GF2 Hack collecting

Vitaliy_Kiselev

$410 (minus fees)

stoney

GF2 with Hexanon 40mm 1.8 gave surprisingly good resolution on a candid shot at 2.8. Picture Adjust was set to 0, -2, 0, -2.

Then I tested it out on a magazine cover. A head-n-shoulder shot then cropped an eye.

Wow. Very nice detail.

ithard

any other ways to reduce the fees?

maybe a middle man that has an amazon payments account?

LongJohnSilver

Hi Vitaliy,
How much is the target amount?

Best

Vitaliy_Kiselev

So,
$400 (minus fees)

tashbee

$20 here, can't wait to see the unlocked power of this little guy

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@John_Farragut
You can be sure that no one will know your home address except me :-).

John_Farragut

Guys, is there a way to hide your shipping address when donating via PayPal? Not being paranoid or anything, I just don't give everyone my home address.

stoney

@jason I guess we need around $300 more funding. If each person donates $10, we need roughly 33 people. Otherwise we will never gonna find out what a hacked GF2 can deliver.

stoney · vlcsnap-2011-11-27-22h34m16s31.png

Check out this guy's blog. Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite Japanimation. He recreated Ghost in Hong Kong using his GF2 & 20mm pancake. Will GF2 get a huge boost from the possible hack? Definitely. Higher bitrate will sharpen frames from deep DOF.

I did a quick testing in low lighting to push the auto ISO to max which is 1250 I think. See a frame from 1080i60 video. No visible banding line. But not sharp enough. At least I found it uses B-frames just like GH2!!! AVCHD quantization tweaking possible? I'm not expecting driftwood's 166Mbps GOP1 AQ3 on GF2, but I will be happy with Chris Brandin's 44Mbps GOP12 AQ4 patch or... 66Mbps GOP12 AQ2 :)

jason

What is the magic number we are going for?

Vitaliy_Kiselev

$360 (minus fees)
And remember, paypal fees for $5 and $10 are quite big :-)

stoney

Vitaliy, are we there yet?

stoney

I'm not so sure about the quantization optimization. GF2's 1080p avchd codec might be closer to GH1's. My expectation is between GF1 and GH1.

I have GH1 and GH2, and they are my workhorses but already showing wears. They've been in my deep pockets and dirty bags, sat on a sticky dining table, swept dust on a messy desk, covered with melted candies by kids, etc. Whoever going to buy mine in the future, sorry.

GF2 body so cheap that it was no brainer to get one for everyday "abuse". It's built like a tank. Metal body, no swivel LCD, tight seals with real screws. I bought a cheap set of iphone LCD covers from ebay and cut one piece to protect GF2's LCD from scratching. But GF2's metal body is slippery, and I hate putting the shoulder strap. So I ordered Gariz hand strap. Black & Red. Gariz is a Korean company famous for reputable craftsmanship and excellent customer service. I got this Gariz Lens Protection for wifey. Great match to 14mm or 20mm pancakes. Cheaper than getting another original lens cap.

It's fun to take GF2 everywhere.

LongJohnSilver

With the GH2 we discovered that "power is nothing without control" :-) I mean that the bitrate wasn't the only key factor and so they came AQ2 AQ3...
So I guess that the GF2 could benefits of the same improvements.

Last but not the least: practicalness and flexibility and not absolute quality is the most important thing for me. Think to the vimeo disposable device competition. When you have creativity you could put your idea also on a iphone :)

A GF2 with a pancake with manual video capability would be a nice beast to have in my pocket!

stoney

The bottom line is GF2 is a good camera even without hack. We can help Vitaliy help us. Let's donate and dream he unlocks its potential.

stoney

I tried underexposed videos. It must have pushed the auto ISO to 1250 which is equivalent to GF3's 2000 which is only 2/3 stop lower than GX1's 3200.

The 1st screen capture shot is on a plain white wall. Although it's not clean, there's no visible vertical or horizontal banding lines. Either noise reduction kicks in or noise reproduction uses up the bitrate so much that macro blocking or smearing occurs.

The 2nd screen capture shows tonal gradation issue. This is typical to m43 system.

I'm hoping the hack can improve both cases. But my gut feeling is that 1250 ISO is practical max for GF2. Of course it can't mimic the hacked GH2's high ISO performance as its stable bitrate prolly stays below 50Mbps. Having a fast lens would do it to stay under the ISO limit. 12mm 1.6 or 2.0, 14mm 2.5 or 2.8, 25mm 1.4 or 0.95, 45mm 1.8, 50mm 1.4, etc. You got the body at cheap price. More coins for lenses :)

See mine with Konica Hexanon 40mm 1.8. Pretty cool looking. I like. When using the vintage lens, pressing the LCD magnified the view where it seems showing actual exposure with 1/30 shutter speed and 1250 ISO. When using 1/60 SS flicker setting, the magnified view would be a stop brighter to give some idea about actual exposure before recording anything.

AEL can be easily accessed by setting Q MENU/Fn button to Fn.

stoney · Screen shot 2011-11-26 at 3.35.17 PM.png

There's flicker setting: Motion Picture -> Flicker RED -> 1/50, 1/60, 1/100, 1/120. It locked to the shutter speed for video. Then I used a vintage lens to lock aperture. But the camera controls ISO automatically. It steps through 160/320/640/1250. If PTool can lock the ISO, that would be a full manual control.

There are only two film modes. Standard and B/W. REC -> Picture Adjust. Contrast, sharpness, saturation, NR can be set.

MY COLOR mode has Cinema preset, and it's like GH2's Cinema film mode. But MY COLOR mode ignores all other user settings. The camera controls pretty much everything except the aperture from the vintage lens. It ignores the sharpness and NR settings, too. It has a total of 9 cool presets where GH2 has 8 and GF3 has only 6. But none can be customized except CUSTOM preset. The CUSTOM preset has color, brightness, saturation, and contrast settings, but no NR setting. It would be great to have manual controls on MY COLOR mode, but I know that would be too much to ask.

I tested out GF2 vs GF3 resolution. At 1600 ISO and -1 EV, GF3 gave sharper JPEG. But GF2 was 2/3 stop brighter. GF2's 1000 ISO matched to GF3's 1600 ISO to get the same exposure reading. Then both cameras gave pretty much same resolution. GF2's WB needs color adjustment toward Amber (yellow) to match with GF3's color. You know GF3's lowest ISO is 160 where GF2's is 100. Basically I wouldn't worry about the resolution issue for "my" copy as there can be sample variations.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

At $345 (minus fees)

stoney

14-42X looks great on GF2. 14mm pancake looks best on GF3.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

At $295 (minus fees)

stoney

GF2's JPEG engine smears detail to reduce noise. Take RAW photos instead.

GF2 has the best video capability among GF models. But it definitely needs more polishing. Thus we need PTool. Let's see what this small camera is capable of.

I'm hopeful. What if it never makes it? I wouldn't cry over. Life moves on.

stoney

Newegg had GF2, 14-42, a bag, 4GB deal at $290.

After selling all except the body, the net cost of body only would have been $170.

Sad... I missed it by a few days.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

At $265 (minus fees)

stoney

Since GF13 >>> GF1, prolly GF2VK >>> GF2 where GF2 has more video features than GF1.

Why not GH1? I like carrying GF for candid stuffs. GF body + Lumix pancake combo is awesome. Also GH1 body only is around $500 on ebay. GF2 body was less than $200.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

Tags in Topic

Top Posters