lunelson

Is it not the case though, that the d5200 cannot change apertures while in live view mode? And if so, did you find this to be a problem? I read about this being a drawback of video shooting with nikon cameras and it sounded like a real bummer. Having to go out of live view mode and back in constantly, to adjust your exposure...?

[quote]12-50mm F2 would have been really attractive[/quote] Yes, that range and speed would have been the optical equivalent of Canon's 24-105 4.0 on a FF sensor; unfortunately, with only a 3X range and only a 2.8 the panasonic still doesn't compete well enough with what you can get other formats. But I guess we'll see what the GH3 has to offer... maybe it will all be justified somehow. Just to note however, that with this lens the GH2/3 is now a 2000 euro camera system, which also puts it in a different sphere of competition

Hi Andrew, -- regarding the image which "graded poorly": I believe this happens not because it's flat but because the whole thing is dark. That sounds simplistic, but in my understanding the gamma encoding of digital images in relation to light means that the darker areas get fewer bits accorded to them than brighter areas. Dark areas of digitallly photographed images literally have less information. This is why digital imaging in general has such a problem with shadow noise and why a well exposed image looks great in the higher tones and still looks bad in the shadows, and why everyone "crushes the blacks" these days. It's why professional video is so obsessed with 10bit and 12bit images too, because it's the only measure you have against this problem. Chemical photography doesn't do this, since it "encodes" information linearly in relation to light level, so it all looks much more even. Anyway what I'm saying is with a flat profile if you push your exposure "to the right", even though that looks wrong on your display (it will all seem too bright, but just watch your histogram), later you will have encoded more of the picture you actually want, since the flat profile allowed you to push it in to the higher levels of the image. In the grading you would bring things down (rather than up, as you had to do with the sky in that image), and you find that the tone and saturation will turn out much better. That's my theory. I would like to see a comparison, to see how the NEX 7's flat image profile would hold up if treated that way, since I think the color looks much more neutral and balanced than what the GH2 or Canons produce... Best, L

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Yes, well indeed. This is the thing that keeps giving me a sinking feeling. I like the images that the GH2 can produce when they're well exposed -- and corrected afterward, to compensate for the bizarre color response -- but the problem is the glass: what really I want is a FAST zoom with a good documentary range (something like 28-85 equiv.), and there just isn't one. The 12-35mm is still only rumored, and it's going to cost at least 1200 euros and still only be a 2.8. Canon's EF-S 17-55 2.8 has a more useful range (slightly longer) and costs at least 30% less on the street. And the 60D and 600D have higher native ISO according to DxoMark (even if only slightly), and the cinestyle profile would seem to reduce noise by raising the gamma before compression. So maybe we get moiré and aliasing and less sharp images, but the color is more balanced, better exposed/less noisy , the feature set is better (considering the Magic Lantern hack), and the available glass that *works* with the camera natively is unparallelled. The idea that I have to carry a bag of primes and shoot under f 2.0 in order to get good images out of GH2 is a bit ludicrous. That being said, of course you can adapt all kinds of interesting glass on the GH2 and get really nice and detailed images out of it. But at every point in that process there are little caveats and compensations you have to make to keep it all under control and get the best out of it. Including onerous post-processing. On the other hand what you buy as glass for the 600D will also work for whatever replaces it next year, and will also work on the C300 and any other EOS-Cinema products which could be rented if need be. Ah well, I've got my eye on Magic Lantern over the holidays.... we'll see what the lay of the land is in January.

I've had my GH2 since the summer, and I'm thinking about whether i'll stick with it in January and invest in the new 12-35 X lens (supposedly coming out then), or throw it over for something else, namely something with a better lens system and faster native ISO. The noise in video mode on the GH2, in my experience, is such that shooting with the 14-140 lens is garbage in anything but full daylight (or with artificial lighting), since in my results the highest usable ISO on the camera is about 640 and to flexibly run-and-gun with that lens you need to work at around f 5.6. Anyway I've found some workarounds to the weird color response of the camera (over-multiplication of yellow), but the ISO thing is a bitch. Every time I think I like this camera I shoot something interior with it and I hate it again. Wondering if there's someone in Berlin who would like to do a test with me side by side to verify? I'd gladly share my AE technique to correct the color distortions but I have this terrible feeling that my camera is somehow eff'd and I'd like to prove it one way or another. Anyway I also can't stop thinking that the Canon APS-C cameras, despite shortcomings vis a vis the GH2, have the EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS which is awesome and has (as yet) no equivalent in micro 4/3, and there are many more of course. Keeps me up at night. Not really. But almost.