Panasonic Lumix GH-2 Firmware 1.1 update just released

Joint update service for Four Thirds lenses | Digital Camera | Digital AV | Consumer Products | Support | Panasonic Global.

Notably, the new firmware adds

  • Improved noise reduction for low light usage
  • Powered zoom lens features to work with the new X-Series lenses
  • 25p mode for PAL cameras
  • 30p mode for NTSC cameras
  • Improvements to auto focus
  • Improvements to burst mode

The better online discussion as to what the new firmware provides is likely to be here.

Noise reduction – I shot a test clip before and after, using 1080/24p video mode at ISO 2500. There is a noticeable improvement but noise is certainly visible – just guessing but it seems it could be as much as 40% to 50% less noise. It is possible that the noise improvement is better at ISO 3200; I believe 2500 is the highest the native image sensor goes to in video mode and 3200 is done through software signal processing. I think. I have not looked at the noise in terms of still images.

HBR – I previously wrote that I wasn’t sure what was happening here. My mistake. On PAL cameras, this is a new 25p mode and on NTSC cameras this is a new 30p mode. My mistake was that I had inadvertently rendered my new 30p video as a 24p mp4 file, which meant some frame blending had occurred. To correct what I wrote previously, the new HBR/1080/30p looks great!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *