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Panasonic FZ200 topic, 24x zoom with constant F2.8 aperture
  • 350 Replies sorted by
  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

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

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @wielkiczarnyafgan

    Today I do not know.

  • pewepewe

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

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    Vitaliy - ok, thanks for reply

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    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 ]

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    Uploaded today another image quality sample:

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    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

  • trevmartrevmar

    I am tending to use Contrast -1 in 'Natural'. I really prefer to only boost those blacks in post to the correct baseline level. Using -1 gives a slightly extended dynamic range, but -2 is too much -- even for my tastes...

  • ahblezaahbleza

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

  • ahblezaahbleza

    and here's another one from the same guy showing some video samples at 1080i

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    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...

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    trevmar - today I went to shoot at "Natural" profile set to -1 -2 0 -2, and it really gives the most D.R. and most balanced contrast- as you say ;)

    EDIT:

    I went to shoot some low light tests yesterday... Actually I am a very suprised - because FZ200 has DIFFERENT ISO SCALE than GH2 has.

    FZ200 has higher ISO scale - that means ISO 1250 at FZ200 is actually ISO 2500 on GH2! ISO 800 on FZ200 has the same brightness as GH2's ISO 1600... FZ200 ISO 1600 is the GH2's ISO 3200!

    Of course the FZ200 ISO 1600 provides higher noise than GH2 ISO 3200, but at the beginning I was little dissapointed and now I see I can shoot even very dark scenes with FZ200. Nice!

    Just imagine what is going to happen if GH3 inherits the same ISO scale as FZ200 - GH3 at ISO 3200 brightness level would be equivalent of GH2's ISO 6400! I have seen this GH3 video and I can't hardly see any noise

  • eyenortheyenorth

    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.

  • konjowkonjow

    @eyenorth what do you mean? "Once you pull the information back into the legal zones"

  • eyenortheyenorth

    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.

  • konjowkonjow

    Thanks. I understand legal zones now :)

  • haribabisharibabis

    @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!!!!!

  • eyenortheyenorth

    Cool :-) The camera is quite amazing for the price!

  • pewepewe

    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.

  • dadixdadix

    Hello.

    @jcmr I think the ghost frame from your example is because of fz200 post processing software and to be clear about that I think is noise reduction fault. I do video procesing and when I add some poor algorithm filters in avisinth like fft3dgpu the result is the same. So I think is necesary a option which deactivate noise procession (reduction) or other hidden filters in fz200. The same result I have when I apply noise reduction filter from ffdshow codec to noise video source in real time.

  • jcmrjcmr

    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.

  • dadixdadix

    I wonder what would happen if fz200 would record video at 80 000 kb/s like hacked gh2. If with 80 000 kb/s recording and ISO 100 in low light and after that to do post procesing in adobe premier, increasing Exposure and dynamic range.

    Like these :

  • jcmrjcmr

    @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.

  • dadixdadix

    @jcmr I think Panasonic have low dynamic range because of analog to digital converter which is in 12 bits (4096 colors) . Canon (example 550d) have 14 bits convertor (16 384 colors ) . Of course is not all about convertor and bpp , maybe Panasonic has low quality photosites. (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/dynamic-range.htm ). Photosites are from hardware but this analog/digital software convertor maybe can be hacked, I don't know. So ... dear hackers , hack the analog to digital software and add higher bpp :14 or 16 and 4:2:2 output if this is posible :)

  • wielkiczarnyafganwielkiczarnyafgan

    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".

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