[vimeo]12718346[/vimeo] The new 44MBIT AVCHD is amazing in low light. It holds onto so much more detail at ISO 1600. The GH1 needs careful handling and a great lens to perform at ISO 1600. You need to expose well, maybe a little over.
Month: June 2010
One of the biggest ownership dilemmas I ever had was between these two cameras. I loved the silky smooth shallow depth of field image from the 5D Mark II and the fun factor of the very usable Panasonic GH1. The low light performance of the 5D Mark II was completely absent of banding and colours looked incredible on a big screen. The GH1 had a significant cost and handling advantage…
As the Panasonic GH1 Custom Firmware develops further, we now have quite a lot of options to choose from. We needed a really good test. So what’s even more fearsome than a camera chart? A lama. That’s what.
I was lucky a few months ago to find a rare Isco Centavision lens, which is a high quality 2x wide anamorphic lens. It has it’s own focus ring and it gives quite a Cinemascope-a-like 3:1 aspect ratio on the GH1 with it’s quirky native 16:9 sensor.
Above: Ichiro Kitao, product planner for Panasonic Lumix. Panasonic did a fantastic job on the GH1’s hardware, and it’s software is an impeccable creation, with really easy to use functionality. Now Tester13’s software PTools allows us to change a limited set of variables in the GH1’s firmware. It doesn’t recode anything complicated, create any new functionality or restructure anything. It’s simply doing this:
[vimeo]12472000[/vimeo] The results are finally in and EOSHD.com has found settings that give you the best possible quality from your GH1. There will also be improvements and updates still to come. Please read on! The GH1 can now do 50Mbit 1080p MJPEG and the quality is astounding. It isn’t quite 100% robust yet, certain types of shot can halt recording. But it’s very usable as you can see from the…
Sush! Panasonic GH1 owners. Don’t tell anyone. This is top secret! The 1080p MJPEG is much better than the new AVCHD 32Mbit 1080p. Below are 1:1 crops of frames straight from the camera.
UPDATE: Tomorrow I’ll publish full settings, the final bit rate achieved. I need some time to shoot some decent footage and side by side shots with AVCHD 1080p to show just what a hike in quality this is. So – the Panasonic GH1. Great camera. Crap codec. Right? That’s all changed.