Video quality, hacked GH1 compared with GH2

I've tried to test the GH1 (hacked) and the GH2 under the same conditions. To make sure the conditions were the same in both tests, I made a rotating platform using Technic LEGO, and left it under artificial lights. To better be able to judge the quality, I put a sock on the platform. The sock has some texture, which will come in handy in the comparisons.

The lens used was the Panasonic Leica 45mm f/2.8 lens. The focus was put on the centre of the image, and I used f/6.3, ISO 400 for some depth of field.

Both videos are filmed in 1920x1080 pixel resolution. The GH1 is hacked to a maximum of 44Mbit max bandwidth, while the GH2 has the native firmware. The GH1 video stream is 25p, the GH2 is 24p. I used the new Cinema 24p mode on the GH2.

The GH1 stream is 11 seconds, 38.430.720 bytes, 3.5MB/s.

The GH2 stream is 10 seconds, 27.998.208 bytes, 2.8MB/s.

So there is more information in the hacked GH1 stream. However, this does not necessarily mean that it's better.

Here's the GH1 (hacked):



And the GH2:



It's not easy to make an objective comparison based on these YouTube videos. So to be more fair, I have made frame grabs from the video streams.

GH1 (hacked):

GH2:

To make the comparison even better, here are 100% views of two similar framegrabs (click for a larger version):

Conclusion

First of all, it is easy to conclude that the colour balance is different. I have the same saturation settings in both cameras (+1), and the lightning was the same. So the difference must be due to different implementation of auto white balance. Overall, I feel that the GH2 colours look more natural.  It's not strange that the cameras struggle with the colour balance here.  After all, there is artificial light, and the subject colours are rather strange.

When it comes to the sharpness, I think the conclusion is that the GH2 has better image quality. Even though the bandwidth is a bit smaller than in the hacked GH1.

I have also made a comparison of the GH1 video quality before and after the hack, in which case I found that the video quality was slightly better after the hack.