It's getting really irritating what's going on with the AF100 and i am beginning to see the strong "marketing campaign" and Barry has unfortunately lost credibility with me now. And it makes sense you know, the guy's writen a book on the AF100, he's teaching af100 classes, and these discussions hurt sales. and that's fine he's a businessman, but he has the power to close and delete threads, and that's not cool. Apart from the obvious and most recent "GH2 deficiencies list" closure there are other more subtle actions.

my comments and criticism (Stefanos) led its closure and I was banned for 2 weeks! I gave my honest opinion about an awful video Panasonic used to publish a press conference about the AF100 and said how it is ridiculous panasonic chose that video since it doesn't showcase the AF100 to the least. Guess who started the conversation? Barry. Also check who commented last on the thread before it was closed and said "can we just close this thread". Jan Crittenden, panasonic employee. with barely any real arguments, the thread was closed just like that and i was banned.. All I'm saying is certain people have too much of an influence or power.
anyways

I know it's not exactly related to AGAF thread... But do you think it makes sense having 5d/7d along with GH2? I need a B cam for my doc work. I'm a faithful micro43 user, but one thing I got really tired with is the sensor size that doubles all my focal lengths. So is it totally stupid looking for 5d/7d now when Mark3 may come down on us soon, and F3 is not unrealistically expensive? Or maybe I should throw 1500 on that Nokton and get the 5D DOF (not the form factor though)

Thank you! that's what I'm going to do.

As I was the first to mention the dvxuser situation and barry, I wouldn't want this conversation to become a rant on dvx and barry. Barry is a very eloquent and intelligent guy and I've learned a lot from some of his posts, and I'm 100% sure he's one hell of a business man. My point was that I think his role as a DVX moderator and his job as a DIT and someone who is affiliated to making money from the AF100 are coming to conflict with each other, to an extent which doesn't help community expression. It is just that more and more AF100 related threads are being closed as soon as the conversation starts to present simple true facts about the market users and cameras. And the threads usually close with an intelligent sounding long post about DVXuser philosophy with very poor argumentation. What I find tiring, is being told all the time that I'm bashing the AF100 to justify my GH2 purchase. I couldn't care less about that.
that's all, and that's one reason why some of us are discussing all this here

>Think Barry is an extremely valuable member/leader of the HDV/film community.

Fully agree.

>But I believe in freedom of speech.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
This is the problem we have with AF100 compain.

>1. 3 position ND filters

Built-in ND filter is superior to any ND lens filter. It saves space and it sounds very convenient. No ugly flare if flare can't be avoided with hood or matte box. XZ-1 has built-in filter, too. This should become an essential feature to all serious vdslrs. Just imagine not having adjustable ND filter on M43 lens. Nothing but M43 zoom and its cool hood. What a stress relief!!! This should be the single most important feature of GH3.

Yes built-in ND filter is discrete and it's just fine. 2x, 4x, 6x... what more to ask? No more step up rings. It just makes the whole setup more compact.

Reflective sensor... true. Hopefully CDAF system can determine metering based on each frame's digital image so that non reflective sensor can come back. Actually this can open up varieties of metering strategy.

Portability is an important plus for me. For example recently, for a videoclip, i used the gh2 linked to hat. With the af100, it wouldn't ever been possible. It's a priceless feature for me. However is a matter of needs.

@dcloud
>I want a GH2 simply because its small and i can carry it anywhere without being obtrusive. Thats it.
>I have an AF100 and I earn money from it and it is paying for itself. for its cost, its really convenient with all the >features mentioned. WFM and Vectorscope: I use it alot and it has made exposure easy and illegal colors are >easy to spot. Thinking its not useful is ignorant.

I really like AF100, and I think that for many people its price will pay out fast.
But, as I said, it is completely wrong to try to sell it to someone who really do not need all this.

@DrDave

Generally, you must use XLR connectors if you can. They, alone, do not make sound better.
But good microphones that you can connect to them and better preamps really make the difference.
Plus you can't accidently unplug good connector or get static hum because of not so good contact.
And using locking HDMI cables is also very good idea. Unfortunately, I do not see locking mini HDMI.

>From Vincent Laforet blog

I think that his opinions about AF100 are highly subjective.
Something like anti-Barry :-) "All is bad" postion opposite to "all is perfect".
Neither one is informative.

As for Zacuto tests. I find them to be one of strangest things. Some mix between marketing and "independent" tests.

I guess I should chime in here. I was part of that thread that was closed. I expected it to happen but I really thought it would get closed earlier than it did. I think Mr. Barry and co. exercised pretty good self-control for the most part. I'm sure panny asked them to close the thread and sponsors do keep the forum paid for so I have no problem with them obliging, but I don't have to stick around either and that means possible lost revenue from the lack of my ad clicks or buying sponsor's goods, both of which I have done a number of times. I can just post elsewhere if I choose, and now VK has opened this new forum for those of us who think differently than most on DVXuser. I've seen it on other forums, eventually the heavy hand will shoo everyone away and do the exact opposite of what was expected.

Anyway, back to the GH2 vs. AF100.

It's no secret that people who don't understand what's actually *inside* of devices can be easily swayed to believe that those devices are somehow different to others. I'm fairly neutral on the idea that Mr. Barry is in the pocket of Panasonic. I tend to think that he was told by panny that the AF100 is somehow drastically different than the gh2 and he truly believes them. That's fine, I understand that. Marketers plan on that type of loyalty and they count on their customers to spread that marketing pitch by telling everyone they know about their new toys. If this didn't happen, then nothing new would get sold. Everyone would be using their old devices that are plenty good-enough. It's like the whole Ipod/Ipad/Iphone thing. Every couple months they come out with a device that is marginally better and large numbers of people who have perfectly working older devices line up to get the new and improved thing. Guess what? A phone is still a phone. An MP3 player is still an MP3 player and a tablet computer is still a tablet computer. It's just the sex and coolness that they sell with large amounts of peer pressure and WOW factor.

I work in the electronics design field and I work with marketers who sell these things to people. I've been doing it for over 15 years now and every job I've had I've watched the marketers embellish the truth to pump up sales. They don't outright lie but they do stretch the truth a lot. So when someone comes along and says that some marketing person *told* them that it's different, I have to really take that with a grain of salt as I know that the marketer is likely in selling or ass-covering mode. Again, I'm not trying to insult anyone or claim that anyone is actually making things up, but I know how these things work behind the scenes and in the real world and would be surprised if somehow it was different this time..

So after watching many videos, pixel peeping, and reading possibly hundreds of threads on the GH2 and AF100 all over the internet, I can say that some serious comparison can be made. Sure they have some obvious mechanical differences but while others are looking at stuff like how much moire or aliasing these things have, I'm looking at their deficiencies and noting that each seem to have extremely similar problems such as the same yellow cast on the picture, same banding at the same shutter rates, same amounts of noise in the dark areas, same blue lines, same flaring during bright light, etc. If the AF100 had a different sensor and/or processing, then most of these visual problems would be captured somewhat differently. But they aren't and I've been able to find the exact same visual problems amongst videos from each camera. This says to me that the sensor and processing are likely the same.

Sure there are differences like XLR jacks and SDI outputs and ND filters and all that but those are fairly superficial in terms of design. You could put an XLR jack on your GH2 if you wanted. You already have a digital video stream and I've seen simple IP cores(bits of programming you can buy) for FPGA ICs for HD-SDI and HDMI transceivers. Adding a small board and some ICs could create a huge number of outputs of different kinds. You don't have to change a thing on your main board. These are just some of the examples that may be different on the outside but don't actually change anything about the core of the camera. All of these could be added to a GH2's system with additional boards and make it have the same functionality as an AF100. The rest seems to be simple software differences.