Personal View site logo
Make sure to join PV on Telegram or Facebook! Perfect to keep up with community on your smartphone.
Please, support PV!
It allows to keep PV going, with more focus towards AI, but keeping be one of the few truly independent places.
GH2 showing fixed darker band/stripe 20 pixels high across footage
  • 186 Replies sorted by
  • @John_Farragut I'm also noticing some moving horizontal interference at 1/50th. When I switch to 1/40th it goes away. 1/30th it comes back slightly. You can really see the horizontal movement when you speed the footage up. I will post some video footage of this at a later date.
  • Or a problem with balancing of processors? AFAIK, the GH2 has three of them.
    I remember a similar problem, only vertical, with an early HDTV cam from JVC a free years ago, which had two processors. They fixed it for lower ISOs with a firmware update but it never went away completely at higher ISOs.
    BTW, that camera was a about 10 times the price of a GH2…
  • @RJH No, I've been working around it. When I first noticed it I was on the 14-42mm kit lens (3.5-5.6) using only available light, at ISO1600+. And still a bit under exposed at that. I've got lenses now that are all 1.4 - 1.7, and I typically light every scene so it's been a lot less of a problem for me.

    I haven't tried the new hack yet, but it would be interesting to see how under or over exposure affects it. I suspect it shows up more when it's 2 stops+ under exposed but I'll have to check.
  • Yes, it does show for me with high ISO under the new hack.
  • Same here using last patch Aquarius check out first couple of shots are iso 12800 at f2.8 ss50 last 2 shots are iso 5000 at f1.8.You can see clearly this band appearing on the lower part of the screen, as soon as I turned off an back on, changed lens and iso down to 5000 this band disappeared.

  • Hi!
    Same issue for me.
    So, for be clear, it's a generic problem of GH2 on bad situation, or only few models are concerned? It's a hardware or software problem? If it's soft, maybe the update of december can resolve it..?

    I am under warrantly, so i need to know what i must do : replacement, or post-prod?
  • Actually, good to know that it is more of a generic problem. I saw it, and I despaired. But now I know it is a more common problem, so everybody is in the same boat. Still bad of Panasonic. But you always have to live with these kind of things. Nothing ever is perfect.
  • In fact, I've found the band visible in 24p mode but not in 50i and 50p on my PAL camera with 1/50 shutter...
    It's there when the shutter is 100 with the 50i/p mode.
    The same case for 24p mode, the band isn't there if the shutter is 1/25...
    So it turns out, but not quite sure:
    1 x shutter + 1 x fps = no band
    (anything else) x shutter + 1 x fps = band
  • @exhardy Try higher shutter speeds and you'll see the band move up the picture.
  • Thanks John_Farragut. GH2 can have at least one bug, no problem^^.

    Anybody that want to see it have just to rolling the shutter speeds with the lens cap in high iso.

    Tested on 3 different serial numbers base.
  • Can anyone else confirm if this mainly happens within the first 10 seconds of a recording?
  • The 20 pixel banding becomes noticeable from 1250iso and up. The limit removal of the high iso is great, but with the removal, I think everyone sees that it isn't a batch of cameras but something Panasonic already knew about. In fact, when I tried to get Panasonic to address this issue, they pointed to a document that blamed it on CMOS sensor design, but I called them on it when I said that my Canon 7D never exhibited this behavior.
  • This is unfortunate. For the shoot I have coming up this weekend we have some night shots we were planning to do at ISO1250-1600. But tests do reveal this issue and now have to rethink the approach. I don't think low price of camera justifies this. This seems like a significant flaw.
  • @driftwood

    I just tested, and it makes no difference for me after 10 seconds of recording.. (seAQuake patch)

    The only thing that seems to help is 25 shutter speed.
  • @smsjr
    If you can shoot with 1/25 shutter then you should not have any trouble.
  • 1/25 shutter is breaking the 180º rule! (so use with caution).
  • @RRRR Very rare that I would ever shoot at 1/25.I shoot things in motion and that shutter speed would not play well a lot of the time.
  • @alcomposer
    @RRRR
    @smjsr

    "1/25 shutter is breaking the 180º rule! (so use with caution)."

    +1... If you're using a 1/25 shutter... you're probably not going to like the way your footage will look.
  • Well, each to his own in terms of the look of different shutter speeds.. And horses for courses.
  • @RRRR
    This is not about different look or house for courses. This is clearly a black and white topic.
    180º shutter is the gold standard.

    So this is basically
    1/50 for 24p and 50i
    1/60 for 60i etc

    Other than that you can shoot at 1/100 or 1/120 respectively for the 'Saving Private Ryan look', or 1/25 or 1/30 for the Tom Cruise scene in dark night club movie name that I forget.
    (please jog my memory anyone)

    Anything else is HIGHLY artistic and should be attempted at your own risk. I would suggest having a largish monitor so that you are able to see clearly what you will be getting, and once captured- play it back STRAIGHT away to confirm that it is watchable.

    It is a constant joke for me that for some strange reason DSLR(style) camera makers seem to think that having a shutter that is both variable and able to go up to 1/4000 is somehow a feature in Video Mode? Go figure.

    Also note that if you are using fluorescent lighting this will cause flicker if not synced with the shutter, (ie: 50hz power 1/25, 1/50 or 1/100 shutter etc). So unless you feel that flickering is 'desirable' I would restrain shutter artistic expression.

    Dial it in- like the look, set and forget.


  • @alcomposer
    Don't remember that one, but "Collateral" had the 360 degree shutter look on most of the wider night exteriors.
  • @nomad
    Thanks man - it is Collateral... scene attached...
    collateral-1.jpg
    431 x 300 - 42K
  • To bring this topic back (I was bitten in my ass by a stripe issue on a recent shot).
    Was anyone ever been able to resolve this stripe issue with panasonic?
  • You can't it's a hardware issue just fix it in post with AE
  • Rephrasing if not clear: was anyone able to resolve this issue by contacting panasonic and replacing the camera?
    Also: Fix in post with After effects is a bit vague. You know it is not like there is a "Fix GH2 stripe" plug-in in AE.