@LPowell Thanks. I buy into your theory. You saying the design of m43 lenses gives the extra sharpness where the body processes indifferently. The telecentric m43 lens design makes sense to explain the more light reflection from the m43 sensor back to the lens.

@stonebat - "I guess the body recognizes Lumix m43 lenses and applies some sort of sharpening."

I seriously doubt this is the case, as Panasonic would have spun it in promotional material as an exclusive advantage of Four Thirds system lenses. What seems more likely is that the Lumix lenses' clinical sharpness is due to their image-space telecentric design:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecentric_lens

Unlike film, which is flat and equally sensitive to light from all angles, the photo receptors in a CMOS image sensor are fabricated into cylindrical wells. As a result, oblique light rays may defract off the circular rims of the photo receptors and reduce the overall sharpness of the image. The design goal with a telecentric lens is to focus the light into rays that are parallel to the axis of the lens - and thus perpendicular to the image sensor - minimizing the defraction effect of oblique light rays.

Since legacy lenses were designed for film, they allow more oblique rays to strike the image sensor, particularly ultra-fast primes shot wide open. This produces an overall softening of the image which many of us prefer to the precise digital look of Lumix and Zuiko lenses. The drawback, however, is that legacy lenses are more susceptible to flare and reflections that bounce back into the lens off the image sensor itself. Panasonic's sensors are prone to blowing out highlights and uncontrolled lens flare can make this even worse.

While the digital image sharpening filter in the camera can make aliasing artifacts look worse, it cannot simply be "turned off". It is an integral part of the demosaic filter that converts the image sensor's Bayer RGBG array into RGB pixels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing

The reason a sharpening filter is necessary is because the RGB still-frame resolution of the camera is generated at the same high resolution as the photo receptor array. The native luminance resolution of the sensor is actually closer to the number of green photo receptors, which is only a quarter of the GH2's rated 16 megapixels. The mathematical interpolation used to calculate the RGB pixel values would produce overly-smoothed image details if sharpening were not used in the algorithm. While Panasonic has not disclosed the details of their proprietary demosaic algorithm, it no doubt uses edge detection techniques rather than straightforward unsharp masking.

OTOH, the GH2's Sharpness settings were optimized for high resolution JPEG still photography rather than HD video, and could probably be patched to lower values. However, this would not eliminate aliasing artifacts, it would only tone them down, along with genuine image details. The only way to reduce aliasing at the source is by lens and/or filter choice. Here again, the dilemma is the trade-off between excessive sharpness and susceptibility to lens flare. To my eyes, the modern aspherical lens designs used in contemporary Nikon, Samyang, Tokina, Sigma, and Tamron lenses produce more balanced results than either non-aspherical legacy primes or telecentric Lumix and Zuiko lenses. If they were more compatible with the GH2, I'd probably include modern Canon aspherical lenses as well.

Thank you starstuff!

I love Pana lenses, I have the 7-14 and it's just awesome, really need to kill that sharpening ...

Thanks for the crops.
I'm not sure how magnified those crops are, but I'm not seeing sharpening artifacts on them.

Ian, I believe you're correct about the panny lenses.
An interesting test would be shoot text like the above (and show magnified), but compare against one of the panasonic lenses to the Canon FD or something else.

Also, since this does seem to be the case, it makes me wonder if there's a way to hack this and offer and on/off option?

@Elenion Exactly. This is what I've been saying all along.

So this is some 100% crops.
Where Excon is enabled I cannot see much of a difference in sharpness between 60i and 24p using Excon.

Shot on a Canon FD 28mm 2.8 at f/4. ISO is 160, SS 25. I didn't process the images, only aligned them im Photoshop, no white balancing etc.

yes that's what I'm asking since post #1. Too much digital sharpening, always.

There are black ProMist filters in lens size and they are as good as those in a mattebox.

Sorry, I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but often when we compare the sharpness of gh2 video, we're comparing it to "pro" video. A whole heck of a lot of pro video, dslr or otherwise, is shot with a black frost 1/8 to take away the video look (and sometimes at 1/4 or and 1/8) -- unfortunately, those filters cost $200 - $350. But I can tell you the second you put them in, excessive sharpness is gone.

@_gl good info, thanks! was not aware of that post. I guess I'll try some 60i myself now.

@robbie75vr,

Have you ever considered shooting with an anamorphic lens. Mine offsets the sharpness Of my GH1(7) very well and I am using an in-camera sharpness setting of +2. I know the hacked GH2 is sharper than the hacked GH1 but I think an anamorphic lens would be a perfect solution to your problem. Also, Like @Stonebat mentioned, old manual focus primes and zooms would go a long way to solving your problem also.

here is an example: