Congrats on your patch making the test Nick! I'm a long time lurker here but just wanted to say, I make my living using a GH2, and your work (And VK's as well of course) has made my job much more enjoyable and worthwhile. Thanks for working so hard to come up with these amazing hacks! Loving the shootout, wish I could see it in a theatre

@kronstadt @shian I am curious as to what you liked about G? I am doing this just as blind as everyone else (turned down 3 offers to find out so far :) but there several issues with the image quality in G and I would be curious as to what is offsetting them for you.

• Muddiness in some of the shadows.
• Second lowest resolution (next to D) in the fine detail patterns in the zebra garment, the latticework in the upper left and the tile pattern at the bottom.

D and G are two of the only ones that produce image artifacts that I simply have not been able to create on a Driftwood setting with a GH2. If somebody managed to get that low a resolution out of Quantum 9b with that lens, then I am genuinely impressed. It would be like finding out the secret to hacking a GH2 to make it look worse than the Stock settings without applying new settings. :)

@itimjim Thanks for giving individual scores for each - I haven't seen anyone do that in the thread yet. :) I'm most curious about your scores for D, B and G. Would you mind elaborating more?

Just for fun, I'll say that I'd be more than happy to shoot with any of: H, F, C, E, A, or B.

In the end, a camera is like a hand grenade: close enough is good enough.

The more I watch the videos and compare the lighting diagram, B seems like the most logical for the GH2. Simply compare the diagram for who lights the girl in the dark chair talking to the guy in the green shirt.. In the GH2 diagram they have a Kino lighting the back of her head. And there are only a few diagrams that light like this with the GH2 having the most power hitting the back of her head. The C300 is other camera with a similar light. So I am not sure, but that would be my guess. The practical light in the foreground also has poor-er dynamic range than some of the other more expensive cameras. I love the speculation tho.

I originally thought/wanted the GH2 to be H, but there is no such light on that girl's head and the range is quite impressive. But if it turns out to be I would be impressed. Either way great test. F and H to me are my favorite.

@bwhitz Very well said, and I agree on every point. Same goes for @driftwood.

The GH2 does not outperform the best cameras in the world. It has its limitations. But what matters is that with a little bit of creatively working around those limitations, you can create an image that to most audiences looks nearly on par with the absolute highest end cameras available (Alexa, F65). This is a unique moment in film history, when anyone with a few thousand dollars and a good story to tell can compete with big budget productions in Hollywood.

@driftwood @bwhitz

I'm a bit of an oldster, as the business goes, and have been hearing the same arguments -- that true democracy in filmmaking is just around the corner -- for at least 20 years. The only thing which changes is the equipment which is supposed to bring about the transformation.

There are still far too many features than anyone could ever hope to market, and the quality, visual and literary, hasn't budged in the low budget realm in 20 or more years. What one does see, year by year, since the mini-DV "revolution" of the mid 90s, is more resolution and DR. By now, the prosumer equipment has nearly caught up with the 16mm I started with. But that's about it, for progress in the form.

I just ignored it, saved time.

But now I think I know that we could do.

Does anyone know when will part 2 come out? I though it would be today.

@jrd You say "and anyone with a lot of money would be nuts to use any of the cheaper cameras featured in the test", and I say remember Oliver Stone's films, especially "Natural Born Killers" (one of my all time favorites), probably half of that is shot with 8mm. And, yes, it is nuts - and therefore it's cinema. Of course, budget matters. But tallent, and I should have also added KNOWLEDGE, matter more. (I think knowledge of cinema history, art history, philosophy can be more important than knowing ISO, WB, shutter speed etc.) For one, I'd love to have a substantially higher budget to hire professional actors - not A list or B list, but at least some actors who have taken acting classes and maybe have read a bit of Stanislavski at least. I'd also love to afford at least 5 decent lenses and a decent matte box and lot more filters, and hire a professional soundman, instead of trolling review sites in search of cheap 4-channel field mixer that would not mess up the sound any more than it already is coming from an £11 Chinese mic. I'd also love to have the locations booked for long durations and sets constructed for each scene. But that's not the point that I'm trying to make in my comment. The point is, watch "Badlands" ($500,000), "The Rain People" ($750,000), "Who's That Knocking at My Door" ($75,000), "Mean Streets" ($500,000), "Easy Rider" ($350,000), "Stranger Than Paradise" ($100,000), "Pi" ($160,000). Hell watch "El Mariachi" ($7000) or Nolan's "Following" (reportedly £6000, but I strongly doubt that cause that's the cost of 16mm film stock alone) and many more such films that were made on a shoestring - I'll tell you if they were shot with GH13 they'd look a whole lot better and, importantly, they would cost a whole lot cheaper (no camera rental, no filmstock, no negative development, no editing room costs (just a powerful computer worth £1000), a whole lot less lighting equipment - the list of benefits can go on and on). And then, after watching all these films, watch "Koyaanisqatsi" or "Baraka" or "The Tree of Life" ($32mln) and tell me if it's impossible to shoot like that with GH13 or GH2...

@driftwood thanks!

@thepalalias you made me watch that Shootout again (and again and again...) ;D As I said, when I watched the footages for the first time yesterday, I was initially paying attention to all technical sides, then I decided to "switch off my guard" and just watch it as an ordinary viewer, and just looked for the imagery that I'd prefer to see in a cinema theater or on DVD. That bright green shirt that "B" gave, was an instant turn off for me. What was also a turn off for me on various cameras was the high definition of the edges of the glass table. If we think of this as a cinema scene, then viewers' attention should not be hijacked by excesive and unnecessary detail that is not important to the story that is being conveyed. That is also why I found that the light in the corner, though important in lighting the curves of the black girl, should not be too prominent. You know... people spend so much time fixating about Follow Focuses, but focus is one of the essential tools through which the director TELLS the viewer "Pay attention to this and not that", other tools are lighting, light control, camera choreography etc. Therefore... in this respect, I just felt that muddiness in some of the shadows played their role well in "containing/controlling" the unnecesary detail and thereby keeping the "focus" of the scene on its protagonist. As a result the scene unfolds around him, rather than the other way around. I'm also someone who likes neo-noir lighting style (even during brightly lit scenes) combined with warm (but not saturated) colours - I just wouldn't light this set in such a way, although I understand that the purpose of this excercise was precisely to create 14 stops. Granted! But then I would like to reverse the question and ask not which cameras managed to capture all of the detail (because almost all of them did an incredible job at that), but which camera managed to control and contain the unnecessary detail in a way that helps to tell the story? In that respect I felt that "G" was okey (although it's quite possible that the operator did some horrendous mistakes with it in terms of lighing and color correction). I woudn't necessarily say that it's my first choice (I actually liked "F" a lot, and I felt that the response to light in "I" and "C" felt also quite "natural". "A" was a bit to light/hazy for my taste). I guess a lot in this shootout also depended on colour correction and lighting styles - especially given that it was done by different teams.

I want to end with an optimistic note:

Just the fact that it is hard to discern which one of these 9 cameras is the GH2, is already great news for all of us! Wouldn't you say? ...;)

hello, in the very first part of the show Zacuto shootout they show us which is the GH2, when the guys with GH2 showed in the color correction room the shot in the monitor is visible and here is the comparison (sorry for my english)

I think that particular shot was just b-roll from from one of the graders in baselight (they all used the same system, so that shot would have fit into any of the other camera segments as well). I is definitely not the GH2 : )

@thepalalias Yes, now that you've put it in such perspective, I do agree with you. "G" is moving down on my list. I guess my order of preference is now F, I, C, A, G, E, H

I watched this video a few times now in 1080P, its easy to pick the bad ones...D and then G.

I found them to be unacceptable, I really hope the Gh2 is neither of those.

Personally I liked H the best, (something about the image overall that was pleasing) but all the others were good too!!

B may have been the GH2 as there was a definite GH2 type of outline when the males were in front of the outside window. However the room was lit differently and more evenly in C ..(and they did do that for the Gh2...and it has also been colored in Post.....note the colors in the outside window...they are quite affected and a bit whacky)

All this work is possibly to avoid hi contrast in the overall image, that makes me think that this could also be the GH2.