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Panasonic GH1 firmware hacked, codec bitrate bumped

4 Comments Published by Matthew Jeppsen June 15th, 2010 in Cameras, News

Like the Canon 5D MarkII Magic Lantern project, the Panasonic GH1 (and GF1 apparently) has had a firmware hacking project for about two months now. And just recently they hit a major breakthrough; they’ve bumped the codec recording bitrates to beyond the limitations of the stock camera.

In the case of the AVCHD codec, you can now record in 32Mbit AVCHD 1080p native 24p MTS files. For MJPEG, you can push the bitrate to 50Mbit 1080p (this thread says 70Mbit @ 1080p/30, and 720p/30 in 4:2:2 color). But right now the winner appears to be the native 24p AVCHD mode, check out these quality comparisons for examples. The MPJEG modes are also reportedly buggy when a scene contains a lot of information…the camera will stop recording. Sounds like the processor in the camera simply gets overloaded at high bitrates+complexity.

But not everyone is so jazzed about the hacked firmware…I spotted this Tweet from Philip Bloom:

“been shooting with hacked GH1 today. bit disappointed. loads of banding still.”

It remains to be seen if this project will continue to break new ground in the GH1 firmware, and what new features we’ll see down the pipeline.

4 Responses to “Panasonic GH1 firmware hacked, codec bitrate bumped”  

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  1. 1 JayDee Jun 15th, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    That makes me a bit jealous: I’d love a “Magic Lanterning” of my T2i…

  2. 2 Aaron Szabo Jun 18th, 2010 at 6:37 pm

    This is great news as the GH1 has the best lens compatibility.

    Any Canon FD or EOS, Nikon, Olympus, Zeiss and just about any cinema lens (including C Mount) will be compatible. Also, long range Telephoto 35mm is doubled in focal length.

    The increased DOF will be beneficial (especially for macro) alongside a 5D ii of course…

    You can also find wide 25mm f/0.85 – f/0.95 c mount lenses in the hundreds for super low light shooting.

  3. 3 Bruce Boyes Jul 29th, 2010 at 10:14 pm

    Actually, the focal length of lenses is not changed by mounting them on other bodies. I had my misunderstanding of this pointed out to me recently and upon further investigation I am now also persuaded that there is huge and widespread misunderstanding about this. Bear with me if I am not using all the correct lens terminology. The distance from the lens to the sensor plane is the same for any camera (if the lens is allowed to have its full focal range including infinity, which it is for properly designed lens adapters). All that can change is the sensor size and how much of the image circle of the lens is used. This changes the field of view. So mounting a 35mm film lens on a smaller image sensor does not change the focal length, f-stop, depth of field, or perspective (relative magnification of near and far objects in the image). All that changes is the field of view. Try it yourself. Take some shots on a micro 4/3 body with a given focal length lens and then on a larger sensor body with a lens of the same focal length, or even the same lens if you can. You will see that this is so. The reduced sensor size just crops the image, that’s all. At first glance it gives the appearance of greater magnification but if you compare the images you will see that the magnification is the same. It’s no different than shooting an image with a 100mm lens and then cropping it in photoshop to half its size. It is not magically now shot with a 200mm lens, it’s just cropped.

    As another example, the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens has actual wide-angle near object emphasis because it is a 20 mm lens. Its field of view is roughly that of a 40mm lens mounted on a full frame 35 mm camera, but its perspective and depth of field is that of a 20 mm lens. Take a shot of the same scene on a larger sensor camera, crop it to the M4/3 sensor size and the images will be identical.

    That’s not all meant to be a rant, just food for thought. Guess I had too much time on my hands just now! Anyway I have done a couple of video jobs using the GH1 with alternate glass and one of my favorites is the Zuiko 50mm 1.4 from the OM-1 days. Also a Canon FD 135mm f/2.5. Both work great in dim light and are loads of fun used wide open. Now I just need to get some ND filters for shooting in daylight.

    –best regards–

  4. 4 Aaron Szabo Jul 30th, 2010 at 8:57 am

    Bruce- You are pretty much right on, except for the fact that sensor size directly affects the amount of depth of field no matter what lens.

    A smaller sensor camera using a larger image cicle lens does just crop in “on the lens”, which automatically changes the field of view and DOF will increase at the same f stop. So a nikkor 50mm 1.4 on a GH1 would be an equivalent to 100mm 1.4 as far as field of view, and vignetteing would pretty much dissapear. When your shooting large format photography, sometimes you needs f stops as high as 64 to get it all on focus.