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Footage from the new "GH13"


Patrick Neary

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Yes and I'm greatly encouraged but I want to see it next to some Canon stuff. The Canons I suspect would not do nearly so well.

 

There's a clip on vimeo somewhere of a guy wearing a coarsely-woven black flat cap which is quite eyebrow-raising given how little aliasing there appears to be - but again, it's very hard to evaluate this stuff off a 6mbps h.264.

 

P

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Yes and I'm greatly encouraged but I want to see it next to some Canon stuff. The Canons I suspect would not do nearly so well.

 

There's a clip on vimeo somewhere of a guy wearing a coarsely-woven black flat cap which is quite eyebrow-raising given how little aliasing there appears to be - but again, it's very hard to evaluate this stuff off a 6mbps h.264.

 

P

 

 

Here's a collection of poorly shot clips (mine) that i think show off the GH(13)s bad side (notes on the vimeo page)

 

http://www.vimeo.com/12948828

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Ah, finally someone who understands the value of seeing something fail!

 

 

I'm evaluating the GH1 against the 7D, or possibly a 550D if Canon ever gets around to shipping any to the UK. Stream of consciousness begins here:

 

- I mainly have access to Canon glass. This can be easily adapted to the GH1 - practically anything can, given the extremely short FFD on the micro four-thirds mount. However while these lenses have manual focus, they don't have manual aperture control, making this a questionable solution.

 

- Native mount lenses for the GH1 are few in number and hideously expensive, despite the Four Thirds approach of letting the camera correct certain lens aberrations electronically, which was intended to (and presumably will) reduce prices.

 

- Even if the EF-S glass did work properly would I really want to use it on anything vaguely serious.

 

- I have a couple of full manual Pentax lenses and an EF adaptor, and Pentax K primes can be had for cheap, but then am I going to hamstring the camera by putting cheap glass on it?

 

- The sensors on the 550D and 7D are about the same size as a 35 motion picture frame. The GH1's is considerably (maybe 40%) smaller. So:

 

- If I buy cheap glass for it, that glass will be slow, and by the time I'm shooting micro 4/3 at F/4, I might as well shoot with a 2/3" video camera for all the effect it's going to have on depth of field.

 

 

- The GH1 doesn't seem to have such nice highlight handling as the Canon stuff, and it doesn't have such fine control over colorimetry.

 

 

- There is no live video feed on the GH1. This is maddening.

 

 

- Canon probably has poorer codec performance, especially with the expanded bitrate options available through third-party firmware for the Panasonic.

 

 

- The GH1's aliasing performance appears to be considerably better than the any of Canon's, though not as good as even quite basic video cameras such as the HVX-200.

 

 

- Panny's cheaper, but I would probably more than spend the difference hunting down adaptable glass.

 

 

- GH1 doesn't overheat, or at least not as much

- 7D probably has worse rolling shutter skew.

- GH1 takes SD cards. I own CF.

 

 

Decisions, decisions. 7D is winning right now but I find myself regretting that because the 7D's aliasing performance is so poor.

 

 

P

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Ah, finally someone who understands the value of seeing something fail!

 

P

 

Every imaging system has artifacts and shortcomings as you know, it's just a matter of deciding which ones you can live with (and afford).

I got to see a new 35mm print of 8 1/2 last week and I thought if some of those pixel peepers looked at this they would proclaim that 35mm was unsuitable for theatrical origination.

 

As far as adapting lenses, I've tried some of my manual AIS, AF, and pre-AI Nikkors (with a $30 adapter) and the difference in quality from the stock zoom is not subtle at all. PK (even older M42) lenses may be cheap, but if you're careful about buying, as with any mass produced stills lens, they can be extremely good glass as well. When I was shooting for a newspaper (pre digital days) I tried out three or four 85 f2 nikkors before I found one that was really good.

 

The 20mm f1.7 Panasonic lens is quite good, and not that expensive for a fast wide-ish angle, the main problem seems to be with the supply.

 

I haven't even begun to mess with image control parameters with the GH1, but I suspect it's just as malleable as the Canons given enough button pushing.

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Canon has that rather nice Picture Style Editor thing which gives you full blown curves. I don't think the GH1 has that.

 

GH1 pictures do look somewhat less subjectively "nice" than Canon, probably due to the lower usable dynamic range on a smaller sensor.

 

Edit: oh, and. I'm worried that if I buy a load of low-cost Pentax glass, it'll all be F/4 and I'll end up exactly back where I started on 2/3" video as regards depth of field. What's your experience?

 

Edit edit - Oh, apparently it's about 2/3 of a stop difference between micro 4/3 and APS-C. Not terribly significant. I really should look these things up before I post.

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