Panasonic GH2 Overhaul Part 2
Recently I spent the weekend with my family in Grand Forks, ND. I (intentionally) didn't bring much gear with me, but I did have my trusty GH2 + stock 14-40mm lens and my Steadicam Merlin. One afternoon while on a walk I did some shooting, and I wanted to see what kind of video I could put together while maintaining a 180° shutter angle (here's a great post explaining what I mean by shutter angles).Without any of my trusty Tiffen Neutral Density filters, I had to significantly close down my aperture to maintain a proper exposure. As you may know, this means my depth of field would become significantly deeper (i.e., more would be "in focus" at once, more detail here). So often with our DSLRs, we feel the need to keep our aperture wide open to maintain part of that ever sought after "film look", and believe me, I'm a BIG fan of a shallow depth of field, but every now and again I like to try and shoot something without using it as a crutch. In the case of this video, I didn't really have a choice if I wanted to keep that 180° shutter. ;)
A perk of shooting this on the GH2 versus using a Canon DSLR like my 60D is that most of the beautiful brick buildings in Grand Forks would have been extremely distracting and ugly due to the line skipping on the Canons, like this. I've never been too happy with the line skipping that happens on the Canons, especially when shooting at 720p60, and it's probably the main reason I pack my GH2 alone when traveling lightly.
Here's what I shot:
Grand Forks is a great little town. Unless you were living under a rock back in 1997, you've heard about the Red River flood that took out most of the city. The Red River floods every year, but never as bad as it did in 1997 (Read about it on Wikipedia). I've always been intrigued by the high waters in the spring that seem to take over parts of the city; from what I understand, every year several of the bridges in Grand Forks are closed down for short periods of time when the water is too high, but life goes on. I wasn't able to get any footage of this, but I must say, it's very eerie driving down the highway with massive bodies of water on either side of you. It feels like driving down the middle of a lake. :)
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