While most attention in the DSLR video world focuses on Canon cameras, the Panasonic GH1 camera was an early contender in this market. A persistent programmer has hacked the firmware on this camera with stunning results.
Longshan’s People Part II – 50Mbit GH1 MJPEG from Andrew Reid on Vimeo.
Do yourself a favor and go to Vimeo to download this video. It’s worth watching in full HD.
Obviously, Andrew knows what he’s doing with a camera and has chosen a beautiful exotic subject. The sound track fits perfectly and his rough edit makes the most of his clips. And, considering his subject, I believe I can feel a sense of reverence in the work that carries through the video as well.
But the star of the show is a technical fact. The hacked firmware is allowing his GH1 to capture video at high data rates, as much as 50Mbit 1080p.
In other posts I’ve talked about how the quality of a video image from a camera is due to more than just the sensor size. The GH1 has a smaller sensor but this firmware hack results in less compression of the captured bits as they flow to the card. It’s a winning combination.
While the changes to the camera may not be easy for everyone they are programming changes and do not violate the warranty. You can change the programming back to the factory standard just as easily.
Also, the data rate is variable and the camera shifts the rate up to deal with more complex images. Evidently, it can shift the rate up enough that is can’t sustain the video recording for more than a few seconds on some shots.
To deal with this Andrew alternates between using the MJPEG video format and the 32Mbit AVCHD format. Like I said, this may be too much for some people to deal with but it’s very much in the spirit of exploration that is part of shooting DLSR video.
You can read the full details on his blog post.
Will someone come up with the same hack for Canon cameras? After seeing this, I hope someone is working on it.
