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Should I switch to Gh2?
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  • Alfi666Alfi666

    GH2 and Canons have their pros and cons... owning two GH2's, 550d and 600d I think I can compare...

    I love the image coming from Canons... not the resolution, but the colors and overall look. GH2 has incredible resolution and 1080p really looks how it should, but the colors are nowhere near the Canons. I recon this might be a personal preference, but IMHO the colors on GH2 are simply wrong.

    Cutting the Canons and GH2's in multicam sometimes really hurts as I can't get the GH2 colors close enough to my liking. This is trouble especially in good light.. in low light, all colors seems different and there is not that much color information anyway, so the intercut isn't that bad.

    IMHO, GH2's are good when used alone.. in such case, no one will care.

  • icpicp

    I've been (and I still) a Canon profesional user for the last 3 years. I've shoot with the 5D Mark II and the 550D/t2i, mostly promos, events, studio, documentary & live stuff. I'm not a tech or DOP, so I speak from a filmmaker/editor/colorist(poor) point of view. I bought the GH2 as a personal camera two months ago, I hacked it with the Orion patch and bought some vintage lenses and make my first cheap kit (Rokkor, Vivitar, Canon FD). Now I'm sold. Make the switch, you won't be disappointed.

    Pros:

    • Picture quality from this little camera is unbelievable (and for this price!). I like it more than the 5D video footage, it's sharper and the increased bitrate let's you keep a lot more details.

    • Smaller sensor, so bigger dof, but it's a good thing: focusing on moving subjects it's easier. And it's still shallow enough to be filmic.

    • Large choice of cheap/vintage lenses that you can use.

    Cons:

    • Magic Lantern is a huge improvement to the Canon firmware. It helps a lot (peaking focus, false colours, etc...). I miss it a lot. If you use it on a daily basis you'll miss it too. GH2 hacks it's different, it doesn't add menus and the stuff the Magic lantern have, so keep that in mind.

    • Audio: Canon onboard recording is uncompressed wav. On the GH2 is compressed AC3. Usually I use an external recorder, but on situations where I need to attach directly a mic to the camera, I prefer wav to compressed format. You can increase the AC3 bitrate with ptool, but you can't playback recordings on camera.

  • antcucantcuc

    Thank you for your input guys. @bwhitz I was afraid the green tint and low light performance would be a problem with me but I'm glad you're not having that problem.

    @Alfi666 That's an interesting point about the color. I'll have to do further research to see if it's a dealbreaker for me. But I figure with the larger latitude the hack bitrate offers one should easily be able to get the color to a good point? I may have to just get my hands on a gh2 to do my own tests.

    @dhallowell and @icp Thanks for your input. I don't use magic lantern much and use a smallHD dp6 for focus peak and false color so that won't be a problem.

    Seems like basically everyone here is pro-gh2, now I understand why the plethora of gh2 discussion even exists. I'm going to stop wasting my time and get my hands on a gh2 asap. I can't wait, thank you everyone!

  • goannagoanna

    @antcuc

    everyone here is pro-gh2

    Nope. Not us. Nobody here like that. Nup.

  • hedroxhedrox

    one thing that should be also considered when you are comparing the iso performance on the gh2 vs. canons is that the panny´s liveMos senzors have different sensitivity to the light.. I have edited 4music videos that were filmed on 7D and I would say that the iso performance is really poor (we are talking about video not stills) everything above iso 800 is problematic.. also I´ve had 7D+50mm f1.8 stoped to f2 and gh1+helios 55mm f2 and the gh1 was at iso 800, 7D was at iso 1250, (sure the T-stop maybe wasn´t equal but it has been proven also by andrew read (EOSHD) that iso 160(GH2) is like iso 400 on the 5DmII , look at C300 the "superior" iso 20 000 is eqv. to iso 6400on canon dslrs , I hate when people do such tests and comparing, the last one was from dave dugdale when he was comparing the D800 and 5Dm3.. he set the cameras to iso 6400.. the D800 had maybe 1-2EV brighter footage compared to 5D and he said that the 5D is clear winner ... same thing with philip bloom on his christmas shoothout C300 at 3200iso was totally underexposed compared to other cameras at 3200 and nobody says nothing about it.. are those people blind? canon´s iso rating is not equal to panasonic´s and sony´s!
    also you should consider that in what situation canon is.. if they want for a 4k dslr that shoots 4:2:2 8bit 15K you know what will you probably get for 1-2k from them ..

  • bwhitzbwhitz

    @Alfi666

    I recon this might be a personal preference, but IMHO the colors on GH2 are simply wrong.

    Which lenses are you using on the GH2? Remember... the GH2 is ALL about lens choice. Allot of the "canon look" people like is really just from canon lenses. If you were trying to inter-cut a canon DSLR with a canon lens with a GH2/Panny lens, then forget about it. It just won't work. Got to match the lenses.

    IMO, when I first saw GH2 footage I thought the colors and look was pretty bad myself. But then I saw material shot with Nikkors and other lenses and was hooked. IMO, it's Panasonic's lenses that are off, not the GH2. I think they are absolutely abysmal.

    If you're trying to get the GH2 to look like a canon DSLR... start by shooting with canon class. Then use 'nostalgic' or 'vibrant' color profile settings... they look pretty close to me.

  • Alfi666Alfi666

    @bwhitz:

    Got your point... I'm using Panny lenses (14-140 and 14-42 and 20/1.7)... I will try with same Canon lens I'm using on Canons just to check if there is some noticable difference. I've seen intercut footage between Canons and GH2 but all were using Canon lenses.. and there was not such huge color difference. Nevertheless, I liked the Canon lenses because of their autofocus - thats the reason I like GH2 in the first place... so putting Canon lenses is a bit useless for me (I could then use 600D instead)

  • kurolawkurolaw

    I owned a 5d Mark II and decided to sell it to switch to a gh2. I never regreted it not a even a second. The gh2 is just great when it comes to post, and the moire/alliasing problem is almost non-existent.

    The only problem is audio but its worth it. You can even use your old canon glass(i only use old glass(don't like the look of most new lenses).

  • rockroadpixrockroadpix

    I'm fairly certain that GH2 audio is better than 5DMkII audio. I could be wrong. When I was researching getting a dslr, (way back when) the GH1 had better sound processing in cam than any that were out there.

  • BlueBomberTurboBlueBomberTurbo

    GH2 has the best audio from a non-dedicated recording device I've heard. Nice full range, not tinny and compressed sounding like just about everything else out there. Not sure about the mic input quality, but the onboard stereo mics are great for general ambient sound. I don't even need to use a separate mic for auto racing events.

  • antcucantcuc

    Ah great advice everyone thank you very much!

  • fatpigfatpig

    +1 on the audio part. especially great for use with pluraleyes in post :) automatic sync- and if you need to, camera audio can be used very nicely. :)

  • kdurkkdurk

    switched from t3i to gh2. gh2 sooo much better for video. i can shoot video so much easier with gh2, smaller and in general my video just looks better when compared to t3i footage. gh2 is easier to operate and focus than t3i. like canon better for straight up photography. just my 2cents.

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