GH1 vs. 7D vs. ?

[Wesley Scoggins]

Ok, we've got a lot of people that really know their video here so I thought this would be a good place to ask for some opinions.

I am waiting for the Scarlet (Most likely the 2/3 interchangeable or S35) and I would like to start getting used to the DSLR form-factor, and would like to start stockpiling lenses that I can use for it, and have something I can possible use as a B-Cam once the Scarlet is released.

Well, I have a event that I have to film in January, and I need to get a camera and start getting used to it's workflow now.

I have narrowed it down to the 7D or the GH1, both of them fit my budget, and take lenses that I can use on the Scarlet.

The reason I want to utilize a DSLR (instead of a dedicated video setup), is because I need something that can handle lowlight really well, AND I need to take good stills at the event I have to film. It also seems like nothing else in the sub-$2000 range really can do both of these as good as these cameras.

Besides being used for this, I am also going to be using it for personal short-film work.

Looking at as many sample videos as I can, I have noticed a bunch of things, and I was wondering if I could get this verified by users of them here.

GH1:
CONS:
- It doesn't seem to be as good in low-light, and it's stills while still really good don't seem to be as good a the 7D.
- There is the "mud", which I feel like won't be a major problem for me since I am not going to be doing any rapid pans like that.
-The Low Bitrate of the codec (which i've heard isn't really a problem.)
-Having to unpack the 24P mode from the 60i wrapper is a step that is kind of annoying.
-No 30P mode in full 1080P.

PROS:
-Seems to have better/more accurate color.
-Less moire/aliasing.
- I have heard that it can resolve a little bit more detail, but haven't seen actual resolving numbers.
-I have heard it has more resolvable dynamic range.
-AF-Mode while shooting video, which could be a big help for event shooting.
-Motion looks "better" and a little more "cinematic". I don't know how else to say it. Also don't know if i'm just imagining things.

7D:
CONS:
-More moire and aliasing than the GH1 (as far as I have heard.)
-The image seems to be overly saturated in many cases, and tends to look more "contrasty".
- The skin tones seem to be a little more "plasticky".
-12 Minute record time could be iffy while filming an event, if it goes down at the wrong time I could miss something important.
-More expensive recording medium.
- More expensive camera.
-Worse stock lens.

PROS:
- 24P without being in a 60i wrapper.
-Better low-light.
-Higher bitrate.
-Better stills.


That is all I can think of off the top of my head.

I feel like the GH1 would be better for the event shooting, and I think the color looks pretty good. But I have heard questionable things in regards to "lines" being in the image during low-light, but most of the low-light I can find looks really awesome.

The 7D, has a higher bitrate, and the highlight priority mode which can help keep that under control. So it seems like 7D should on paper have a higher potential dynamic range, and more CC leeway in post.

So I guess, I wanted to get some input on what is the better overall camera, and what the people who've used it here think?

 

[Noah Kadner]

GH1 is a nice cam for the form factor but in terms of sensor, image quality and lens choice, the 7D or 5D Mark II are much better. I'd suggest the 7D because you trade sensor size for a lot more frame rate options. It's a slam dunk at least until Scarlet comes out.

Noah

 

[Chip G]

Someone on another board said you can order the GH1 from Europe or Japan as a body only for $800 (no kit lens), If you are going to buy nice glass for your Scarlet anyway why not buy one lens now for Scarlet, the adapter and the GH1 body only for $800? Your GH1 will be grey market but who cares atleast you won't be stuck with a lens that cannot be used on a Scarlet. For $800 + $100 for the lens adapter it sounds like it would be the way to go for you, there is always eBay to sell it if for some reason you do not like the cam and keep the lens for Scarlet.

If you do buy the whole GH1 kit for $1500 I have heard the kit lens is pretty decent for the money.

 

[Shane Kelly]

7d also has a larger sensor but the GH1 can take pretty much any lens out there with the correct adapter. The 7d will take canon or nikon lenses.
I'd buy the 7d.

 

[David Rasberry]

The one real plus for GH1 that nobody mentions is the electronic viewfinder. It will be much easier to follow action and focus accurately with this than with a small LCD as well as better for hand held work. AF also works in movie mode on the GH1. I also like that it can be adapted easily to PL mount and C-mount cine lenses or Leica M lenses.

For the 7D, you will be able to use the lenses on an S35 Scarlet with the new electronic Canon mount, but for that to be really worthwhile you need to buy premium quality L series lenses.

 

[Jim Retar]

Regarding your 7D cons.... contrast and skin tone can be adjusted in camera, or by creating custom settings on your computer.

Also, the 7D has both CF and SD slots, I think?... very cheap recording medium.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

The GH1 is a great little camera for sure, but it suffers from some terrible aliasing from how the sensor is read and processed in video mode. I'm not sure, but it even looks like the 1080p mode is upscaled from approximately 720p vertical resolution, and that the 720p is made from a line skipped sensor read. The confusion of the aliases is pretty brutal, but you can clearly see the very low vertical resolution as witnessed by the stair-stepping on the horizontals on the chart.

Graeme

 

[David Rasberry]

The GH1 is a great little camera for sure, but it suffers from some terrible aliasing from how the sensor is read and processed in video mode. I'm not sure, but it even looks like the 1080p mode is upscaled from approximately 720p vertical resolution, and that the 720p is made from a line skipped sensor read. The confusion of the aliases is pretty brutal, but you can clearly see the very low vertical resolution as witnessed by the stair-stepping on the horizontals on the chart.

Graeme

Thanks for the chart Graeme. Have you had a chance to do shoot one with a 7D yet? At least as far as aliasing it seems to be a bit better than a 5D.

 

[Chip G]

The one real plus for GH1 that nobody mentions is the electronic viewfinder. It will be much easier to follow action and focus accurately with this than with a small LCD as well as better for hand held work. AF also works in movie mode on the GH1. I also like that it can be adapted easily to PL mount and C-mount cine lenses or Leica M lenses.

For the 7D, you will be able to use the lenses on an S35 Scarlet with the new electronic Canon mount, but for that to be really worthwhile you need to buy premium quality L series lenses.

The GH1 articulated LCD is REALLY handy for shooting from the hip or those unusual angles, IMO that's what the GH1 is all about, it's little stealth size, mount or take it anywhere type cam, it's a lot smaller than the 7D btw and makes a better travel cam.

7D is also a great cam but body for body it's almost $1k more than the GH1 body.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I'd not had charts shot for 7D or 1D mk IV, but from the appearance of aliasing in non-test movies, there would appear to be little difference between them and the 5D2. 720p modes can be very different to 1080p modes due to the different tricks needed though.

Graeme

 

[David W. Jones]

My take...
I had a 5DII and sold it. It was great for stills but so so for video.
I now own a GH1, and was planning on buying a 7D as well, but I think Canon will issue something even better before I get the chance.
You can adapt a large number of lenses to the 7D, and an even larger number to the GH1.
There is a crop factor when using full frame 35mm still lenses with either camera. With the 7D it is 1.6x and the GH1 it is 1.9x, although most people use 2x.
The 7D has live external monitor output, the GH1 does not.
Neither camera is perfect, but both are great little tools. As far as stills go, I don't do print work, so either camera has plenty of resolution for timelapse or motion still for video work.
I mainly shoot :30 commercials and the GH1 is a handy tool to have on set.

But... Just remember, the right tool for the job.

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

A number of folks have been contacting me about putting a PL mount on their 7d, and it's possible but you will probably have to remove the mirror and carve out some of the inside of the camera, as Pawel did to his Canon after I put the PL receiver on it. That's risky, of course, because you could kill the camera, and even if you don't, you will certainly have voided the warranty. The GH1 should allow for PL lens use, so you can put those Red primes or Master Primes or Lomo Scope lenses on it - or rather, it on them - without surgery.

(Right now I'm not doing a PL mount for any Canon, and if I did, you'd have to do the surgery yourself).

Love to see some side by side footage between the 7d and GH1 in artifact producing situations, and also a low light comparison.

 

[Kenn Michael]

The GH1 has WAY less aliasing than the 7D. It actually resolves more as well.

However, the codec mud isn't as much of an issue for me as the BANDING. The GH1 has terrible banding on solid surface colors when there is underexposure in part of the frame. So even if your subject is lit properly, and you have purposely set some other areas to be underexposed, you will see banding all over the place.

GH1 is more fun to shoot with because of the LCD (and electronic viewfinder when it's bright outside).

GH1 has banding, and 7D/5D have worse aliasing and moire. 6 in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

 

[Stuart Hooper]

Kenn, you've noticed banding with lenses other than the kit lens where at least part of the scene was exposed properly? As long as there is contrast between a properly exposed subject and a dark background, I haven't seen a lot of problems, unless it's a really white wall, or something like that.

Overall I love the GH1, and think both the mud and the banding are less serious issues than people on the forums who don't own the camera make them out to be. People tell me the 7D has a very similar IQ to the 5D, but I just don't see it.

For now, I say: 5D (when the firmware hits)>GH1>7D.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

I've not measured the 7D, but the GH1 resolves very poorly - around 720p in 1080p mode, with horrific levels of aliasing. It's 1080p mode is worse than the 5D2's 1080p mode IMHO. Is the 7D so much worse than the 5D2??

Banding is an issue with all 8bit heavily compressed codecs - the codecs remove the noise as they can't compress it (along with detail) and 8bit will band quite easily without the presence of noise or dither.

Graeme

The GH1 has WAY less aliasing than the 7D. It actually resolves more as well.

However, the codec mud isn't as much of an issue for me as the BANDING. The GH1 has terrible banding on solid surface colors when there is underexposure in part of the frame. So even if your subject is lit properly, and you have purposely set some other areas to be underexposed, you will see banding all over the place.

GH1 is more fun to shoot with because of the LCD (and electronic viewfinder when it's bright outside).

GH1 has banding, and 7D/5D have worse aliasing and moire. 6 in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

 

[Kenn Michael]

I've not measured the 7D, but the GH1 resolves very poorly - around 720p in 1080p mode, with horrific levels of aliasing.

Have you seen Barry Green's charts? The 7D is WAY worse than the GH1 in terms of aliasing and moire. I can get thru an entire day shooting with the GH1 where I don't visibly see aliasing in real world scenarios. Can't say the same for the 7D.

Again, I'm comparing resolving power and artifacting between the VDSLRs - not comparing to RED which there is no comparison.

 

[Kenn Michael]

Kenn, you've noticed banding with lenses other than the kit lens where at least part of the scene was exposed properly? As long as there is contrast between a properly exposed subject and a dark background, I haven't seen a lot of problems, unless it's a really white wall, or something like that.

Stopped using the kit lens after the first day. :smile:

Been shooting with the same fast Nikkors that I put on my RED. Maybe I have a GH1 that performs worse than others, but banding is there anytime there is a flat color surface (including faces) that is 3-stops under in a scene - regardless of your subject being properly exposed. Even at 320 ISO. This doesn't happen in any other camera I own or have owned. It's just a GH1 thing. When the banding isn't there, it takes very nice images.

 

[Chip G]

Lots of good info on these two cameras over at dvxuser and Barry's tests & charts, one guy reported that the GH1 mud (that I think is blown out of porportion) was less using a canon lens instead of the kit lens, he had a pretty good explanation for it, made sense to me.

Anyway, I guess that's what eBay is for, if you don't like one sell it and get the other but for event shooting the GH1 has a longer record time, 7D is limited to 12 min.

 

[Stuart Hooper]

Kenn, when we say banding, we are talking about the low light vertical streaks, perhaps attributed to fixed pattern noise in the sensor, right? (Not the 8 bit color banding that Graeme is speaking of?)

Also, Graeme, would you mind posting some more images of your charts and findings? Much of what you've written in this thread about the GH1 sounds like almost a direct quote from Barry Green's findings about the 7D. Maybe the cameras are more similar than either would care admit...

 

[Tyler Lambert]

Someone on another board said you can order the GH1 from Europe or Japan as a body only for $800 (no kit lens), If you are going to buy nice glass for your Scarlet anyway why not buy one lens now for Scarlet, the adapter and the GH1 body only for $800? Your GH1 will be grey market but who cares atleast you won't be stuck with a lens that cannot be used on a Scarlet. For $800 + $100 for the lens adapter it sounds like it would be the way to go for you, there is always eBay to sell it if for some reason you do not like the cam and keep the lens for Scarlet.

Can someone provide me a link to that thread?