@Ptchaw, would love to see some before/after comparisons of the distortion correction on m4/3 lenses.

@Ptchaw
"I have a suspicion the additional sharpening with M4/3 lenses @stonebat reports is to compensate for the effect of distortion correction on the image. "

Ptchaw, yes please post images with the contacts taped and not taped. This should be interesting.
If you can, post images of the kit lens at its widest with tape on and off.

Have read a lot on this but only now found this thread. Keyphrase is "edge sharpness".

Tips I've collected from all over the place to help soften the edges in your videos:

- Prime lenses, shoot wide open
- Diffusion filter, Tiffen...Schneider...
- higher ISO, some suggest between 400 and 800 (cannot confirm this yet but apparently the edges result to be softer?)
- lower the in-camera sharpness and contrast to the lowest setting possible

I only own a few "cheaper" lenses but using my old 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor so far seems to produce a much more softened skin/look compared to the kit lenses that come with the GH2. Have tried a diffusion filter too but I'm not yet too sure if it's any different than adding diffusion in post.

I hear the Voigtländer f/0.95 gives the softest look so far whilst remaining an overall image clarity and sharpness, can't comment on this myself.

Oh yes, I'm with you. Was merely pointing out what we can do until we have a hack solution ;-)
If possible, that is... I read people say it's just the nature of the sensor itself, let's hope that's not true -.-

JPEG file with -2 sharpness setting has sharper image than RAW file.

> I read people say it's just the nature of the sensor itself, let's hope that's not true

No, definitely not. The GH2 adds major sharpening even at -2. To defeat it altogether is my no1. hope for the hack now.

The hacked bitrates have removed a veil of blur from detailed footage, but now the sharpening is way too harsh and makes some footage look a bit 'video'. And encoding the artificial contrast wastes bitrate without buying you anything, plus doing it in post gives you more control.

Here's an old 44mpbs test shoot (-2 cont/-2 sat/-2 sharp). The whole image looks crunchy & brittle to me - look at the extreme sharpening halos in the 1st blowup. And notice the dark halos/outlines around all bright areas in the ducks shot.

I recently did a quick & dirty test of the interlaced mode: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/391/25p-official-topic-aka-dont-cry-for-me-argentina/p5 . It seems to give the same resolution on static images, but sharpening appears to be disabled, that's why it looks so soft. It needs a more thorough test, but I think that interlaced is showing us what the sensor outputs without sharpening.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev & @cbrandin, have you made any progress with film modes? Any chance we can defeat sharpening (or at least lower it)?

@starstuff please do & post your results. A test chart & tripod should nail it.

@JDN
Is there a cheaper filter solution? E.g. a Tiffen filter in lens size? Or does the 4x4 size of the filter make a huge difference compared to a lens sized filter?

@JDN, late reply, but look at my screenshots above again - the GH2 is applying a large amount of digital sharpening even at -2. That's the real issue.

A lot of people are now complaining that some lenses are 'too sharp' - it's not the lenses (can a lens ever be too sharp?), it's the GH2's added digital sharpening! Using filters to avoid that isn't the answer (at least not until it's disabled).

@starstuff, did you ever try the interlace tests?

@_gl
not with some charts but I did test for myself. I do believe I can see an improvement in terms of digital sharpening over progressive. I'll mount it on a tripod and shoot in a bit.

I think that the digital sharpening is enabled only with pana lenses

Lets hope Vitaly find the switch, so we can use the nice features of the original lenses without the ugly sharpening. It looks so much better when done sensefully in post.