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GH2 Possible Improvements
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  • Driving focus is appealing.
    But we don't have docs and reversing system code at such level, without debugger. Ouch.
  • All new features will of course be nice, but my (many others i think) intrests are 25p and bitrates up. 100p would be nice and so on, but just to get basics first.
  • Never thought of the slow focus. That would've been great. Watching the Birger mount demos I haven't been able find out whether you can adjust the focus speed of their auto focus cue points... This would have made that redundant... except on a jib or what not...

    Otcx, I'm sure everyone agrees with you and that Vitality knows this better than anyone.
  • Setting focus point A (out of focus) and B (in focus), and how many seconds it should take from A => B is at the top of my wish list!

    And 25p of course :)

    (battery indicator for third party batteries would be nice too.
    And holding the Fn-button for two seconds to activate ETC mode while filming, thus avoiding accidental activation of ETC)
  • >Setting focus point A (out of focus) and B (in focus), and how many seconds it should take from A => B is at the top of my wish list!

    My personal dream is special follow focus unit that transmits commands to GH2 using microphone connection (via sound modulation).
  • lol

    i think we're at a point generally where logical improvements have been exhausted
  • >i think we're at a point generally where logical improvements have been exhausted

    Believe me (as UX designer), they are not exhaused. You just need to work harder and get more input to find proper ones. This is usual problem of any design - people know that they want something to be done, sometimes even hints on how it must looks like, but, generally, have no idea how it must be implemented (final look, procedure, controls, etc).
  • You're right. It's just that because as you say, most people including myself do not have good understanding on how things are implemented so until you manage to start hacking and you know more about certain behaviours, it feels that people keep suggesting quite imaginative improvements or repeating themselves.
  • >...repeating themselves

    Maybe a new topic about improvements that summarize what was said here, but with only the voting option and not the "add reply" one ? Just to evaluate the popularity and prioritize (I'm sure 1080p25 and boosted bitrate will be the winners...)
  • I would like to see the AF tracking working in video mode.
    I have seen it in the improvement list but I want to write it here too,
  • -I would like to see the AF tracking working in video mode.
    I have seen it in the improvement list but I want to write it here too,

    Same here, most important with 25P and boosted bitrate.
  • I suggested this for the GH17 "Lenin" hack also...

    More and more of us are starting to film in ultra widescreen. Maybe the GH2 hack could give us the ability to select a cropped aspect ratio of 2.39:1 or 1920x803 square pixels?
  • I was just thinking about the battery replacement issue, or even the use of an external battery.
    Vitaliy, do you think, if the battery indicator issue can not be tackled, could you implement a way of the camera doing stop-watch so we know how long it's been switched on?

    That way we would at least know when to safely change battery! thanks.
  • Hi Vitaliy.
    It can be expected changes in improvement GH2 as still camera? ( .jpg - removing yelowgreen veil, etc.)
  • Hi Vitaliy! Thanks for your hard work, I just donated.

    As a production videographer, the things I need most are:
    1. Focus peaking in red like the AF100 has. I have to get focus right or else I'm sunk!
    2. 1080p60 or 1080p50. Overcranking 1080 footage would put this cam right with the F3/FS100.
    3. Default to exact 180 degree Shutter speeds based on video framerate (24fps = 1/48, 25fps = 1/50, 30fps = 1/60, 60fps = 1/120, 120fps = 1/240, etc) = even nicer progressive footage.
    4. Lower ASA's to minimize need for ND
    5. Selectable English language (My GH2 is in Japanese)
    6. Electronic ND? (I am dreaming now) :)
  • >#5 is a must for me too.
  • yes 24p with 1/48 shutter might also help to minimize the strobing since i didn't notice it that much on my old GH13 with native 25p checked and 1/50 ( i live in europe )... just a thought
  • How about making the iExposure activation threshold much much less? :) That would make the GH2 the absolute best DSLR in regards to dynamic range too! Especially if coupled with a lower contrast picture profile.
  • > lower contrast picture profile

    +1 Lower contrast profile like the Technicolor Canon profile would KILL!
  • Any chance of shutter speeds from in increments of 1 from say 1/2th second all the way upto 1/130th second. If this was possible it might be a way to get around the band line problem.
  • I suppose it's impossible, but is there any way of improving the crop mode, regarding the video noise?
  • >is there any way of improving the crop mode, regarding the video noise?

    No, use simple logic and laws of physics :-)
  • laws of what?

    ;-)
  • I'm going to chime in again for an adjustable "crop factor," at least in movie modes.

    There is a whole world of c-mount lenses out there, fast, cheap, and good enough for 1080 video. Some have tiny image circles, some almost fill the four-thirds frame, but very few completely fill the frame.

    It would be really useful to be able to crop just inside the image circle, so you could use the full field of view of these lenses and get optimal matching to the camera. Since the crop would be performed before it goes to the in-camera downscale to 1920x1080 and the camera's encoder, we could get very good results. (The only way right now to use the whole lens is to crop the already encoded 1920x1080 in post, upscale the crop back up to 1920x1080, and re-encode. Yuck!)

    This has to be possible, since the camera is already doing it! It's cropping a 4976x2800 subset from the 4976x3456 sensor, de-Bayerizing it, and downscaling to 1920x1080. All the entrerprising hack programmer needs to do, it would seem, is to change some constants--the locations of the corners of the crop window. Easy!

    For example, for a crop down to 98.7% of the full resolution, take the 16:9 rectangle with 4912x2764 pixels that extends from (32,18) to (4944,2782).

    If you can make this happen, please include the ability to reposition the center of the crop rectangle. Tolerances in cameras, lenses, and adapters are sloppy enough that the image circle is very obviously off center for most lenses, as people who have experimented with c-mount lenses have seen.

    Maybe at first, the crop corners will have to be selected in ptool and therefore hard-coded into a custom firmware, and perhaps accessed by going into ETC mode (though I observe again that curiously, ETC mode
    is the one mode where the downscaler is skipped--though it obviously is cropping in ETC mode it may not be easy to add a scaling step.)

    But as a longer term dream-feature, it would be super cool to be able to adjust cropping from the camera's user interface, something a lot like the interface that you use to select the focus assist area: a rectangle of variable size and position, superposed on the live view image.

    Thanks Vitaliy!
  • Is there good reason to believe that offering a 1/48th shutter speed would provide perceptible improvement over 1/50th?