Sunday, August 22, 2010

GH1 Failures

So we had our first hacked Panasonic GH1 failure. I wasn't actually there for it, but Mr. Steady was.

I don't have the exact wording of the error, something to the effect of "could not write to SD card, check SD card".

They were shooting out in the very very hot direct sunlight. Now my tolerance for direct sunlight and heat is vastly lower than Henry Steady's. So if he said it was hot out in Central Park, I'm sure it was really freakin' hot. And our GH1 is hacked, so the data rate is much higher than it would be if it weren't.

Also, they were doing fairly long takes.

Between the three things (hack, heat, and hlong takes) the GH1 stopped recording.

The good news is that the solution was to shut the camera off for a couple minutes and start 'er up again.

That's just something to keep in mind.

4 comments:

DAVID FREY said...

My Canon has a similar issue, so I 1.) try and shut it off between setups 2.) try and keep it in the shade as much as possible.

Andrew Bellware said...

Ah yes, that's interesting. 'Till now I'd never heard of a problem with the Panasonics overheating. And unlike the Canons, the problem doesn't seem to be with the imaging chip but will the read/write process. All good stuff to keep in mind.

DAVID FREY said...

That's interesting. Working at a lower bit rate before the hack might explain why it never happened before. The one advantage of the Canons is that when recording does stop, you can still use the take up until it cuts off.
I'm not sure if Maduka figured out a work around, but he said he couldn't use any of the footage that got cut off.

Andrew Bellware said...

Yeah, it looks like the files are just broken. Maybe there's a failsafe that the Canons have which the Panasonics don't because (unhacked) the Panasonics don't tend to overheat.

At least you know when it's happening to you 'cause the camera tells you it's not going to continue to record! ;-)