Has anyone with an FZ200 tried the 35-100mm for zooming? I never thought I would encounter a manual zoom that I would use during filming. The 35-100mm hasn't changed my mind on that completely. However, it is so smooth and quiet that it makes it very tempting.
If you can hear the sound of your breathing and the zoom at a wedding it must be a really boring one! the camera is what it is and it is pretty bloody good - I've had a quick look at the footage and I don't see any problem intercutting with the gh1 or 2, it's okay in low light, not fantastic but usable. I'll certainly have one with me at every wedding from now on - the ability to quickly more away from blocked position and grab the shot when I need to means it's a great backup camera for me - If Vitaliy can make any improvement, great but it's usefull right now
@tired Do you have your contrast at -2 like me? The blacks seem emphasized to me. It is tough to grade in post, even with contrast set to -2 and i.Dynamic enabled (that only works outdoors when you have lots of ISO range available).
Vitalyi - when do you expect to start hacking the FZ200?
Regards :)
I'll make topic in development, do not worry.
I haven't made any adjustments yet - still using it in STD config. I want to really get used to what it looks like on the camera & in the edit before I start playing around with the image.
Another wedding and gave it another try - I can do a rack focus with the zoom lever now, bit of fiddling but it works. The IOS is really interesting, try shooting while walking down a flight of stairs - you can see the correction happening. will post some footage tomorrow
there's a quick selection of shots
You guys made me buy it... I will have my FZ200 shipped tomorrow. Tired - image in your clips looks very promising. Tell me please if FZ200 records sound while in 720p 120fps burst mode?
No, high speed modes (120 and 240 fps) do not record sound.
thanks for reply
Thanks for the nice video. I also like the image quality.
Vitaliy- Do you know if it would be possible to hack the FZ200 to display the live view on a remote monitor whilst recording video. Currently the display can be viewed remotely using the USB output, but the screen blanks as soon as the record button is pressed.
Today I shot some short comparision ( random stuff on a street ) between GH2 with Cake v2.3 patch and FZ200, looks like factory FZ200 beats the GH2 in some aspects... I didn't expect it. The FZ200 is very very very good... I could say - beast!
Of course it's much worse in low light than GH2 ( due to 8times smaller sensor ) but I find ISO 1600 still usable, but anything over is awful noise...
Thanks for the video. The FZ200 looks much sharper than the GH2 in your video. Although I liked the GH2 image more don't really know why. I hope you don't mind, but I borrowed a screenshot of your video to put here so I can ask why the FZ200 stills make this ghost effect on moving subjects and not the GH2?
The ghost effect is my faullt + I forgot to change field order of FZ200 ( both with the GH2 ) on the Vegas timeline, so the project preparation for render wasn't totally correct
My another test
I had a quick test out of the FZ200 and wasnt impressed by the codec in general. The100fps mp4 mode rendered terrible macro blocking /artefacts and anything remotely dark / shadows didn't look good in the AVCHD modes.
OK. Sooo... driftwood - Can this be fixed by hack?
Honestly - I am little confused with the FZ200 macro mode - both auto and manual... :( I cannot achieve desired effects and I am sure I must be doing something wrong - even in the pdf manual there is not much about macro mode and can anyone explain it here?
Because it looks like FZ200 macro capabilities are limited... :(
shadows didn't look good in the AVCHD modes
I only use AVCHD. Contrast is high in shadows. I have my film mode at Contrast=-2 to compensate. That does the job for me. I do have to force my reading codec into the 0-255 input mode, so there may also be some incorrect signalling of the 16-235 mode when the range is actually greater than that. I expand and trim the levels in Sony Vegas.
In my opinion FZ200 in generall has more contrast, it's sharper, but provides less detailed image than GH2 - both set up to -2 -2 0 -2 setting
I need to test this but it seems that there are two most usable profile on FZ200: - "natural" and "standard".
The "natural" profile seem to show the most detail, but at the same time shows the biggest amount of noise ( the "Low Light 1250 ISO" test was shot with it [ sorry for weird W.B. ] ) - so it seems to be the best for outdoor shooting
On the other side the "standard" profile - which looks to have more contrast than "natural" but tends to show less noise when shooting with high ISO value... - maybe could be best for shoothing indors with high ISO?
I will try to shoot few scenes on monday to give you example.
And one more thing - the FZ200 image is very similar to those from GH2, so there will be no problem to combine them on the timeline - if someone plans to work on both.
What I like a lot in FZ200 is ISO 100 ;)
Here you go:
@wielkiczarnyafgan - Thanks for this. I really had no idea there was a difference in the profiles, other than acting as placeholders for your own custom Contrast, NR, etc, settings. I have been using standard, and need to really take a closer look, as the high contrast of the "Standard" has been apparent in the videos I have been taking. Hmmm...
It looks as though "standard" and "custom" are basically the same. But I do like "natural," especially with contrast dropped to -1. Surprisingly, with the Creative Video "natural" profile I think -1,0,0,0 looks good to me. I can get rid of noise, and add contrast, in post. I need to do some test shooting and have a better look. Isn't it strange how moving NR from -2 to +2 in "natural" doesn't make noticeable difference to the noise?
My LX7 behaves the same way...
In GH1 and GH2 changing NR from -2 to +2 makes no difference ( or almost no difference ) , so I think FZ200 behaves the same way.
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