For me, the best aspect of this ruse is the title: The Big Thing. Fucking love it! And to hear Hitler say he wants "The Big Thing". LOL.

@Dusty42 The TZ5 does not have a silent electronic shutter. It is very quiet, but discernible, while the SH mode shutter on the GH2 is truly silent. What was unique about it (for a compact) was that you could keep the burst mode going indefinitely until the battery ran out. The longest I ever ran it was around 90 minutes without stopping, and while I can do something similar on other larger and more expensive cameras, it is unusual for a compact (believe me, I had a heck of a time replacing it).

On the GH2 I am familiar with the 80% mode (and more recently HBR) - the difference between it and SH mode is 10 fps and a couple other minor things. The hacks have brought the two much closer than they were in the other areas, but as of the middle of last year, you could still tell the difference a lot more easily than now in stills.

But 40 fps 1080P vs 30 fps 1080P is a noticeable difference. And the resolution difference vs 60 FPS 720P is also noticeable.

In other words, 40 fps SH mode remains the highest speed available at maxmimum video resolution by a difference of 33%. And I cannot vouch for the newest hacks, but back in early December it was noticeably better in lowlight slowmotion with a 1/100 or 1/125 shutter than the 720P modes I tried at the time (and I seem to remember than the 24H ones too).

So specialized, but useful.

Well at least you had a chance to be cynical tired. I think i would have been a believer had i not participated, for many reasons stated by others. Anyway, a little bit of bullshit never hurt anyone and if anything, it lightened up the atmosphere of PV somewhat. Vitaliy, you're a complex character, but most here would not own a GH camera if not for your talents :-)

@mimirsan If VK decided that he was no longer doing this, I think a lot of people would understand and move on. We are lucky to have this community, but most good things in life come to an end. In the mean time, we can be happy that we have such a special and unique situation. In the end, VK most likely won't be the cause of the end of these hacks. Most probably world depression or some kind of corporate intervention will stop this.

@thepalalias, "The TZ5 does not have a silent electronic shutter" But it's all electronic. The sound you hear might be coming from the speaker? In GH2, you can set how loud this sound is in the setup menu; the sound does a pretty good job of mimicking a mechanical shutter. On the GH2, when the sound is set to low, you might think that it's a mechanical shutter. That might be the case on your TZ5. You can run the TZ5 shutter for many more times than 200,000 to 300,000 clicks. Try that with a mechanical shutter. A semi pro Nikon is only rated at 100,00 - 200,000 clicks. Do you think the GH1/GH2 are rated any higher? I have not seen an officially rated spec on these cams.

I shoot photos on my GH2 (RAW). But I am forced to use the "loud" mechanical shutter. Jpegs out of GH2 is worse than jpegs from my 10-year old Nikon D100. I kid you not. So I truly wish that Vitaliy removes the restriction on the High Speed Burst (SH) mode to shoot RAW. This will make GH2 a well rounded cam. Shooting nice video, RAW silently, timelapse without wearing the shutter, extending the life of the cam, etc.. Please, please Vitaliy, do you see any possibility that a hack to optionally remove the restriction will be in a future ptool?

"the difference between it and SH mode is 10 fps" From the above quote, you're saying that the Variable Move Mode is always based on 24p mode. I believe the it's dependent on what mode you're in (need to check tonight). So if you're shooting in HBR (30p or 60i?), 80% mode will give you 37.5fps; that 2.5fps difference between SH mode. In 720p mode, 80% mode will give you 75fps. And of course, if you're shooting 24p, 80% mode will give you 30fps. And yes, if you're always shooting in 24p, the difference is 10 frames. I agree with you in term of quality difference in jpeg from SH mode and AVCHD.

The point that I was trying to make, in the last post, was that if Vitaliy puts in a hack to remove the restriction on photo size (frame rate might be reduced per hardware limitation) in High Speed Burst mode, you can choose to use it or not to use it. It's a matter of simply checking a box like to ISO limit restriction. You can still use ptool and stay with the 40fps that you dearly love. It's nice, though, to hear from you using the SH mode for another purpose.

I am interested in knowing how many GHx owners shoot photos using the cam. How do you use the High Speed Burst (SH) mode? Do you use that mode at all? I am hoping to hear from others.

Thanks.

@Dusty42 I use high speed burst to shoot Astro Photographs because it eliminates the shutter vibration. I wish I could shoot RAW images that way.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1041&message=41113079

To those who like to misread what i wrote : i stress that i like the Hitler videos. They're hilarious. But i don't understand why they are considered funnier with a buildup leading to april 1 (i like them anyway, not in an april 1 context). Maybe it's because i'm no fanboy, that i don't understand the excitement. I only see how pranks like these mess up google for years to come. Anytime you'd need to do a specific search on the topics discussed here, and you wouldn't find the source of this joke, you'd still think something like this was real. I regularly encounter this for instance with trying to find info on 4K dslrs (which right now may be far-off but maybe next week they might not be) and i kept finding last year's YouTube loser who wrote you could turn a 550d into a 4k cam. I know this is not true, but then it does keep showing up in Google when trying to find anything on a 4k dslr. Why would you need to make fun of the fanboys? (Which i feel are being taught a lesson only cause you have a saviour's complex. Just ignore them.) April fools is a lame kind of humour imo. In this case because it exploits the stupidity of the fanboys. The Hitler videos however are brilliant.

@Dusty42 Next up, SH burst mode framrate vs 80% framerate. Both are completely fixed - the 80% mode does not remember what mode you were in and if it did, a lot of people would already be shooting slow-motion with it. I routinely switch from SH mode to 80% mode and from 24H to 80% mode and it is always the same number of FPS, believe me.

From an ergonomic standpoint, if it were related to the current shooting mode you were in, it would likely be modified from another button or menu screen or be a drop down menu under you current mode (like 80%, 200% and 300% currently are under VFR but under the Cinema and other modes instead).

Anyway, none of the rest really matter. The fact is that the factory max for video modes is 30 fps at 1080P and 60FPS at 720P, unless you use 40FPS SH burst mode.

@Dusty42 Even if we work under the assumption that the TZ5 has an electronic shutter (and I am neither saying that it does or does not) it does not have a silent shutter, just a very quiet one. Because each time there is an exposure, regardless of whether you shoot with every sound disabled, there will be a click that is rather quiet.

I would not try to analyze it by the rated shutter life. I would go out and shoot 3,000 to 8,000 exposures a day with my 50D for timelapse HDR or straight timelapse for months and be fine - one week in Decmber I had 21,000 exposures or more on each of the following 3 cameras: 50D, GH1 and GH2. Each of the two times I had my shutter drive assembly replaced they commented on how far past the specified life it was on that 50D. These are conservative ratings (as they should be) much like the MHz or GHz ratings CPUs are given when bin sorting: the problems are much bigger if over-rate than under-rate.

@mpgxsvcd @dusty42 That type of moon shot is exactly why I wished the SH burst mode included EX tele-converter capability. I always had to switch to video mode when I wanted to zoom in more. Anyway, I shot mine with a 600mm f/4 Canon L series with EF III 2x converter and then in EX24 and EX SH mode (so with an effective aperture of f/8.0) last December. It was heavy to carry it along with my other gear to Mt. Hollywood but I really enjoyed the pictures and videos of things 5 to 8 miles away, as well as the moon and clouds.

Late to the party but those were hilarious vids, and totally fixed an otherwise lame April Fools day. Thanks VK!!!!

I'm thinking this thread needs the two vidos posted in a last post and then the thread closed, i don't see anything more to gain here.