As soon as I read Michael's preview of the GH2, I checked the internet for more details, including price and availability in Australia. It seemed a fascinating development in camera portabilility, combining 'very good' still image quality with 'very good' video quality. (I've avoided the term excellent).
I discovered this feature of extra-teleconversion on Dpreview. There was great confusion about its quality, and whether the feature was available with all lenses that attach to the camera.
It's clearly intended to be better than digital zoom, but would it be as good, in terms of resolution and noise, as the standard video at 1080p.
Thanks Michael for clarifying the issue.
At ISO 320 and below, the image quality in ETC mode is about as good. But above ISO 320, the image in ETC mode begins to show more noise. This would have been my prediction. It makes sense.
Unfortunately, this situation it seems to me, tends to reduce the usability of the camera in ETC mode. Such a massive 'equivalent' focal length in 35mm terms of 2x300x2.6= 1560mm requires an exceptionally firm tripod and still subject.
To use the camera hand-held at 300mm with ETC on, would usually require a very high ISO setting in order to get a sufficiently high shutter speed, despite the benefit of IS.
Nevertheless, what we appear to have in practice, in ETC mode, is a 2mp P&S camera with 1080p video at 24fps capability, and a telephoto reach of 1560mm (in 35mm terms using the 100-300 zoom).
That's truly astounding for video.
