Jon Jacobs

It’s patently offensive to use the term “retarded” as an insult. Even in hillbilly states like Ohio. And I’ll put my 5 posts of criticsm up against your 1,903 posts of rambling nonsense any day. Another bored retiree, clogging the site with incoherent Fox level rants when the rest of us just want to learn how to get the most out of prosumer video cameras. I’ll say it again. Andrew, it’s time to put this site down and get on with your life. It was once a thriving source of GH hacking info but as Panasonic cameras have become so good that hacking is no longer needed, the brain drain has left you wth these two bored retirees shaking their fists at clouds and talking uninformed nonsense about motion cadence and cinema lenses. Because when you’re just a hobbyist shooting furtive 20 second videos of Vietnamese women in grocery stores, you need clickless aperture.

Sigh. Another clickbait thread started by a bored expat retiree with clearly nothing to do but worry about things pros long ago consigned to the "crap amateurs obsess about in order to have an excuse to not actually, you know, do work" file. Sorry folks but is this really what this site has become? A bored retiree starts clickbait threads and the rest of you auto-respond? Andrew, time to let the domain reg expire and do something with your life. You're still a young man, you have time to become something more vital than this.

I understand the “mojo” thing. Mojo is vaguely undefinable, unquantifiable personality due to artifacting. Lots of audiophiles prefer gear with added “mojo” like tube amps, turntables, wacky accessories, etc. Nothing wrong with this preference for more rather than less artifacting until people start describing mojo as being somehow better, or closer to the source. The reason I prefer the image from the GX85 to even the best hacked GH2 is because the GX85, especially with CineD, comes closer to a modern digital cinema camera look. Much closer. The hacked GH2, no matter what patch you use, has a look, definitely. Whether you prefer it or not, whether you call it “mojo” or simply less well-evolved color science, is your prerogative. But for me, I far prefer the cleaner and more tonally natural footage of the GX85. Comparing Vimeo clips is meaningless. Apples and oranges. I defy anyone to shoot a controlled comparison of the same subject in the same room, as I did, with the two cameras and come away preferring the hacked GH2. Unless of course you don't care for a cleaner and more color accurate image, and are looking for more “mojo” to add character and “filmic” to your hobby of playing with cameras and trying to make short Vimeo clips look like someone's idea of exaggerated 80s film stock.

FWIW I shot professionally with a hacked GH2 for years, mainly with the Intravenus and Moon patches, and while I certainly liked the quality of that camera's footage, the GX85 I shoot with now is a whole quality level higher across the board. I sold the GH2 after shooting some comparison tests because it wasn’t even close. Panasonic's color science has come a long way in the last few years, and once I saw what was coming OOC with the GX85 the GH2's shortcomings were thrown into stark relief. Skin tone is massively better on the GX85, especially now with the CineD hack. And shooting 4K to export as 1080p gets rid of so much noise I rarely if ever use Neatvideo anymore, while this was a necessary step for any indoor GH2 shoot. I prefer the rangefinder form factor to mini DSLR anyway but ergonomics aside I find the GX85's IQ to be so much better than even the hacked GH2’s 100+MB all-I that I haven’t regretted selling the GH2 for a moment. Everything from video to stills to workflow is better with the GX85.

Someone with your limited experience/skill level should hang back and learn for awhile, instead of jumping in and opining in a thread to which you've got nothing helpful to add. Obviously there's nothing wrong with still photography, something everyone "partakes in". Except this isn't a still photography forum. The focus here is shooting DSLR video and trying to make it look like film. Sorry to trigger you but this isn't a millennial safe space to dialog photography - if that's what you want, go to dpreview or any of the trillion photography forums. This is a forum about video. Look at the title, look at all the threads. Beginner photographers clogging a thread about video exposure with unhelpful comments about Auto-ISO being a kewl thing for stills photography just annoy and frustrate those of us who come here to actually find solutions. Which, if I'm being honest, are few and far between these days, because of nonsense like this. A few years ago Andrew posted here about an old Canon FD lens, the radioactive 35mm F2. He included great photo examples, and some highly informative commentary. I was intrigued enough to hunt down this lens for myself and it's one of the best investments I've made - it may be my overall favorite lens for both video and photography. Everything looks better when shot with this lens. That's the way forums like this are supposed to work. Guys who actually know what they're talking about, sharing knowledge with others. I recently bought some Raspberry Pi 3s to turn into AirPlay audio adapters and wireless print servers. I know dick-all about coding so what I did not do was join a bunch of Linux forums and complain about how things are soooo much easier on my iPhone so why can't Linux be more like that? Instead, I STFU, read a ton, learned what I needed, and expressly avoided wasting anyone's time with questions I could answer myself with just a few mins Googling. Success came quickly, and I happily went on my way. Mission accomplished. Why can't it be like that here? Is it asking too much?

Whether Auto-ISO is a frequently requested feature among still photographers or not is immaterial to this discussion and frankly this forum as a whole. This is or at one time was a forum dedicated to shooting film-like footage with DLSRs. There are plenty of still photography forums. This isn't one of them. It's for video shooters, and specifically, video shooters trying to mimic the look of film. Which means following a few basics like 180-degree shutter, getting exposure right by knowing how ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and available light all work together. You do it long enough and it becomes 2nd nature. But if you're 20 with your first beard and you think all this old-school crap is "played out" and you just want to go to a music festival and shoot wide open in bright sun with a 1/1500 shutter because screw NDs that's for old men with ear horns, you'll just live with choppy motion that screams amateur video because hell why not all the best Red Bull extreme idiot videos have that same look so it must be woke, right bra? Just how lazy are some of you guys? Shooting Manual for video is how pros do it. It's how film shooters did and do it. It's how you get the best looking motion footage from a digital camera, so the brightness isn't ramping up and down as the camera senses and then tries compensating on the fly with the inevitable and unescapable delay that screams camcorder instead of Super 35. Like I told Vesku, if auto-ISO is what you want, you're in the wrong forum. Shoot auto-everything with your iPhone and be done with it. You'll be much happier with your video, and you won't have to worry about cameras with pesky manual controls you need to spend a whole day or two to grok. I get that some of you younger guys are inexperienced, impatient, and have zero sense of history or tradition. I get that these things are "played out" to you, that you know better because you live now while the great filmmakers lived in the past, forced to use all that un-woke (sleeping?) manual gear. This is the age of Trump after all - the Post-Fact era, where actually knowing things is a liability. Better to just grab it and Make Art like this genius. Maybe it's me. Maybe I still think these forums are for guys trying to get a film look from a digital camera, instead of what they seem to have become which is that perforated drain catcher in the shower that collects all the hairballs and effluvia.

Vesku, I have to ask you: are you a minor and/or someone to whom English is a 2nd language? I ask this not to antagonize, but to better understand what's going on with your posts both here and on Personal View. I am trying to figure out whether you are simply a very young person with extremely limited photo/video experience, or an adult whose inane comments and complaints regarding Panasonic cameras need to be seriously considered as disruptive spam by the moderators of both forums. I've been a longtime lurker here but I have just registered solely to post this message. Because I've finally had enough. I honestly don't know whether you're for real or if you're simply trolling both of these video-oriented camera forums. Auto-ISO in Manual mode? Are you serious? Do you understand how foolish that makes you sound? Manual means manual - no automatic anything. That's the entire point of Manual. I am all for democracy and universal access to information and patience with one's fellow travelers etc etc but your posts are almost in a class of their own. I cannot fathom why Andrew here and Vitaliy at PV allow such uninformed inanity to poison their sites. If you are a minor and/or ESL, I will try to simply take that into account when I see your posts. But if you are a grownup and you're genuinely saying these things, just please stop. You come off as a complete know-nothing, and you seem to know less the more people here try to educate you. Exposing a digital camera properly for video or still photography is just not that difficult, but you treat it like it's the mystery of the pharaohs. You're not new to these forums, you've been posting here and at PV and god knows what other DV forums for quite some time, how can you possibly still be banging on about Auto-ISO video? If that's really what you want then you don't want the cameras under discussion here. The GH/GX/5D et al are not for you. What you want is an auto-everything cameraphone, or a point and shoot. I'm being serious - you will get exactly what you want from these cameras, because you're exactly the kind of user cameraphones and point and shoots are designed for. They're auto-everything so you don't have to understand exposure or ISO or anything else, just press the button and your video will look OK. It won't look like film or even professional video but to get that kind of result you have to be prepared to learn about your camera and how it works, which you clearly are not willing to do. Cameras like the GH4, GH5, GX85, 5D et all are designed to be shot fully manual for the best results. That's why there are forums like EOSHD and PV, for people who use these cameras. You are clearly not the kind of user who should be here if you're still asking questions like "Why won't Panasonic put Auto-ISO in their Manual shooting mode?". Vesku, maybe you are a kid, or English isn't your native language and something's getting lost in translation. If so, I apologize. But please, enough with the ignorant nonsense. It is such a drag coming to these sites and seeing your broken record complaints in so many threads where serious people are tying to have serious discussions.