Is there any chance for the audio levels meter ( the same as in GH2 ) to be implemented to FZ200 via hack?

What about the live view for video on an external monitor using the USB/VGA output?

High Speed Video mode overview:

Done color correction and aspect changed in Sony Vegas

Ability to shoot 100/120 frames per second in HD resolution is very interesting. Personally I am not really pleased with image quality drop, higher noise ( grain ) and visible awfull compression artifacts... [ in relation to normal 720p 50fps mode ]

I uploaded some unedited MTS. files shot with "Neutral 0 -2 0 -2" profile - download here:

http://www.speedyshare.com/aWbyR/00021.MTS

http://www.speedyshare.com/8Est2/00024.MTS

http://www.speedyshare.com/wz6af/00033.MTS

Here's a nice video about shooting macro photos with the FZ200.

Regarding to what you wrote about your FZ200:

Vitaliy wrote: "Got FZ200 today, some initial thoughts":

+Zoom is noisy, really noisy, on my camera

-On mine FZ200 zoom is very very queit, you'll need total silence when recording, and later listen very very carefully hear it...

+To overcome noise, Panasonic allow only low speed zooming during video

-So that's no more a problem since zoom motor is barely hearable...

+I can pretty good hear OIS work

-No sound of Power OIS on mine... Stabilization is totally silent.

+AF is not really that good (after GH2 or any other latest m43 bodies)

-Possible. I had 14-140mm f.4.0-5.8 for some time, had to sell it cause lens was too dark... Don't remember much about autofocus performance in GH series...

+AF, compared to camcorders, can hunt for long time in some situations"

-Hmmm, FZ200 autofocus work is not light fast, but it's acceptable - takes up to one second to focus on moving object, af performance drops can a bit in very low light scenes, but this happens rarely.

+LCD is usual 460k panasonic stuff

-Since I always had problems with visiblility of GH2 LCD in bright light, the FZ200 LCD apart from the same resolution seems to be progres over this one from GH2. Once I shot comparison between FZ200 and GH2 ( in the same conditions, one standing by another ) and the FZ200 LCD was more "visible" ( maybe due to it's antireflex coating ) and the brightness and contrast was set same on both LCDs.

Summarizing... - Vitaliy - you should send it back to a place where you bought it to replace it, because they gave you a defective camera...

About the bad quality in 100/120 fps mode - the codec seems to use a different color space which results in quite hard clipping when importing into Adobe Premiere at least. Once you pull the information back in the image looks much better. I was initially also pretty worried about the quality until I checked the histograms in Premiere and discovered the issue. There is some more moire and aliasing, but not too bad. Not as good as the standard 1080p video stream which is very good, but still quite usable once the highlights and shadows are recovered.

When importing the 100/120 fps footage into at least premiere, premiere leaves alot of highlight and shadow information outside the color space represented directly in the monitors. So you have crushed blacks and highlights going into superwhite. If you open a reference monitor and apply a curves or levels effect you can pull that information back into the image as it isn't lost, but just 'hidden'. Once you've done that, you'll see the image is much closer to the 1080p stream quality with the same dynamic range and much less pronounced grain and blocking. There is however some more moire and aliasing as this mode seems to use a much less intelligent downscaling method than the standard video mode.

@eyenorth Good Tip! I had forgot to check this! I use edius! The gh2 footage is almost always between 0-100 but the FZ200 HighSpeed footage is from -10 to 120 !!! so i bring it between 0-100 and it looks much much better!!!!!

Guys. I see you talking about editing FZ200 footage in Premiere etc - can I ask, what is the lowest spec processor that will allow Premiere to edit the FZ200 AVCHD without it appearing choppy in the preview window.

I am currently using an Acer 8930 laptop with 4GB memory, running windows 7 on an Intel Core2 Duo P7350 2mhz processor and an NVidia GeForce 9600m GT graphics adapter - and the stuttering in playback is unbearable.

Thanks dadix. Btw found this videos filmed with the FZ200 in youtube and I think they are beautiful. Its almost like watching National Geographic lol.

@dadix I was amazed when he pulled the gamma level and all the detail popped out. It was like magic happening. It would be awesome if FZ200 could get close to those results.

I've shot a club party tonight with FZ200 ( amongst other cameras ) and it's low light capability is comparable with Sony EX1R camera ( FZ200 has similar grain level, but maintains more "real colour" on higher ISO, when EX1R tends to artifficially oversaturate on higer GAIN's. Other thing is - FZ200's image is softer and more "cinematic" and closer to GH2, while EX1R's image is sharper and more "video like".