P13DigitalMedia sent me that picture with the following text: “If you want some trivia, the world’s most watched TV show, Top Gear uses the Lumix GH2 for aerial shots (pic via twitter).” BBC uses very strict rules regarding image quality and I am glad to see they uses the GH2! 🙂
To bad the Gh2 is now slowly fading out from stores. I only found some new and sometimes overpriced cameras via third party resellers at Amazon (Click here) and some auctions on [shoplink 16254 ebay]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]. We want it back in Stock!
Dpreview posted updated the studio comparison tool and added the GH3 images. Now you can have some fun comparing the image quality with other cameras!
GH3 in Stock status check: [shopcountry 33624].
26 Responses
This is exciting!! I’ve been a top gear fan for so long and always thought they hired a heli pilot and had their big production cameras hanging out the window, not a multirotor with a tiny mirrorless cam. I had no clue. Makes me love my GH’s even more. Now it’s time to go re-watch all the scenes with aerials in them.
@Jshaw6000, they do… This RC helicopter was used in the last two episodes of Top Gear that aired the previous 2 sundays.
I watched them and never realized it was GH2 footage… quite interesting.
Excellent info. Although I do not have see advertising and marketing campaigns as do other brands, I am convinced that the GH’s are excellent tools.
They uses..
Bad video quality. I’ve watched the episode and drone footage was all green and monochrome :))
Haha! You Oly fanboys crack me up. If you absolutely must troll, then please, for the love of God, add a modicum of creativity to proceedings. We’ve all been left slightly dumber for the experience here, and it doesn’t need to be like that.
Pretty sure that comment was a joke… 🙂
Cool to see the same camera I have is used on one of my favorite shows!
Give the us-vs-them routine a break for a while. Mar’s joke was about the editing they used for one sequence. If you had watched it yourself, you would have gotten the joke. And if you hadn’t watched it, you weren’t really in a position to disagree with Mar or even comment at all…
Yes, you are right… he should have kept his mouth shut and not speak out of turn. I am glad there are people online who take the time to enforce the law. I for one am super happy that there isn’t some constitutional amendment that gives people the right to say what is on their mind without explicit permission, and I am glad that the “shut the fuck up” amendment that empowers you to tell him off is firmly in place.
LOL
I really hate people like you who bully others online. You think you have the right to tell people off – even if you are right and he made a mistake, who the hell do you think you are? What makes you so special? Who cares if he picked up on the wrong cues?
do you know what GFYS stands for? Technically there doesn’t need to be an s at the end, but traditionally it is added for good measure.
And I am very happy to know what camera was used for the show.
In the Top Gear episode in question (the Africa special where the copter becomes part of the show), for the laugh of it, Top Gear did make the footage look like Modern Warfare in green. It was interesting seeing the genuine shots they do use though, it makes sense they’d use a radio controlled multicopter as having a real helicopter in use on travels around the world would be costly.
The S800 hexacopter seen here, has a camera gimbal known as a Zenmuse which is about the best money can buy, at the moment it can only accept a GH2 or Sony Nex, a GoPro version is rumoured. I do hope they do a GH3 replacement gimbal one day, but to be fair the footage looks great on the GH2 anyway.
Top Gear’s budget is such that they always use a proper helo and the best crews money can get. This show is a mint basically.
They’ll have had to choice but to use a real helicopter in the past series as multicopter tech is relatively new, some Top Gear shows actually feature real copters in various challenges too. You’ll find the DJI S800 which itself is top of the range multicopter gear is designed to be effectively a tripod in the sky and is replacing the need for real helicopters for video production.
In fact, this is the company that do the filming of the aerial shots using multicopters for Top Gear:
http://www.extremefacilities.com
GH is still best in video for along time,
but Oly is still lack in video they work good in still only (jpeg)
Great bit of advertising for Panasonic. Top Gear has some serious high quality footage, some of the best on TV next to nature shows. I’m surprised they ever used it, especially if it was unhacked, considering the budget they have and the companies they work with.
Super cool…..what patch are you using. I use Orion with Dark Mater Marix.
Have you guys actually seen the episode?
I wouldn’t exactly call it a home run based on what was shown there.
They use aerial shots in many episodes, the ones where they’ve for the comedy value, used the copter as part of the episode they altered the video in post to make it look like a video game.
when they bring back my mar sensor. For now GH2…
The Brithish Top Gear has some of the best cinematography on television. The American, not so much – I guess they don’t use the GH2.. 😉
Out of all the British TV shows and series the Americans have adopted and Americanised, none have been nearly as good as the originals. Even to American audiences. TV is something the Brits buy off the Americans but it seems that Americans want Brit programs.
Must be something about greener grass…… and also dying it green.
i used the gh2 filming volcano eruptions. the footage was used for different tv productions in germany. but now, i like the gh3 much more than the precursor. specially the 720p50 iall modus with 72 mbits its superb and much better than the 17 mbits avchd from gh2. no problems with moire or aliasing until now.
Guys, something is really-really wrong with DPreview tests. GH3 image quality on ISO 1600/3200 is not even much worse than the one of E–M5, but even G3 has a little edge against GH3!
> but even G3 has a little edge against GH3!
All I see is that G3 JPEGs have more sharpening, and thus some details stand out more. But GH3’s color fidelity is higher.
There is very little difference between RAWs of E-M5 and GH3. JPEG processing is clearly different – and Oly is better by a mile -, but RAWs are nearly identical. (Noise patterns are identical. Color rendition is slightly different.)
In the end at high ISOs, to me personally, color fidelity is more important than sharpness. New Sony sensor > old Panny sensor.
Funny, it’s too hard to tell whether this is good or bad because Top Gear is notorious for overprocessed and ugly video.
Did you see the savannah trees in the last episode? OMG. Saturation was pushed so high it looked ridiculous.