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GH2 impressions

Terry

New member
Hi Nigel, welcome to the forum.

The 14-140 + 20mm is a good two lens kit. All purpose lens plus fast and discreet pancake (at a good focal length to be useful in many situations).
 

Tesselator

New member
OK, I'll read more.
The Zacuto clips; the bathroom scene, maybe from part 3?, showed very well that the GH1 had the worst DR of all the tested cameras. The big jump was between film and digital though.
From what I have seen (untrained eyes though) this far the differences between the GH1 and the GH2 aren't that big. I'll have to go back re-check some samples. The high ISO noise speaks for the GH2 though as I really dislike banding.
Yup, absolutely true. Like I said somewhere before the GH1 looses out in every test. It's only two good points (compared to big name DSLRs) are price and flange distance - that's it.

You are also right that there is very very little difference between the GH1 and the GH2. They have partially cleaned up the banding noise. It's still very much there but it's better now. Also they improved their internal pre-procesing noise reduction routines by a tiny tiny bit - but at the cost of some global and micro contrast. When this is combined with the new 160 ISO base it seems to be better at higher ISOs but it's really just a combination of the new base value and the improved NR. Now combine those two things with smaller pixels (finer noise grain per screen scaled inch) and you have people thinking that it's a great improvement - ummm, after they scale both GH1 & GH2 images to 1000 pixels for the web that is. It is better but very very slightly when one evens the playing field via 100% and adjusts ISO to base compensation. As far as still IQ goes that's it. That's all there is.

Video Mbps in the GH2 has been almost doubled (to 24Mbps) over the native GH1. But with the hack the GH1 can achieve 75Mbps peaks and sustained average rates of 50Mbps. Additionally the GH1 with hack can set GOP to 20 or 10 frames, producing 3 key-frames per second at 60p or 50% more in 1080/24p(I). The codec's 75Mbps peak bitrate allows it to encode a large amount of image detail into each key-frame yet compression efficiency remains high enough to limit average bitrates to 50Mbps. You'll need a good class 10 card for this but that blows away the GH2 in almost every situation. The situation improves when using the MJPEG encoder with such setting and if you're doing green screen there's no beating these bitrates - well, within the M4/3 world anyway... ;) The shorter GOP frame structure in combination with the 75Mbps peaks also significantly improves the codec's ability to track moving objects without producing mud! Nice aye?! The GH2, AF-100 and the Native GH1 can only dream of such things. :p
 

Tesselator

New member
There's at least one review that seems to have a different opinion on a number of your talking points.

http://www.eoshd.com/content/465-Canon-60D-versus-Panasonic-GH2-Full-Review-Part-2
Yeah, but if you read his review he has a definite agenda and a horse in the race. Why people do that is beyond me but I don't trust anyone who says total BS like "[the gh2's] Resolution is simply amazing, makes still frame video grabs look like the 60D's stills..." and then rates such things as "Street Cred" in-line with the rest of it. Heh! No way... That's just a dorky user review full of totally unqualified and unquantified opinion.
 

ustein

Contributing Editor
>"[the gh2's] Resolution is simply amazing, makes still frame video grabs look like the 60D's stills..."

This is BS even if exaggerated.
 

lcubed

New member
>"[the gh2's] Resolution is simply amazing, makes still frame video grabs look like the 60D's stills..."

This is BS even if exaggerated.
i've got to wonder if this is referring to the moire issue of the 60D video.
i've seen references both at that review and on philip bloom's blog on having to deal with this moire when downrezzing from 60D FF to 1080P video output.;)
 

lcubed

New member
I have to disagree about the video quality of the GH2 compared to the Canons.
At slashcam.de they see it as a reference in DSLR video quality even in lowlight compared to 60d and Nikon D7000: http://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Test/Panasonic-GH2---der-kompakte-Ueberflieger.html
I have written about my personal experience 2 days ago.
thanks for the pointer!!

the google translator even does a decent job going from german to english. the night shot video testing posted on jan 14 of the nikon, canon 60D and GH2 was quite interesting !!
 
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Tesselator

New member
i've got to wonder if this is referring to the moire issue of the 60D video.
i've seen references both at that review and on philip bloom's blog on having to deal with this moire when downrezzing from 60D FF to 1080P video output.;)
No. He was comparing the camera grabs during video recording of the GH2 with the standard still camera abilities (non-video) of the 60D. Which is not only BS it's completely absurd! I think this sets the tone for the entire review myself. But whatever... is seems anyone with a keyboard these days can become an instant expert - even in Germany. ;)

Show me the bitrates and keyframe intervals, tell me the sensor size, post some samples if you know what you're doing, and that's all we really need from these guys. All this on and on endless drivel and speculative opinion about what they think is nothing short of retarded.
 
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B

Berndimax

Guest
Tesselator, do mean by "becoming an instant expert" the slashcam site? This is a very trusted site and is testing camcorders for many years now. If you mean me, I have to say that I am not an expert, but also not an novice. I started filmmaking (documentaries) 13 years ago with a Sony VX1000 and have made my experiences during the years.
 

Amin

Active member
I like the 7-14mm lens for it's FL. But perspective buyers should be informed: The lens displays a massive amount CA that the camera's "correction" is unable to completely remove.
I don't agree with the "massive" CA observation. My copy, which I recently sold, had at worst moderate CA (minimal when used on a Pana body with default Lightroom processing used)

Here's a 100% crop from the part of my house which typically shows the worst lateral CA which a lens has to give. This crop is from the left edge of the frame. I processed both 9mm f/4 files in Raw Developer, which doesn't apply any corrections. On the left is the Oly mZD 9-18, on the right the Pana 7-14, both at 9mm and f/4:



Here is the same area with the file processed in Lightroom 3 (which applies CA corrections automatically for Pana lenses shot on Pana bodies):



RAW files for download:
Oly 9mm f4.RW2
Pan 9mm f4.RW2
 

Tesselator

New member
Naw, I didn't have anyone or any site in particular in mind when I made that remark. But the reviews I read on every single commercial site from "professional" reviewers almost always offer an "opinion" which is wrong at lest as often as it is correct. To me there is no such thing as a "trusted site". People are way too unpredictable and influenced by all sorts of absurd things to be trusted with delivering unbiased and absolute fact. Especially sites that have advertising, get review products from manufacturers for free, or who receive any kind of funding from OEMs or VARs. If they can show what they're saying directly then there's a chance it might be true but still I don't completely trust such and almost no review sites do this satisfactorily anyway - German ones included.

There's only one intelligent way to go about learning of some gear's abilities, and that is to read the specs and the manual and then try it for yourself. Generally speaking, that's about it.

Luckily for me most Japanese stores will allow you to play all you want with their demo models! ;) It used to be that way in the USA as well - I think it still mat be too...
 

Tesselator

New member
I don't agree with the "massive" CA observation. My copy, which I recently sold, had at worst moderate CA (minimal when used on a Pana body with default Lightroom processing used)
That's nice. Thanks for showing this. OK, but I still think that "massive" is the correct term given the price of this lens. At $900 there should be none. Also your tests are too kind IMHO. Go ahead and give it something difficult. ;) Here's some 100% completely unprocessed crops from the last few images I took with it:





This one only - I processed so the CA would stand out clearly. I brought it in at 16mpx instead of 12 so it's bigger than normal. It the same image as above - but processed.







That should NOT be cyan!






Maybe our adjectives are out of sync but for nearly a thousand dollars I call this "massive" amounts of CA. :) My $200 Rokkor 16mm has much less than this and it's 40 years old. ;-)
 

Amin

Active member
OK then, we disagree. Compared to all the ultrawides I have used, the Pana 7-14 does not have above average CA, so by any criteria, I wouldn't call it "massive" (which to me implies much worse than average).

As as a practical matter using my default workflow, I was never troubled by color fringing of any kind with this lens. What body were you using? RAW or JPEG?
 

Amin

Active member
GH1, Firmware 3.2, RAW, ACR demosaicing.

How many other UWA lenses have you used?
If you count 24mm and wider as ultrawide in 35mm format, then I have owned at least 10-12 of them, mostly zooms, and most costing about as much as the Pana 7-14.

It does neither of us any good to argue this issue. We both have hands-on experience with the lens and have formed our own opinion of it. For the others reading the thread, I just wanted to go on record as strongly disagreeing with your description of a massive CA problem with this lens and put up a couple of carefully controlled comparison crops with the corresponding RAW files for download. Having accomplished that, I'm done here :salute:.
 

Tesselator

New member
I have like, 50 lenses between 20mm and 35mm. None of them have as much CA as the Lumix 7-14 and none of them cost over $250. All but three are manual focus - most of them are primes but there's lots of zooms too. I've have only 4 UWA lenses though (below 20mm). None of them cost over $500 and only one has CA like the Lumix. Three are MF lenses.

It's also cool that we have different opinions. That's the human condition. ;) Sharing such opinions is fun for me. That you didn't see and couldn't show the CA from this lens might also have something to do with the difference in conditions you and I used it under too. It's all good and thanks again for sharing your experiences!
 

CPWarner

Member
I am with Amin on this one. In the situations I use my 7-14 I am very happy with the lens and do not see problems with CA in my copy.
 

Terry

New member
GH1, Firmware 3.2, RAW, ACR demosaicing.

How many other UWA lenses have you used?
Can you post one of the RAW files? I would like to open it in ACR or LR. A Panny lens on a Panny body is very well corrected (from my observation and every review). I've never seen anything from that lens similar to what you are posting.
 

Tesselator

New member
I might later, yeah... But the GH and G firmware can't correct it when it's in the OOF areas like this. Which is why I tried to get the potentially troubled areas in the OOF portion of the scene. You're right tho. The camera's firmware does a lot of shifting of the color plates for that lens and images that are all sharp and in focus are typically well corrected.

The one UWA I mentioned that also has a CA problem is the exact same deal except I have to correct for it in ACR by hand. One setting fits all images and almost all of it's images need it. The difference between it and the Lumix is only that the GH1 does it for the Lumix automatically without user intervention. Handy.
 
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