Lots of new Panny firmware....wooohoooo

[Diane B]

It seems the already fine AF on 14-45 is now even better. I didn't find any difference in the 20mm AF speed or the focusing noise. I don't use the video, so no comments regarding that.

Where I noticed the difference in the focusing noise was in a short little video clip I ran with continuous AF on the 20--before you would hear it make a noise as it came into focus and if you used a 1/2 click to focus, it was quite noticeable. The noise on playback of the focus seems quite less to me, but I'd have to check it against some older files. I did notice a difference in the 14-45 on the last update and this seemed similar for the 20. I don't video much--just a bit of experimenting so its not very important to me.

I still haven't checked better higher ISOs as some have mentioned--or the better AWB.

Diane

 

[Roel]

I do believe that the AWB, especially in artificial (tungsten) light is much improved.

However, my high ISO shots still look the same. Unfortunately, I did not do any test (baseline) shots before I updated GF1 firmware, so what I just said is highly subjective as I have nothing concrete to compare it to.

The GF1 pre/post firmware update is usually decent up to ISO 800-1000 for me. At 1250 and 1600, it gets quite noisy, especially in the shadows.

Can anyone else comment on high ISO with this update?

 

[Paul_Kerfoot]

Thanks Terry

Updated the G1, 14-45 kit and 45-200 tele this morning. No worries.

Upgrading lens firmware is operationally identical to the body firmware except you must have the correct lens mounted. You must treat each lens/body firmware version upgrade as a completely separate operation and not try to combine them. Also note, it is necessary to upgrade the body firmware before any lens firmware upgrades. The annoying part is waiting for the battery to fully charge.

First C1 announces support for the Panasonic raw format then all the body/lens firmware is upgraded. Are you really Terry or is this Santa Claus.

Paul

 

[Tullio]

...Also note, it is necessary to upgrade the body firmware before any lens firmware upgrades.
Paul

I don't believe that's a true statement. I recently bought the G1 with the two kit lenses. They all came at f/w 1.0. Since I did not want to loose the ability to use 3rd party batteries, I decided not to upgrade the body but I did upgrade the two lenses to 1.1 without any problems. Body and lens are two different entities and there is no check between the two that forces the body to be upgraded before the lens.

 

[slau]

This is a direct quote from the Panasonic Firmware upgrade site:

In advance to any lens firmware update, please make sure that your camera body firmware is latest.

I don't mind to play around with software but not when I update firmware. No room for error here. May be it is just me.

 

[f6cvalkyrie]

As I mentionned in my earlier post, Panasonic wants you to have the latest camera firmware before updating any lens firmware.

Whether lens firmware update does work (well) without body firmware update is a risk I am not willing to take !

So, I decided that I will not update my lenses anymore, since I am happy with the results now !

C U
Rafael

 

[Vivek]

Just a heads up my generic battery (Sido) still works in my GF-1 after the firmware update as it does in my G1 running v1.4.

Regards

Kevin

I confirm what Kevin said.

~5 Euro/battery (shipped).

 

[simonclivehughes]

Updated the G1, 14-45 kit and 45-200 tele this morning. No worries.

This is a typo, isn't it: "G1"... I can't see an update for the G1 or GH1 yet.

Cheers,

 

[Steve Pope]

How do I 'transfer' the new firmware files to the camera?

Can a patient person guide me through the steps I need to take to update my brand new GF1 and 20mm, using my Macbook and the internet directly (ie, missing out the card reader stage)? I can download the two relevant Panasonic files to the desktop okay...but then what do I do??? 'Unzip' them, whatever that means? 'Transfer' them...how exactly? With the USB-tethered camera menu open at what page, etc, etc?

I've never done a firmware upgrade before, and have no intuitive digital talent whatsoever, so explain every stage if you can bear to! Thanks in anticipation...

 

[Terry]

If you click on the file on the Panasonic site, it will download to your mac. Generally, the settings on your computer will automatically unzip the file and give you a .bin file on your computer.
Once you have the bin file on your computer...
1.Make sure you have fully charged the battery. Don't bother trying the update if you didn't just take the battery from the charger
2. Plug the camera into the computer in the same way you would to get your pictures off the computer
3. Open the finder (little face icon). You will see the camera as a device that is hooked up to the computer click once on that and you will see the files on the sd card....just leave that alone for the moment
4. If you have an up to date mac you will find the .bin file in a folder called downloads on the dock. move the .bin file to the the area where you see the camera files in step 3.
5. Eject camera from the Mac.
6. Turn camera off
7. Turn camera on and hit the play button
8. say yes to the update.
9. Do the exact same thing for the lens.

If this is not clear, send me a PM and I can walk you through it over the phone.

terry

 

[Tullio]

...Whether lens firmware update does work (well) without body firmware update is a risk I am not willing to take !

Well, there are two issues here. One is, can the lens firmware be updated without the body being updated first? The answer to that is "yes". The second is, will the system (camera body + lens) perform at its best if the lens f/w is updated but not the body? The answer to that is...it depends. In the case of improved AF, there is a direct connection between the body and the lens. However, in the case of 3rd party battery lock, there ins't. So, all I was pointing out is the fact that there is no check being performed by the camera that will prevent a lens f/w update if it is mounted on an outdated body.

 

[Steve Pope]

Terry tutorial

If this is not clear, send me a PM and I can walk you through it over the phone - Terry

A very clear breakdown - I'll follow it to the letter tonight. Thanks for taking the trouble!

 

[Tullio]

Thanks very much for posting this thread, Terry. I don't check Panasonic's website regularly (maybe I should).

Considering that the G1 is a year old, I'm not sure Panasonic will release an equivalent f/w update for it. They may have a G2 already in store and that would be a nice differential to have between the two models to push the sales of the new model. However, I hope I'm dead wrong because that would be one good f/w upgrade to have installed (whether we loose the ability to use 3rd party batteries or not).

 

[Jack]

Note also that on the Mac those .bin files change name once downloaded so you cannot easily tell which file is for which lens unless you DL them one at a time. The GF1 file maintains its name..

 

[Godfrey]

Note also that on the Mac those .bin files change name once downloaded so you cannot easily tell which file is for which lens unless you DL them one at a time. The GF1 file maintains its name..

Jack,

The only time a download file on Mac OS X, downloaded with Safari, will "change its name" is when Safari is configured to 'Open safe files after downloading'. See the Safari Preferences panel below:

What it does, in the case of the Panasonic fw updates, when this is set is automatically expand the .zip archives to their .bin executable contents. E.g.: the download zip file FS014045V12.zip is expanded to the ES100112.bin executable file for use in the camera. If you turn off the option, you can download all the .zip files with no ambiguity regards their names, the names will be as listed in the download page.

I strongly recommend people turn off this option as I have done in the image above. It is a security risk first and foremost, and it confuses people as well, in my experience. I am not sure whether FireFox has a similar option but I would recommend the same thing there.

The other issue I see on Mac OS X when it comes to these fw downloads is the '.bin' file extension. On Mac OS X, '.bin' is a known file type for an old type of encoded interchange file format (MacBinary) which dates back to internet file sharing in the 1980s*. If the ES100112.bin is accidentally double-clicked, Mac OS X believes you want it to be decoded and generates a ES100112.bin.cpgz file from it, which is junk.

I hope these notes helps make what is happening regards downloads and file naming a little more transparent.

* MacBinary format, available in both an ASCII based '.hqx' form or the binary based '.bin' form, encodes the two-fork Mac OS file structures of pre-Mac OS X days into a simplified byte stream to ease file transfer using systems that did not recognize the Mac OS file structure.

 

[Streetshooter]

The way I did the update was as suggested by Terry. I used a USB cord to the puter...then opened Olympus studio...Then hit the update button and everything just happened.
Of course this was for the lenses on the Pen 1. I don't know if the Panny stuff is any different. The cable method worked great.
Shooter

 

[mark1958]

I downloaded them all and had the issues Jack brought mentioned that caused me some confusion at first. I copied them to an SD card and systematically switched the lenses to do the update. For two of four lenses, I had to redownload the files for some reason and repeat but in the end it worked. When i went to see what to do for the camera, i had already updated that during the process since i had included that firmware file on the card. Well it took longer than it should but all updated fine for me.

 

[Jack]

Understood Godfrey -- my point is the .bin has a different name than the zip, which IMO is just stupid since the zip is logically named. IOW and IMO the .bin should have an equally logical name.

 

[Terry]

I actually did it the slowest way. One by one with a card first body, and then lens, lens, lens....... and reformatted the card between each download.

My guided tour above was for someone who didn't have a card reader.

I do need to go back and change my safari settings because I have it set to auto extract.

 

[Godfrey]

Understood Godfrey -- my point is the .bin has a different name than the zip, which IMO is just stupid since the zip is logically named. IOW and IMO the .bin should have an equally logical name.

Ah ... I thought you meant that this was something different on the Mac OS X platform. Panasonic does this on both Mac OS X and Windows ... here's the info for the 14-45 lens update:

Note that both archive formats (self-extracting .exe for Win, .zip for Mac) extract to the same, differently named .bin file.

I agree with you ... I don't know why they choose to change the name of the .bin from the archive which contains it.