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Not a review yet, just initial impressions.

Shooting video at f22 is gonna be a thing. Yup, that shallow DOF is sooooooo 2021.

CineD botched the dynamic range testing on the GH6. They measured the GH6 in non boost mode at 800 iso when the native is 250 iso. The GH6 even in non boost DR mode has more dynamic range than both the GH5S and the GH5. Cined really needs to get their act together. They are currently claiming the dynamic range in non boost mode is the worst of any modern M43 camera. Kind of a turn off for people who want to use 4k 120p. WTF The GH6 looks better then the competition in the shadows. The S1 takes the cake for highlights. I love highlight retention I just like having an even balance of highlight to shadow detail. Also when talking highlight detail the RED Komodo, which is seeing a ton of use on all levels of production, actually only has a little over 4 stops. So the GH6 isn't doing bad at all.

This is available in mid-March for €349 and could be a very interesting alternative to the F6 if you only need 2 channels and/or prefer to have something much more compact for camera mounting. Runs for 8 hours on two AA batteries and with the optional BT1 adapter it can not only be remote controlled but also have wireless timecode sync over BLE. I think the F3 would partner up well with a couple of Zoom's F2-BT lav recorders to make a very capable 4 channel 32 bit float audio system that would all be timecode synced and remote controlled through BLE for around €700. Not having to worry about setting levels and never having to wonder whether the lav mics are in record mode etc would be a boon for solo operators in a hurry.

Yes, the intro no longer is appropriate given today's events. Going to re-do the video and post it later when had more time with the camera.

From CVP's over under testing the GH6 clearly does better then the GH5 and GH5S. The S1 and S1H also quickly get really bad horizontal banding when underexposed. To me those dynamic range numbers are kind of meaningless.

Well I have done a total back flip and cancelled my pre-orders. Why? I blame Putin. He's responsible for everything else including the GH6 not having PDAF so why not?! But seriously, I looked again at all my options and came to the conclusion that what I needed most in 2022, was stability. I'm less than 6 weeks out from a stupidly busy season and it's not the time to make sweeping changes. So I have somewhat reluctantly cancelled any/all plans to go M4/3 for my video needs. The S1H has already gone. Love(d) that camera, but it's just overkill (and overweight mainly) for my needs. Kept my S5 just in case the OM-1's arrived too late or any other such problem and the good news for me financially is actually I will come out of this next/current move financially ahead as I'm selling 3x lenses + the S1H and ordering a second S5 body. I'm putting my new gimbal on ice for the season and will look at that again some other time after this next season is over. It's really only the tracking AF I have any issue with in regard to the whole system and if the GH6 is anything to go by, I think there's a good chance that a further tweak for the S line in regard to AF may be coming. And if any S2/H/R etc is in development and has CAF, they will halt all further work until a PDAF solution has been sourced. Or they go out of business. Also, this gives me time to see how the OM-1 shapes up in reality for others over this coming year. You/they can be the beta testers! 😬

Yes.

Is it not f2 MFT = f2.8 S35mm DOF?

What a terrible day. We humans show no signs of learning, progressing and stopping these thugs from coming to power and ruining everything. 😢

Yep. Thoughts are with them. Xelmus Anamorphic are there. It's absolute evil in our time.

Yeah, sad day. Hope that are not members of our community in Ukraine, and if it is the case, that they could be safe.

Videos like those are just too controlled to see the real world performance. As @Mark Romero 2 mentioned, in great lighting with lots of contrast it seems like it will be ok, but in the real world it is pretty terrible. I tried CAF with the kit lens (20-60 L Mount) and the Sigma 45mm that I got for free, and it was completely unusable for me. The pulsing, the complete loss of focus then the endless hunting was just not workable for me. The worst would be trying to rely on it for a talking head or interview scenario since the talent would need to start all over if it lost focus. I always use MF for those scenarios. I also only shoot in VLOG which makes it worse; I know there's other color profiles but I should have to pick a different profile just because of AF. With my EF adapter and Canon lenses, I even had problems with one shot AF. It simply would not focus at all at times especially with the Sigma 50mm F1.4 so I had to manually focus or change the focus point. Forget focusing on the eye, I had to pick hair, edge of shirt, etc just as a starting point. On a tripod or nice and stationary with plenty of light it might be useable, but in fast or even moderate scenarios like events or something as simple as people walking indoors in a mixed lighting environment it fell apart every time for me.

I think an OM-1 based system is probably the still the best option for me right now, but for that operative word, ‘probably’. Sticking with L Mount means sticking with a known quantity and putting +1500 euros back into my account. Switching just adds a little uncertainty into the bigger picture plus costs me minus 3500 euros. Sometimes it’s simply a case of playing safe and that was what I set out to do this year and so I’m sticking to/going back to that plan. For my own sanity more than anything!

Yes, so it looks like in DR Boost mode the GH6 can't match the S series cameras in the highlights (as you would expect from looking at Panasonic's VLog graph a few pages back) but the shadows are completely free from that awful horizontal banding which I was surprised to see on the S cameras. And the GH6 does amazingly well in colour fidelity underexposed (again in Boost) From this test I think I'd be comfortable underexposing the GH6 in Boost mode by one stop to give an extra stop in the highlights when the scene requires it.

They re-tested at ISO 250 and found an additional 0.2 stops, using their "conservative" rating (how much noise you're willing to live with. Using these criteria the Alexa, for example, is rated at 14 stops) So 9.4 stops at base ISO and 11 with DR Boost for GH6.

Yep, handheld wide open at f/2.

Some great features: Punch in to check focus while recording is a game changer for me. I means they can stick with their funky AF as I can always check focus like I did with my C100. Flip screen thingy is excellent. Full HMDI All the 10bit 4k etc and especially ProRes. I'm sure it'll pair really well with the 10-25 f1.7 and 25-50 f1.7 Does it have the digital crop without losing quality in 4K like the GH5? That was a great feature. Made the 10-25 into a 20-70 f1.7 equivalent. In saying that I think the FF Panasonics are great and I don't think I'd go back to M43 (just sold the 10-25 f1.7 as well!). What I'm really interested in is having punch in to check focus on the FF cameras, full HDMI on the next S5and the same flippy screen, FF 4K 50p 10bit (not so bothered about 100p and over) and in camera Prores. I imagine a S1Hmk2 will show us if that's going to happen as the S5 is still a new camera. A FF 20-50 f2 and 70-100 f2 would be amazing.

Thank you very much. I really hoped it would be better now. I looked at the video below and though that it's quite ok but video only shows couple of scenarios.

I’m thinking that for 99% of users, for 99% of the time, the S5 is a better option. Unless anyone really really really needs the ‘extra’ video capability of the GH6, S5 for me all day long. Except for the rear screen. The GH6 spanks the S5 there. S5ii with phase and the GH6/S1H rear screen and happy days.

Sorry if I often post my tests but honestly I've never seen anything like it, and for a month I also paid 15 euros for runwayml which in comparison is unwatchable .. We are not yet at professional levels probably, but by retouching the mask with fusion a little bit in my opinion we are almost there ... I am really amazed by what you can do...

I am feeling pretty confident that my storage problem is solved. The 1TB card shows 524 minutes remaining when filming at 4K60FPS XF-AVC and it shows 852 minutes remaining when filming at 4K30FPS XF-AVC. For safety, until I trust going solo with the V30 cards I will keep a V90 card in slot A and keep dual slot recording enabled. If it fills up I will swap it for another V90 card, and if the V30 card continues to work without problems then at least I'll be able to dump from a single card later on. Ideally after a few months I'll be able to use only the V30 1TB cards, I hate keeping up with multiple cards and swapping or dumping in the middle of a shoot. The 160Mb/s for 4K30FPS is well within the SanDIsk card's advertised capabilities and even 260Mb/s still leaves a pretty comfortable data rate delta based on the advertised speeds for the Sandisk Extreme PRO cards. I also tested my 1TB cards when they arrived. Sustained is the big question now and only time will tell if they can maintain that speed sustained. Below are the results from testing the Sandisk V30 and the ProGrade V90, the read speeds for both are WAY lower than advertised at least with the way this software does the tests or due to my card reader: Sandisk Extreme PRO 1TB V30 ProGrade 256GB V90 Lexar 64GB 1000x (Just for fun) The Lexar results were pretty shocking, no idea what to make of that, but I still will not be buying any Lexar cards. I'll be the first to admit that I have never used digital IS in camera so I knew nothing about it. But now that I know I will need to rely on it at times I read everything I could about it. The shutter speed requirements are unrealistically high for it to work well, so I will be forced to use a gimbal more or stabilized lenses.

The way I see the OM-1 / GH6 / GH5S / P4K distinction is how flexible they are for video (ie, shooting video in uncontrolled conditions. From this perspective the OM-1 and GH6 are in the "very videography ready" category because they has IBIS and the others don't, with the OM-1 having the advantage because of its PDAF. It's all about speed, and shooting with sticks, or even a monopod or gimbal is a much slower and heavier way to shoot than handheld, so this is really the defining feature that separates these from the GH5S and P4K. The "somewhat videography ready" category has the GH5S in it because it can expose with the shutter up to very short exposures - enough to shoot wide-open in full sun, whereas the P4K doesn't have this capability. This means you don't have to use NDs, which also slow the shooting process. It can also take photos, which videography frequently coexists with and is expected from the same camera. The "it is actually a cinema camera" category is the P4K without IBIS or fast shutter speeds available. It's not the least useful for video out of all cameras due to its good high ISO performance, unlike true cinema cameras where they basically never get changed from their base ISO, but it's still much better suited to shooting where you have control of the conditions and have time to setup and expose and bend the subject to the camera. There are obviously other factors in here that effect things, but if you got tasked with shooting an event video that was completely chaotic with things changing at every moment, where you had to get everything and had no re-takes, I'd much prefer the OM-1 set to full-auto than the P4K. I'm sure they'll tinker with the GH6 AF but I'm not optimistic about it getting that much better. I'm no expert, but AI typically gets better as a function of how much processing power you give it, which I think is why it's better than the GH5, but there's a real limit to it I think.

FD 35mm f/2 concave, with a Fujifilm X-S10, full pic and center crop. I guess I could call it a sharp lens (and looks like that Fuji peaking works very well)

Yeah, if you're set on AF then there's the OM-1 and if not then there's this. Maybe the zombie apocalypse is actually thousands of people running around outside making films with dead-format cameras having a great time and the FF purists huddling in their fortified caves afraid that they'll get overrun by the impure hordes!

90 minutes of applauses! I just don't understand why it is assumed that EVERYONE aspires to have a FF camera. And that therefore those who don't have a FF camera must necessarily suffer from the small penis syndrome. It's just the premise that is wrong. In my own small way (deep technical diving), I wouldn't think of taking an FF camera on a dive, which, with its housing and porthole, is as big as a washing machine. The M43 is the perfect compromise of quality and size. For decades sports photographers have used APSC cameras because it was the right tool for the job. And for eons cinematography has been Super 35mm. Now legions of youtubers have decided that if you don't have an FF camera you're a loser. Then of course I respect all those who need a FF sensor for their work but they should stop explaining me what I need... Regarding Gerald, if you're a Youtuber for a living you play by the rules of your job and shut up just like all the other workers who clock in in the morning.

Well, where are the cats? The flowers...?

One of the funnest, coolest, and most useful tools we found for getting our lenses and camera ready was using the free app of BLENDER for pre-visualization. Honestly, we tried a bunch of "pro" solutions to create pre-viz and storyboards, but nothing was as effective (and obviously as affordable) as BLENDER. Here's an example of one of our master shots compared to the final result. Audio was taken from our initial video conference call/table read: Special thanks to Jacob Zirkle for the tutorial allowing us to be much more practical with this simple and creative solution.

It's too long ago for me to remember accurately, but mostly I think they dried up. Of course, in a lens it's more complicated because you shouldn't humidify them too much or you'll get fungus. Also, when @PannySVHS says the rubber "dissolved" that's something I think is literally true - which is very different to rubber drying out. It's probably a case of reading the advice from known good sources, which considering the level of completely wrong info posted all over the internet about it, I'd only get from lens manufacturers directly.

Coming from Fuji myself (XT3), not as good. For stills, no problemo…in fact there are several bonuses with stills for a camera having contrast detect. But for video, with static subjects or side to side movement, pretty OK and yes, native Panny lenses have an edge over Sigma. Reliable tracking forward or away from you. Forget it. Pretty crap. It CAN do it, but you don’t get to decide when those times are. Toss a coin up in the air and the probability of heads or tails is 50:50. That’s S5/S1 tracking as things stand for you.

Personally, I don't find CONTINUOUS autofocus to be usable when shooting video. However, I usually shoot at 30fps in V-LOG, and that is where continuous autofocus struggles the most. If you shoot in 60fps (which is only aps-c crop on the S1 / S5 series of cameras, not full frame), AND you shoot in a more contrasty picture profile (standard, natural, 709Like), then the continuous autofocus is better. Please note that I only have one L-Mount lens: the 24-105 f/4 It is a good lens but probably the Panasonic prime lenses would focus better. Also, Sigma lenses are notoriously WORSE for autofocus on Panasonic L-Mount bodies.