Lens dilemma - Leica or Samyang. Steadycam. Timelapse.

[luminescence]

Hello,
        I am new here and a new GH2 owner, currently wading through the manual and Andrew's book. I am due to leave the states in a week for south america and wanted to ask a few questions:

1) I want to get one good fast lens to go with my Lumix 7-14 and 14-140. The choices are the Panasonic Leica 25 mm 1.4, or the Samyang 35 mm 1.4 (Rokinon here in USA). I might have preferred the new Samyang 25 mm but I guess it will take a while to come into circulation?

I wanted to check that the crop factor for a GH2 is in fact 1.8 and not 2? If so, this would make the 35mm, a 63mm, and the 25mm a 45mm - correct? Given my other lenses, what would users recommend, 45mm or 63mm?

Adapter: On B&H's website the only adapter for the Rokinon (for Olympus 4/3) I can find is the DMW-MA1 for $115 w/o tax. Is there a cheaper one?

2) After a lot of looking around for a lightweight travel-friendly steadycam, I ordered the Lensse MidX Camera Stabilizer Steady Cam ($98) - anybody had experience with this? It got a lot of good reviews on Amazon.

3) I am interested in exploring time lapse video, but could not find much in Andrew's book (except p.45) or on this forum about it. Can anyone point me to discussions or articles about this topic - in relation to the GH2? Is there a particular brand of interval timer I need to get (relatively inexpensive), and does the GH2 hack cater much for time lapse?

Apologies for so many questions and thanks for a great community!

[chrisso]

I saw someone had chosen the SLR Magic 12mm, 1.6f specifically for Steadicam work.
Manual lens though.

[Francisco Rios]

Hi, Welcome!! Bienvenido !

I recommend the panasonic leica for steady work. The leica has the option for automatic focus that can be better for your steadycam work. Also the 25mm focal lenght is better to handle in steady than the 35mm. And at last the leica is lighter than the samyang.

Take a look on these videos:
[url=http://vimeo.com/33025136]Musgo Trailer[/url]
[url=http://vimeo.com/33456753]Making of Musgo(part I)[/url]

You will see the gh2 working on a steadycam very similar to yours( it's the same but british)

I don't know much about time lapse. I used the internal option of the GH2 ( 300%) and works fine. I used for clouds.
I know there is twixtor but I didn't use it yet.

Good luck!
Francisco.

[luminescence]

thanks, I had already decided to go with the Leica, so good confirmation. The steadycam at 1.37 of the second vid is identical to the one I ordered. With regards to timelapse, its not clear if G13 Timelapser is incorporated into the latest patch 3.64d - as discussed at Personal View.
Where exactly did you set the "internal option of the GH2 ( 300%)" ??
cheers!

[Francisco Rios]

Here is:

MENU
CREATIVE MODE
VARIABLE MOVIE MODE
FRAME RATE
300%

CHEERS!

[luminescence]

thanks Francisco!