Still dreaming of AF100 firmware fix for all the kinks...

• focus expansion (can be fixed with MONEY)
• 1080P50/60 with sound (can be fixed with MONEY)

Still undone...

• Auto iris is unusable. Having horrible steps and being slow as hell renders it totally useless.
• Manual iris control is laggy and not precise
• Auto focus is sooooo slow
• Ugly clipping of reds causing ugly highlighs
• Strong aliasing in and around highlights
• higher bitrates to get rid of compression artefacts

Other than those I like it :)

But the fact it really cannot be used with autoexposure renders it useless for many types of jobs. And the autofocus is really too slow to be called auto. It does find good focus eventually though :) To me its only all manual setting with this thing and external recording.

It is a shame. I had to learn the hard way not to buy a single panasonic "pro" camera again. And what is most irritating about it all, is that when they fix some faults with the camera they come up with a PAID upgrade... which is hardly obtainable anywhere.

>there is no way to add features, change the menu structure or make the camera into something other than what it is

As far as I remember she is talking is such words for long, long time.
She really thinks that it is impossible for ANY camera. She is MANAGER!

As fo risky investment. If you really need AF100, buy it, don't look at promises.
If not, fuck Jan and go and get Sony. Win-Win solution :-)

@LPowell

Can you use your own words instead of link, please.
And I do not see any update other then Jan opinion (and opinion of Jan is near absolute zero for Japan I am afraid).
We need to talk direct with Japan to understand any real intentions.
All I know is that first really software oriented camera will make true revolution.

P.S. May be all this shit is result of this http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/2911 ? Or it is alcohol caused dream?

I have on several occasions posted critical assessments of the AF100on forums.

My main interest in making these types of posts is to highlight crucial technical issues directly to Jan and other Panasonic marketing people . While I haven't personally received any negative responses from moderators, I have seen threads unilaterally closed or deleted at Jan's request. In my view, this confirms that she does pay close attention to forums.

I would be most interested in the capabilities of the AF100 should a hack became available for it. (And of course, for the GH2 as well.) For my purposes, the biggest disadvantage of the GH1 is its inability to do anything beyond recording good video. The GH1 integrates very poorly with condenser mics, external monitors and viewfinders, timecode and audio recorders, waveform monitors and remote control devices.

The AF100 has the basic potential to integrate these components into a compact, centrally coordinated recording system. Unfortunately, the current firmware falls a bit short of what's needed to handle each of the required interfaces at a consistent level of quality and functionality. That (along with a real-time image sensor RAW data tap) is what I'm patiently waiting for.

I like the AF100, but I think it's biggest downfall is a lack of "Smooth" type profile that slightly lowers DR, but in return causes no weird color shifts when going into overexposure.

For shoots where every second counts and the client needs to monitor or you need to record to an external recorder, or sync to another camera with TC, the AF100 is a better choice than say a GH2. Those are days when you're getting paid $1000 a day to shoot and bring your own equipment. If you're getting paid in the $300/ day range for the same thing and you need to shoot without permits, without insurance, and losing one shot isn't going to cost you you're job, than the GH2 is perfectly capable of these tasks.

I actually prefer the additional sharpness and color gamut of the GH2. I have never once seen aliasing or moire in any footage that I've shot, and the body is so tiny you can put it anywhere. It has less aliasing than any camera under 10k, even less than the F3. F3 is an amazing camera as well, but the S-log firmware price means I would get a used Red One cheaper before going the f3 route.

Seriously, many of the AF100 complaints could be taken away with just the simple smooth profile from the GH series.

Understood.

That's too bad.. :)

I'd also love to take an AF100 apart and see just how different they are.

I have not looked but is there any kind of firmware update available for the AF100? I wonder if it were compared to the GH series cameras, how different in size and style it would be. I'm betting that there are large amounts of the code that are identical and that the extra bits that the AF100 have are just sub routines that hook into the main code.

Makes me wonder if certain features(that don't need specific hardware) could be ported from the AF100 to the GH2 after the encryption is bypassed..

I guess I should chime in here. I was part of that thread that was closed. I expected it to happen but I really thought it would get closed earlier than it did. I think Mr. Barry and co. exercised pretty good self-control for the most part. I'm sure panny asked them to close the thread and sponsors do keep the forum paid for so I have no problem with them obliging, but I don't have to stick around either and that means possible lost revenue from the lack of my ad clicks or buying sponsor's goods, both of which I have done a number of times. I can just post elsewhere if I choose, and now VK has opened this new forum for those of us who think differently than most on DVXuser. I've seen it on other forums, eventually the heavy hand will shoo everyone away and do the exact opposite of what was expected.

Anyway, back to the GH2 vs. AF100.

It's no secret that people who don't understand what's actually *inside* of devices can be easily swayed to believe that those devices are somehow different to others. I'm fairly neutral on the idea that Mr. Barry is in the pocket of Panasonic. I tend to think that he was told by panny that the AF100 is somehow drastically different than the gh2 and he truly believes them. That's fine, I understand that. Marketers plan on that type of loyalty and they count on their customers to spread that marketing pitch by telling everyone they know about their new toys. If this didn't happen, then nothing new would get sold. Everyone would be using their old devices that are plenty good-enough. It's like the whole Ipod/Ipad/Iphone thing. Every couple months they come out with a device that is marginally better and large numbers of people who have perfectly working older devices line up to get the new and improved thing. Guess what? A phone is still a phone. An MP3 player is still an MP3 player and a tablet computer is still a tablet computer. It's just the sex and coolness that they sell with large amounts of peer pressure and WOW factor.

I work in the electronics design field and I work with marketers who sell these things to people. I've been doing it for over 15 years now and every job I've had I've watched the marketers embellish the truth to pump up sales. They don't outright lie but they do stretch the truth a lot. So when someone comes along and says that some marketing person *told* them that it's different, I have to really take that with a grain of salt as I know that the marketer is likely in selling or ass-covering mode. Again, I'm not trying to insult anyone or claim that anyone is actually making things up, but I know how these things work behind the scenes and in the real world and would be surprised if somehow it was different this time..

So after watching many videos, pixel peeping, and reading possibly hundreds of threads on the GH2 and AF100 all over the internet, I can say that some serious comparison can be made. Sure they have some obvious mechanical differences but while others are looking at stuff like how much moire or aliasing these things have, I'm looking at their deficiencies and noting that each seem to have extremely similar problems such as the same yellow cast on the picture, same banding at the same shutter rates, same amounts of noise in the dark areas, same blue lines, same flaring during bright light, etc. If the AF100 had a different sensor and/or processing, then most of these visual problems would be captured somewhat differently. But they aren't and I've been able to find the exact same visual problems amongst videos from each camera. This says to me that the sensor and processing are likely the same.

Sure there are differences like XLR jacks and SDI outputs and ND filters and all that but those are fairly superficial in terms of design. You could put an XLR jack on your GH2 if you wanted. You already have a digital video stream and I've seen simple IP cores(bits of programming you can buy) for FPGA ICs for HD-SDI and HDMI transceivers. Adding a small board and some ICs could create a huge number of outputs of different kinds. You don't have to change a thing on your main board. These are just some of the examples that may be different on the outside but don't actually change anything about the core of the camera. All of these could be added to a GH2's system with additional boards and make it have the same functionality as an AF100. The rest seems to be simple software differences.

>From Vincent Laforet blog

I think that his opinions about AF100 are highly subjective.
Something like anti-Barry :-) "All is bad" postion opposite to "all is perfect".
Neither one is informative.

As for Zacuto tests. I find them to be one of strangest things. Some mix between marketing and "independent" tests.

@DrDave

Generally, you must use XLR connectors if you can. They, alone, do not make sound better.
But good microphones that you can connect to them and better preamps really make the difference.
Plus you can't accidently unplug good connector or get static hum because of not so good contact.
And using locking HDMI cables is also very good idea. Unfortunately, I do not see locking mini HDMI.

@dcloud
>I want a GH2 simply because its small and i can carry it anywhere without being obtrusive. Thats it.
>I have an AF100 and I earn money from it and it is paying for itself. for its cost, its really convenient with all the >features mentioned. WFM and Vectorscope: I use it alot and it has made exposure easy and illegal colors are >easy to spot. Thinking its not useful is ignorant.

I really like AF100, and I think that for many people its price will pay out fast.
But, as I said, it is completely wrong to try to sell it to someone who really do not need all this.

Portability is an important plus for me. For example recently, for a videoclip, i used the gh2 linked to hat. With the af100, it wouldn't ever been possible. It's a priceless feature for me. However is a matter of needs.

Yes built-in ND filter is discrete and it's just fine. 2x, 4x, 6x... what more to ask? No more step up rings. It just makes the whole setup more compact.

Reflective sensor... true. Hopefully CDAF system can determine metering based on each frame's digital image so that non reflective sensor can come back. Actually this can open up varieties of metering strategy.