John Matthews

I'm expecting more than enough video settings than I'll ever need- a bit like driving a Lamborghini to work only 10 minutes away. However, I do like the idea of trying something new and making some photos and videos. This camera will offer new limitations that I'm not used to. Apparently, it'll be here tomorrow morning. Exciting. I'm also certain that the deal I got is simply extraordinary given the current market (new and used). If it turns out I hate the camera, I'll just sell it and get something else, but I want to give it a shot. This is not a beginner's camera; thankfully, I'm not a beginner and understand 90% of the settings and what they do thanks to EOSHD and YouTube. If I don't understand something, I know where to find the information.

Yeah, you might need an address. Anyway, as far as I can tell the 1579 euro deal is gone now. Panasonic is getting it one all sides. I think there are many who think the X-H2s and OM-1 are better depending on their use-case. For me, I've always preferred video from my Panasonic cameras, but it's close. I'm still not 100% convinced I'm going to like the GH6, but I really want to try it, especially at that price. M43 users who want Panasonic are probably upset about the AF and all the lying for years about DFD promises. In this regard, I've found Olympus CONTRAST AF in the E-P7 and E-M10 iv was much better at latching onto faces than many Panasonics I've used (not sure about GH6); so, I'm not even sure PDAF is necessary, but Panasonic users have made it necessary due to all those lies. Once Panasonic can pull their head out of the sand (and they will), they will be back with a vengeance as long as they continue with lenses. Sony is the Evil Empire and Panasonic is... never mind. 😀

Now it’s available at a slew of places, including Amaevil.fr. Panasonic is going to sell tons of these at that price… seems like super aggressive marketing!

To be honest, I have zero NEED for such a beast of a camera (I'd include the GH5S and GH5, ii in that as well). It was the price that convinced me- that's all. Also, I have too many cameras and I need to sell some. It's going to be a massive learning curve, I expect. Yes, the deal (as I understand it) is you buy a GH6 in France (maybe Europe), send your invoice and everything to Panasonic, they give you 400 back, an extra year of warranty (making it 3 years total, WOW!), and they send you a 1tb SanDisk Extreme SSD (again, WOW!). I'd say that the price is more like 1000 Euros for a GH6, which is crazy! I found the deal (for 1579 euros) both at FNAC.fr and Darty.fr, but the FNAC deal went away this morning. It should arrive this week and I'm super interested in seeing what it has to offer.

There are some crazy deals right now for Black Friday, at least in France. I found the GH6 for 1579 Euros (tax included) with a 400 Euros cash-back scheme, an extra year of waranty and a SanDisk Extreme 1tb drive SSD thrown in (to be confirmed). Well, it looks like I'll be able to purchase on after all... along with the promised GH6 guide from @Andrew Reid. I was not expecting that, but now that I have a gazillion M43 lenses, it makes sense. The main problem now is that I have too many M43 cameras!

Yes. I think I need to redo the test. Also, I think I need to transcode to Prores first because FCPX is not liking AVCHD on my M1... not the first time, but it looks bad.

Terribly sorry. Too late to edit the previous post. I accidentally set mislabeled the image... the image on the right should be 59.98fps not 25fps. I might have to do the test again. Sorry.

I just did a test with fast moving water from a fountain in AVCHD(24fps) vs. MP4(25fps) on a GX800. The MP4 blew away the AVCHD in this unrealistic situation. I filmed a wide scene of the river and neither failed, but the fountain on a 14mm up close was WAY to much for the AVCHD. I wonder if my hacked (moon T7) would have handled it because that's also AVCHD but a way higher bitrate? Here's a screen shot of FCPX of the worst frame:

Trees are a good idea, but they might not make any codec fail. I'd say high dynamic range with lots (> half the frame) of moving water... you'll probably see some results with that; however, you won't be able to show us too much due to online compression for sharing. We'll just have to take your word for it.

I'm finding the GM1 in AVCHD 24p to perform better than the GX850 (very similar to the GX85) in terms of 1080p in MP4 or AVCHD. Of course my E-M1 ii down-sampled C4K blows them all away- no moiré, no aliasing as far as I can tell. I think it's worth the extra effort. If I add just the slightest bit of sharpening to the down-sampled h.265 image, it's practically indistinguishable side-by-side on my 4.5k iMac monitor, yet the files will be WAY smaller.

Yes. "New" to the software, but some are old. Some features like stabalisation are also new. I have to wonder if this gets more practical in terms of time, it might turn into a "better" way to transcode footage too (provided the AI gets smart enough too fool us).

But Kye, the human eye has evolved, you see. What was more than adequate in 2015 is no longer going to cut the mustard in 2022. Funny how things have changed.

Me too. I have a bunch of family footage. It doesn't look too bad just on my iMac M1, but upon de-interlacing, it really came to life and it looked like how I remember it. I'd also agree by saying it look close to consumer-grade 1080p.

It won't do anything for dynamic range or color as far as I know. It does a good job detail, noise, de-aliasing, de-interlacing, and re-timing. Not sure for log.

No footage to share, but I hope that the community is checking this out. I was already super impressed with the previous version in that it made all of my interlaced footage look like how I remember it being at the time. With this update (still early times) I noticed you can basically throw many new (but old) formats at it. I took some .MTS (hacked GH2) files and tried them. I upresed them to 4k, reduced the noise a little, added in minimal detail and sharpness and output them as h.265 4k 8bit files at 28Mbit/s. The results looked so good. I found the blue channel to be nicely detailed and virtually noise free (which was a minor problem before). Yes, it takes quite a bit of computing power (1 minute of footage = 20 minutes render), but still... Maybe others have some thoughts?

It does something weird when skimming through a clip (strange macro-blocking)... not sure why that is. On Prores footage, which is roughly the same size doesn't do that. My impression is that the prores footage is better. Am I wrong?

I shot my niece's wedding... it took me forever to edit (made a long version and a short version), but I learned a lot. Anyway, she doesn't want to even look at it for approval because her grandfather who passed away is in it. It's been collecting digital dust for about 3 years. Oh well...

I was hoping to squeak that last little big out of some AVCHD footage (and then delete it)... also, I prefer prores to avchd. I don't use proxies anymore as my M1 iMac seemingly edits EVERYTHING I can throw at it, especially 1080p content.

Sure, but the lion share is tied to cameras, unlike Panasonic, Sony, Ricoh and Fuji who probably wouldn't even sneeze if they stopped their camera business altogether- that was my point. In capitalism if you're not at least 8% above inflation, you're losing money because you could invest it elsewhere and make more. I think they're all waiting for the other one to jump out first, hoping to save their business in the short-term.

I agree that the old stuff is just fine. Part of using old stuff for me is to use AI upscaling after the edit is done(again, not a pro and never get paid for this)... it can be a legitimate workflow, but the added step can be time-consuming. However, rendering an edited 1080p timeline goes relatively fast; so, you might save there too. One can also save about 4x on storage too. Given most people can't see the difference, why not? It's just he Topaz final upscale that takes forever (16 hours for 1 hour of footage on a M1 Mac). On shorter projects, it's more doable and the savings would be real.

@kye, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of the situation. I wonder if there will be a fourth phase coming full circle where content creators go back to film. The more I think about it, I think the consumer push for 4k has been a direct response to the low res VHS and mini DV home videos, solving the "problem" of resolution that no one really had with 1080p- just insecurity. I also believe the same can be said for the amount of shallow DOF photography and video- something that was inaccessible in the past is now a cliché part in almost every production. Now that the iPhone can do it, I suppose there will be a resurgence of higher quality deep DOF content to differentiate. The part of this initial comparison that had me scratching my head was the "AI upresing". I've purchased and used Topaz's solution with amazing results with my DV footage from 2001-2011. I look at these comparisons and I can't help but think how we've seemingly only made baby steps from one iteration to the next with 2010 cameras giving 95% of the image of 2022 cameras when accounting for AI. Are we in a new phase where you're better off investing in primarily a better computer and software than a "next gen" camera? For that matter, investing in almost anything (lights, tripods, stands, etc.) makes more sense.

Business is business. You face the same fate as all other companies- make money or starve (depending on where you live). You do make an interesting point though: if the name of the game is to make money and 100% of your customers won't see a difference in quality, why not go with the least expensive solution that allows you to keep the most amount of money? For some people, they'll say "time and ease". Do you find you gain time or ease with the Fuji system? Just as a follow-up to make a few points from what others have said about M43: 1) All camera companies will eventually fail. New ones will always crop up as long as humans have eyes and ears. 2) Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Leica, Arri, Red, Balckmagic, Hasselblad and now OMDS (maybe others) have no plan B- meaning they must deliver on cameras and sales or die. Sony, Panasonic, Fuji, Ricoh could pull a Samsung and kill their camera division immediately. With this type of move, Sony E-mount, X-mount or K-mount would die. A Panasonic failure wouldn't kill M43 or L-mount. 3) Any existing great cameras and lenses will obviously continue to make great content as long as there's one working camera left and there's a will to do so. 4) If you buy your gear used (and you're savvy enough), you can probably sell it at little to no loss. Sometimes, you'll make money because sellers don't always know the value of their gear. Look for the bargain.

Yes, but not the lenses. I'm waiting to see what the OM-5 has to offer. Looking at the E-M5 iii, it encapsulated everything that M43 is- small enough, good enough quality, loaded with great features. If you're counting grams, the E-M5 iii is a good choice paired with inexpensive, small, primes. For the enthusiast, it's a camera that you want to take out. In a small bag under 1kg, I can cover 8mm to 300mm- that's really hard to do on FF (maybe impossible). Sure, you'll find a couple of lenses in each system, but I don't think you'll find all the lenses in one system. While those look like interesting cameras, I'm not certain they're a big enough leap over existing Fuji cameras. Having not used them though, I can't really say. However, everything you've said about OMDS/M43/Olympus, could equally be said about the Fuji system, except that it's closed and reliant on only Fuji making the bodies. M43 has many manufacturers across multiple continents being an open system. The lenses will continue to work for long time to come- no need to jump ship.

I think the problems will come for Olympus if used, small FF become widely available for less than a new OMDS camera. That'll be tough competition and they'd better have next-gen tech to go with the small sensor that's near impossible to put into a FF body. Will that happen? I also have my doubts. Still, it's not as though there's no need for something smaller than FF, which is the current message by many.

I find this feed amusing now in September after knowing what has happened. It was released March 18, 2022 and some people only got their camera in August, 2022 due to such high demand. The rumors are now that the OM5 will be released in late October. There have also been several lenses released and a new macro on the horizon. Unfortunately, they've "let go" of the general audience and went 200% on the niche markets where their cameras excel.