sounds great- thanks!

Hi All... My good friend David asked me to give a little run down on the National Geographic project and how the GH2's were used. I should begin by saying (thanks to David) I have become a GH2 fanatic. I travel quite a bit, and I find it amazing to be able to carry along a studio (three or four bodies and a full compliment of lenses) in my backpack. My humble thanks to the amazing work the GH2 community has pulled off.

This particular project was a one hour Nat Geo piece for a series called "Ultimate Factories" on the making of Bacardi Rum. Nat Geo's specs require a minimum of 100 Mbps and as Geo had never heard of GH2's and would not approve their use... I filmed much of the early shoots with a Sony EX3 with a nano flash. A Sony 900 was the other principle camera used.

I brought a few of my Gh2's along and started clandestinely grabbing shots with them whenever possible. Often, I would mount them here and there to capture various strange angles. I'd trigger them remotely with wireless intervalometers. I also used the GH2's for all of the time lapse shots.

On one trip to Puerto Rico we rented a crane. It was a very sizable theatrical rig capable of slinging a huge camera rig. As it turned out, the operator had forgotten to bring along the cables we needed for the "big camera's", so I mounted two Gh2's (one with a 7-14 and the other with a 14-140 lens) on this huge crane with wireless remotes. It was a very funny looking contraption to be sure. Kind of reminded me of Beatle Juice... but it did the job quite remarkably.

Another funny story around the Gh2's happened on one of the shoots to Bacardi's huge bottling plant. Geo sent another DP down from Washington along with a Producer to shoot interviews while I concentrated on B-roll and all the speciality shots we needed. By that point in the travels, I had already junked the big camera's and was only traveling with GH2'a having demonstrated to the powers that be... the amazing quality out of the little Pany's.

The first morning when we were unpacking our gear in the equipment room the other DP was breaking out the Sony 900 and the truck load of gear that goes along with it. He kept glancing my way wondering what the heck I was doing with the little camera's he assumed I was playing with, and wondering where the hell my real gear was. As we walked out the door... he with 60 pounds on his shoulder and I with... well you get the picture... he finally had to ask just what I was up to, and had I forgotten to pack my brains or what. I just smiled.

We went off on our separate ways for the day and came together later to view our respective rushes. Without any question, the GH2 footage was far superior to that of the 900... a Sony pro flagship camera. To make a long story short... it didn't take long before he was speed dialing B&H, and yet another shooter fell to the power of the little engines that could.

If you happen to catch the show, I think you will be able to tell the GH footage from everything else. Of the total shoot, I would guess that 30% of the footage is from the Pany's. There would have been more, but it took awhile for Geo to give in to their use.

To my eye, what comes out of those little jewels is nothing short of amazing.

My sincerest thanks to everyone who has made it possible... genius in high service from my perspective. Who would have ever imagined. No more Pelican cases... just a little ole backpack. :)

RBB

Thanks for sharing, awesome. So, which hack?

@LightFlight thanks very much for the detailed review. We're using 2 gh2s as our A cams now on a nature / environment series that will be a public broadcasting acquisition, although we also have a lot of f800 footage which is what we started with. I'm not sure if you've noticed it by I find the m43rds sensor helps with cutting with 2/3" cameras, probably in good part unless you really go crazy on the ND's, you don't get jarringly shallow DOF like a 5d so it just cuts better.

Not sure if you have time but I'd love to compare notes (my process in brackets -- curious about yours): - Monitoring / Exposure (Fine working without it, usually end up underexposing a stop of "white" on the histogram) - WB (Generally manual to a Gray Card (for still / nature) or Warm Card (for interview) -- I found the K manual WB never matched up with manual on F800/900 (too much sony blue). - ISO (Stick to 160 and 640 generally but I'm hearing so much contradictory information about this these days...)

Were you a canon guy before picking up the gh2s or were they your first foray into dslr world? How do cannon guys react? I feel like a lot of them are crossing their fingers for the 5dmkIII but more and more I've spoken too either acknowledge the supremacy of the gh2 or are just moving on to the c300.

fantastic review. and today they asked me to bring in some footage from "this other camera" to compare it with 7d. lets see.

nice.

Cool stuff. I clicked "Like" button :)