@bwhitz - Have you read Barry Green's AF-100 book? Well, I should ask, have you ever shot your own footage or owned/rented/handled an AF-100? I ask about Barry's AF-100 guide as there are many examples how to make things "pop".
Lastly, I would suggest the skin tones from my example are far more accurate. There's nothing you're going to get with correct reds/greens, etc. like that out of the GH2. Period. No ultra-megabit hack will make the colors right. Just sayin'. Also, BOTH cameras have problems with highlights. The moire is much less from the Af100 from my testing side by side with a GH2 and both equipped with a 14/2.5 lens.

If you like your GH2 and others like the AF100, that's fine. This isn't a zero-sum game. I just hate to read about people putting down a completely different product to make theirs better. Both are great cameras.

My understanding is that the AF100 has a 12 megapixel sensor, the next generation beyond the GH1. I think the only case where some form of downsampling is not used is in the GH2's Telecropping mode. The BBC's resolution tests on the AF100 established that while its image sensor does produce high-resolution aliasing artifacts, it is free of the multi-colored moire effects that often plague Canon and Nikon DSLR videos.

Speculation was that Panasonic's proprietary video downsampling process skips the standard DSLR demosaic algorithm and instead averages photo receptors of the same color to separately produce each pixel's R, G, and B components. That would certainly explain the AF100's immunity to moire...

Aside from all other thoughts, nice to see brianluce and bwhitz on the same team for a change!

@bwhitz "Even though, it does look nice and cinematic... more-so the second clip. First clip has a case of "grey-skin"... which ever camera that might be. The first clip needs it's mid-tones lowered a notch...

And if that first example is more "accurate" then I don't want that. I want what my pic looks like (hyper-real then?)... which is achievable with the GH2 (since it came from there). "

The 2nd clip is from the AF100. :) Goodnight all. :)

They have just vote a law in France for criminal charges for blog writers because of false advertising, which mean that the blog writers should always disclose his relationship to any manufacturer if they are testing or talking about a product. I think it is a very good law because the bloggers/forum are becoming a scam. Many test or advice are in fact just disguised advertising. The persistence to defend the Af100 on dvxuser is so blatant that I can't see it as without any form of retribution. Oh, yes the poor guy was ill when some test (german mag) showed that the gh2 had better resolution/less moire, yes he would test the two camera as soon as he is well.... where is the test, is he still ill. I really hope the USA and globally those law are voted, because there are a lot of abuse which triggered the french government to put laws to protect the consumers. What I have seen from the AF100 is just the most ugly highlight handling, in the first example above it is always borderline on the skin tone.

In the Af100-Fs100 one, he puts the camera in its comfort zone, that is lit the scene within the DR of the camera. Test are meant to stress the camera. Yes in such situation, that is if your film is only at night and interior, it is going to look good, everytime you will be able to lit/control the whole scene it is going to be good... but, but, but put some sunshine and contrasty situation in there and see how it looks. The FS100 is no standard to compare to, another mediocre camera, this is a sensor that is capable of 13.5 + stops of DR and Sony just cripples it with also very bad (technicolor) highlight roll-off and 8 bit output.

My conclusion is that the AF-100 is just a video camera, that is it was designed by the same guys that have been designing those 6-7 stop highly compressed eng camera system. In this world things like DR is only an after thought, things like autofocus is ten times more important in the news event world. So they just used there video background and added a large sensor. While the suppose lower consumer division has to compete against the Canon and Nikon in terms of image quality. The digital photography world has been graced with much better image quality that's its video counterpart. Today a $ 1000 Nikon D7000 has bridged the last gap against film with its 14 stop of DR, and trounces it in every other way.

If you check out the four-thirds.org site, the AF100 is listed under a new M4/3 "Cine System" section, along with a collection of Zeiss CP.2 and Schneider Cine-Xenar lenses. While a native M4/3 mount can be fitted these lenses, I expect most will be ordered in PL or Nikon mounts along with M4/3 adapters for use on the AF100. These are all manual lenses and the least expensive of the CP.2's is about $4000.

Panasonic has clearly positioned the AF100 as a lightweight, inexpensive option for filmmakers who want to hook up a videocam to their cinema lenses. It really has very little in common with the GH2 and even less connection to the Lumix Micro 4/3rds lens system. Panasonic's AF100 lens compatibility page promises restricted functionality with only a limited selection of Panasonic and Olympus lenses, and has not been updated with newly tested lenses since the camera was first introduced:

http://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/af100/lens_compatibility.html

To me, this indicates that Panasonic does not regard the AF100 as a step up from the GH2, but as a budget-friendly alternative to the "DSLR video revolution" (i.e. Canon).

@bwhitz - So what do you think of these skin tones?

@Shield
I agree.

If I win a prize and I must choose either AF100 or GH2, guess what I would choose.

@stonebat T2i?

I don't get the reference... ???

Does this look like video?

@LPowell

But it does... do you guys really not see it? It's not operator error, or an insult or anything... it just doesn't look like film. No filmic motion, no filmic contrast. Like I said, I asked one of my friends earlier who was sitting here earlier (who knows nothing about cinematography) what he thought and he said "student film" right away.

It's not even the lighting... they must have been using a weird shutter angle or something... maybe 30fps with a 1/30 shutter?

@Shield "Can you post video samples that you like?"

Sure... here's the first clip I did with the GH2

See how the motion is different? And the contrast? You can thank the hackers for that!

And here's a clip that was actually shot on the AF-100 that I love... content wise, and for it's cinematic look.



I think they used an external recorder going to an I-frame codec and Ziess CP's.. so maybe it's just the Panny lenses that people use with the AF-100 that I'm thinking are so video-ilke. I'd love to see a Lumix vs. (Ziess, Canon, Nikon) lens test.