Panasonic GH2 hack showreel

Here's a 'showreel' of GH2 hack patches: footage that was shot with all sorts of different experimental hack settings by Nick Driftwood. It will tell you nothing unless you download the original file and compare that to your own, stock GH2 footage. But Driftwood posted a download link on Vimeo to the original, uncompressed footage for us to scrutinize.

These are considered experimental patches and I would not suggest using these on a paid job. You need extremely fast SD cards and they fill up in no time.

Hacking the GH2: a friendly tutorial

For all those who -just like me- have held off hacking their GH2's because you were insecure about it and/or didn't feel like spending days on geek-forums trying to get some straight answers from this enormous pool of information, there is now an EZ guide to hacking your GH2. Well done, Sam Mallery! (and why didn't you do this BEFORE I spent 2 days and nights roaming the forums...;-)

GH2 shoot with compact rig

Compact GH2 rig 'on the job'

Did my first official shoot with my GH2 today and built this compact rig to suit today's needs. Was shooting with kids at a school and running about in the woods so I need something small and light. I took along my Pentax 6mm 1.2, my Panasonic Lumix 20mm 1.7 and my Canon FD 50mm 1.4. I wound up using the Panasonic most of the time because it is wide and will easily tell me at what aperture I'm shooting at. The Canon is too tele for handheld work and the Pentax aperture ring was too hard to see...
Audio was recorded on a Zoom H4n in combo with the Sennheiser G2 wireless series. My partner was doing the audio.
I planned to use my SmallHD DP4 but I was moving so fast I skipped mounting it most of the time. Can't wait to look at the (hacked GH2) footage.

What the hack? Panasonic GH2 at ISO 12,800?!

I just succesfully installed the Panasonic GH2 hack and applied a Driftwood patch and before I even got a chance to test it out, master-hacker Vitaliy Kiselev has done it again. Now he has quadrupled the native maximum ISO of 3200 to 12800. How this translates into real life can be seen in this video.

I finally hacked my GH2- did I?

HACK INTERFACE: LOOKS MORE COMPLICATED THAN IT IS

I don't know why, but there was a huge mental barrier to hack my GH2... which I overcame today. There were a few reasons: I wondered whether or not I needed the hack, if I was jeopardizing the stability of my camera and last but not least: I really didn't feel like having to figure out how to do it...
The question whether or not "I really needed" the hack can be answered by a simple "no". Who needs the hack, really? On the other hand, who really needs a new camera? As far as the stability of my camera is concerned, you can always revert to the original firmware. And as far as my resentment for figuring out how to do the hack: it was quite simple. (even though I felt very insecure while doing it)
So now I am presumably shooting 24P with this patch: Driftwood_176M_GOP1_NOAQ_(QuantMeBaby v3) Presumably, because I have no idea whether or not anything has changed in-camera?! The firmware version stays the same and the little footage I've shot looks great. But so did the footage before... I cannot honestly say I see any difference... And I just noticed I used a Sandisk Ultra II, 15mb/s Class 2 card. I thought these are way too slow for these outrageous hack-datarate-numbers..? I guess this story isn't over yet...

GH2 hack: testing in the dark

The new Driftwood patch/hack for the Panasonic GH2 achieves an astonishing bitrate of 176 MB. But to be honest, the technical particularities of this accomplishment elude me; you could have told me 2000 MB and what does it say..? Numbers mean nothing.
The only thing I'm interested in is seeing it in applied in the real world. How does this hack translate into picture quality? Better dynamic range? Less noise? More sharpness? I'm looking for a video that does a side by side comparison of the original bitrate and the hacked one. But I mostly get video that is is sterile testing: a rating of noise produced by the camera when shooting at different ISO's with the lenscap on... That's not a real life test?!
Shoot the same scene with this ridiculously high bitrate and shoot the same scene with 'native' settings. That way I can judge whether I really 'need' this patch as long as I'm only publishing my stuff on the internet... and whether or not it's time to 'upgrade'. Can't find such a test. I guess one of these days I'm gonna have to try it myself. Meanwhile, here's the 'test in the dark' and a 250 MB bitrate test.

Amazing GH2 hack footage

The latest Panasonic GH2 patch seems to be able of some awe-inspiring stuff. The Vitaly team has been able to pump up the bitrate to a dazzling 50 MBP/S (factory bitrate is 17 MBP/S at highest setting!) and GOP3 ('Group Of Pictures.' To put it simply, the shorter the GOP, the better the quality (and less efficient) Is what they say...) Check out this footage, which is compressed for Vimeo and not even at 1920x1080! Original footage is said to be twice as good-a number of people compare this to RED 4K footage.
Not bad for a €800,- body... Aren't we having fun?

GH2k hack - 50mbp/s GOP 3 from BC Olejniczak on Vimeo.

Panasonic GH2 hacked!

It was a matter of time and the time is now: the GH2 has been hacked. Programmer Vitaliy Kiselev has just got to work on the new firmware. Obviously it's still in Beta but he has managed to get these functions -at least partly- working:

• the 30 minute clip length limit being removed (for PAL versions)

• a PAL / NTSC menu function

• new audio bitrates

• AGC selection

• 720/25p, 1080/25p, and 1080/60p (the latter two currently freeze the camera)

If you want to be a Beta tester or want to help out with the development with a donation, here is the place to do so.

Exciting times- this is going to turn a great camera into a killercam! Power to the People! (didn't I use that slogan for a post a few days ago..?)

True 24P out of the Panasonic GH2

24P out of the GH2 is wrapped in a 50i container, if I have read well. Now I'm not the most technical of persons. As long as it works I don't have to know how or why. But luckily for me and and many others like me, there are users and consumers very much involved in the inner workings of the soft and hardware that make up our cameras.
They know that these camera's can do better and they set out to prove it. Now someone has been able to figure out a way to record true 24P through HDMI onto an external recorder. It's a big deal, not necessarily because you get a much cleaner image but because it opens the door to many more possibilities on the GH2: the camera is not the impenetrable vault everyone thought it was. Here's the thread discussing this new development: http://tinyurl.com/6azfoya