I just spoke to a source at Panasonic and touched on the possibility of the GH2 hack, and why Panasonic wanted to make it hard for Vitaliy Kiselev to improve functionality on the camera, for free and unpaid.
Browsing: firmware
“As you may know, I have GH2 firmware now. But it is encrypted, and uses compacts UPD format [same as Panasonic’s latest compacts]. It’ll require bunch of resources and expertise to try to dump [firmware from compacts] and learn how encryption is performed. [So it can be reverse engineered]. Please publish this info with bold request for all engineers [with expertise in] NOR flash (and especially LSI with NOR) to…
At 43Rumors.com, VK has been interviewed regarding the GH2. Please do read the interview in full. Although it contains quite a few contradictions, technically it is quite illuminating.
UPDATE: The firmware was released in October, but only added the ability to control aperture during movie recording. We need control of shutter speed and ISO for it to be properly usable. Image source: IFA 2010, press pack – Sony’s press conference today at the IFA in Berlin Source: German website Slashcam.de reports via Sony Alpha Rumors Ichiro Takagi (Deputy President of the Imaging Business Group of Sony) today told…
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.
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:
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.