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.

Sweet 'n cheap follow focus?

$99,- for a good follow focus?

Vitaliy Kiselev, the man responsibe for hacking the Panasonic GH1 and GH2, runs a forum called Personal View. He has some nice deal going on once in a while, whereby he appraoches dealers to give a special deal for his members. For the dealers it's nice because they get publicity and sell a bunch of units at once.
Now there's an interesting little FF being offered as a special deal. I think Vitaliy generally knows what he's talking about and he says this unit is better than another respectable budget follow focus, the DFocus. (I own one but it has some annoying play and it doesn not mount as easily as this one) This unit that's being offered could have 'minimal play': I'm curious to find out how that translates into real life... You have to be a member of Personal View to be able to get in on the deal. US $99,- seems to be a pretty sweet price.

Nice feature: on and off without waiting in line!

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..?)