Good news for all Panasonic GH2 owners! Vitaly (the hacker) managed to dump the firmware of the Panasonic GH2! He can now start the reverse engineering process. It will take some time to understand the GH2 code. But we now have to right to dream the new features we would love to add to our GH2 (50/60P for example?).

There is also one more good news. Unlike the GH1 the GH2 video uses the RAM instead of ROM. You could be able to update the hacked software without to have to install one firmware hack update after another! Go Vitaly go!

Follow the forum post form Vitaly at www.personal-view.com

P.S.: Don’t forget to support Vitaly’s work with a small (or huge) donation!

The dpreview forum user “Morepix” found something really interesting about the GH2:”
1) The NR +2 shot had less noise and slightly less fine detail than the NR 0 shot.
2) I ran Topaz DeNoise on the NR 0 shot and compared the NR +2 image OOC. By comparison, the NR 0 shot with Topaz processing was better in every respect than the one with in-camera NR.
3) For some reason, the NR +2 shot showed chroma noise (blue) which the NR 0 shot did not.
4) My conclusion: Don’t use in-camera NR on RAW images. But if you want to clean up noise at higher ISO, Topaz does the best job I know of.”

ISO Test GH2 vs X100 (Dpreview forum)
Panasonic GF2 review at Blog.Paran.
PL-Mount and otherwise, cine-style lenses are proliferating (ProVideoCoalition).
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS18 / FH5 review (CameraLabs).

There are three refurbished E-PL1 cameras you can now get on Olympusmarket: First black E-PL1 on [shoplink 21833 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink], Second black E-PL1 on [shoplink 21834 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink] and a silver E-PL1 on [shoplink 21835 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

Links to:
GH2 at [shopcountry 16254].
GF2 at [shopcountry 17361].
Fuji X100 at [shopcountry 19929].

Olympus has revised it’s business results forecasts for the fiscal year that ended on March 31. The net sales are 2,1% lower than expected and the net income has fallen by 50%. Olympus said the decline of digital camera sales is caused by intensifying market competition and by the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Yesterday I had a talk with three of my best sources. All do confirm that Olympus and Panasonic will soon go back to 100% full production capability. There are only minor problems with external suppliers that could delay the way back to the “normality”. Olympus and Panasonic plants were not particularly damaged by the Tsunami disaster. They don’t have to face the huge problems Nikon Canon and Sony do have. I don’t want to sound cynical (that’s just a pure marketing and business information) but Olympus and Panasonic could take advantage of the situation because it looks like Canon-Nikon-Sony too will not be able to produce enough cameras to avoid a price increase on their cameras. Is that a chance for Oly and Pana to increase their market share?

P.S.: I expect new product announcements next week by Panasonic and in June by Olympus. So stay tuned!

Goyo (Click here) made five new C-mount primes lenses that do cover the whole 4/3 sensor! Those are 12-16-25-35-50mm f/2.0 primes! To bad they don’t have a native m43 mount because otherwise this would be an amazing news. You will need to buy the C-mount adapter ([shoplink 21797 ebay]You can get them here on eBay for $8-$20[/shoplink]) to use those lenses.
On their website you can find sketches of the optics (no real pictures). They look pretty big. But finally we have some new lenses we can play with :)
There are no info about availability and price. And I didn’t fin any Goyo Lens on [shoplink 21799 ebay]eBay (only…”Toyo”! Is it the same?)[/shoplink]. That’s the list of the new lenses you can find on Goyo’s website:

Links:
C-mount adapter on [shoplink 21797 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
Goyo and Toyo lenses on [shoplink 21799 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].

Low light comparison between the FS100, F3, [shoplink 16841]Panasonic AF101[/shoplink] and Canon 5DmkII

The website 3Dkraft created 3D pictures using two Panasonic GH2 cameras and the 14-42mm kit lens. Take a look at the results on 3Dkraft (Click here).

For our polish readers. There is a new PEN blog you might want to bookmark: http://www.penowiec.com/

Definitive Answer on the affect of NR on RAW for the GH2 (Dpreview forum).

Olympus XZ-1 per se and compared to Samsung EX1 (Seriouscompacts).

The new Capture One 6.2 adds support for the Panasonic GH2 and GF2.

Videos readers sent to me:
Dulche con leche (GH13+Nokton video) on vimeo.
Panasonic GH2 Slow Motion video on vimeo.

Panasonic announced that they will reduce nine percent of the global workforce due to restructuring efforts. 35,000 people will loose their job. Engadget said: “The cuts will come over two years. The news comes as Panasonic reported a ¥40.7 billion ($499 million) loss for quarter, largely on account of a ¥61 billion ($748 million) restructuring cost. Panny says that its bottom line was also affected by a strong Yen, stiff competition in television sales, and the recent earthquake and tsunami.”

That’s a terrible news for all the workers and maybe for Panasonic too. If you have to cut 9% of your employees means that something isn’t working very well inside your company. A wonder what kind of influence this will have on the Digital Imaging division and the future Micro Four Thirds products strategy.

UPDATE: Photoscala published the financial results from Panasonic. The bad news is that Panasonic had a 10% turnover drop on digital camera sales. The last quarter had the worst result since two years. See the image below (Image courtesy: Photoscala)

Doesn’t look good at all.

FIGS. 8A to 8F are diagrams showing a comparison of the temperature distributions of different heat radiating structures.

If you want to know how Panasonic solved the possible [shoplink 16254]Panasonic GH2[/shoplink] heating issues than you may have a look at the United States Patent 7933516 (Click here to read the full patent at freepatentsonline). That’s the description:
“When the camera body is made smaller, however, this reduces the space surrounding the electronic parts, such as an imaging element unit that includes an imaging element and an imaging element circuit board that controls the imaging element, or the main circuit board on which the camera controller is mounted, which means that these electronic parts are packed together more densely. Meanwhile, as image quality rises, the imaging element and the camera controller consume a greater amount of electrical power, so these electrical parts generate more heat. In particular, when a large amount of heat is generated by the imaging element, heat is transferred from the imaging element to electronic parts such as the main circuit board on which the camera controller is mounted, and it is possible that the heat will damage the electronic parts. With the camera controller and imaging element described below, heat damage to electronic parts can be prevented.”

“The main circuit board is disposed on the opposite side of the imaging element from the body mount, and includes a camera controller. The heat radiating plate is disposed between the imaging element and the main circuit board. With this camera body, even if heat is generated by the imaging element, since the amount of heat transferred from the imaging element to the main circuit board is reduced by the heat radiating plate, an increase in the temperature of the main circuit board can be suppressed. This prevents heat damage to electronic parts.
As shown in FIGS. 8A to 8F, a comparison of the heat radiating structure in this embodiment with the heat radiating structure in the reference example reveals that the temperature of the CMOS image sensor 110 and the main circuit board 142 is lower in this embodiment. The reason for this seems to be that the heat of the CMOS image sensor 110 is efficiently absorbed by the heat radiating plate 195 and the thermal conductor 196, and that heat is efficiently released from the CMOS image sensor 110 via the thermal conductor 196 extending to the front side.
It can also be seen that the temperature of the bottom face 101a of the camera body 100 is lower in this embodiment. The likely reason is that part of the heat transferred from the CMOS image sensor 110 to the main frame 154 is radiated to the outside of the thermal conduction path by the heat radiating member 198.
These results tell us that the heat radiating structure of this embodiment is effective at suppressing an increase in the temperature of the main circuit board 142, and suppressing an increase in the temperature of the bottom face 101a of the camera body 100.”

The japanese blog Egami (Clic here) found a patent which describes a possible new Olympus XZ-2 with 28-112mm f/1.8-3.8 lens.

Not a big deal….