Philip Coltart: Hacked GH2 smokes the RED Epic camera!
RED Epic verus Panasonic GH2 from Philip Coltart on Vimeo.
And this is what Philip Coltart wrote as a comment on his vimeo page:
“Ok I can see we’re getting to the point of this post where splitting hairs is all that’s left. I didn’t weigh the camera. We had some odds and ends on it and I can tell you it certainly felt like. 25lbs. Not a negative point. It is solidly built. Not a run and gun shooter. I left this review open for your interpretation but I will state strongly that I expected the RED to perform the same as a good 1080p cam like the GH2, only 5 times bigger. Mark my words clearly, because I was with the Epic for four days and on the phone extensively with RED, this camera is NOT sharp, pixel for pixel compared to the GH2. When you Zoom the RED raw files to 100% and you look at the GH2 at 100%, the GH2 smokes it. SMOKES IT! and I am not talking about false sharpening. I am saying the RED Is soft and creamy like a 7D with a crap lens on it. On top of that, anyone boasting 300 frames is grasping at straws because what RED doesn’t tell you is that when shooting at 300 or even 120, you Redcode goes to crap. 12:1 and that, my friends looks like junk.l at 5K and I will happily load the raw files or you to see. I’ll be blunt, now that this post has run its course, the RED was a complete disappointment to the hype. I don’t have to be a Hollywood pro to see it either. Which I think is all the more a testimony. Thank you for all of your thoughts.”
P.S.: GH2 price check at Amazon, Adorama, B&H, J&R, eBay (Click on shop name to visit the GH2 search page).
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Recent comments
Comment from Neonart: I agree. I've had 2 L1s, an E3, and now ...
Comment from Patrick Cavan Brown: Thank you, Stephen!...
Comment from zf: You doesn't seem to get the point here. ...
Comment from gl: ... actually I see now your quote was fr...
Pitofknowledge
7 months ago |I guess now is the time where some douche complain about Panasonic delivery problems or lacking EVF or Articulated screen on the not yet announced GX1
Gianluca
7 months ago |Wt21
7 months ago |What does the GX1 have to do with this post? Or is it just that time of the month for you?
MJr
7 months ago |You’re surprised that the GX1 is on our mind a few days before the announcement, on a dedicated m4/3 rumors site?
Do you always look for such ridiculous arguments or is it just that time of the month for you ?
FrankieT
7 months ago |Are you one of the douches Pitofknowledge is referencing?
MJr
7 months ago |No i live in the EU, delivery is fine. We hate tilty screens, and we already know it has no EVF. I only complain about people complaining about people complaining about the EVF, for not understanding. Obviously.
FrankieT
7 months ago |DB, an American idiom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_bag#Slang_uses
MJr
7 months ago |Hence the humor. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hence
Simon
7 months ago |Fact is that the HACKED GH2 is top notch. In other words: Panasonic is intentionally crippling its products, instead of letting them run wild and trail the market. What kind of strategy is that?
Nikku
7 months ago |This is normal. Panny doesn’t want the GH2 to compete directly with its higher end video cameras. I personally disagree with the strategy, but understand the logic.
Dummy00001
7 months ago |> I personally disagree with the strategy, but understand the logic.
Another story about disruptive innovations and how businesses try to prevent them from occuring.
I really hope Panasonic reads that and sees the opportunity. And officially allows GH* and AG-AF cameras to be hackable (say, at cost of voiding the warranty) and let the people be. While selling them “new” cameras with more RAM/faster CPU/better sensor/different features/different ergonomics/etc.
P.S. I’m not a video guy – I’m into stills. But think about the prospects of having a hackable stills camera!!!
P.P.S. Reminds of the WRT54G and the DD-RTW.
zf
7 months ago |I can’t see much reason of hacking stills. My GF3 can shoot RAW which is the highest standard of any kind of professional video camera use.
The problem is, all manufacturer are forced to compress it’s file. But sometimes, they compress it far too much. The hacked GH2 can only reduce the compression but still impossible to eliminate it.
Some regulation might hinder them too, though. We now know about 29:59 limit regulation. But I sure expect there are a lot more shitty hidden regulations that only tax extortioners know.
Jessy Plames
7 months ago |They know this is a huge selling feature so they have stopped the regular firmware updates blocking them. It’s happened this way for a while now.
Dummy00001
7 months ago |> My GF3 can shoot RAW which is the highest standard of any kind of professional video camera use.
But RAW is the only beginning. Camera manufacturers failed to provide usable (some do not even provide any) interface to develop RAW right on the camera.
Add WiFi and 3rd party apps to correct the photos, and I can see myself shedding more than 90% of time I spend the computer developing and uploading photos.
Mobile phones already reached the point – DSLRs/ILCs are still lagging. And mobiles phones, even at the lower price points, already provide the 3rd party apps with GPU acceleration for the photo editing.
zf
7 months ago |You doesn’t seem to get the point here. It will be a pain to explain what RAW is, why is it so important, why hacked GH2 4:2:2 format is the closest to RAW’s 4:4:4 and why you have to pay 100k to get real RAW video format.
Any kind of points that your mobile phone reached, if you are talking about hipster style instagram, I wonder why you’re still here. We have these program that can edit photos, like instagram, and can apply presets at exactly 0.5s, like instagram, but better. It’s called lightroom. If 90% is the total amount of developing and uploading time, that means you either forgot the most secret feature of resizing or it’s time for you to upgrade from dial up.
M43Photo
7 months ago |The hacking also gives much higher bitrate. I’m not sure what bitrate has been used in these video clips, but the comments talk about 176mbit. That is roughly six times the original GH2 bitrate, and will give you enormous video files.
I prefer the stock GH2 video compression, which gives a reasonable balance between video quality and video file size.
Nelson
7 months ago |176Mb is still smaller than RAW that RED is recorded on
Archer Sully
7 months ago |Apple is about the only company I know of that focuses on product, and lets the profits happen. The world would be a more interesting place if more companies did that. And that means you, Panasonic!
Simon
7 months ago |+1
If Panasonic guys would have been at Apple, they would’ve advised to hold back the touchscreen iphone for some more years so they can keep selling click wheel ipods for some more years.
zsun
7 months ago |Apple is pretty good in perfecting its product but they are not perfect either. For example, through jailbreaking it is perfectly possible to have mirroring display function on the iPad 1 however no Apple firmware update address they, keeping that a great selling feature of the iPad 2. Why can’t they allow both? Because they want people to spend more money on a slightly better model despite the fact that those comsumer’s iPad 1 was barely 1 year old.
observer
7 months ago |And the GX1 with the super duper fast chipset will smoke the GH2???
Why focus on the negatives that the GH2 had been crippled etc… Why not be super happy that you can buy a budget GH2 and hack it to be better than all those expensive alternatives???
MJr
7 months ago |What exactly is he complaining about, that the RED is soft with a crap lens on it ? Well duh.. not the cameras fault. And very convenient not to mention RAW, in which RED is the king, including dynamic range and incredible noise performance. The amount of stops you can regain from RED-RAW without noise starting to show is insane. “I don’t have to be a Hollywood pro to see it ” .. but he’s obviously missing a lot of critical knowledge and cannot look past what’s on the surface. Like all those split view video comparisons on youtube of D7000 vs 7D or whatever. When will people ever learn it’s not that black ‘n white.
Pile
7 months ago |What he said is hacked GH2 is comparable with RED, and GH2 smokes RED in terms of the sharpness in not-so dark situation. Actually overall quality of the footage of GH2 made me surprise a lot. Now we need to complain about the Panasonic sensor’s noise performance!
Nikku
7 months ago |I wish Panny’s jpegs were as good as Oly’s. I would love to have a GH2 for the video capabilities. I had a GH1, and the video was outstanding, but the jpegs were fugly, and I prefer not to work with RAW files. I traded it for an EP2, which gives wonderful jpegs, but poor video.
Neonart
7 months ago |I agree. I’ve had 2 L1s, an E3, and now a 520 and E5. When I wanted to check out m43, I actually bought both a G2, and a EPL1. While the G2 blows the EPL1 in features & specs, I stopped using it and LOVE the EPL1 as my carry everywhere cam. The files are just beautiful. No need to fuss with them much, and IS is great on legacy glass.
I wonder what Olympus could do if they used the GH1 sensor in one of their cameras.
John Krumm
7 months ago |Didn’t look like a smoking to me. In the outdoor shots the GH2 had kind of a blueish color cast, and the RED nicer greens. Indoors the GH looked quite nice.
Diti
7 months ago |Have you tried using a neutral grey chart? I do, and my shots never have any color cast.
Stephen
7 months ago |You don’t shoot a 5K camera and look at a 1920×1080 crop and compare pixel to pixel, because that’s not how you use the camera. You shoot at 5K and scale it to 4K, 2K, or 1080, and it looks a hell of a lot sharper and there’s less noise. That’s the whole point.
Unless of course Mr. Wedding Video Shooter thinks he’s stumbled on to something that the DoPs who shot The Hobbit, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, the new Spider-Man movie, Social Network, and so many more, have all missed.
Patrick Cavan Brown
7 months ago |Thank you, Stephen!
snowflake
7 months ago |I think the reason for the reduced clock rate is due to thermal considerations.
The faster the clock rate the greater the heat production. Heat destroys electronics. I would worry that all those who are pushing the speed are shortening the life of the camera.
This may not be a problem for most heavy useres who upgrade when ever possible, but it would be a concern for someone buying their used camera.
The issue of heat was mentioned in this forum in April
http://www.43rumors.com/?s=patent+heat+
Stephen
7 months ago |Or, alternately, he should have used the FF1080 mode on the EPIC. That would use the full 5K sensor, scale it down to 1080 in-camera, and record it that way. Smaller data rate, still great quality.
Uberzone
7 months ago |The author says the videos were compaired at 100% crop. Red camera at 5k and GH2 at 1080p? Maybe I’m missing something but that doesn’t seem like a good comparison. Downscale the Red to 1080p, then compare the two.
gl
7 months ago |The post title is totally wrong. Philip and I agree later in the comments that the GH2 oversharpens its video images for AF lenses. I tested it, Panny apply extra sharpening during the lens distortion correction, that’s why the AF lenses are sometimes called ‘too sharp/clinical’, and manual lenses ‘more organic/cinematic’. Check my test here: http://www.personal-view.com./talks/discussion/comment/21050#Comment_21050
It’s easy to be seduced by sharpening, but it’s not very cinematic (even compared to modern digital-camera movies which are never as sharp as a GH2 with an AF lens). And if you don’t like the look you can’t turn it off (unless the hack finds a way around it). But you can always sharpen the RED footage in post.
gl
7 months ago |… actually I see now your quote was from one of his later comments, where he changed his mind. Fair enough, the GH2 AF sharpening is still a problem though.