The Panasonic approved firmware update can be found here: GH2 Firmware update

And if you’re looking for details on what the upgrade will do to your Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2 look no further than the following link for details formatted just like the official GH2 Manual: GH2 Firmware update details

For PAL users the big bonus is that you can now shoot in 25fps and at a higher bit rate – 1920×1080 at 24Mbps.

The update also gives custom menu users power zoom options (missing until now) and auto focus users now benefit from an expanded range of movement (before this update auto focus dropped out when nearing the edge of the viewfinder/screen)

How to install the GH2 firmware update?

Panasonic’s instructions can be found here: Update service for four thirds lenses but you might find my explanation easier:

Step 1. Current version 1.0 firmware

1. Check which firmware version you have installed on your GH2 – do this by switching your GH2 on (making sure you have a four thirds lens attached) and pressing the menu/set button.

Then scroll down to the setup menu > version display.  Hopefully, if you’ve never performed any updates, both body and lens firmware versions will be on screen.

2. Download the firmware update for Windows or Mac from here or link at top of this page. I’m using a PC but it’s the same procedure for Mac.

3. Extract the contents of the .zip  file you’ve just downloaded by double-clicking it. This will convert the .zip file to a .bin file (this is your GH2 firmware hack)

4. Format an SD card using your GH2.

5. Remove the SD card from your GH2 and insert into your computer.

Step 6. Transfering 1.1 firmware update to SD card

6. Transfer the .bin file onto the SD card making sure it goes in the root directory – that’s to say the first or top-most directory in the hierarchy. (see image)

7. Make sure you have a fully charged battery in your GH2.

8. Insert the SD card into your GH2 and switch it on.

Step 9. Versioning up

9. Press the ‘play’ button on your camera. Then following a message of ‘Please wait,’ a ‘start version up’ prompt will appear at which you need to press up to select ‘yes,’ then press menu/set.

Step 10. Updating to version 1.1

10. The firmware is now updating and will take approximately 2-3 minutes.

Following the update the camera will return to the standard screen that you get when you switch the camera on. Now you can check the firmware version has updated by following step 1. Job done! (NB Remember to format the SD card before reusing)

Unofficial GH2 firmware hacks:

Now if you’re feeling brave enough why not follow Sam Malley’s excellent instructions to install Vitaliy’s notorious patch:
An EZ Guide to Hacking the Panasonic GH2

And as for the patch itself: Vitaliy GH2 Firmware hack

And here’s where you’ll find a bunch of other hacks and patches: GH2 hack options

And a really good FAQ page: GH2 hack FAQs

In this video review I took it to the Arundel Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in West Sussex on a day out with the family to see what it is capable of.

Front view

Much like my other reviews I haven’t spent time setting up shots – essentially just whipping it out and shooting.  The footage was edited using Final Cut Pro but none has been colour graded or adjusted.  What you see is exactly as shot.

Some news organisations are seriously considering buying into products such as the OWLE Bubo so that newspaper journalists can make the transition to becoming multimedia journalists.  I for one think this is a ridiculous suggestion but do see them as a useful tool for field journalists wanting a little more from their iPhone.

The OWLE Bubo is made aluminium, making it virtually indestructible. It also comes with 37mm lens threading, as well as a 0.45x wide angle/ macro lens combination which delivers footage with better colour saturation, contrast and sharpness than is possible with the iPhone’s camera alone.

Back view

At the time of writing, the OWLE Bubo costs around £150 but for an additional £100 comes with a Rotolight for those looking to take the device to the next level. You’ll need to watch the video to find out whether I think it’s worth forking out for one of these kits.

Many argue that for all the money you could spend turning your iPhone into a reasonable video camera you’d be better off buying a DSLR.

My argument against that is simple – that you won’t find a video camera easier to operate than an iPhone.  So if it’s simplicity you’re after I’d look no further than an OWLE Bubo but only if it’s only being used for fun.

Here you can watch the weekly trailer for Rod Liddle’s Got Issues which will be updated every Friday.

Usually the feature is shot on a Thursday, then edited on a Friday so that it’s ready for publication that weekend. It means of course there isn’t much time to line up relevant interviewees – in fact on many occasions I’ll still be chasing on a Thursday morning on my way into London for the shoot itself!

Rod generally decides on the subject, although on occasion I get a say:)  My job is to track down the candidates Rod would ideally like, then produce, shoot and edit the feature.

Often the biggest wait with Rod Liddle’s Got Issues is the time taken to get something legally safe. The piece is deliberately shot hand-held to give it an on-the-road vibe but also to get us around the many issues with filming in public. Namely jobsworths with nothing better to do!

Watch the full video every Sunday at The Sunday Times or use the episode finder below:

 
Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls takes a verbal bashing from an angry protester, Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain talks debt and Labour leader Ed Milliband refuses to comment.

In the meantine, Tony ‘Baldrick’ Robinson marches on the frontline as 400,000 people march from Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park in protest at public sector cuts.

I shot two films on March for the Alternative. The one above and this for The Sunday Times: Protesters tell us why they took to the streets of London

So I’ve just treated myself to a new Lumix GH2 DSLR or to be precise, micro four thirds video and stills camera. I plan on using it for personal projects where I can spend a little more time than usual framing my shots. But I’ll also be using it for family pictures too.

It took me some four or five months to decide on the GH2. Initially, I was split between the Canon 7D or 60D – then the Panasonic AF-101 came out and that led me to the GH2. Since the camera will be predominantly used for shooting video the decision was made for me.

This is the first video I’ve shot with the GH2 and it was really just for fun, to see what the camera was capable of on a day out with the family – as in, no time to set up shots.

Lens-wise I used the only specifically video optimised DSLR glass on the market, the 14-140mm Lumix lens. I also used a Lumix 20mm pancake lens. The film was shot entirely in the camera’s intelligent auto mode since at this point I haven’t even started to read the manual. Regarding location everything was filmed at Corfe Castle and in Lyme Regis.

I absolutely love the camera but do hope that Panasonic issue a 25fps firmware upgrade soon. It’s just not right that we in the UK are ignored when it comes to broadcast specifications not being met.

 
Politicians in The House of Commons vote 323 to 302 to increase tuition fees.
Following the vote thousands of protestors in Parliament Square complain they can’t leave because of police kettling. Here they describe what’s happening.

This piece was shot on a Sony Z7 video camera and followed that week’s Rod Liddle’s Got Issues shoot. I hope it has a point of difference to the majority of footage available on the internet. From a balance POV, I’d love to have been able to interview some of the police there – but alas, they’re not allowed to speak to the media unless they’ve been trained (or told exactly what to say).

Once again, because this was a solo effort I was able to move around quickly. Also, I was lucky to find interviewees positioned so close to much of the trouble – it meant that in many cases an interviewee would be talking about their annoyance over cuts or police handling while trouble broke out over their shoulder.

Highlights of this nature include the moment students break into the Law Lords, two girls talking about the police baton they’ve obtained and a youngster smashing breeze-blocks right in front of the camera as I conduct an interview.

In 2009 I was commissioned to produce an online series of careers videos for The Guardian.

My pitch was originally to create features about jobs related to English heritage and the environment – but after six months began to include films about unusual jobs too. All of the videos were shot on a Sony VX1000E, my first semi-professional camera.

Those embedded above include The Taxidermist, The Horologist and The Game Keeper. While below you’ll find direct links to the entire series via an episode finder.

Guerilla filmmakers Matt Marsh and Sam Rowland shot Choose Not To Fall on borrowed cameras due to the expense of broadcast quality kit.  Their mini documentary was shot in one day then edited in two.

For many of the locations, such as the BFI building, they knew permission to film wouldn’t be granted so many of the shots were achieved by acting quickly and taking risks before being asked to move on.

When it came to interviewing Daniel Ilabaca, both directors liked the geometrical shapes found in the park which lend themselves to parkour.

On filming, Sam says he was keen to use a tripod for most of the mini-documentary – he believes when filming hand-held you instantly sense there’s somebody else involved in the story – while by using a tripod the film becomes a portrait of the subject.

Matt says they could only capture 8 seconds of slow motion at a time, so if they didn’t hit the button at the right time they’d miss the jump – something that evidently happened a couple of times during the shoot.

As Britain’s higher education system fails to deliver ‘home grown’ talent to the engineering sector, a collective of companies in the water industry have taken radical steps to solve the problem themselves.

Southern Water has teamed up with the University of Brighton to devise a revolutionary Masters degree in engineering. Not only does Excellence With Industry give students practical experience with five companies in the industry before beginning their careers, the course also pays them an annual bursary of £9000.00 and guarantees them a job on completion of the course.

Back in February 2008 Gordon Brown said employers have a responsibility to give everyone the opportunity to unlock their talents by creating more structured pathways into careers. The following summer, Southern Water‘s collaboration with the University of Brighton took their first intake of students.

The catalyst for action was the ever-widening skills gap which has seen a 25 per cent decrease in the number of engineering graduates in the UK over the past five years.  It means ongoing developments such as the Channel Tunnel rail link, the 2012 Olympics and other large scale civil engineering projects in the UK have a decreasing pool of talent from which to fulfill those roles. Only recently a number of civil engineering contractors have had to recruit from Australia and South Africa in order to gain enough engineers to deliver projects such as Terminal 5 at Heathrow.

Southern Water’s project manager Ben Green believes the lack of engineering graduates could be down to the lessening number of students studying the sciences and engineering at both A-level and degree level.  And he says traditional methods to deal with demand don’t cut it anymore:

“Going to recruitment fairs or advertising in the press isn’t enough. Because of the demand for engineers, not just for engineering schemes, a number of engineering graduates will go on to careers in the city, careers in accountancy, other careers that are on offer because the skills that they hold are highly valued.”

Excellence with Industry has been set up through close working with the University of Brighton and with Southern Water’s supply chain partners.  They include Atkins, which is ranked in The Sunday Times “Top 20 Best Big Companies To Work For,” as well as Costain, MWH and United Utilities.

Ben says the collaboration works for many reasons:

“The benefits that we get out of this programme include getting graduates that are working with us before they even graduate.  They’re learning the companies systems, they’re learning the company ways and their interpersonal skills and business skills and commercial acumen are much, much higher because they’ve already been exposed to the real world. And they can start delivering benefits from day one when they join any one of those companies.”

The scheme was oversubscribed by nearly three or four for each of the eight places available. In deciding the best candidates an open day was held at the university where students were told about the course and the benefits. They were then invited to put in an ‘expression of interest.’ Once those had been reviewed a shortlist of candidates were invited for interview.

First year student Sarah McGee remembers the experience vividly:

“From the moment you got there it was extremely intense. Just needling questions, you knew that they were taking note of everything. There were obviously certain criteria they were looking for.  I think possibly the first interview, the informal one, was maybe more of a character assessment on personality attributes etc.

“The more formal one was the more general leadership questions. Have you been a good leader, that type of thing.  Regarding the presentation, we were given the topic to research three weeks before the interview. It was quite an intense period of time juggling university work with research for this. Because the presentation was so important and never having done one before in this sort of situation you didn’t really know where to come at it from so you had to go with your gut.”

Excellence With Industry differs from other engineering courses in that the students have the ability to work with five separate companies.  This means they can work and gain a wide range of skills and experience in all areas of the industry, whether contractor, client or consultants.

Second year student Sam Matthews says it’s going to make his final decision that much harder:

“If anything the exposure to five different companies makes the choice even more difficult. The fact that normally you choose to go down the contractor route or the consultant route for me isn’t so clear cut. And having had brilliant times with all the companies involved means that at the end of graduation my decision is pretty difficult.”

Another benefit of Excellence With Industry that the students rave about is having their own personal mentor to help with any questions or advice they might need. Sam says it’s a flexible set up:

“My mentor Ben Green has been absolutely fantastic. Not only has he provided support through my placements he’s also been there on hand to help me with my university modules.  So particularly with water resource management if I’ve had any questions, if he doesn’t know, he can put me in touch with somebody that does. That means I can drive my university grades and receive a better mark.”

A complaint most full time students can relate to is the size of debt one graduates with. To help ease the pressure, students on Excellence With Industry are paid an annual bursary of £9,000, something Sarah says she was impressed with from the outset:

“Certainly for me it means I don’t have to work now.  The previous two years I have been holding down a job as well as studying for a lot of hours a week.  So for me instantly that pressure is gone.  I can just concentrate on what I’m doing.  I can also maintain some sort of life around my studies and my work, which I think is quite important.

“My friends instinctive reaction is to say ‘you lucky bugger’ but I think they all realise that we work really hard on the course.  It’s a difficult course, I’ve been on placement all Summer, I’ve had to do extra work on top of that.”

One of the biggest complaints of employers taking on graduates straight from university is their lack of experience in the subject.  Ben says Excellence With Industry tackles that issue head on:

“The feedback from this summers placements has been exceptional. All of the companies involved – Atkins, United Utilities, MWH, Costain and Southern Water – all the line managers that have been working with these students have stated, these are their words: They’d have no hesitation in employing them in the future, they’d love to have them back on their site, and the work they’ve done has been great and of a higher quality than a graduate placement.”

But since students are not contracted to take a job when they graduate, how can those involved in running the scheme be sure students won’t take their skills elsewhere?  Ben Green says it was a deliberate choice:

“Whilst it may be of benefit to contract the students to work for one particular company after they’ve finished their degrees what we’re more interested in is actually making sure we get graduates that want to work with those companies.  Therefore we feel it better they can choose which employer they really want to join because employees that are driven and committed to those companies will provide better value than those that are tied.”

And Sam, who’ll be graduating this Summer says they’ve nothing to worry about:

“Providing that obviously I do receive a job offer at the end of graduation, my intention is to work for one of those companies and maybe in the future as my career progresses switch to one of the other companies involved with the Excellence with Industry programme.”

And Sarah agrees:

“When I graduate I’m definitely going to work for one of the companies, not least because the job is there for 12 months and I will have built up by the end of my second year a great folder of contacts.  I think having at least a year at one of these companies is a great opportunity to cultivate those relationships.”

“What’s the point in voting?” my (non-political) partner asked me last night.

And following the 10 o’clock news from the BBC which failed to get to the essence of what appears to be happening in this country, I can see what she means.

In a democracy, I explained, the government reflects the will of the people.

Britain is broken down into 646 areas (constituencies) with an MP representing each one. The people living in each of these areas vote for the MP they want to represent them. The one with the most votes then takes the seat for that area in the House of Commons.

In the General Election on Thursday the main parties achieved the following:

Conservatives:  306 seats – a gain of 96 seats

Labour: 258 seats – a loss of 91 seats

Liberal Democrats: 57 seats – a loss of 6 seats

So, the will of the people is clearly for the Conservative party.

However, in order to govern a single party must achieve a clear majority in the House of Commons. So, of the 646 seats in the House of Commons, the governing party need a minimum of 325 seats. Because there is no clear majority we have a hung parliament.

This means a coalition government needs to be formed.  This is ‘supposed to be’ where parties put their differences aside and join together for the good of the country – to form a stable government.

Since Thursday night the Conservative party have been in talks with the Liberal Democrats to form a Conservative led coalition government.  A democratic solution.

Difficulty arises because we have an unwritten constitution. That is to say, we don’t follow a rule book in this country, we follow conventions.  So as undemocratic as it seems, when a coalition government needs to be formed, it could be between the losers of an election.

Now that Gordon Brown has been forced to resign by his party, Labour are clearly hoping to form their own coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.  Nick Clegg has made no secret of that fact that he would never work with Gordon Brown but would he consider working with David Miliband or perhaps Harriet Harman?

Indeed it seems talks have been ongoing between the Lib Dems and Labour since before the final count was in.

Granted, Clegg may be just playing the game – by having meetings with Labour, it puts pressure on the Conservatives to do them a better deal.  But the fundamental fact is that they weren’t voted into power and Clegg said on many occasions in the run up to election that if the eventual outcome was a hung parliament he wouldn’t turn his back on the party with the most seats.

Now as Europe’s economy crumbles further the one thing we need is stable government yet the Liberal Democrats continue to go against the public’s wishes in pushing for their own gains – this from a party that somehow managed to lose support in this election.

If Labour and the Liberal Democrats were to form a coalition government, the United Kingdom would cease to be a democracy in that our government would no longer reflect the will of the people.