Panasonic's new GF2: Full HD in a compact camera

Panasonic's long-rumored GF2 has finally been announced, and Digital Photography Review has had a few days to test a pre-production model. Panasonic will ship the GF2 in the U.S. in January, and will release U.S. pricing in December.

The GF2 is slightly smaller and lighter than its predecessor, the GF1. (It's still slightly bigger overall than Sony's NEX-5, but when using its pancake lens, it's a bit thinner.) It uses the same 12.1 Megapixel imager as the previous model. In order to reduce its size, Panasonic had to remove some of the physical controls that were on the GF1 and replace them with menu options.

Perhaps the biggest change in the GF2 is that it now has Full HD video, rather than the AVCHD Lite in the GF1. That means that the GF2 has 1080/60i and 720/60p video (the 60i mode reads the image data off the sensor in 30p mode).  However, the GF2's AVCHD bitrate maxes out at 17Mbps, not the 24Mbps maximum that Panasonic's GH2 and some other DSLRs can achieve. ISO sensitivity has been increased to 6400 from the 3200 maximum of the GF1. The GF2 also has a built-in stereo microphone, but as with most DSLRs, you'll be better off capturing audio with an external recorder. It fully supports Panasonic's new 3D lens, which will turn it into a tiny, albeit limited, 3D camera.

Digital Photography Review didn't do image and video quality testing, so that will have to wait for another review. The fact that the GF2 only goes to 17Mbps AVCHD means that its video output almost certainly won't stand up to that of the GH2. There's no word about whether the GF2 provides a live output on its HDMI interface while recording, what the resolution of the live output is, and what (if anything) is superimposed on it by the camera.

The GF2 is clearly a consumer-oriented camera, a step up from point-and-shoots rather than a smaller replacement for a DSLR. It's unlikely to have many cinematography applications, especially if it's priced only a few hundred dollars less than the GH2.

Check list marketing, or why vendors put useless features into their products

Yesterday, I wrote a post about Pentax's new K-r DSLR. Like all new DSLRs, it has a video mode, but the K-r's is fixed at 720P at 25 fps. Fine for Europe, but completely useless in the U.S. Pentax isn't the only offender, of course; it's virtually impossible to find a DSLR from anyone that has usable audio, which is why the Zoom H4n audio recorder is so popular.

Why do manufacturers add features to their products that don't work or are useless? It's usually due to "check list marketing." You've probably seen the comparison lists that show how the features and functions of various products compare. The lists are almost always put together by a vendor to show how much better their products are than the competition's. No one wants to look bad on one of these check lists, so the sales team or product managers will push the engineering team to add features. The engineering team will usually resist, but sales and product management will insist that engineering implement the features in some way, so that they can add them to their check lists.

That's probably how the K-r got its video mode. The website and data sheet for the camera boast that it has HD video. Yes, at the lowest resolution that can be called HD, with a frame rate that's useless in North America. They don't say that in the headline, of course; you have to read down to the specifications to find out the bad news. The check list only says "HD video". Canon? Check. Panasonic? Check. Nikon? Check. Sony? Check. Pentax? Check. It didn't say "HD video that you can actually use," or "HD video that you can edit," or "HD video that won't make you throw your camera through a plate glass window." There would be some checks missing on that list, and not just for Pentax.

I'd rather see companies implement features the right way, and have the courage to leave out features that can't be done well, rather than implement useless features simply to fill out a check list. If Pentax's engineers didn't have to implement video mode, could they have used that time and those resources to make the still features of the camera even better? There are many photographers who buy DSLRs for their ability to shoot stills and couldn't care less about video. It would have been a retro step by Pentax, but in this case, it would have been the right thing to do.

Get Your Products Out

The new generation of high-quality, video-enabled DSLRs is thoroughly changing both the high-end still camera and camcorder markets. It's now inconceivable for a manufacturer to release a $1,000+ DSLR without some sort of HD video capability. Even Sony, the lone holdout, is rumored to be biting the bullet on November 18 with a HD-capable DSLR that will compete with the Panasonic GH1. (Technically, the GH1 isn't a DSLR, it's a Micro Four Thirds camera without a viewfinder, but it does everything that a DSLR does.)

The ironic thing is that RED, the company that made cinematic video production much more affordable with the RED One, first identified the need for print photojournalists to be able to shoot competent video without having to carry two cameras. It rechanneled its development effort for the Scarlet, which was originally supposed to be an inexpensive, handheld 2K camcorder, into a video-capable DSLR. That was almost two years ago, and not only has RED not yet shipped the Scarlet, it hasn't even provided a definitive list of features or release date.

When the Scarlet comes to market, it will have to compete with a variety of products from virtually every major DSLR manufacturer, at price points starting around $1,000 to over $5,000, with a huge range of capabilities. While Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, etc. weren't educated about the market opportunity solely by RED, it didn't do RED any good to tell its competitors so early about what it was doing. In my opinion, the early announcement was sheer hubris: "We beat you with the RED One, and we'll beat you again with the Scarlet."

Once you make a product announcement, you have to get the product to market quickly. You cannot assume that your competitors are too slow or too dimwitted to respond. The first time around, competitors took RED for granted because they were a new company, run by someone from outside the broadcast electronics business. Lots of companies like that had announced products, perhaps even shipped a few, and then sank beneath the waves. But RED was for real, and its competitors learned to pay attention.

If you're a new entrant into a market, you usually get one free pass where your competitors underestimate or dismiss you. Once you become successful, you're on their radar, and the requirement to get to market quickly becomes paramount.

Want a Scarlet today? Buy a Canon 5D Mark II

I previously wrote about the restart of Red's Scarlet project, apparently to turn it into a still and video Digital SLR. The Scarlet, of course, was supposed to cost $3,000, and Red fanboys everywhere have been waiting breathlessly. Well, the first HD video from Canon's new 5D Mark II has shown up (thanks to our friends from Gizmodo), and it looks awfully good. The 5D can be had from Ritz, a reputable dealer, for under $2,700 without lens, or for about $3,500 with a lens. The video referenced by Gizmodo used 11 different lenses, so this was anything but a simple production. Nevertheless, pro photographers, the market targeted by Canon, buy lenses all the time, and still lenses cost a small fraction of the cost of video lenses. This is why Red made its move.

There's still plenty of market opportunity for Red, but as Jim Jannard said, the market has changed (dramatically), and the Scarlet, with its fixed lens and video-only orientation, simply wouldn't have cut it when it reached the market next year.

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