Petition for the G7 hack

[jagnje]

Well, why not  hacking seems to be back in style, so why not try to hack this one. I think it only really needs higher bitrates in all modes and it would be an even beter camera. 

[Cinegain]

I petition free cameras!

I think that's got about the same chances.

[ntblowz]

I always wondered what happened to the GH3 hack

[jonpais]

?

[jagnje]

Well, I would be more than happy to donate. It's cool b cam, with all the esential features. Sony is getting hacked, samsung is, canon, nikon...I don't see why it would be impossible.

[Cinegain]

A petition is something with significant public backing that you're going to present to someone to get your way and not theirs.

Hacking is more of a community and collaborative effort. I don't see how a petition helps there. Besides, hacks are created out of limitations in a certain line-up. You weren't happy with the GH2 quality? Well tough luck, there wasn't anything better. Want a better Canon? Well, there's the 1D C... btw CHDK goes way back before all of that (it was already happening on general consumer level)! Want a better Nikon? Well, there wasn't much better than the D5300... now there seems to be. NX1 is already representing the Samsung flagship and there's no chance of anything better within the system: hack away! But if you want something better than the G7, we take present day Panasonic and we can get the GH4, soon GH5, an upgrade at reasonable costs. That's segmentation that just works! Besides Panasonic likes to hear out people and implement features they agree they'd like the users to have, rather than having the users tinkering around with their cameras. By now I think it's pretty much air tight to get into, but who knows, with the remote app you could unlock V-LOG L, what's to say there aren't more exploits? Well, judging the userbase I'd say if it was possible, we'd already know about it. I just don't think it's worth forcing time and energy, maybe even funds into it, when you can just buy a better Panasonic camera??! I also generally think the need for better quality is way less than back in the 5DmkII/550D/T2i ML and GH2 days (and you'd have a significant jump up in quality back then as to marginal improvements you could make now).

[jagnje]

All very solid points and I agree on most of them. But, I think that the sensor in the G7 is superior to the one in gh4 image vise but it's being held back a bit. Don't get me wrong, for the money it's an amazing picture, and it just makes me curious what it could do with a higher bitrate, thats all. I have yet to test it with the shogun and see for myself.

[TheRenaissanceMan]

It's the processing that improved from the GH4, not the sensor.

I think with the GX80 out and a GH5 announcement imminent, this is a little premature. 

[IronFilm]

The GH3/G6/GH4 (or any of the GMx series, or newer GXx or GFx series) never happened.

 

I don't expect to see it happen for the G7.

 

Is a pity though, as it is nice to be able to add English language to the Japanese only cameras, & to add PAL/NTSC to those which lack it, & is great to be able to remove the recording limit.

[Claudio Lisco]

i want to see too hacking this camera!it's a nice camera and can have more power for me....

[TSV]

Yeah, what happened on this front? I hacked my GH1 to get more BR and it was really cool. Did Pana went berserk on the group of guy who did it? ML made some amazing improvement over what did Canon, would have been nice to have this ported to Panasonic too.

[mercer]

I think Panasonic just went ahead and did it themselves, so a hack became unnecessary.

[IronFilm]

1 hour ago, TSV said:

Yeah, what happened on this front? I hacked my GH1 to get more BR and it was really cool. Did Pana went berserk on the group of guy who did it? ML made some amazing improvement over what did Canon, would have been nice to have this ported to Panasonic too.

It was never a group, it was just one guy: VK.

After VK hacked, then others released various different flavors of patches. But they never did the core hack work themselves. 

And for many many years since then VK has done nothing. So it is 100% reasonable to expect we will not see another Panasonic camera hacked again :-/ :-(

[TSV]

3 hours ago, IronFilm said:

It was never a group, it was just one guy: VK.

After VK hacked, then others released various different flavors of patches. But they never did the core hack work themselves. 

And for many many years since then VK has done nothing. So it is 100% reasonable to expect we will not see another Panasonic camera hacked again :-/ :-(

Pity, as the GH platform would have definitively something to gain if a group of ppl like ML worked on it.

The hack was simple, but it really helped me to get better video out of my GH1.

[IronFilm]

There is a massive difference between the Panasonic, Nikon, and Samsung hacks vs the Canon hack. 

Those other hacks are just tweaking a few bits, or a line of code, or values, here and there, which means for instance you can put a higher number in for the bit rate. But the core firmware remains the same. 

What Magic Lantern did with Canon DSLRs is totally different, to quote from the ML team themselves:

"Magic Lantern is not a "hack", or a modified firmware, it is an independent program that runs alongside Canon's own software. Each time you start your camera, Magic Lantern is loaded from your memory card. Our only modification was to enable the ability to run software from the memory card"

http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Lantern_Firmware_Wiki

Creating new code from scratch which can run on the camera is a MASSIVE undertaking! ML had a huge leg up with the headstart CHDK ("Canon Hack Development Kit") had made with Canon P&S cameras beforehand. 

Thus we're not going to see what happened with ML any time soon with any other brand of cameras.