ac6000cw

Working fine for me 😀

Hi Andrew, Welcome back - we've missed you! I think you did the right thing in taking a break from it after 11 years, and very much agree with concentrating on creativity and how to get the best out of more modestly priced equipment. The latest multi-thousand dollar cameras are interesting as indicators of what will trickle down to the mainstream later, but there are a ton of other information and opinion sources covering that anyway, and for me the creative and tell-it-how-it-is blog posts/articles/forum posts have always been the real strength of EOSHD. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I'd agree with the others that out of that list the GH4 is the one I'd go for, with the G7 second. But if your budget will run to a good used GH4, I'd also seriously suggest trying to stretch it maybe 25% further to a used G9, which is in a different league (GH5-level) of 1080p picture quality with up to 10-bit 4:2:2 100Mbps capability (plus you get 4k @ 24/25/30p up to 10bit 4:2:0 150Mbps and 4k50/60p up to 8bit 4:2:0). It's also got better IBIS and video AF than the GH5 (mk1). Main downsides (versus the GH series) are 30 minute max record times per clip (10 mins for 4k50/60p), no All-I or > 150Mbps codecs and no 1080p @ 24p recording - which has always been a weird limitation, as it does offer 4k @ 24p recording. (In the UK, used G9s from dealers are around £500 - £650 at the moment, which is excellent value for such a capable camera)

ProDAD Mercalli v5 can do this - I use the software a lot but not the lens correction part of as I don't have any need for it. Of all the software stabilisers I've tried over the years, Mercalli v5 is easily the best I've ever used. https://www.prodad.com/Video-Stabilization-for-Professionals/Mercalli-V5-SAL-Windows-29795,l-us.html Note that people like Magix sometimes bundle it with their video editing software at a much lower cost than buying Mercalli on its own from ProDAD (but it doesn't look like they are doing that at the moment, unfortunately).

Me too... the convenience factor is huge versus a carrying around (and changing between) a whole collection of primes. I think at least 99% of my video (and stills) is taken using three micro 4/3 zoom lenses - Pana 14-140mm f3.5-5.6, Pana (non-Leica) 12-60mm f3.5-5.6 and Olympus 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 (primarily used for wildlife). Used primarily on a G9, E-M1 mk2 and GX80. They are relatively small & light and the two Pana zooms support Dual-IS2 on my G9. Having the Dual-IS support is far more important to me (as I shoot nearly everything handheld) than any small gains in performance I might get using non-stabilised primes. I also have the Pana 12-32 and Oly 14-42 EZ 'pancake' zooms, which get used when I want to keep things as small as possible. I do have a small collection of small/light primes (12mm f2 Samyang, 20mm f1.7 & 25mm f1.7 Pana) but they normally only get used in very low light situations.

Not that I know of in a general sense. AFAIK the record and shutter buttons can't be re-assigned/programmed, only the 'function buttons'. '4k photo' mode uses the shutter button, but that's limited to 4k at 30p only.

I own a GX800 (originally acquired because I wanted the 12-32mm pancake lens, and it was almost as cheap to buy it with GX800 bundled in!). I've never owned a G7, but based on dpreview's video test chart comparisons, the 1080p & 4k sharpness is about the same as the G7. In those comparisons the GX80 is softer at 1080p than the G7. Never tried a GM1, so I can't compare it to that. I like small & light cameras (one reason I like micro 4/3), and that was why it took me a least a year after its launch to convince myself I wanted a G9. But for situations where I want the video quality, top-notch IBIS and/or the speed of operation/autofocus (like wildlife photography/video), for me it's well worth carrying around the extra weight and bulk. The GX800 makes a nice small & light companion for 'normal' shots if I've got a long lens on the G9 for wildlife photography.

Based on my experience with moving from a G3 -> G5 -> G6 -> G80 -> G9 (with GF5, GX80 and GX800 as extras), I think Panasonic's 1080p quality went a bit downhill with the G80 - it has more aliasing in 1080p than the G6, and in the GX80 it's on the soft side. The LX100 suffers badly from aliasing in 1080p as well. Of the above list, the G6 is my favourite 1080p-max camera - but the G9 blows all of the above out of the water on 1080p quality (it's GH5 quality level). If you want a really discreet, cheap, micro 4/3 cam with 4k and decent 1080p, try a GX800/850/GX880 with a stabilised pancake lens like the 12-32mm. 4k is limited to 5 minutes, 1080p to 20 minutes, no 'creative movie' mode (except by using 4k photo mode, which is 30p only), IBIS or viewfinder, but it's a really small, light, camera and doesn't suffer from the on-board audio IBIS noise problem which the GX80 and G80 have.

Me too, but I suspect heat issues would make that difficult in something as small as the GX80/GX85 body. I own a GX80 (the European spec GX85), and use it often as a 'travel cam' with a Pana 14-140 or Oly 14-150 lens on it - makes a nice 'super zoom' equivalent camera that will fit in a small camera bag. Sometimes take along the light/cheap Pana 25mm F1.7 for low-light situations. It's just a nice, solid-feeling camera to use. (Main downside for me is the poor, noisy, distorted on-board sound).

If it helps you decide, I use V30, 90MB/s write, 160MB/s read speed rated SanDisk Extreme 128 GB micro-SDXC cards (in SD adaptors) in my Lumix G9 for 150Mbit 4k50p with no problems. Recently I've paid around £23 for these in the UK. There are also equivalent standard SD card size versions. The (theoretically) better 'Extreme Pro' versions of these (similar performance) can sometimes be bought for not much more if you shop around. V30 rating = 30 Mbyte/s = 240 Mbit/s sustained sequential write speeds, so 200 Mbit/s 6K HEVC is theoretically OK. Personally I've always found the higher grade SanDisk cards to perform well i.e. read and write speeds are at least as good as the spec.

I think of all the video-capable cameras I've owned, the Pana G6 (which Andrew dubbed the 'GH2 Redux' when he reviewed it) was almost perfect for me - small, light, fits nicely in the hand, mic input, FHD 50p/60p to MP4 files, a lever to control power zoom lenses (the last G series camera to have that), 'creative video' mode etc. and a simple uncluttered control layout. For stills (not video), it also had variable telephoto sensor crop controlled by the zoom lever. It's successors gained 4k video and then IBIS, but I think they lost some of the 'only what you really need' control simplicity along the way.

I think that's a great idea !!

Definitely - especially at the price they've dropped to (currently under £900 including sales tax for a new body in the UK). The used prices seem to be rising a bit too, which is interesting - some people must have realised just how much camera you get for the money...and that there is a great selection of good & inexpensive native lenses to go with it.

Olympus 3840 x 2160 at 24/25/30 fps is about 100 Mbit/s => 12.5 Mbyte/s. At 4 Gbyte per file and 13 files, that works out at just under 70 minutes maximum 4k recording time (and much longer in 1080p)? The E-M1 ii is also limited to 13 files per recording. As I rarely record for longer than 10-15 minutes, enabling focus-stacking (on E-M1 ii) with any lens is of more interest to me, but as I don't have > 30 minute recording on any other camera I own, having it available on my E-M1 ii might be useful one day 🙂 Thanks - I'd seen that info posted on EOSHD a while back (maybe by yourself) but not yet tried it with a recorder.

Modern de-interlacers are adapative, so they use different combinations of techniques in different parts of the frame, depending on things like how much motion and inter-field differences there are. For DV I use command line FFmpeg to deinterlace (using 'yadif'), upscale and sharpen - in the example command lines below input is DV avi, output is H264+AAC audio at 1920x1080p at double the DV frame rate (so 25 fps interlaced -> 50 fps progressive): ffmpeg.exe -i <input_file>.avi -vf yadif=1,scale=1920x1080:flags=lanczos+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int+full_chroma_inp,unsharp -c:v h264_qsv -global_quality 30 -look_ahead 1 -c:a aac -b:a 384k <output_file>.mp4 You can add motion-compensated de-interlacing 'mcdeint' to the processing, which improves the deinterlacing quality but is quite a bit slower: ffmpeg.exe -i <input_file>.avi -vf yadif=1,mcdeint=0:1:10,scale=1920x1080:flags=lanczos+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int+full_chroma_inp,unsharp -c:v h264_qsv -global_quality 30 -look_ahead 1 -c:a aac -b:a 384k <output_file>.mp4 (I'm using nVidia hardware H264 encoding for the output in the above examples - h264_qsv - but you could use any of the many FFmpeg software encoders instead e.g. ProRes etc.) I got some of the ideas for the deinterlacing settings from here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/866186/how-to-get-good-quality-when-converting-digital-video

For anyone with an E-M1 ii, someone has managed to modify the v3.4 firmware to remove the 30 minute video record limit and allow focus-stacking (for stills) with any lens - https://www.mu-43.com/threads/modified-firmware-looking-for-users.99804/post-1449131 I've loaded it on my E-M1 ii and the focus-stacking certainly works with Panasonic lenses. Not yet tested > 30 minute video recording, but the display certainly shows more than 30 minutes available. (There are also modified firmware versions for some other Oly cameras at the beginning of that thread e.g. for the E-M10 iii and E-PL9, plus earlier E-M1 ii firmware versions - see https://www.mu-43.com/threads/modified-firmware-looking-for-users.99804/post-1184700 ) I dipped a toe in the Olympus pool by getting a used E-M1 ii about a year ago (I own several Panasonic cameras as well). It's grown on me over time - relatively small, great colours, IBIS and build quality, but the differences/restrictions in how it operates in video versus stills mode get frustrating at times (like no 5x5 focus areas in video, and the single centre focus area is larger). The audio pre-amps are noisy too. It feels like there is a better video camera lurking in there but Oly have never really been interested/committed enough to video to let it out...

The GH5s and G9 have more recent, faster processing than the GH5 - hence there have been more performance upgrades via firmware updates for those two versus the GH5. I guess the new GH5 ii probably has (at least) the processing and IBIS from the G9 combined with the better thermal management of the GH5 to allow unlimited recording times.

My guess is that (to record internal compressed raw) either RED want an exorbitant licence fee or they won't licence it all - unless, like the deal with Canon where they get the RF mount licence, they get something useful for their own cameras in return i.e. it's a cross-licence deal (quite common in terms of patent licencing). Re. today's other Panasonic announcements, as a G9 user I'm quite pleased it's getting a firmware upgrade to add the latest AF algorithms and the 'red frame' recording indicator from the S5. The GH5s is getting the same update plus raw video output to Atomos (for ProRes RAW).

Just a quick thought - have you tried setting 'i.Dynamic Range' to off (or low)? (in the 'Photo' -> 'Image Quality' menu, but also applies to video - see page 353 of the user guide) It's disabled automatically in the V-Log/Like709/HLG etc. modes. I'm not an S5 user, but I know from experience with the G series Lumix cameras that 'i.Dynamic Range' can make low-light video look a bit noisy/flickery (so the usual recommendation is to set it to off or low).

AFAIK, some S5 10-bit modes have a 30 minute limit per clip, but 8-bit doesn't.

Not surprised - as an owner of a G85, I know it's a great camera for the money (and size/weight) but when I bought a G9 I realised what I'd been missing...

(Speaking as an electronics engineer) the turn-on problems sound like the extra 'startup' current drawn by the phantom power circuitry on power-up (if it's on when the XLR module powers up) is 'tripping' some protection system - which then cuts off the power to the XLR module because it thinks it's faulty. 'Staging' the power up by first turning on the module (with phantom power off), then turning on the phantom power probably keeps the peak 'startup' current draw low enough to stop the protection tripping. Unfortunately I think the only way to find out if it's the XLR module or the S5 having a problem is by trying another XLR module or S5.

S1/S1R/S5 updates officially released now - https://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/dsc/download/index4.html

I own both a G9 and an EM1 II and honestly I'm not convinced that (overall) the Oly autofocus is much better than the G9 - and IMHO the G9 is a much better overall video camera than the EM1 II. The G9 1080p leaves the Oly 1080p in the (soft) dust, then add 4k50/60p and 10-bit video modes which the Oly hasn't got at all... On the other side, the Oly is nice to use, has great IBIS and battery life, and is smaller and lighter than the G9.

There is always '4k photo' mode on the GX800, which allows PASM modes - 30p only though, and I think all 4k is limited to 5 minutes max per clip.