Luminous Landscape and the GH2 crop mode. Deals: new low-price record on the GF1 and GH1
GH2 ETC Mode from Michael Reichmann on Vimeo.
I don’t know if Panasonic is really conscious about the fact that the 1:1 video crop mode could become one of the most popular features of the new Panasonic GH2! Vitaly (the hacker), Philip Bloom, EosHD and many other famous blogger are simply amazed about it! Not only, also Luminous Landscape posted an article about the Panasonic GH2 Extra-Tele Video Mode: “Its presence is hidden on the user manual page about digital zooming, and Panasonic makes no mention of it in their product promotion. This should have been a banner feature for the GH2, something that those shooting video would see as a huge differentiating feature. Being able to shoot uninterpolated Extra Tele Conversion output from the sensor, and have what is effectively a 2.6X tele-extender with no light loss and no image degradation – all available at the press of a button – is quite a big deal to my mind. Did the engineers at Panasonic not tell Marketing about this feature? If not, why not? Or, did Marketing not understand what this was all about? We’ll likely never know the truth. But now you know, and if like me you find this to be an exceptionally useful capability – pass it on.”
Panasonic GH2 direct preorder links:
Amazon US
One more deal: US readers might not get the GH2 soon but at least you can enjoy one low-price record after another!
The Panasonic GF1 with 20mm lens is now in Stock for $579 ony at Amazon (Click here).
And the Panasonic GH1 price is back at $959 at Amazon (Click here)
P.S.:Panasonic has set the price for the GF2+14mm lens in Hong Kong: HK $5,990 (That’s $771 US dollars)
Share
Recent comments
Comment from Angry Olympus Owner: +1....- Comment from Angry Olympus Owner: You are right, It does handle noise poor...
Comment from Jonathan: OK, I think we are actually saying the s...
Comment from Zonkie: No, you don't understand:
When you cr...
frosti7
2 years ago |Its sad that Panasonic Doesn’t recognize their own strength, that means they don’t know who is their target market
Dun
2 years ago |They say “no image degradation”. Doesn’t a full sensor video have less noise at low light than 2.6x zoom using a small area of the sensor?
Ganec
2 years ago |No, it has not.
For video on current large chips (panasonic GH included) are not used all pixels, only some of them (exactly only those necessary for HD video resolution).
Maybe GH2 is different and use pixel binning (electronic charge sum at hardware level) as it is used in compacts…
Zonkie
2 years ago |I don’t understand. When used in this cropped mode, you are using a sensor of the size of a campact camera or a normal camcorder. Therefor, you are losing all the advantages of a large sensor, in special the shallow depth of field. Shooting with a camcorder that has a 2mp FullHD sensor would give same results (but notice that in the GH2 they are seeing shallow DOF in this mode only because the lenses become very, very long. For example a 100mm lens becomes 520mm equivalent in full frame. You would also get shallow depth of field with a camcorder using such focal length).
So unless I’m missing something I think that the Panasonic engineers did understand the feature and so did the marketing team. It’s the reviewers who seem to think it’s something else than what it is.
frosti7
2 years ago |you are not loosing the advantage of GH2 high quality sensor, processing, higher DR, Lower ISO noise
Zonkie
2 years ago |That’s not correct. The small part of the sensor you are using has the same physical size and same pixel count at a normal camcorder. So its capabilities regarding noise and DR should be roughly the same as a camcorder with a decent sensor.
Camcorders also don’t have the artifacts that you get rid of by using the GH2′s cropped mode.
So it’s just going back to the camcorder era. With long telephoto lenses to achieve shallow DOF.
Steve
2 years ago |The size of each pixel does not change when you crop so you the noise is much lower than consumer camcorders at the same iso.
Zonkie
2 years ago |Yes, the size of pixels does not change. You have a small sensor with 2 million of decent size pixels. But think again, a camcorder has a sensor with the same physical size and same pixel count, so the size of each pixel is the same (not so on compact cameras that shoot video, because those ones have a total of 12-14 million pixels). Therefor, assuming the quality of the sensor is similar, performance should be similar too.
Jules
2 years ago |Your average videographer does not *always* need shallow DoF. Actually not all that often on average. But he does want that feature.
For the rest of the time, if he can do without all the tradeoff of those large sensors, he will be happy.
Zonkie
2 years ago |The main reason for using a DSLR (or big sensor camera, to be exact) for movies is shallow DOF (and to a lower extent low ISO performance). Otherwise a camcorder is better.
With cropped mode you lose these two advantages. Back to the camcorder days.
Sure, as a free feature is not bad. A camcorder does have advantages in image quality (less artifacts) over a normal DSLR, so if you can have it why not? What I don’t understand is the fuss about it.
Steve
2 years ago |You don’t loose DOF or High ISO capabilities. EOSHD has great 1:1 examples with great DOF and ISO3200.
Jonathan
2 years ago |of course you are losing DOF – for using shorter focal lengths from further away than you would with no crop.
Zonkie
2 years ago |Again, those shots have shallow DOF because in this mode you are using very long focal lengths. The crop factor of the sensor in this mode is 5.2 (instead of 2 like in regular 4/3 mode) and that’s about the same factor as a camcorder. Therefor the DOF behaves exactly the same as in a camcorder or a compact camera. If you use a focal length of 100 mm in those cameras (which is equivalent to over 500mm) then you DO get shallow DOF as in crop mode with the GH2.
And ISO performance is clearly worse in crop mode than when using the whole sensor, for obvious reasons.
Angry Olympus Owner
2 years ago |@Zonkie
This should have been advertised more by Panny.
The point is you don’t need a bunch of extra lenses when recording video. A 35-100mm can be used as a supper tele photo with this feature. Without this feature a 150mm or a 90-250mm would be the only other option which would run at least $2000. Canikon folks right now have no choice but to get more lenses for tele-video. With this feature that is not necessary for M43 users.
Think about it
Say you own a 35-100mm… you can hit 520mm with this feature (great for nature). With out it theirs no tele-converter and if there was you lose F2 and its only 2x. The only option is 90-250mmf2.8 which is $5000
Do we have to think about this one????
Say your a Canon person in the same boat
You own a 70-200mm and want tele video, only option is a $1500 100-400mm to reach 520mm at around f5.6 and thats if your a aps sensor. If your full frame you need a 500mm or 600mm which are both well over $6000
Also there is a difference between why many people chose DLSRs for video and why people chose M43-”DLSRs” for video. M43 is chosen many times because of the lenses can be used on the mount, and with this feature many more lenses like the 17-102mm f2 can now be used with no vignetting issues.
Its not just because the sensor is big.
How can you not see the benefit???…
I bet every other future VIDEO DSLR will be reviewed at a disadvantage for not having a feature like this… simply because it is a advantage. And users who get accustom to using it will never be able to live without it…
Because it is a BIG BIG advantage for VIDEO users
Shallow DOF doesn’t really matter at telephoto lengths because even with a small sensor DOF is always shallow enough at high telephoto lengths as you said. And yea iso will take a hit but so what?? You can go up in focal length without sacrificing F-values so it almost balances out anyways.
And just because M43 can do it now… 100-300mm and a GH2 cost around $1400 if you get body only.
You can do clean video, sharper than what canon or nikon can do at the time, at 1560mm@f5.6 in a very very very small package
Find a good quality (no mirror toys) FF or APS sensor camera lens that can hit that any where near 1560mm and if you can, let me know the price and how much cubic yards it takes up.
BTW, This does not take into account the other brand lenses that can be used on m43 with a adapter that are 300mm+
Panasonic really did well by adding this feature
Zonkie
2 years ago |Yes, you are right in all what you say. I don’t say this feature is not useful, let alone coming for free.
I just want to point out what it is and what it is not, because people are not understand it correctly. The article at LL starts by talking that the greatest advantage of using a DSLR for video if shallow DOF (at a given FOV), but with this feature you lose that ability (at the same FOV, that is).
They also point out there’s no image degradation (noise), but this is not true for obvious reasons: if you take with the GH2 an image at its full 16 MP size and look at it at 100% magnification you will see quite some noise. Now crop the center area and look at it also at 100% magnification: same noise (obviously). However, instead of cropping, reduce the size of the whole 16 MP image to 2 MP. Now look at it at 100% magnification: much less visible noise, right?
So that’s the point, in “normal” mode the GH2 is scaling down an image and thus the noise is much less visible. With the ETC mode it is just cropping the center area and so it gets all the noise. Roughly same noise as a camcorder (not strange, since the sensor size and pixel size is the same).
Angry Olympus Owner
2 years ago |You are right, It does handle noise poorly compared to 1080 from the entire sensor, and DOF advantage is lost.
I think they mean in terms of pixel to pixel sharpness though when they say no image degradation and not degradation from ISO performance
It looks like the most notable drop in performance due to ISO is at 320ISO+ so below that and its only DOF being compromised.
But yes the Quality when using this feature can drop a good amount under certain circumstance… I do see some are not realizing that
Winston Loo
2 years ago |What is more interesting is that this feature is also available on the G2. Its called EZ Optical Zoom. Read pg 56 of the user manual. It promises no image degradation for Movie.. but for stills the size of the still photo will be M or S not L..
The Okram
2 years ago |Cool, thanks for that info!
Steve
2 years ago |You don’t loose DOF or High ISO capabilities. EOSHD has great 1:1 examples with great DOF and ISO3200.
Jonathan
2 years ago |No zonkie, you are using the same focal length (which is a physical characteristic of the lens) on a cropped sensor.
Assuming your compositions remain more or less the same you will have to use a shorter focal length (actual FL, not ‘equivalent’), step further away from the subject or both.
Zonkie
2 years ago |Yes, same physical focal length, but much narrower FOV (i.e, equivalent focal length).
On a full frame camera, 50 mm is not a very long focal length, it’s a normal one (because you get a normal FOV). But in a compact camera 50 mm is a very, long focal length (even if physically is the same) because you get a very narrow FOV (equivalent to about 250 or more mm).
That was my point.
Creatingdvds4u.co.uk
2 years ago |A 2.6x tele converter that doesnt degrade he video or photo quality am I seeing this right or is this scientifically impossible. I am getting mine on Tuesday and I have got to try this function out myself.
Zonkie
2 years ago |It is not exactly a tele converter. It is just cropping the center of the image. So think of it this way: You take a normal picture at 16 MP and then you crop the center part (the 2 mp in the center). So you end up with an image that looks the same (the framing) as if you had used a 2.6 longer lens, except that in the second case the image would have a larger resolution of 16 MP instead of just 2. But since in video you reduce the size to 2 MP in any case, the final result is the same.
vanawesome
2 years ago |Amazing. this makes me want to get a longer lens so I can do some extreme telephoto shots. The last shot is amazing. I can’t believe it doesn’t loose any light or detail. What a powerful feature, I may be wrong, but it would stand to reason that the rolling shutter effect would be minimized using this feature as well wouldn’t it? I’d like to see some pans and motion in this mode.
sacundim
2 years ago |Note that Luminous Landscape didn’t quite claim that there’s no image quality degradation. To quote them literally:
“Is There a Quality Gain or Loss? The answer is both yes and no.”
“Frankly, in my limited testing so far I am unable to see any differences in this regard [...]”
I’d emphasize that “limited testing” part there.
Anyway, there must be some sort of degradation, there is no getting around it. Why?
1. You’re using the same lens at a much higher output magnification. You’re asking a small central part of the lens to produce an image 2.6x as large as what you normally ask of the whole lens. This means that you’ll be using a worse part of the lens’ MTF response curve.
2. Assuming that the full-sensor capture output is downscaled using all of the pixels in the sensor’s 16:9 crop, well, then your capture area is much smaller.
What I notice about LL’s test scene is that there’s very little fine detail in the frame, and the scene contrast is low. And is it just me, or do the bricks in the chimney on the bottom center of the narrow angle frames look sharper at 260mm than at 100mm + 2.6x ETC?
CDMc
2 years ago |I have to disagree – the image size is the same – it’s just a video crop of the final image – whereas normally the Normal image accross the whole sensor is downsized to 1080. I don’r believe that the DoF will change (though I could be wrong – the overall image is still with the entire sensor, so with that aperture it will have the according DoF. For example if you took a normal picture and then cropped to 1080 does the DoF change? no.
I think perhaps noise is slightly more apparent, but Wow, like Reichmann says the kit becomes 28-780 (or whatever the tele end becomes).
It’s a plus for me, especially after the article on EOSHD – no moire, etc.
sacundim
2 years ago |You’re misinterpreting my statement about the image size. My remark is purely about optics, not about how many pixels the final file has across the frame.
Forget about digital for a minute, and just think about film. Suppose I take a photo on a 35mm film camera, and make an 8×12″ print of it. That’s about an 8.5x enlargement from the negative.
Now I take the same negative and make an 8×12″ print off a 2.6x crop of the negative—a 20.8x enlargement. That’s going to look worse, for *two* reasons:
1. You’re going to be magnifying film grain a lot more. Not relevant to the argument here.
2. The more crucial one, which everybody who claims that ETC gives you the same quality is missing: you’re using a worse part of the lens’ MTF. For example, your lens may have 90% MTF at the center at 10 lp/mm, but only, say, 60% MTF at the 26 lp/mm that would be needed to resolve equivalent detail at the 2.6x crop.
Depending on the lens, by doing the 2.6x crop, you’d expect to see less microcontrast, loss of fine low-contrast detail, and less edge definition. And I think I can actually see less edge definition in the Luminous Landscape lens video, in the bottom center brick chimney.
Zonkie
2 years ago |>if you took a normal picture and then cropped to 1080 does the DoF change? no.
You are right, if you crop the center of the image the DOF does not change. However, the equivalent focal length does change!
In other words, to take a picture that looks the same as the cropped one above, you’d need 2.6 times longer focal length. If picture one was taken with a 100mm lens (200mm equivalent in full frame), then picture 2 should be taken with a 260mm lens (520mm equiv.) to frame in the same “contents” (the difference would be that the second picture would have 16 MP instead of just 2 of the cropped one, but in video it doesn’t matter because the 16mp one is reduced to 2mp anyway).
So yes, same DOF but at 2.6 longer focal length. Exactly the same as with a camcorder or a compact camera.
Jonathan
2 years ago |I would humbly suggest this is incorrect.
Cropping an image does not change the DOF, so far so good. Then again, if you use shorter FLs and/or shoot from longer distances to fit the *same* composition on a cropped sensor, results in more depth of field.
Zonkie
2 years ago |No, you don’t understand:
When you crop the center of an image you don’t change the DOF. But you do change the FOV to a much narrower one. In other words, to get the same FOV in “normal” mode as you get in cropped (ETC) mode you’d need a 2.6 linger focal length. That is clearly shown in the video, in order to match the 100 mm focal length in ETC mode, they have to zoom in to 260 mm in normal mode. Now they are getting the same FOV, but in the normal mode the DOF is narrower (because the focal length is bigger). That’s how the crop factor works, and in ETC you have a 5.2 crop factor (instead of 2), so a much wider DOF for the same FOV.
Philip
2 years ago |I think all Gx-models have. My Gf1 have it, here called “digital zoom”, give me 2x magnification. But on the Gf1 the picture degradation is quite visible..
Steve
2 years ago |Digital zoom is much different and of lower quality than the GH2′s 1:1 video.
TenSpeed
2 years ago |There’s a lot of confusion here. Assuming the regular, “full HD” capture is reading a total of 1920 pixels from the width of the full sensor (x 1080 height), then the number of imaging sites doesn’t change at all in cropped mode, nor does the size of those imaging sites. This would mean reading values from every 3rd pixel and ignoring the two in between, which is one of the possible ways of reading video from the full sensor (yes, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s a starting point). Otherwise you’re reading 16Mpixels x 60fps, which is a lot of data to sift through to get a mere 2M captured.
So realistically, Panasonic seems to be saying they read 1920×1080 imaging sites whether using ETC mode or the regular mode. The difference is that normal mode skips pixels, while ETC doesn’t (but only reads from the middle of the sensor). I doubt that any good lens would show a major difference from one mode to the other, as the processing is likely to be a much bigger factor.
Dun
2 years ago |Does it really skip pixels from the full sensor? Is this explained by Panasonic? or is there a review on the internet showing that this is the case? I thought that camera is interpolating, not skipping. If it is skipping pixels, big sensor of the camera would not be an advantage much in terms of noise. It would have the noise characteristic of a sensor nine times smaller than GH2′s sensor, because it would be using the effective area nine times smaller than the full sensor if it is skipping pixels.
Dun
2 years ago |I read the review of Luminious Landscape review. He says there IS more noise in that mode at high iso “due to the lack of compression / interpolation done when the whole sensor output is reduced in normal shooting mode.”
CobyB
2 years ago |If you don’t think this is awesome you are missing the awesomeness. Let’s say you have a nice sharp 135mm f2.8 prime on the camera. At the push of a button, for free and with no extra bulk, you suddenly have a 360mm f2.8 with an image being captured 1:1 (no pixel binning, no line skipping…).
Angry Olympus Owner
2 years ago |+1
Rasterblaster
2 years ago |This feature is only really of use for extending the focal length of a long lens. Other than that, as Zonkie rightly points out, it seems to defeat what we love about shooting video with DSLR’s. But it’s still a very cool feature for extreme telephoto. FYI GH2′s are available from Vistek in Canada. In stock and ready to ship!
Steve
2 years ago |Unfortunately Zonkie was incorrect. I responded to his post above.
Zonkie
2 years ago |No, I was now incorrect. Think about it again and you’ll understand why (I answered above).
Duarte Bruno
2 years ago |2 things are very clear about EC from this video.
1 – It does loose light!
2 – It does not loose pixel detail!
Claas
2 years ago |are you 43 guys only focusing on video or what? all i read is video modes.. video modes…
what about photography?
admin
2 years ago |Claas!
Right now most websites are focusing on the video features of the GH2. If you find interesting news about the pure photographic aspect please sen me the linsk and I will post them!
Bye!
MintMark
2 years ago |They’re discussing video because this feature is most useful with video. If you did this for still frames then it would be a clear trade off… as you crop the frame (and then view the resulting image at the same size) you would gain effective focal length, but lose resolution and detail.
It works for video because without the cropping the camera is reducing the resolution anyway by scaling down the whole sensor field of view into 1920×1080. When the crop mode is used the camera doesn’t do the scaling down step. You’re left with the same 1920×1080 resolution but a smaller field of view (that is, a longer effective focal length)
The Canon 60D has a similar feature but even more extreme, a 640×480 crop mode.
Peter
2 years ago |43 is focusing on Video because it sux at Photography.
Mike
2 years ago |Not as poorly as you do at spelling and proper capitalization, apparently.
McSmooth
2 years ago |How did marketing miss this one? The feature was boasted on every Panasonic site from day one of it’s announcement. Here is an example on the US site that has a chart outlining the extra zoom factors:
http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/systemcamera/gms/gh2/movie.html#extratele
Dun
2 years ago |Luminious Landscape review. He says there IS more noise in this mode at high iso. He says
“we do indeed see a bit more noise in this mode, almost certainly due to the lack of compression / interpolation done when the whole sensor output is reduced in normal shooting mode.”
“Consequently what we see is that in ETC mode at ISO 160, and up to 320, there is no discernible noise degradation visible. This is likely because the GH2 is so clean at low ISOs to begin with. Above ISO 320 in ETC mode images are somewhat noisier than full raster images. I would judge about one to two IE noisier, mostly visible in the shadows and quarter tones.”
CobyB
2 years ago |Yes there will likely be a bit more noise at high ISO, and a bit less resolution unless you have uber-sharp lenses. But when I say a “bit” we are still talking orders of magnitude better quality than the horrible “digital zoom” feature seen in previous cameras … because the way the narrowing of teh field of view occurs is fundamentally different.
DonTom
2 years ago |I agree with the posters who pick up on the possibilities of this feature with fast primes, for movie making. This feature has excited me for a month or two. I need to film my kids playing rugby, at school plays etc. A cheap legacy 85mm F1.8 will work great for that using this feature, far better than a kit zoom ever could. Another bonus is that the hyperfocal distance will remain unchanged as the EZ zoom is activated, so manual focusing of such an event will be a breeze…..focus wide, adjust aperture so that most of the stage is in acceptable focus, then use EZ zoom to go on in.
Only problem is that the filming will have to stop to activate, but can’t see that taking too long.
Dezske
2 years ago |I actually perceive quite the opposite as other commenters do. I find the picture at 100mm with ETC sharper than at 260mm without. I also made up a theory that could explain this. I suppose that the recording was made with an ultrazoom lens. Those lenses perform usually better in the normal to short tele range and their softness increases towards the tele end of their range. So you might end up loosing more by the optical zoom than you loose if you stick around the sweet spot of your lens and “magnify” (I know it’s cropping) digitally the center of the picture where the sharpness is the highest anyway.
Of course I think that ETC would deliver a worse picture if compared using two sort of perfect lenses. What I would consider here as an additional factor none of you mentioned so far is that using the full crop you have definitely at least an R, G and B sensor pixel behind each recorded pixel while cropping down to a 1:1 sensor-image mapping gives you interpolated color values. 2 MP means 0,5 M red, 1 M green and 0,5 blue pixels.
The Okram
2 years ago |This thing is is cool also at the other end of the scale. I just tried it with my G2 and Leica 45 Macro – at max magnification, the field of view (long edge) is slightly less than 6 mm!
Of course at such magnification the use of tripod is obligatory.
Jonathan
2 years ago |OK, I think we are actually saying the same thing.
Angry Olympus Owner
2 years ago |+1.