2-stable-settings/p6

GF2 is a strange camera in Video mode. Panasonic say in their manual that Flicker Red (Flicker reduction) when set to 1/50 >1/120 in video mode will lock the shutter. I agree from the tests i have done in bright daylight that it does, however it appears SOMETHING is changing when large amounts of light or dark is introduced quickly, it seems to have a trigger point. If you use a manual lens, set aperture, use an ND or VariND and set iso to 100, it appears you can shoot and lock shutter between 1/50 and 1/120.

In dark situations where the camera needs gain, i think the iso will follow a similar pattern, jumping at trigger points, but shutter and iso will be locked at what you set it to unless you pan the camera to a very bright or very dark area, this seems to trigger some change but not enough to correct exposure. Weird. I throw this out there for discussion, as there seems to be conflicting opinions on this and no real explanations on what the camera is doing.

How the heck can Pany top the GH2 and the hack.. looking at buying some new cameras this year at work.. quite possibly GH2's, hopefully GH3 will top the GH2.. Wish I could post some footage... but its proprietary content.. but it is DANG its F'ing pretty!

Vitaliy, If I get my "videoography slush fund" that I have asked for, based on this footage, your getting a nice donation!

BTW I also tested with a chart on the center and another on the corner but the diffraction settles in equally as expected, so I'm publishing this test where I zoomed in on the chart and it's easier to see the differences.

A zip file with all images is also here: http://www.mediafire.com/?hwotq64ixux4z9k

[More to come...]

The DMC-GX1 employs full HD 1,920 x 1,080 videos in AVCHD (MPEG-4 / H.264) format. The AVCHD format features almost twice the recording time in HD quality than the conventional Motion JPEG. The AVCDH matrix for i and p frames in 1080i is the same as each other (as seen in the attached file GX1 picture parameter set). Notably, the 720p matrices differ from each other from i frames to p frames (notice both pps matrices attached below)

Video AVCHD:

NTSC [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 60i (sensor output is 30p) (FSH: 17 Mbps) [HD] 1,280 x 720, 60p (sensor output is 30p) (SH: 17 Mbps)

PAL [Full HD] 1,920 x 1,080, 50i (sensor output is 25p) (FSH: 17 Mbps) [HD] 1,280 x 720, 50p (sensor output is 25p) (SH: 17 Mbps)

Video MP4:

The DMC-GX1 can record videos in MP4 format. This format is suitable for editing videos on a computer or uploading those to websites. Resolution can be selected among 1,920 x 1,080 (20Mbps), 1,280 x 720 (10Mbps), and 640 x 480 (4Mbps), all at 30p (NTSC) / 25p (PAL). The mp4 mode records files to the DCIM folder. See attached 1080 p25 mp4 header info and streameye graphic for GOP and progressive confirmation.

The usual mini HDMI Type C. Video: Auto / 1080i / 720p / 480p (576p in PAL system)

Optional accessory (essential): Live View Finder (field sequential color, 1,440,000-dot equivalent).

More info on video capabilities: http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/systemcamera/gms/gx1/video.html#avchd

Firmware: http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/download/fts/dl/gx1.html

Canon cameras have the HIGHLIGHT TONE PRIORITY function, it works by setting a different iso for highlights. what we need manufacturers implement is this same function but with an option to chose 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 fstops diference.

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/atepper/story/gh2_adds_missing_avchd_29.97psf_but_worsens_its_already_non-standard_hdmi_o/

Is there any technical reason all these new cameras don't or can't offer this frame rate?

Any techniques that have worked for you in the past? General tips?

Many thanks!

Results are great. I knew the gh2 is going to have blacks baked in, oversharp issues and lower latitude straight from the camera, but I am really impressed by what I got out - 5DtoRGB makes it pretty much comparable to C300- I think the image resolution wise is quite near to the c300 image and could be further tweaked to produce great results, that will go side by side with the best cameras out there.

Got to buy some extra fast cards though, as my allegedly 32gb class 10 Transcend card froze on me a couple of times.. Tell me what u think..

.Patch: quantum 100

.iso 640 (down from 800)

.kelvin 6300

.24h

.standard -2,-2,0,-2

.shutter 40

.lens 14-140.

.AFS - continuous AF off

.OIS on (1)

.Tripod: Camera locked

late afternoon indirect natural light, indoors. grain and noise was constant and pleasing. Color was great and faithful...

But: In the middle of the shoot (two and a half mins in) after a pink shirt appeared on 1/5th of the frame, the image turned greenish, specially on the skin tones Mids.

this samples are two frames apart. direct screenshots from quicktime with avc plugin for playback of mts file.

I've also noticed this almost a year ago in a shoot, using original firmware. In a scene where yellow was background and blue and pink elements appeared in the foreground while panning. kind of like the pink shirt that comes in and out of the frame.

In this case it never goes back to normal up to the end of the clip, up to 5 minutes, the shirt keeps coming on and off frame every 10 seconds.

Anyone noticed this? It looks like although everything is locked the codec is performing some kind of auto white balance adjustment?!

I'm aware of the possible color shift in the first few seconds after you start recording, but this is different.

I've posted this on another thread but it was out of place.

I appreciate your input.

thanks

I'm using Balazer's Cake patch v.1.1 with Ptool 1.63. Thanks in advance for any help.

p.s. yes that ballantine's glass is empty but I'm not seeing things. Yet :)

The footage was as noisy as one would expect. But when I imported it into Adobe Premiere Pro, something interesting happened. When I played the footage back in the preview window, and had the display set to 1/4 resolution, a series of random streaks appeared falling from the upper left to the lower right. It that resembled a heavy rain, or having a lot of thin leaves falling in a strong wind.

The artifacts did not appear when watching the footage at full resolution. As far as I can tell, it doesn't have any negative impact on the video.

As I said, this may not have any real significance. But I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this.

• Should I shoot with the camera in Movie mode on the dial, or should I leave it in M?
• If I leave it in Movie mode do I use HBR mode?
• What should my shutter speed be at? I tried 50 and 100 and it's quite blurry, 500 seems better and 1,000 causes it to crash.
• I'm getting really bad banding especially with lower (50,100) shutter speeds, is this to do with frame rate?
• How is frame rate related to shutter speed, 60i? 24p? I'm not sure I understand it.

Thanks in advance for you help, even a link to learn more would be much appreciated!

Edit: I have an Extreme Pro 64GB SDXC Memory Card.

Another thing i wanted to ask: Is there a hack that gives a good balance of recording time and quality? The hacks out there give superb quality but on the 16gb sd the recording time drops from 2 hours to 20 minutes. Some sort of hybrid would be great - like 720p with long recording time and then the "ultra" settings for "magic" moments.

Hope that fits here, sorry for all the newbie questions - just got a little lost with all the new options.

How feasible is it to have a bargraph or bitrate display added to the GH2 which shows us what bitrate is being recorded? I'm guessing not, but it's something nice to watch when you're tired of looking at beautiful images.

Even if not possible, I hope this is useful to anyone doing any testing who hasn't already noticed the time remaining thing.

here's the link to some promising posts;

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/124/876733

Any thoughts? What is the situation on clean HDMi 10 bit 422 front?

BR,

Jure