@Nino_Ilacqua Sorry! I had overlooked your question.

Since Chris himself has already explained, my answer may be needlessness, but I am a premise improved about TYPE-ZERO after this. Therefore, please use 444 soft ver.

@BlueBomberTurbo Many thanks for testing TYPE-ZERO and please try 444 Soft Matrix version! :-)

@cbrandin Thanks for your post.

{ Cluster v7 'Apocalypse Now - Nebula' 6 GOP Setting } VS { Cluster v7 'Apocalypse Now - DREWnet' 12/15 GOP Settings } VS { Valkyrie 'Apocalypse Now' 3 GOP Settings } Any testers??? I tried and Found Cluster v7 Nebula GOP 6 to be the Best. What do you feel people???

@cbrandin I'm not currently equipped to meaningfully respond to your point. I've discussed your "right angle" assertion with two professionals -- both of whom knew as little as I do on this point.

My gut reaction is 1) if the film lens projects the image at all angles (based on your point, not anything I know) -- then it's covering the right angle, and 2) this sounds very much like something a salesman in a camera shop would attempt to explain when attempting to sell me a new lens.

That said -- you may be entirely correct on this -- and I intend to learn more about this.

But -- that's also irrelevant to the fact that people respond really well to "soft" lenses used with the apparent excessive sharpness of the GH2.

@onionbrain

Regardless of resolution charts -- it's still the best looking footage I've seen from a hacked GH2.

At the risk of provoking even more ill-will, which is unaccountable to this reader, could I ask you to clarify, please? If you're doing side by side comparisons, one setting versus another, would you be willing to post them? Maybe it's a confession of incompetence or poor eyesight on my part, but I can't usefully compare footage I'm looking at now, to dissimilar footage I looked at 2 weeks or maybe 2 months ago, with other settings.

I hope you're right - that would make choosing a setting that much easier. But what exactly is the basis of the judgment?

@onionbrain - Of course you are right about the aesthetics of all this.

I can assure you, however, that lens design has changed in many ways since the advent of digital sensors. This is most apparent with extreme wide angle and tilt/shift lenses. Old versions of these lenses can exhibit color shifts at edges with wide angle lenses or when lenses are shifted because of shadows cast by sensor pixel walls. Another change with many lenses is that more attention is paid to longitudinal CA (caused by differences in where colors focus) because it is difficult to correct in post verses lateral CA (caused by differences in how colors are refracted) which is trivially easy to fix in post. In film days, there really wasn't an easy way to correct either in post, so lateral and longitudinal CA had to be treated equally. If you trade off longitudinal CA for lateral CA you can do a better job with the longitudinal CA in-camera.

These guys really do consider how design criteria have changed because of how digital sensors work versus film. Of course, all this is much more visible with high resolution stills than it will ever be with video.

Of course - there were some lenses that were so good that all this is academic - but we're talking big bucks!

@jrd

I'll put this on the to-do list. The most honest reaction I can offer is -- AN is being used in production tomorrow.

The differences between various settings and stock can be subtle under some conditions, and more dramatic under others. When you've stared at them and pixel peeped for eight months -- you notice differences.

The truth is that the best testing is your own. Use what you like. My point is simply that -- as a person who has been staring at this stuff for eight months on calibrated production monitors -- these AN settings look damn good -- damn good!

@cbrandin At this point I simply don't know enough to either agree or disagree with you, but I am interested in learning more -- and I appreciate learning from you. You've inspired my recreational project for the next month -- learning more about this. And, I thank you for sharing your insights.

I think what you noted about the difference between video and stills is a big deal.

Coding is hard, and non-intuitive. Drill ten or twenty Inception levels down and your brain is heterodyning like a hummingbird on Prednisone. It's not merely no wonder but fully expected that different opinions/philosophies will collide at max velocity, compounded by the exponential aggrotrashyak inherent in any mangeekforum. Discovery Channel would call it "When Big Brains Attack".

I have a lot of respect for Lee, Nick, Chris, Vitaliy, and anyone else who pulls on his wetsuit and dives into this GH2 code. If I had a million years and no kids and independent wealth I could never begin to grok WTF these guys are doing when they diddle the binaries and gift us these .ini files which utterly transform a cheap consumer camera into an authentic professional filmmaking tool. They all have my eternal respect and fealty, even though Vitaliy deletes most of my posts because cheap black market vodka and forum moderation are frankly a bad cocktail but hey it's his tree house and at the end of the day it's probably for the best.

As for the Kurtz "I Swallowed A Bug" patches, Onion's right as usual. They're the best yet from a visual standpoint. Whatever blips and farts show up in Streamparser, what I'm seeing from the raw files out of my GH2 are noticeably better than what I was seeing before, whether I choose the soft or fully erect patches. Call me a romantic but I prefer the soft patches, even with old FD/Rokkor lenses. Especially with old FD/Rokkor lenses. I wanted this look when I bought my GH2, and now I have it, just by downloading a tiny snippet of .ini these gods among men have shared with us all for free.

I understand and respect the scientific peer review. The hard work, self-imposed pressure, and ego needed to push the art forward guarantees a certain baseline level of rancor and primate behavior. You didn't see the body bags from the Mars rover landing because those guys don't air their work on a Russian blog. But trust me, there were body bags. Omelette/broken eggs etc.

Mainly I just want to thank all of the above for the Apocalypse patches. They are genuinely a new level of performance for the GH2, not just a squint to maybe see the difference incremental yaya. I can't believe my $700 camera shoots this kind of footage. Really, it's nuts. I know you guys need to butt heads but just know how grateful the rest of us are for your hard work. Thank you.

@lpowell - honestly, I have no idea. That may have happened because I didn't change the deblocking tables or anything else. I should probably run more tests. Or, it may just be raising Q because I didn't allocate enough bandwidth.

@cbrandin I thought Leica labeled Panasonic lens wouldn't utilize in-body distortion correction. But it was proven that's not the case. e.g. Leica DG 25mm 1.4. I sold it and bought 20mm Lumix again :) You are absolutely right about the film lens' inherent soft look on digital sensor. That's why I replaced them with sharp lenses. AN settings + sharp lens seem unique combination. Softer look + less CA. Lumix 20mm 1.7, 14mm 2.5, 14-140mm are all good.

@stonebat - Could be that they have changed their requirements. I just remember that it used to be that way.

@cbrandin I don't know about other Pana-Leica lenses, but I know the DG 25mm 1.4 for sure as one user tested out and posted about it. There was noticeable amount of corner distortions. It seemed no better than 20mm 1.7 uncorrected distortion. I'm no longer a fan of Pana-Leica. I just love Lumix lenses. The new AN settings seem nice for them. Thanks!

The in-body sharpening might try to optimize images based on the original luma matrix. I use -2 sharpening. If needed, post-processing editor can do much better job.