This is ok. Until we can notice extreme fanboy things :-) And tell them to hold. We are not fanboys community here.
@workerb Ditto also. I love my GH2 but the hardcore community sucks it bigtime. All it will bring is resentment and total lack of taking them (and the GH2) seriously.
We are seeing more hardcore GH2 fanboy these days. Time for some prescription.
Also, Most of us here certainly realized that smaller sensor cameras gather LESS light at the SAME f-stop an FOV. This was a given to know that the GH2 would not beat the large sensor formats in low light.
Nice to hear nick driftwood's patch will stand up to a lot of pushing and pulling in post. For under a grand, this camera does so much more than we've any right to expect. Can't wait for the v1.1 patches..
ditto!!!!
I find the GH2 fanaticism really off putting & embarrassing.
In a run and gun situation (ie weddings), any camera that helps me recover underexposed faces well gets my vote :) up until now I've used stock 720 50p @17mbts and hate the mush in shadow areas. I hope VK has the new ptool finished before spring here in PAL-land!
@RRRR Yeah especially when part 2 of the test was "Oh, this camera is pretty dark, let's try this other camera, oh, it's similar, not bad but still kind of dark. Now, how about this one? Hmmm pretty dark, but that's expected..."
And all the images looked lousy and unusable. If you have to put any of those in your film, you're in big trouble.
@brianluce exactly.. when a 800$ (or less) camera performs comprably with 20k "Pro" offerings.. (real 1080p resolution is real 1080p resolution) then we really cannot complain too much about the options..
What I noted in vimeo forum concerning test2 of Philip Bloom:
" considering your tests here, I think :
1/ c300 =(better Hardware/Sensor, average software/compressor 50mb/s mpeg2)
2/ gh2 =( average Hardware/Sensor, better software/compressor 170mb/s H264, Vitaliy Hack)
They are on par on resolution ! Advantage to c300 in NO light conditions, but no test needed here. If we add a post process denoising, on LOW light condition, we don’t know the limit in which gh2 is still here, but gh2 has got some arguments in his favor since it gives a lot of details in low light(because of excellent compression compared to c300) even if there is noise.
I think c300 is a very good hardware base for canon to go on improving software on it ! Common Canon, give some open source software tools to community with this cam …"
We're spoiled.
GH3. Another year, another cam. Why can't we have it all? I expected by now the Canon 5D Mk III would be a big step up. Maybe Fuji's organic rainforest brew will open the gates. In any case, time for a new sensor with lower noise and better everything.
@DrDave the low noise of gh1? IMO it's at least as noisy as gh2, if not noisier, and the grain is not as fine and absolutely not uniform.
The one problem I have with the vid about the test is that Bloom makes it sound like the GH2 fares worse than the other DSLR, when, really - it cannot match F3, C300 and FS100 for signal to noise output. The other DSLR, whilst some can be cranked highly - macroblocking and other problems will ensue.. Some of the surfaces literally come alive on the other dslrs, and the noise is not uniform - it will be a bitch to get rid of. Anyway, who cares?
I thought the FS100 looked good in that test, obviously my concerns for the camera would be to the functionality of it's operation - on paper it always looked like a very interesting prospect. A bit of a shame that it only has a HDMI output.. (would it be wortwhile to exchange your EX3 for a FS100?)
I'll be trading up to the GH3 if it has the sharpness of the GH2 and the low noise of the GH1 ( or better!) and an awesome hack to up the bitrate indoors.
Hmmm.....wondering what's the deal with new picture profiles with the GH-2. Anyone know if that's still being worked on?
I think for the skin tone test it would have been wiser to use smooth. Nostalgic is too baked in.....still loked great though.
IMO there's no problem with seeing how far cameras can be pushed. Now when it comes to whatever camera you have, then you learn that camera and work within it's limits. I have always believed that's how you work with any tool. Stay in it's sweet spot and even cheap things can perform at a high level. I've had to engineer sound with some awful equipment, but I still manage to get a good sound working within the limits of the gear. Unless you're working in extreme environment, that would require only the best.
All of the cameras had acceptable image when not under stress, which is a win for low budget film guys everywhere. I will say tho that Pany needs to upgrade the AF100. No reason that camera should be using that sensor. Everything else about it is great, but that sensor.
il is a test here, no artistic feeling about noise allowed :-)
i don't mind noise to a level, as long as it's decently 'filmic', like 70's stock film. or even 16mm noise for that matter. and the high driftwood patches DO make it looks so, to a degree. so- what are the differences between this 'nice' noise and 'ugly' totally unusable noise?
Thx to Philip for part 2 ! It was great.
Concerning the extreme low light test, hmm we can obviously call it THE NOISE TEST. Very dark (dracula conditions of light with no candles) and here we don’t have the NASA lens of Kubrick . No much micro contrasts to see, flat still surfaces except hair of the guy. And of course small sensors are bad here as they need both super-primes and denoising. Note that we don’t know nothing about internal denoisers of all the cams here while compressing…
So yes, NOISE for GH2, what else? Look at image at 6400 iso for gh2 : details are still here. Noisy of course but still details inside.
Gh2 should be used under 1600 iso with lens aperture under 2 and (neat) denoiser in post process. 3 conditions and details I think are here : that is what matters. The only drawback is shallow DOF if not needed…
We don’t need a NOISE test Mr Bloom. These tests has been done already. We need something real : a low light test for details (like in the zacuto test). But PB chose the worst clinical test for small sensors. Not low light but…dark. It is not England it is Romania
The low light test is nonsense He has filmed with f2.8? Besides - use light sources, when filming
and the Winner is: the GH2, the camera with the best resolution
Glad 5n shows its benefits. Its all in the sensor size . Remember why camcorders/compacts are worse in lowlight? Smaller sensor. None of this is surprising and the GH2 is a great camera and good enough in lowlight and great with fast glass. I will say it is nice not to have to rely on expensive fast lenses in lowlight when using my 5n.
@Lpowell The d5100 & d7000 are great cameras. You know it would pretty darn great in lowlight anyway. ;-)
I wonder if 'smooth' might have been a better choice for the skin tone test?
@derek Yes, I did say Nikon, sorry if you happen to disagree...
I was fairly pleased with the GH in the skin tone test. It wasn't perfect, but not unusable either. I wonder how hard it will be to get Pany to come up with a flatter profile. it seems like a really important thing for both the AF100 and GH line. Gotta make that a priority along with more fast glass.
I liked the look of the F3 S-Log the best. The FS100 2nd and then the C300 in terms of low light. I will say that I thought it was remarkable how fine the grain was when the C300 was cranked all the way up to ISO 20K. Unbelievable how these cameras do in low light.
I'm not too put off by the GH performance in low light compared to those monsters. It was an extreme test and hopefully we can augment the GH with a Nikon or Sony DSLR. I think those are acceptable low cost tools for very low light situations.
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