sgreszcz

With the Voightlanders or the newer Panasonic or Olympus pro f1.2/1.4 lenses or a speed booster you are not doing that badly for low light or shallower depth of field. I'm enjoying shooting with the Panasonic 15/1.7 and Olympus 75/1.8 these days now that the light is getting gloomier. The IS is incredible on these cameras, and with all the right audio jacks, better battery, (and hopefully a cleaner preamp than em5ii) this could be a really good documentary or event camera. Then there are all the stills features like 18fps raw and the improved high-res mode... Can't wait for you to get your hands on one to test. I'm sure you have given them some excellent feedback for improvements over the em5ii.

Will be interesting to see how the AF works with video and the enhance PD-AF and the C-AF. Would be good to get something comparable to Canon's AF.

Better viewfinder or same as GX80?

Quite fast, I think a bit faster than the 25/1.4 too. The 20/1.7 was one of the first m4/3 lenses that I owned (with the Olympus 45/1.8). I loved that little 20mm lens except I lost a lot of shots due to missed autofocus (mind you of my kids that don't stop moving). It was pretty good for manual focus with video and I liked the angle of view and had nice rendering.

I just got the 15/1.7 and it is a great little lens. I think that it might replace my 25/1.4 for indoor shooting lens as it is easier to get environmental pictures and video of my kids without having to be way back.

I always struggled with this too in both RAW and JPEG. You can see a test I did with the G7/GX80/LX100/E-M5II here where I balanced everything before shooting. I find the GX80 to have much more pleasant colours than any of the Panasonic cameras that I have used so far. Here's hoping that the GH5/G80/LX?? use similar colour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGXsDFfKDxE

I too find it a bit awkward that in A or S mode on a Panasonic you can't see the ISO or S/A that the camera selected. For the GX80, I find that the IBIS gets a bit wobbly when doing some sort of movement with wider lenses such as the Olympus 9-18 or 7-14. With the Panasonic 12-35/2.8 and dual-IS it works better and really controls the jitters on the Panasonic 35-100/2.8 zoom. Check out my youtube videos where I tested out the IS of various Olympus and Panasonic cameras including the LX100, EM5-II, and GX80. I had the LX100 and sold it in anticipation of the LX200 and hopefully the better colour rendition like the GX80 (check out my test of the LX100/G7/GX80 colour). I don't know if it was the (auto) white balance, or the LX100 lens, or the "JPEG" rendering but the LX100 would give me some funky colours in the skin and lips sometimes. Also a tilt/touch screen would be nice as I use the EVF+touch focus for stills a lot. As you say, the GX80 isn't much larger than the LX100, except when you need something faster than the pancake lenses (like the Panasonic 2.8 zoom or even the 15mm/1.7 prime). The GX80 is also much heavier than the LX100 and doesn't have as good a thumb grip. I've recently sold my Olympus cameras and most Olympus lenses and replaced them with two GX80. I hope to get the LX100 replacement as it is a fantastic travel camera, and I could probably get by with the LX200+Gimbal and the GX80 with Panasonic 35-100/2.8 for most things. I didn't find switching between stills and video mode that tricky. I assigned custom settings to the bottom left function button and C1 to stills and C2 to video. I mostly shot stills in A mode, so to switch to video it was: Function button (select C2=video), shutter dial to 60 (rear wheel jog to 1/50), Aperture dial to A. I would pop on a 3 or 6-stop ND depending on how bright the scene was. Outside I used ISO 200 and inside auto-ISO. It would be easier if Panasonic told you what A it was selecting as sometime you need to jump into M mode to find out.

Yes, this is really stupid and I found out the hard way doing some long milky way time lapses this summer that the batter life in the GX80 is much less than the same battery in the Gx7 and LX00, especially when I forgot to turn off the IBIS. I don't know why they didn't allow for USB power of the camera as well as charge the internal battery. I posted this in another thread, but it is more applicable here: Look at this guy's blog http://www.grahamhoughton.com/tech-talk for the subject "Building a USB to 8.4v power supply to power your camera for longer periods out doors". It refers to Panasonic, but I'm sure you can do much of the same for any camera that has a "dummy" battery on the market. I've ordered the voltage/current converter and dummy battery and I'm going to use it with external USB battery packs for longer time-lapse video (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01FD9X1NK). I did order the wrong plug to allow me to swap the dummy battery from mains to USB backup. His blog has all the details, but he also has some videos:

I have been using both Olympus and Panasonic cameras for stills and have no idea why you would think that Panasonic is only valid for video. The Panasonic raw files are quite robust and the JPEG processing with the GX80 is actually quite good, while maybe not yet matching Olympus/Fuji.

Look at this guy's blog http://www.grahamhoughton.com/tech-talk for the subject "Building a USB to 8.4v power supply to power your camera for longer periods out doors". It refers to Panasonic, but I'm sure you can do much of the same for any camera that has a "dummy" battery on the market. I've ordered the voltage/current converter and dummy battery and I'm going to use it with external USB battery packs for longer time-lapse video.

I'm just curious in which ways Panasonic cameras are severely deficient to Sony in stills photography? In most ways except for ultra-shallow DoF or phase-detection C-AF for sports there is probably not a lot of difference? Panasonic (and Olympus) have some excellent native lenses too. If the Gx80 is any indication, the battery life is much worse than it was on my Gx7 and LX100 (same battery type). The IBIS is surely one of the causes, and any time I forget to shut it off for something like longer time lapses, it runs down so fast. I am working on an external battery feed from USB battery bank.

The crane-m looks to take between 125-650g payload. That would be fine for the LX100 and probably the GX80 with Panasonic 12-32 or Olympus 9-18 lenses. Looks like it might support camera control too - not sure what models. Zhiyun Crane-M is the first to control the camera's stabilizer, only a single data line, you can achieve your camera, the focal length of the control interface. The stabilizer and real camera into one, saving every change scenarios need to adjust the time. "Big Mac" long life Zhiyun Crane-M uses 26550 type lithium batteries, can bring to the stabilizer 12 hours long battery life. Even if you are a madman shooting, the full power of the Crane-M also allows you to shoot on a full day.

I'm curious to where you found information about the Crane M? I'm debating getting the Crane for my Panasonic GX80, but maybe the smaller "Crane M" would be better for something like the LX100.

Or in a pinch use your mobile phone and a plug-in X-Y mic (sony, zoom, rode) or something like the Rode smartLav+ and the Rode or Tascam apps. I've used the Smartlav+ for the interview here (with the silicon rode invisilav to isolate the mic from noise). Downside is that you lose the use of your phone.

I have the discontinued Sony icd-sx1000 which is pretty good and smaller/sturdier than my old h1. I read some old reviews that compare the quality to the much larger Sony dc-10. I am thinking of buying another if I can find on clear out discount (got mine for around £100). Some people don't like the built in USB and battery and memory (can add micro-sd. I like that everything is contained and small and it comes with case and little flip stand. I've used the built in mics and lav input and both are good.

Jase, I can't really recommend that setup as the zoom h1 is really sensitive to handling and wind due to the sensitivity of its microphones and the lightweight plastic body. I even tried using a rycote mount and I have a good deadcat (read head) for. It too. I eventually replaced it with the (discontinued) Sony ICDSX1000 which is smaller and more solid and had a built in USB connector and memory so I like that for convenience. That recorder will have the same challenges as any mounted on the camera (wind, handling, distance from camera). I usually use that recorder for lav input or using its built in stand and mics to record a concert, syncing with the gx80 scratch audio in post. I also have a used shure lenshopper with built in recorder if I want better ambient recording. i also got good results with the rode video micro with my old g7 which had an input (not so good with em5ii with noisier preamps). I'm still looking forward to getting my instamics via indigogo to make dual audio a little easier. If you are in the US look up the juiced link little DARling. Does the same thing as the tascam. Im also really looking for the instamic on indigogo to finally ship for a small good quality mic/recorder I can plant on things (like my kids).

Good luck! I was so very frustrated about the jitter in such a great lens, but now it is gone on my GX80, I'm quite happy...

I have a feeling there will be jitter on gh3

I had the annoying jitter with up to date firmware on my Panasonic gx7 and g7. It is gone on my gx80 with dual-is. Search for my tests on YouTube (sgreszcz) for more details as I compare with the g7/lx100/gx80/em5ii

Olympus is actually quite innovative with functionality like live time, live composite, high-res mode. I'm interested in what they will come up with. If 43rumours are right they will have a fast read 4K sensor in the Em-1ii that should have little rolling shutter. If they just improve their internal codec a bit to get closer to Panasonic... People complain about the Olympus menus but I like how you can tweak anything and there are enough function buttons for needed features. The one touch WB is also handy. That being said, I've really enjoyed shooting with my gx80 this summer. The dual stabilisation (with even the 100-400 that I borrowed) is fantastic.

John Brawley published another film with blog post shooting with only the Olympus E-M5ii handheld, flat film profile, and external prores recorder. Looks really nice! https://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/intrigue-how-far-will-you-go/

Hi Jase, I enjoyed you Splash! festival film. The look really gave a nice feel to it. It seemed to be quite sunny in a lot of the shots. Do you use any ND filtering with the Ultra Contrast or just bump up shutter speed to correspond for the larger apertures that you are using? I guess you used a lot of 1080p/50fps for slow motion, so that probably helps with a higher shutter speed? Reminds me of the festivals I attended when living in Köln/Bonn (Rock Werchter / Rock am See 2003) which had great lineups and atmosphere, and HOT weather. It is harder to get to festivals these days with small kids, although went to Bestival in 2013 with a three-year-old and my 8-month pregnant wife... I don't know most of the bands anymore!

Hi there, thanks for your response. I've been doing some more digging and it looks as though I need to find a repair tool to rebuild the video/audio mux. I have tried changing the .mov extension to .mp4 and that didn't work. This program http://grauonline.de/cms2/?page_id=5 seems to try to rebuild the file based on using a working file from the same camera. I just tried it a couple of minutes ago on one of the recovered .mov files and I got the audio, but black for video. I will try some more things, just for the experience if I need to recover something crucial some day.

Hi all, I ran into a problem where I didn't correctly transfer all the files off my SD card before formatting/reusing it. It is nothing critical, but I've been trying to recover the files using "photorec" on the Mac. I recovered most of the .jpg and .rw2 files, but I'm having trouble with the video files. Photorec has recovered a bunch of .mp4 and .mov files, however I cannot play them back with Quicktime, MPEGstreamclip, nor VLC. I'm assuming that the .mov files are the actual video media as they are larger files, and the smaller .mp4 files are just the container or pointer to the video. Any guidance or experiences with video file recovery or tools would be appreciated, thanks. Stephen

Here is the edit from my first real video job. Unfortunately I was only able to capture the preparations as the parade was cancelled due to lightning and torrential rain. Horrible weather to work in. Too bad, as all the kids and organisers put tonnes of time into preparations. Handheld using two GX80 with the Panasonic 12-35/2.8 and 35-100/2.8 lenses (the LX100 for time-lapse).