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GH2 – Wind Noise No More

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Micover on GH2

Most HDLR’s have the mic on the body of the camera and most are monaural.  One of the really cool things about the GH2 is the built-in stereo mic.  I am really glad that Panasonic put the stereo microphone on the pop up flash of the GH2.  It is wonderful to have cool ambient sound with my videos.  I did the Irrigation Festival Parade with the built-in mic but no windscreen.  I just set the camera up near the parade announcers.  There was some wind noise and I started looking for a solution.  I now have a windscreen on my … Continue reading →

An Expensive Friday

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The main reason for this article is I hope to help those who might go through this nightmare. Last week was not a good week for my MacBook Pro. The beginning of the week it was acting flakey and slow. Wednesday, when I shut it down and restarted, it would not boot. The little wheel kept spinning and spinning. Even after more than a half of an hour. I had to use the Recover partition in OSX Lion to get it to boot at all. I decided the best call to action was to reload Lion and did a download. … Continue reading →

Depth Of Field Explained

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Yesterday people were complaining on camera blogs about the lack of shallow depth of field of the New Panasonic 12-35mm lens.  How it does not compare to the Canon or Nikon full frame 35mm equivalent.  What they are thinking of is equivalent focal length not the marked focal length on the lens.  I wrote this response. If we all wanted only shallow depth of field (DOF), we would be shooting with a large format camera at large apertures.  Even the full frame 35mm sized sensor does not have shallow with a wide angle lens.  What makes low DOF is a … Continue reading →

This changes Everything – Updated

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(UPDATE – I bought One.  Great!) For the longest time the micro four thirds format (of which the GH2 is a member) has been considered not professional.  The cameras were not weather sealed.  The new Olympus OM-D EM-5 is.  Yes, there are some great lenses.  The Panasonic 25mm, the Olympus 12mm and 45mm are all wonderful.  All are fast aperture primes.  There are no constant large aperture zooms to speak of.  Nikon, Canon and Sony have such lenses.  Panasonic has one constant aperture zoom lens, the Panasonic 7-14mm which is a game changer on it’s right but it is not … Continue reading →

My Mini-Review of Olympus M. Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 Lens – for Micro Four Thirds System

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Originally submitted at Adorama Olympus Micro Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 Lens – for EP Series PEN Digital Cameras Olympus M. Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 Lens – for Micro Four Thirds System   This is a Great Lens. By halfmac from Sequim, WA on 5/18/2012 5out of 5 Pros: Nice Bokeh, Fast / accurate auto-focus, Easily Interchangeable, Consistent Output, SmallCompact, Lightweight Best Uses: Sports/Action, Video, Indoors/Low Light, Weddings/Events, Night Photography Describe Yourself: Pro Photographer Was this a gift?: No When I bought this lens, I really did not think that I really needed it. I was wrong. I use this lens … Continue reading →

Parading GH2 in FCPX

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I have been busy with my GH2 lately with videos of my local area. Last week end was the Sequim 117th Irrigation Festival. I used my GH2 to shoot the Fireworks on Friday and the Grand Parade on Saturday. Both vids were edited in FCPX. I am getting quite used to FCPX am starting to like it. In the parade I used a couple of effects from Noise Industries development partner SUGARfx which introduces Punchline for FCPX. I will be reviewing it soon. The parade is the longest video I have edited in FCPX and I can say it handled … Continue reading →

GH2 Video Crop Mode

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One of the cool features of the GH2 is the video mode called EX Tele Conv (ETC). Basically the camera is only using the center of the camera’s CMOS sensor and cropping it to either 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 pixels depending on the HD mode selected. When shooting in 1920X1080 HD mode and when ETC mode is engaged, the GH2’s 4608 x 3456 sensor is “cropped” to 1920X1080. In other words, only the central 2 Megapixels of the sensor’s overall 18 Megapixels is recorded. This is a 1 to 1 radio of the pixels on the chip. It does wonders … Continue reading →

Kirk Tuck’s Take on the Olympus OM-D

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No, I did not buy an Olympus OMD. (Yes I Did, He bought a NEX7) Here is a great read from Kirk Tuck, a professional still photographer. He use many of the arguments that made me convert from Canon to Panasonic. The new Olympus OMD looks like a very well reviewed great camera but has some what limited video capabilities. I still feel the GH2 is a better video camera. “The demand for a small camera was clearly there. At least for a huge number of non-professionals who didn’t need big bodies to impress clients, giant lenses for sports magazine … Continue reading →

Convert your HDSLR h264 Footage to ProRes – Fast

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I find using the old Apple Quicktime Player 7 is one of the fastest ways to convert HDSLR video for Final Cut. Just use the Export command for the clips. Save them to your favorite codec. Once the clip is started converting, you can open another clip and convert it as well. Repeat for the number of cores on your mac. Each will process in that core. With Compressor and MPEG Streamclip, only one clip can be done one at a time. This applies to Canon or any footage that has a .mov wrapper. Fortunately Panasonic now supports their .MTS … Continue reading →

Using Legacy Lenses on the GH2

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One of the best features of the Micro Four Thirds camera format is the short back focus of the lens mount because of the lack of a mirror.  I currently use Nikon F, Olympus OM, Canon FD, Canon EF and Leica M rangefinder lenses on my GH2 with lens mount adapters.  About any lens made can be mounted with the right adapter.  There are no electrical contacts so the lenses are strickly manually mechanical.  Because the GH2 has the zoom feature in the viewfinder for focusing, it helps with focus.  i usually use my camera in manual exposure mode as … Continue reading →