John Matthews

Something seems off in those numbers. Are you saying they would make a whole different chassis for 1mm? That cannot be right.

I wish "organic" were a defined term, but it's not. To me, in Standard profile, it just looks the way I remember it being. The skin tones look diverse enough yet not accentuating skin blemishes. What I don't like is when I need to put more contrast in the skin tones because the camera reduced the contrast too much. At least for my caucasian skin, it looked nice. The files and colors just seemed to have some depth to them. I never noticed this; nor can I fathom why this would happen, but I cannot say with any certainty it happens not. What I did notice was it was practically impossible to confidently manually focus with large aperture lenses. The magnified image seemed too soft. This is unlike the GH5. I'm not sure about the GH7, but I have asked about without a real response. For everything you said about the AF, I soon realized that the GH6 couldn't be fully dependable and it was always better to use manual focus and make good use of the [AF] button on the screen or assigning a button. For video and AF, I think it's clear that PDAF is essential in 2024. Any testing of continuous AF with the current contrast systems seems futile and almost a waste of time IMO. I don't really understand why, but I've always thought Olympus had much better contrast AF than Panasonic (even with the millions they'd probably spent on testing, engineering, and especially marketing Depth by Defocus). In good light, Olympus cameras performed as their PDAF counterparts. I also didn't really notice a big difference from the GH2 to the GH6- what does that say? There was only a lot more boxes on the screen but the results were practically the same.

I forgot to mention that, back in the day, the cost of 1500 feet of reel would be roughly the equivalent of the cost of one Panasonic S9, not including the development. Also, to get the camera to be quiet enough for dialogue, you'd need a blimp only adding to the complexity. None of that on the S9! Good times.

Hell, I get excited about my camcorder (VX-980)- and that's even smaller than 1", AND it crops in on that too. The one thing it does that my GX800 and S5ii don't do is basically remove wrinkles on faces (without doing some beauty effect). For older people, they would much rather look at a "smoothed" effect. Although it gives a detailed image, it doesn't do it with such confidence as the GX800 and S5ii do. Also, if I hand my wife my S5ii, she's immediately overwhelmed (and I completely set it up for her). If I hand her the VS-980, she knows exactly what to do.

I had one of those deals in France. It was just too good to pass up in November of 2022. When you wait and buy, you usually don't end up losing that much when you sell it back. However, what happens when you love the look of the camera? With the GH7, it looks as though Panasonic has addressed EVERY problem there was with the GH6 with the exception of a chunky body, but many people like that too. The image is 98% of the image of the S5ii (with the right lens), but you have that screen which is so much better than the flip-out only screen on the S5ii- it's a major usability issue. Also, there's the high frame rates. I currently have the Olympus 17mm f/1.2, a prefect lens for that body... we'll see in November. I will probably dump the idea though if a M43 small camera comes along because I'm still a believer in keeping the format relatively small and that is not the GH7.

I just had a look at my GH6 footage that I took before selling it and I must say it looked great! It has a super organic feel to it and loved the colors in just Standard profile. I also tried shooting in Vlog quite a bit, but Standard really did it for me. I took it to the French Alps last summer and it performed so well for photos and video. Sure, it didn't have PDAF, but when you learn to work around it, it's really no big deal. Honestly, I hope to have a similar opportunity with the GH7.

Granted the title of the thread is "Panasonic GH7". However, invariably with any camera release that is not full frame, the discussion goes only to sensor size and how inferior the sensor is because it's not FF. It's quite ludicrous. This might sound crazy, but usually have better discussion about aesthetics, creativity and productivity with ChatGPT. Sure, it can be predictable sometimes, but I seem to always learn something and it can point me in the right direction. When talking to humans, it would seem there are always games being played: Trolling, Sock Puppetry, Brigading, Flame Wars, Sealioning, Astroturfing, Gaslighting, Spamming, Doxxing, Dogpiling, Shitposting, and Griefing. With ChatGPT, you never have the feeling you might lose something and true discussion can actually happen. I know, it's a sad state of affairs, but that's life on the internet. Fortunately, there are people don't do any of those things.

I know some of us have been harsh on the S9 regarding the recording limits, but it's important to remember that a 15 minute limit in 6k open-gate is still nothing to sneeze at. That would be the equivalent of a 1500 foot reel at 24fps, something unheard of even in the 1990s. Also, you'd need a minimum of 2-5 minutes to change the reel. Can a 15 minute recording limit get the job done? Yes. You'd probably be fine with 5 minutes or a 400 foot reel. By the way, the dynamic range, detail, and workflow would also be way better. We're spoiled.

On the IBIS front, we've gone from taking out micro-jitters to gimbal replacement. IMO nothing truly replaces a skilled steadycam operator. However, if you're one man show, the Panasonic S5ii/x has the best IBIS in the business in June 2024. Sony is far, far behind for out-of-camera gimbal like shots on their FF bodies. Nikon and Canon still have issues with warpy corners on wide shots (the majority of shots for "gimbal replacements"). Coming from M43 and used to Panasonic and Olympus systems crushing FF bodies, I was amazed how Panasonic did it.

Let's remember the great Francis Ford Coppola Preferred the hacked GH2 image! That must have pissed someone off. In my opinion, pissing people off by shooting "lesser" gear is a good reason to continue to do so. I still use my GH2, old reliable, and get paid for it.

Yes, I remember. What's funny is that the results are so clear that they decided to never do it again. And that was exactly 12 years ago.

One thing I learned from watching those videos was that if you take 2 Alexas and film the same thing at the same time with the same WB, you still have the possibility of having visible variations in color. This was a big surprise to me and it's no surprise to me that there would be even more variations with a GH7. I guess even $100k cinema cameras have copy variation and DP's continue using Alexas. The real question is: does it really matter so much? I think if you're a pro colorist, you can make any cameras appear similar enough that only a pro colorist would know the difference. In short, I don't think it really matters for 99.9% of the time. This is probably more about workflow. On a side note, I thought the GH7 looked better than the Alexa in most of the shots with a simple 709 Lut. Blasphemy?

Everyone agrees. There aren't really enough lenses from Panasonic for this camera.

Yeah, it really depends. I was making a reference to an hour north of Seattle. I've never tried with Prime in the US or in France. Without Prime, Amazon gets things to me consistently in 3 days or less. France is much smaller and if you choose a distribution point/locker, it goes fast. In the Pacific Northwest, Spokane (smaller items) and Seattle are major hubs, but the distance is still quite far. I should add that nothing about Amazon is really sustainable in the long-term.

Trust me. It's not necessarily a good thing to have Amazon. Your taxes will pay for their warehouses and run everyone out of business. In the end, you have a bunch minimum wage workers with Amazon never paying for the infrastructure they degrade. Never mind the fact they will soon have a monopoly and you'll have no choice but to work with them.

It's all relative. Amazon, in Seattle, takes longer than in France. Go figure.

I think you're discrediting the French. They were probably expecting a message from Nikon over Minitel, not fax.

Correct. 420 in opengate. Yes. I've never heard it, but I haven't really tested that either. No. Not in continuous focus- it will have focus wobbles.

I think there will be features from the S9 and GH7 coming to the S5ii... I hope. The S2H, I presume, will be a GH7 full-frame, if it's possible to make that MFT sensor into full-frame. It's going to be WAY out of my budget though. Should we also expect internal VND? Hopefully.

Sorry, my comment was a joke. I was just noting that it would seem everyone has forgotten the S9 after the announcement of the GH7.

GH7 just came out... S9? What's that?

Can someone explain why Panasonic won't get sued by putting the option of recording Prores RAW internally?

I'm declaring this a successful launch. Some leaks, but not massive. No one knew about the Arri partnership as far as I know- surprise is always good. No one is crying in their corner because they weren't invited to the "show". I loved the GH6, but I replaced it with a S5ii. The main reason was for photography. Still, I miss all the other cool video features of the GH6 that the S5ii doesn't have, but suspect some will soon come (and better) in a firmware update (like PDAF at 100fps).