Panasonic GH2 Low Light and Lens Test

This is a test of the Panasonic GH2 in low light.
Subject is Orchard Road, Singapore at Xmas.

All footage is ungraded, auto white balance and taken hand held.

We used the Panasonic 14-42mm lens and the new Panasonic 100-300mm lens. Sometimes used autofocus but mostly manual.

Ex-tele is the new crop feature that allows doubling of focal length for any lens. So 100-300mm becomes 200-600mm. Seemed to work really well. More tests of this to come. Best thing about the ex-tele feature is you're able to push in without reducing your f-stop. With the Panasonic 14-42mm lens you're essentially carrying a 14-80mm lens or full frame equivalent of f3.5 28-160mm - but at a fraction of the weight and cost.

The GH2 performs really well in low light. Big improvement on the GH1. ISO1600 is now very very usable. ISO 3200 still usable but has noticable grain.

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Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Panasonic 100-300mm
• Panasonic 14-42mm
• panasonic lens test
• GH2 low light
• GH2 lens test
• Panasonic GH2
• micro 4/3

[isabel95]

Loved the video - am checking out GH2 images and video in anticipation of the arrival of mine. Have to admit though that as much as I loved the video, I loved your choice of music. Who is it?

[BananaManaTV]

@isabel95 Actually the music was just one of the apple loops included in Soundtrack Pro... really nice tho isn't it? It's amazing the sort of music that's included with soundtrack - that's Apple's attention to detail for you!

[Tallaias]

is the 14-42mm a good thing to start with? i see some deals online give you the camera with that one and other more expensive options have the 14-140mm? did you find the 14-42 sufficient?

[BananaManaTV]

@Tallaias The 14-140 is definitely a better lens and of course gives you more distance but we love our 14-42 and find that we use it much more because it's light and gives us plenty of range for most video work. We never really use the 14-140 fully zoomed in. I guess if you're doing wildlife video then maybe you would. We don't so we find the 14-42 all we need! And it's much cheaper!

[MacroTigerGrr]

very helpful thx

[isabel95]

Thanks for the response. Too bad I'm a pc lady! It reminded me very much Bill Evans.

[BananaManaTV]

@jetrockers04 No worries - yep we love the low light performance. And if you check out the recent hack by Vitaly online - you'll see that the GH2 can do even better in low light - has much better resolution and preservation of detail compared with canon 5d.

[jetrockers04]

@BananaManaTV Thanks man! Was worried that panasonic applied the 30minutes limit to all PAL GH2. I'm so certainly going to get this as my "camcorder"... thanks for the great video too... it erased my doubts about its low light performance...

[BananaManaTV]

@jetrockers04 Yep got ours in Singapore - Pal version - nope it doesn't have the 30min video limit. It's awesome - can record for as long as the SD card has memory and as long as your battery will run. We just got a couple of 128gb sd cards - which can record for 13 hours straight.

[jetrockers04]

Did you get your GH2 in Singapore? Does it have a 30minute video limit? Thanks!