Do you care, really? We already had some topic about it of very questionable value. All this "actual real lines" are measured differently and have quite complicated relation to reality.

Yes I care a lot or I would not ask. I am aware it's complicated. I am aware there have been previous discussions. I do possess Google and use it frequently. I am shooting a documentary for theatrical release where I am filming landscapes and trees and forests, as well as urban landscapes, where every line of resolution matters a lot. A LOT. Otherwise, I would still be using my 5d Mark ii instead of the GH2. I am professional and would not waste my or anyone's time if this was not a critical concern. I am asking if there is an uptick in actual resolution with the 1.1 firmware and latest Ptools. I assume not, but wanted to see if anything had changed. If people don't that's fine too.

Thanks for the answers. Yes resolution isn't the only thing, especially with shallow dof shots. But on the big screen every single bit of it makes an incredible difference, and with landscapes and cityscapes it absolutely determines whether the audience perceives your work as a "movie" or something lesser, whether they are aware of it or not. Very, very few lower resolution films ever had a successful theatrical release and one reason is that it wears on the audience and reduces their cinematic experience of disappearing into the movie whether they are aware of it or not.

@JeffGibbsTC

This isn't the place for a debate on indie film aesthetics, but at the low-budget end, the measurable resolution of dramatic features has virtually nothing to do with the popular, critical or commercial success. I could cite examples, but this is probably not the appropriate forum.

And I don't venture to speak to your own needs. For a nature documentary, resolution is obviously of more importance than it would be for a dramatic feature which consists mostly of closeups and medium-shots.

@JeffGibbsTC

Hate to insist, but those DV features by big name directors didn't flop any worse than stuff shot with far better cameras, at similarly low budgets. Steven Soderbergh's DV feature didn't do well, but neither did his low-budget full HD and Red features. And at the really low budget end, the low rez stuff does as well as any other format.

But no matter.... Whatever camera you have confidence in, is the best camera.

I agree story wins, I disagree that low rez did well. It did terrible. Tens of thousands of DV films were shot and only three ever had a theatrical release beyond art houses. And one of those was shot by a studio. Story trumps all, but if you shoot on a low rez format or fashion your chances of getting into theaters were and are pretty much zero. The broad movie audience does NOT like a movie that looks like TV resolution, except at film festivals where it's considered "artsy." Hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on films that has zero chance no matter how good their stories were of making the big time, or if they did, the low quality meant the audience would be limited.

[Note: drafted and posted before JeffGibbsTC's last response]

I promise this is my last word of the subject, but it would be more accurate to say that the chances of any independent, ultra-low budget film getting into a theater are very, very slight, regardless of format and lines of resolution.

Audiences, including mass-audiences, don't care a damn what these non-industrial movies look like. "The Blair Witch Project" is the most obvious example (Hi8!), but what are/were the big indie hits of recent years? "Once" (DV). "Paranormal Activity" (early consumer HD). "Open Water" (DV). "Tiny Furniture" (Canon 7d). Meanwhile, thousands of other films, many of which had substantially better production values, went nowhere. And the few professional "indie" productions which did get into theaters invariably had stars and production values that go far behind the capabilities of self-financing filmmakers, regardless of what camera they were shooting on. Resolution was only one small part of it.

This is something that almost no one cares to accept, but I'd just ask you to look more closely -- not at the aesthetics of the matter, but the actual box office performance of actual American independent films. I think you'll see that lines of resolution has nothing to do with success or failure.

Getting back to actual resolution - in line terms the gh2 outputs around 850-900 with false detail up to a full frame HD.. (1080) with INTRA. I doubt it has changed much since the new ptools.

Search for the ex3 - gh2 comparison thread.

@JeffGibbsTC - "Does the latest firmware upgrade and the amazing new PTools and assorted hacks actually raise the actual lines of resolution resolved by the GH2?"

No. The resolution characteristics of GH2 video are determined by the image sensor, along with its Optical Low-Pass Filter (OLPF), and the proprietary demoisaic algorithms used to extract 1080p and 720p frames from the 16Mpixel sensor. I don't see any evidence that those algorithms were altered in Panasonic's v1.1 firmware upgrade.

"Lines of resolution" is a technical judgment that is difficult to pin down on digital cameras. The problem is that the OLPF doesn't block all of the spatial detail transmitted by the lens that lies just beyond the Nyquist cutoff limit of the sensor's photocell array. As a result, these hyper-fine details are mathematically folded down into the high-resolution region of the sensor and create synthetic aliasing artifacts that artificially enhance the sharpness of genuine edge details. Panasonic distortion-corrected lenses exacerbate this phenomenon with their built-in firmware sharpening filter - you can actually see the moire patterns shimmer on the LCD as the lens locks into focus.

This contamination of genuine image details with synthetic aliasing artifacts cannot be undone in post-processing. That makes it impossible to pin down at exactly what resolution point the genuine details fade into gray and the aliased details become dominant. Since lens resolution and diffusion filters also have an effect on the intensity of aliasing artifacts, the most relevant way to judge resolution is to shoot calibrated test patterns with your complete rig and evaluate the results to your own satisfaction.

There you go, there's the answer. 850-900.

Your debate around the importance of cheap resolution and theatrical release success is an oxymoron. Most succesful theatrical releases are due to overall budget and production value.

Fact is, if someone has secured talent with a $1m fee then they're not going to be shooting on a $700 GH2, unless there's a physical need for it, like shooting in ultra confined quarters and the DP knows it'll cut well.

The GH2 for the larger extent is a low budget camera. And low budget productions don't traditionally do financially well. That includes 5Dii, FS100, 7D...etc.... There's nothing stopping low budget being successful in DVD, TV and foreign markets.

Personally I'd take that, if it leads to larger productions with a budget to shoot on something better than a $700 camera. Until then, I'm so so pleased with the quality that is achievable within my means.

The GH2 is the first camera that I've used where I've been officially satisfied with the resolution. I loved the colors of the HMC150, but the softness, especially on wide shots, always bugged me.

The amount of misinformation and conjecture being spread around this forum as established fact, with nothing to back it up, is absolutely mind-boggingly staggering. So someone just jumps up and says the GH2 resolves 850-900 lines of resolution. Offers no test charts, no proof, nothing - and everyone just agrees on this "fact." Someone says that the the GH2 resolves more than an EX3 and an XF300 while pointing to dodgy samples taken at night at more than likely high gain (at which point the EX3 softens considerably to reduce noise) and it's just just accepted as "fact." Nevermind that I posted high-detail comparisons in that exact thread that showed just the opposite.

Look, guys - if you want to know an exact measurement, you've got to do an accurate test.

Cowpunk, if you doubt my word, you are free to look up any gh2 stills resolution test (there are plenty to go around) and do a calculation on an 1080 frame from there. That leaves bad settings and bad handling out of the picture. It's not rocket science. And there's plenty of footage which time after time shows the amount of detail the gh2 can resolve, so that is not exactly dodgy, nor misinforming either. Ex3 softens with low light? Hang on.. ever heard of sharpening? (and what it does to noise levels).. True resolution indeed.

Mind staggeringly bogging is an opinion.