{"id":11010,"date":"2010-09-30T23:24:54","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T23:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philipbloom.net\/?p=11010"},"modified":"2010-09-30T23:33:42","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T23:33:42","slug":"my-first-look-at-the-gh2-clean-hdmi-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philipbloom.net\/blog\/my-first-look-at-the-gh2-clean-hdmi-out\/","title":{"rendered":"My first look at the Gh2…Clean HDMI out?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, amidst the disaster zone that is my house thanks to the WORST kind of cowboy builder who took my money and did sod all work, in fact did worse than that, he created work, quit 3 weeks in and left my house in a dangerous state with exposed still connected gas pipes, but more of that another time, don’t get me started on a rant!…I got two new cameras on loan from Panasonic and Canon today. Some good news…shame I have to give them back!\u00a0The GH2 from Panasonic and the 60D from Canon.<\/p>\n

I know the Canon has been out for a week or so and there are some reviews on it but I still want to give my opinion on it. I will do this asap, it’s basically a better T2i with a lovely articulated screen and with some better features than the 7D… a mid market camera…more to come soon.<\/p>\n

The Gh2 is very interesting, it’s much improved over the Gh1 but the 24mbs bit rate is only available in 24p mode. The 25p mode is still the inadequate 17mbs mode. I told the guys there today they need to fix that as in Europe we need 25p bit rate equal to the 24mbps. I know a lot of people have the Gh1 with the hack with crazy high bit rate. This I can tell you straight off will not be as good as that in bit rate terms but it does out perform the GH1 in low light straight away. It also has a myriad of new features that I will go into when I actually review it properly. There are manual audio controls and levels on the screen whilst recording, although they cannot be adjusted whilst recording and there is no headphone jack and it has a sort of in camera over and undercranking, albeit in a very consumer-esque way…<\/p>\n

A big improvement is you can now use a monitor whilst recording with the Gh2, before when you hit record it switched off. Now this is where it gets interesting. The LCD screen stays on when the monitor is being used. Something the Canons cannot do, a MASSIVE plus BUT can you record onto something like a Nanoflash or a Kipro using this? Yes and no…The HDMI is completely clean if you press the display button a couple of times but is 1080i 50i (on EU model, 60i on US model) until you hit record, then it goes to 1080p 24p but with a record symbol and a timer. Damn! I told Panasonic straight off that I need that to go off please. So Panasonic PLEASE with the production model can you put this in? The one I am using is a pre-production model. It can’t be hard to add this in the final firmware? We all want it so please please please please please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please pleaseplease please please PLEASE add it! Ideally please can we have a menu option for HDMI display so we can keep the useful graphics on the internal screen and have clean on the HDMI, I am convinced it would be very easy and this feature alone would be worth the upgrade from the GH1 and would turn it into a VERY powerful little movie making machine!<\/p>\n

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