@5mars "I have a GH2 and I hesitate to invest in GH3, preferring to wait for blackmagic MFT (unfortunately I'm not very patient)"

You'll need to be very patient. I preordered a EF version in July and have been told by the manufacturer that I likely will not get my order until march at earliest, and probably much later. So who knows for m43 versions. Anyway, I'm cancelling it and buying a gh3. I'll wait until 2014 to buy a 2k+ camera, by which time there should be an active mount m43 bmcc and the sony-red war should have knocked off some $$ (oh, and lets not forget the 4k varicam).

Its funny, but what convinced me, other than the delay, was how incredibly the AF is. As someone who has to shoot solo (so is thinking as much about sync or sound than focus), or has to shoot things that require AF (pretty much anything that flies) I'm very impressed by this development. In fact (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) is there any non-CCD camera that has better autofocus than the gh3???

@FilmingArt the hack is stable - a year long use without problems

Ahhh, you ordered yet?

@Vitaliy_Kiselev How the 'Panasonic' GH3 hack is progressing, you collected money for the camera(s) right?

@gaman

Thank you for your reply and your test. Does the 2x mode work in 1080p60/50 or just in 24/25/30?

@brudney
@hay

This topic is not about GH2 and hacks stability, move to proper topic.

i returned my gh3 after comparing its footage with that captured from gh2 stock, gh2 flowmotion and gh2 v9b.

although i think the gh3 sensor is slightly better than that of the gh2, i think the imaging characteristics are very minor, not enough for me to keep the gh3 (even with improved body design).

my real question now is how much better is hacked gh2 footage than stock. if you convert the mts via 5dtorgb to prores 422hq and grade in AE w/444 export the differences i see are minute. i'll keep using the hacks b/c i do see they have slight benefit (many thanks to all involved), but i really wish this site had more substantive technical comparisons ("blind style") between stock and hacked settings (and even between hacks) using charts. it seems to me that hack rivalry, apparent on many threads, has resulted in unhealthy biases.

@FilmingArt

I have never had ONE problem with the hack at all. Never once, in a year of shooting tons of footage and events. Just make sure you fallowing the SD card requirements for the patch your using.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev

It is incorrect statement. In GH3 it is all the same :-)

Oh ok, cool. Thanks for clearing that up.

GH2 hack is NOT stable..... I don't care what anyone says, it is simple not stable. Also there's more to a camera than just an image. Even if the GH2 and GH3 had the same image, the build and button options are worth the upgrade. GH2 is built horribly, GH3 is a lot better. Also the oled screen is beautiful.

@bwhitz perhaps, the whole "cinematic texture" that you talk about is what you can push in post and not something that's just a result of a footage straight from the camera?

@JDN: what are you thoughts on the x2 digital zoom for video. How much does quality suffer?

In this test you can see a shoot to show the differences between 2X digital zoom and ETC 2.6X on GH2. Aside the clear difference in dept of field given by the ETC mode, that makes the GH2 sensor acting like a 1/2" sized one, the two images are pretty the same.