John Matthews

Interesting specs, but this is the camera for the rich at 5300 Euros. The A9 II will come out in just 9 months, tumbling the price of this one. I'll just stick with my GX80... good enough for stills and video and un-matched value! Period.

IMO go with the GX80 + lens option. My thinking is for 3 reasons: 1) the FZ330, FZ1000, FZ2000 don't have real 4k options for wide angles, something that's important with street protests. 2) the next time you buy a camera you'll be able to use the lens which means a cheaper ownership. 3) if your needs change, the GX80 will change with them and do low-light as well. Hope that helps.

I just saw this AF review on the new GH5. I'm rather happy to report that I think the GX80 (in terms of AF performance in video) is doing about as well as or even better than the GH5 that costs about 4 times the price. ...not that I use it much.

Alright. So here's my goal. I would like to archive 300 edited, high-quality photos (good enough for HQ printing at 8 x 10) and 30 minutes of edited, high-quality 1080p video. I would like this to be put on a 4.7gb M-disc for long-term data storage, but I guess I could go for 25gb Blue-ray M-discs if absolutely necessary. What would you recommend for doing this in terms of codecs? By my calculations, 300 8-megapixel jpeg's at 100% compression is about 1.3gb. That leaves 3.4gb for the video or 30 minutes of 1080p at 15 mbps in h.264 and in a mp4 wrapper. Much of the source material is 1080p or 4k and raw for photos. Given that "preserving the content" would be the priority, does this make any sense to anyone and do you have experience with archiving this way? Just looking for input.

I don't have a dual-IS lens, and I'm not sure your lens is compatible. I tried a manual lens at 210mm and it didn't perform badly (no jitters); so, I'm not sure what's going on for you...

Hmm... what options are you talking about? Have you made sure that it's actually on? I don't have that lens, but I'd be surprised that Panasonic would degrade its IBIS. Also, you might try disconnecting the lens and putting it back on... Did you also make sure your firmware for the lens is up-to-date?... just some thoughts...

First impression is that it seems significantly quieter. Not sure what they did in firmware to manage that. Can someone else also confirm? I wish now that I'd recorded the audio from it before the update, but that would be my initial report.

Just thought I'd let people know that there's a new firmware available: version 1.2. It can be found here: http://av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/support/global/cs/dsc/download/fts/dl/gx80_gx85.html I just did it and it seems to work so far- so that's good. It says the fixes were: Reduced operation noise during the shooting standby or the motion picture recording. Fixed a problem that camera fails to connect to the Picmate server. I'll be testing it soon.

Does anyone know a way to make a native MFT (my Panasonic 25mm F1.7) lens to stay into its aperture position so it can be used with a reversal ring?

I've decided to not get any lens with more than 9 elements. More and the light turns into minced meat. The old stuff is better... with all the "flaws." Just need to stay away from the radioactive ones.

Nice look. Could you share settings and LUT that you applied? The NYPD sign looks like it belongs in Vegas. Cool.

In manual photo mode or manual video mode (not recording) with constant preview on, they keep the aperture physically open and apply gain when pulling focus. Otherwise, it should be WYSIWYG. Hope that answers your question if I understood correctly. I believe they do the same as many other manufacturers.

Funny. This has happened to me too with constant preview... took me awhile to figure it out as well, but I remembered that I had changed it. This is how we learn...

That's probably your only option at this point. One other question, in 4k photo mode, can you choose your aperture?

Did you try removing the battery while the camera is on? Not sure if it might do something, but worth a try if nothing else works... it might send the camera into some other sort of reset. It worked on an old Pentax of mine.

I'm going to say this is software problem... something went haywire. Try removing lens, SB, and all that stuff. Reconnect. If it persists, it should be possible to reinstall firmware and reformat your card. If that doesn't fix it, I don't know what would.

I would try putting it into that service mode that was floating around some time ago... see if that works. The key is to identify software or hardware error. Software you can usually fix, but hardware would be a trip to Panasonic or MacGyver- that would suck... I should note that about one month ago I had an issue with some of the images mine was writing to the card... green bars covered half of the still frames. I formatted the card and it seemed to fix the anomaly- never had another problem.

Try putting it back to factory settings. But you'll need to re-enter all your custom profiles.

The Olympus ones HAVE distance scales though. I guess you should get those. For some reason, I don't think there's a single Panasonic lens that has it. I guess Panasonic is simply pro auto-focus/peaking only lenses. Even the leica models don't have markings. If you're looking to shoot from the hip, just tilt the LCD. If you're looking to prefocus, don't and just hope for the best with auto focus- that's the message. ... or just get the Olympus models... they look pretty good too. Actually, why did you ask about the 17mm Olympus? You reviewed it on the PEN F, I believe.

On the screen? I doubt it, but I don't have those lenses, just the 25mm and nothing is shown other than icons representing "near" and "far." A distance scale would be really cool though. For that, you need vintage.

I don't really know of a lapel to recommend... I've got a $20 Sony Lav and it's good enough for me. I connect to a Zoom H1... I suppose it's slightly bigger than your setup, but I'd say the results are more than good enough- they simply amazing! The down-side, as you mention, is not having the ability to adjust on the fly. I'm waiting for someone to develop a lapel stereo mic with a super-small recorder that will record at -12 and -24 decibels simultaneously. Once this happens, I'm not sure there will be a need for the remote options. If someone knows of something like this, I'd like to know.

What would have been wrong with an external recorder + lapel mic, clipped onto her? Wouldn't it have yielded similar results, yet with even better audio?

Regardless of using Procolor, I DID notice a serious problem with contrast at -5 in really flat, softbox light. It gave me and my daughter a strange skin condition that I don't have. I've decided to go to with contrast at 0 since it doesn't really impact the final image negatively... at least I can't see it. Anyway, it fixed the problem.

Mostly @Andrew Reid suggestions in the EOSHD Procolor pdf... Standard, AWB, (0,-5,-5,-5). I only deviated with the NR as I don't like what it does at "0."

According to @Andrew Reid, it cures not only the common cold, but death itself! ...bringing those zombies back to life! I have to say it works rather well for me! Sometimes, the red channel seems to overshoot a little, but Film Convert brings everything back to normalcy.