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Hacked GF2 footage topic
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  • I'll be all over this topic, got a few on my you tube channel already. Also have a GH2 and have a GF3 body on the way http://www.youtube.com/user/Ebacherville?

  • Footage from today's Flowmotion v1.11 tests on the GF2. And yes my lens had a hair or dust on it .. didn't check before I shot with it , it was just a trip to the mailbox...

  • Jason, i see you got the exposure under control. What manual lens? Did you lock Flicker?

    Ain't it great receiving boxes in the mail ..haha

  • The last test was with just aperture using a old Rokkor 50mm 1.4. it was all GF2 footage. Really this camera can make nice footage if you can control your conditions, I was outside at far before sunset, had to stop way down.. no ND filter at the time, but totally doable.. this camera can make really nice footage.. I'm going to test more with Flowmoton the footage its making really is nice for low bitrate stuff .. can't believe it's coming from a $250 body and a 30 year old ebay $50 lens. The unboxing shot is the Pany 14mm 2.5 lens because I needed autofocus. I can't imagine if VK can lock down full auto for these GF cameras..

    The slightly softer feel of the 12mp sensor feels good to me.. I tested some of the Intra patches on the GF2 camera and they were very "filmlike" even at 30fps. Slightly grainy etc.. The GH2 blew me away but these GF bodies are really blowing me away for the price/performance factor.. great cams especially if your in controlled conditions and hacked. Really I can't get this good of footage off my Professional grade ENG style Panny cameras at work that cost 3k+ each.., thus why we are now buying GH2's and hacking them at work. Switching our work flow to segregated audio etc..

    Glad I work for a company that can think outside the box and innovate a bit.. had to bring in my GH2 and shoot a a entire project on the GH2 to prove it, but jaws literally dropped when I presented the final footage to my supervisors. Now I have a final screening with the VP's in a few weeks. And this is a not a small company.. we are Inc 500 hall of fame company that typically hires large production houses, So I'm pretty excited a GH2 could do that!

    VK and the various participants have done some stellar work on these cameras and patches.. Wish I could contribute more than just testing stuff and helping people that need info. Just doing what I can to help others I guess. I guess that's the idea behind communities.. people helping each other in whatever way they can.

  • I agree, in good light footage is quite clean when hacked, much better than my Pany HMC 150 in both res and noise. Just need to get to the bottom of exactly what is happening with ISO and Shutter, i started work on it then got side tracked. I can do what i want with it at this stage, but i still like to know exactly what it is doing. If certain others with a Gf2 just shared up front what they found instead of boasting we might find out quicker.

    Thanks for sharing yours Cheers

  • I set the flicker at 60, I'm NTSC.. 2x sensor read. nothing special , I will tell you it was easier to "gauge the shot" when I shot at -1, -1, 0, 0, I was shooting at -1,-1,-1,-1 and it was so washed out on the LCD and it looked like grey scale.. the litle under adn over meeter didnt represent anything really.. I shoot by what looks best and shooting flat is always giood except whe it to flat .. the end footage was graded, i knocked down the brightness and bumped the contrast a little.. but thats easy grading..

    I usually and as in this example go for what I would call "bright film" contrastey, crushed blacks and "bright looking" most clients like it unless they had something else in mind, like a dark look etc. I'm a corporate customer guy, not many corps. like the horror film dark look :-)

    But grading could easily sway footage that way. Shoot flatter and you can grade it any way you need to. But know your customer first.. Its easy for me, I'm in-house A/V production, but we just changed out look from "video" to"filmatic" no big deal, just cant do that do film 1/3" sensor cameras.. Hard part is convincing the bean counters that buying larger sensor cameras are the solution. None the less my personal GH2 proved that, and budgets got approved, and were hacking the GH2s at work :-)

  • Agredd is we can lock these things down manually they will produce great footage .. had a shot yesterday , where the "AUTO" feature screwed it.. really I hope VK figures this out even if its a, once you hit record it locks in the settings .. I can deal with that pretty well. If that gets sorted out well have some nice little portable cameras on our hands.. I've run all Intra patches on the GF2 and it looks great.. very film like actually the softmness of the 12mp sensor seems to make it more film like for a 16mm look i really like it . I totally could see even in auto mode using the GF bodies in light controlled situations as they sit now, interviews etc. they do produce great footage . The GF3 is so small its silly .. if that gets manual controll I'll carry it and a pancake lens everywhere, i look like a Asian tourist but I don't care.. so many time I kick my self for not having my kit with me..

  • Sorry if this has been asked but I did a search and didn't find and low light/ high iso stuff with the gf2, is it better or worse than the gh2 at like 1600 Asa? Since it isn't as many pixels as the gh2 maybe it's better? But less processing might negate that? Just curious for someone that owns both. Thanks!

  • Chazz, compared to the Gh2 and the GH1 ( I have both) the GF2 gets noisier at a lower iso. But as you can't really control it at this point in time, GF2 is best used as an outdoor camera in good light or indoor with a very fast lens or controlled lighting.

    Only bummer outdoors in sunlight is the LCD is almost impossible to see to, it really needs a proper viewfinder. I found this out today shooting surf etc from a rockwall. I tried a 3x LCD loupe, but the screen is low res (300k compared to the new Gh5 900k). The loupe has a flip up which leaves an unmagnified hood on the LCD, this was better but still need to cover my head and camera with a towel to stop reflections. Easier just to grab GH2 or GH1 and leave the GF2 for b roll unmanned role, which is the reason I bought it any way. That, and a pocketable quality stills and video camera with 14mm pancake permanently attached, beats most point and shoots hands down.

  • Biggest thing I found with both GH2 and GF line is the faster the lens the better, basically general rule of any cameras.. Also depends on the patch your using , some show grain more others dont.. some people love a grainy film look others don't.. I find the intra based patches to make the 30fps cameras in the GF line look more, fine grained and more "framey" like 24p film.. many of the other that are based on GOP of more than 1 look more video like.. hard to explain till you com pair them Nativity and side by side. It kind of depends on taste and trial and error with patches and what you like. I have not done allot of testing in low low light, if I'm below 400 to get a good composition, it tells me I need more light. The darker you are the more noise / grain you get . I like grain but not in a underexposed sort of way.

  • Mysteron works with GF2 and GF3 between 80 and 107mbits/second on a cheap class 10 Transcend no errors

  • @Ebacherville I tested a few of driftwood's settings on moving water (river or lake) a while back, and obtained very good results with virtually no pixelation.

    I was going to say 'nice panning on those still images' but then I saw movement in them :) sharp

  • More 720 Motion from days ago. Stock lens, M mode

    vlcsnap-2012-04-02-23h21m29s57.png
    1280 x 720 - 2M
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    1280 x 720 - 2M
    vlcsnap-2012-04-02-23h13m46s44.png
    1280 x 720 - 2M
    vlcsnap-2012-04-02-23h14m05s255.png
    1280 x 720 - 2M
    vlcsnap-2012-04-05-23h58m37s134.png
    1280 x 720 - 2M
  • 5 sec.: a dove, which is flying away, filmed using a hacked gf2, eoshd gf2 hbr (?). 1080 footage renderend to a 720 video, digital zoom and slow mo (50%) done in post, 14/2.5, iAuto, flicker red 1/60. now, i changed my settings to flowmotion 1.11.

    vlcsnap-2012-04-07.png
    1280 x 720 - 825K
  • @Ebacherville, great quality. Using 1080 or 720 ? PAL/NTSC ?

  • Great footage, I am a 16mm lover and GF2 sample seems to show the 16mm's softness indeed. I will try to project some footage on the big screen to better examinate the softness. Only one question, however (I won't arouse bitter controversy!) : do you think that GFx quality could is better than canon 550/600d quality?

  • I just bought a GF2 & tried the eoshd patch with a c-mount 35mm f1.7. Full manual is very difficult with this GF2 because the screen isn't very precise enough for me. In this music live condition, I'm not that impressed with the result. Maybe in full daylight it would look better but I don't think it match so well with a GH2.

  • @feha, it was 1080 NTSC, the Youtube video looks crudy next to the original, realize the original footage is over 100mbits/s bitrate, youtube crushes it down to 4.3mbit/s according to every source I can find.

    My work flow was rendered at 50mbits/s that file looks far better than the youtube video do to compression used at youtube.. if you can deal with the short clips issues of no spanning, Mysteron puts out some great looking footage.

  • FILM LOOK on GF2... We have now begun shooting a low budget Feature film on location in New Zealand. The below clip did not have any colour correction or grading. Simply assemble-edited using Sony Vegas. All the footage is GF2 running the new "PVDOG" patch at approx 40Mbps (PAL) with the standard Panasonic lens. I am so happy with the look of this footage that I will gladly shoot the whole movie this way. Please forgive the Youtube compression. Hopefully you can still see it OK. Would appreciate your comments-

  • Shot this today on the GF3 body, I have GF2 and GF3 and I cant tell a difference in the footage from them and seem to work with the same patches the same.

  • @AndyS, good job on your part. @Ebacherville - thanks for the info you gave me.

  • can you shoot with blown out highlights on the GF lines semi automatic manual mode , yes .. at work commonly we shoot stuff with the highlights blow out , like indoor shots with exterior windows that are far brighter than the other parts of the scene.. you can do this type of shot with a GF camera.. it takes more planing and setup than real manual controls, but it is doable. this was shot to try to blow out the highlights and keep the rest of the shot exposed. it was graded to pop the colors more and make avery bright fresh contrast look , trying to emulate stuff we shoot at work with a cheap camera. GF3 with Sedna AQ1 setC , also tested Sedna setC on GF2 and it works on GF2. looks the same etc..

  • @PhilMyself good work with cheap cctv lens. Is gf2 handheld in the video? I haven't noticed any kind of rolling shutter!!

  • @AndyS - when you say "new" PVDog; is there something newer than his SetF file?

  • @PhilMyself - I think that looks really good, knowing the limitations of that lens (I have one myself).