Thanks for your input @Brianl, interesting link to understand more about this topic.

@Aria, The analogy with sound recording make total sens to me, and remind me the way pro photography got suddenly open to amateur with the entry of digital camera which gives more room for try and mistake correction on the field vs "you have to get it right at first" with slides. I lost my job as a correspondent in Japan for that reason, as photography suddenly became mainstream and widely distributed on the net. Now, in video, the biggest weakness of my production model is sound recording. Being a one man doing everything, the person I am missing the most is a sound man, and if I invest myself in more serious film making project, he would be the first person to join my team.

@IronFilm, Thanks for the comment, and I agree with you on the color grading which looks too much on picture sample, but works out on the film. I wanted to try as hard as possible to break down those 4:2:0 8 bits AVCHD file (as I read so many terrifying post on that matter) but I couldn't! There is lots of post job on this film. Important is to shoot it as flat as possible and to know what you can achieve in post to increase DR and get the color and the mood you are looking for.

Well, I definitely DON'T need 4:4:4, RAW and other such stuff. I played with 4:2:2 uncompressed few years ago when people were building HDMI recording backpack rigs for HV20, which I also did. I think most of the people just don't realize what it is. They think it's a sort of a silver bullet that will make their videos magically better. It's not. The quality advantage is really marginal and can be seen only in very specific conditions, but the workflow PITA is big. You've got huge files, doubled and tripled rendering times, worse previews and other resources hiccups. Is it worth it? Well, personally for me and for the type of job I do it doesn't. 9/10 times. The rest 1 time I do really need it - I can rent. Period, the end.

@Eurocameraman Love seeing someone else who's also still shooting on a GH1, I still shoot 90% of my work on two of them and 720p 60 at that for 720 delivery on Vimeo so 4k is years away for me. My stuff contains lots of camera and subject motion ( moving ocean water ) so 1080 or 4k details would not be easily noticeable. Your GH1 videos look very impressive and don't appear to suffer the issues that plagued many like aliasing and sensor noise banding, maybe you just didn't use those shots in the selects for the videos.

Good luck in future mate. R

@eurocameraman What standards are you calibrating your monitor too? Some say to use sRGB? I conform to Rec 709. This is off topic so I have posted more about it here (in the proper topic): http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6793/how-to-setup-dell-u2410-wide-gamut-monitor-for-color-grading-in-cs6-and-resolve/p1

@Rambo Thanks for your message. I never met most of the problem people were mentioning in forum. I got banding once on an indoor shot while using a wide lens which aperture was not big enough (compare to my lens set), I had to push the ISO more than I wanted and banding came out. I reshot a different way and it came out without problem. I heard that some GH1 suffered of this but not all of them, among mine, only one show of this problem, you can see final result of the shoot here. Marlene (US)

Also, the very first time I used the GH1, i just got it in hand, I helped a friend shooting his Music Video without budget. I think the music, song and video are not very exciting (shot in 3 evenings), but this can give you an idea of the rendering of the GH1 at night. Shanghai (in Chinese)

@CFreak You have misconception about what 12 bit vs 8 bit does. There's no difference in dynamic range whatsoever. If the sensor delivers, say, 13 stops of DR it will be still 13 stops of latitude between the darkest shadow and the brightest highlight, no matter whether you encode it to either 8 bits, or 10, or 12 or whatever. The difference is all about HOW MANY brightness steps will be between the darkest shadow and the brightest highlight. So you will definitively see more banding, more discrete color bands, using 8 bit compression on gradients. The most common situation for smooth gradients that occurs in nature is a sunset. You will definitely benefit from 12 bits if you shoot sunsets on a daily basis. Other than that the difference is not as obvious to human eye as most people tend to think.

Shoot something on a chroma wall with a GH2 and a GH4 with 4:2:2 and do some compositing... and then repeat there's no "need" for better than GH2-level footage. ;)

Question: Do we really need the GH4 and 4:2:2, 10 bit, 4K, Raw file?

Answer: Yes.

Personally I believe that unless it's a proxy, all footage should be AT LEAST 1080, 422, 10bit, and 150 Mbps or higher I-Frame.

Ok, I should clarify:

Personally I believe that for PROFESSIONAL USE unless it's a proxy, all footage should be at least 1080, 422, 10bit, and 150 Mbps or higher I-Frame If 1080 or 600 Mbps or higher I-Frame if 4K (UHD).

Hello fellow filmakers, i've been following this forum from when i bought the GH2 in 2011. But i never actually posted on here. With the hack (i always used the Sanity patch, as i rely on stability and hard drive economy) it became a little jewel... but as with other dslr cameras, i've always been plagued by the infamous rolling shutter (micro and macro jello). With GH2 it's still there, but with obvious improvements on sensor speed/refresh.

This is my last personal project with GH2:

Wheter you'll like it or not (for who's not interested in the story and want to see the footage i suggest to skip the intro and go straight to 1:26) it has been an hassle to manage all the defects that this camera has. Ok i'm not a pro, nor i own pro gear, all handheld/tripod, but between rolling shutter, compression artifacts, blown highlights due to low DR, noise from rising the shadows (and in general the weird ISO issues), i've honestly spent too much time on the post-production side (and it's not an enjoiable time like color correction, setting the style etc...it s a pain in the ass to correct every single clip that looks wrong, not knowing until the end if it could be used or not) Don't get me wrong, i think that for the money it's a great camera... but a filmmaker should spend more time on shooting/editing/soundtracking rather than try to adjust and correct in camera errors. Obviously you cold say...spend more money and get a pro camera. Yes i could... but isn't the purpose of this market segment to give us a middle way? It's disappointing to know that in this market range you could have cinemalike style, but in the end, you have to die to get something interesting out of the footage. And i'm not talking about shaky footage to stabilize.. if it was only that... it would be fine: it's the camera against my shaky hands.. so perfectly fair. It's all the rest that has been a nightmare. I love and hate this camera, so i'm now used to this.

With the recent news in the market, such BMCC, 5D markIII, GH3 & GH4, i've been overwhelmed by the desire to upgrade to a new model, but what i've seen is that there are no real improvements... or to better say, none of these new models give me a good reason to make a definitive choice.

5D MKIII: too soft with factory settings (even more to my eyes used to the crispy GH2), too much of an hassle with the new RAW/magic lantern (storage, heavy post, dedicated software, monster hardware to interact in post). No middle way to choose from...or soft, or supercrispy but heavy like hell. And one of the biggest issues to me: no flip lcd screen (if you get used to it with GH2, you can't even think to go back)

BM CinemaCamera: no m43 active mount to be able to use my m43 lenses electronic functions, smaller sensor (ok better with metabones, but still impossible to get a beautiful, creamy shallow DOF like 5D), totally different workflow in post plus it's required to spend tons of money in rigs and other stuff needed to have decent results. Plus ergonomically really sucks! And i don't need 12 stop of DR, if the price i have to pay is a nightmare in post.

BM Pocket CC: to me is too small, and still has a lot of issues. Yes, cool for the price, but still too much of a toylike that requires anyway painful postproduction.

GH3: as you all have seen... to me not worth an upgrade from GH2 (to me big improvements should have been better low light performances, little more DR)

GH4: basically 4K is not exactly what i need now... i was still looking for better low light and DR. And if i get the yagh... the price is going crazy to the 5MKIII range. I've been at Camera Park, the 25th of April when Driftwood presented it, so i had a chance to touch it and try it. Overall a good camera, lot of differences from my GH2, i saw the pedestal and control of the blacks and the cineD profiles... all cool stuff, but then i saw online different tests and actually the little improvements in DR brought back the hated noise. So... i could write for hours, but to cut: i live and work in London, and in June i'll be traveling for my first time to the US, so i thought it was the right time to purchase a new camera, to try it on the road, shooting the landscapes i always dreamt of. The idea to shoot only with the GH2, and then having again a hell of post issues made me want to make the big step in upgrading. I was thinking to the 5d (as i ve been secretly in love with its look for years... glorious full frame creamy footage and great still camera) but i've been shocked at how bad it is with its softness. And the idea to sharpen in post seems to me ridiculous (post sharpening will not add detail, it will only destroy high frequencies).

I'm actually thinking to continue with my GH2, buy the metabones speedbooster and see if can get any little improvement (at least in light and crop factor) So this is my confusion about what's going on in the market actually. This market is constantly throwing at us multiple new features with every new model, but then they "forget" to improve the old ones. I understand that these companies are challenging each other... but this is not going anywhere. Do we really need all of this? Like RAW and 4k? Beautiful indeed, but still, there are so many other old issues, i'd rather to see them solved before. It's like: we can go to the moon.. but by horse riding. Let's go less far, but in a better way. I hope you understand my frustration and point of view.

I'm waiting until to see how the A7s shakes out...pricewise. To see in the dark....And from the gh4 news, 1080 isn't any better than the gh3, unless you downconvert 4k. Rumor newz is that this year the gh3 will be heavily discounted, along with the g6. Middle of the pricewise road folks...like gh folks... should also be looking at a6000. It's pretty hard to beat the multi-aspect ratio sensor of the gh1 & 2.

Glad that you can manage the postproduction and the storage with RAW. As i said before RAW and 4K produce wonderful images, but i think we are still not ready (or at least "I'm not") to manage the workflow, unless we have a lot of time and big cash to spend in hardware/storage.