GH2 - the ultimate small form-factor video system?

[Mike Kobal]

hey guys,
I just shot a short ghost story only using the two pancake lenses (20mm and 14mm) thanks to the fantastic 1:1 crop mode, there was no need for a longer lens
direct link -90sec tech info below the video
The Other Side: starring Polina Blinova: Shot with Panasonic Lumix GH2 Mike Kobal
the room we shot this in was quite small and not having to deal with a lot of equipment was a joy
cheers,
mike

[Jim Snow]

Very nice job! Great shooting and I also like the editing you did.

[Jeff Harper]

VERY nicely shot and edited. Only thing missing is a story or at least some context for the events.

The beginning led me to expect a story that never happened. It is superbly shot and edited as a random set of clips, but the missing narrative was disappointing.

[Patrick Janka]

That was excellent, I'd love to have editing skills like that!

[Mike Kobal]

thanks Jim, Jeff and Patrick. I agree, Jeff, a story would be nice, always happens during photo shoots, improvising video clips, but one of these days .....

[Patrick Janka]

Mike, do you know of any good books or videos that could help me improve my editing to be more stylistic? I'm fairly vanilla in my editing, but I'd like to shoot highly stylized music videos. I really liked your use of the flashing colored shapes in your video for Christy Thompson. Where did you get the idea for that? Where you just screwin around or did you plan to do that ahead of time? Thanks!

[Martyn Hull]

Very good edit for sure. Lossless E-T-C is mentioned again why is the E-T-C on my GH2 not lossless.

[Mike Kobal]

hey patrick, just screwin around, not aware of any books but i am sure they are out there I usually google around to find tutorials when I try something new or effect I want to try-can be frustrating but its best to look for it when you really need it

[Jim Forrest]

Terrific Mike. What NLE software do you use?

[Jeff Harper]

Martyn, ETC mode quality is dependent on lens quality and lighting, at least in my experience. It's nice, but not perfect.

[Mike Kobal]

edit in premiere pro

[Patrick Janka]

Did you use After Effects?

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Martyn Hull

Very good edit for sure. Lossless E-T-C is mentioned again why is the E-T-C on my GH2 not lossless.

AFAIK it's lossless but you won't get as shallow DOF, supposedly you get 2/3" equivalent. Also, ETC hates gain, so you're best off at low ISO's, like around 200 or so. Otherwise it gets quite grainy.
But resolution and DR should be the same.

Btw, one thing nice about ETC that I noticed is you get way less skew and jello vision, if you could ever get wide enough glass, ETC works great for hand held or other instances where the CMOS sensor wreaks havoc.

[Mike Kobal]

just premierpro

[Eric Lagerlof]

Martyn, I believe the ETC is 'lossless' in the sense that it simply crops the sensor, it doesn't lose quality by trying to 'squeeze' down a 4k(?) image to a 2k image using some sort of digital conversion. My experience of the GH2, with the AVCHD codec is that the lesser ability of the lens, (I own the stock 14-42mm zoom ), to handle wider contrasts leads to noise in the dark areas more often than I would like. Even shooting at lower ISO's. But I'm not sure if this is the total answer.

Jeff's comment above brings to mind how different using a DSLR to shoot video is compared to shooting with a camcorder. As a pro videographer over the last 30 years, including engineering muti-cam shoots, I generally accept without too much question the lens I have with the camera. For starters, most camcorders, even pro ones, come with a fixed lens or a few choices of zoom lenses. If I did switch, I was usually swapping an eng lens for a sports lens(a longer zoom lens, like the cameras you see at stadiums), or maybe a 'pro' lens for the better quality of a 'broadcast' lens. But the lens characteristics were much the same, 'sharp', (for video) and held focus and exposure pretty much throughout the zoom. The lenses were usually reasonably fast, low f2's to hi f1's. And of course, you have gain settings as opposed to ISO settings and let's not forget built-in ND filters. Video cameras were designed to be able to get decent visuals in varying situations with minimal setup times, originally for news gathering.

For DSLR camera lenses, often much of that is out the window. If you even have a zoom lens, exposure (usually) changes quite a bit. Different lenses handle contrast differently, there are no built-in ND filters and of course, the slr lenses responsible for resolving much sharper images than the original video cameras. Some are more noticeably sharper, have wildly different angle of view characteristics etc., etc. With DSLR's, I can't take for granted so much of what I did with a video camera when it comes to wrestling with image quality. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now...