Phil A

The Samsung isn't known. In photography terms, the NX1 was basically just as meaningless as the ones before (there's no ecosystem, the lens lineup has a few gems and mostly meh stuff). And Mattias is right, most people who buy these cameras buy them for photography. The GH4 peaked at selling like 60 000 in a year if I remember right while Canon sells boatloads of every single (convoluted, barely distinguished) product line just with their brand recognition. The 5D III was just great in usability, people who actually shoot instead of arguing in internet forums don't care about 1 EV more or less of DR. When you go to stuff like "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" exhibitions, nearly everything is shot with Canon, also because of the eco system, reliability, professional services, etc. Is it great to shoot a D810 or A7r II and be able to push the shadows by 4 stops? Yes. How often do you do it? Once in 1000 pictures? A close friend wanted to get into video and he gave up in no time. Doing videos on a scope exceeding filming with your mobile phone is just not for the masses, people don't want to use tripods, steadicams, gimbals, ND filters, external microphones and all that rubbish, they also don't want to invest that kind of money. But I feel like this discussion comes up every 2 months and I'm sure someone argued it better than me before. Actually I just remembered a bunch of years ago. Canon didn't give you spot-metering coupled to the active focus point on the non-1D models. The nerve! Total deal breaker. We were so enraged. We didn't really need it but curse them for not giving it to us!

Quick question: Did anyone try to use RockyMountains Movie Converter to convert the 10bit UHD files of the GH5 into ProRes? I use that to transcode my Sony XAVC-S for performance reasons and wondered if it'll chew the GH5 material. Still going to wait for NAB but, no huge surprise expecting, I'll probably go for the GH5 afterwards. Strongly wondering what lens setup right now.

Dear god I hope not. It's of course personal taste but it looks as bad to me as watching TV with Intelligent Frame Creation. But it explains why some people say auto focus is fine and others say it'sbad. Today's Newsshooter short review also says that AF is a lot better in 60p than in 24p. I would guess most people will only use UHD 60p to create slow motion (also seeing how 24p 10bit is internal but 60p 10bit needs external recording). Some of the newer stuff coming out really shows nice images. I think Panasonic really delivered a great camera and I'm looking forward to see how the coming firmware updates improve on it further.

That's not exactly true, it really depends on how you use the hard drive. SSD have indeed a limited lifetime of I/Os (still you get e.g. 5y warranty on Samsung 850 EVO), on the other hand mechanical hard drives tend to have mechanical failures. You need the right medium for the desired application . So far none of my SSDs have failed (using some already a bunch of years) but I had multiple spinning drives fail (some after barely any use). And I don't think cloud backup works for everybody. Where I live we used to have maximum of 6 Mbit DSL until last year... try backing up your raw video shots that way to a cloud . I'm currently also working on a better backup system. I backup onto 2 identical spinning drives in separate USB3 caddies but it's not ideal. I'm currently looking at a (at least) 4-bay NAS for RAID1 or maybe RAID10. I only want to store data on it, then copy it to my local system (3 SSDs, 1 HDD) for editing.

@Ken Ross Out of curiosity, is all you film 60p? AF looks ok, I wonder if you checked if it behaves the same in 24p/23.976p

@Borbarad Both of these videos are using the 60p mode and the second one even explicitly says you have to use 60p for improved autofocus performance. That mean you can't shoot 24p like most people want and it's not possible to record in 10bit. I don't see these videos as good news. Also what good are so damn many autofocus settings and options if most are subpar? On the other hand a lot of people love the A7s II and that definitely has really bad autofocus, cinema cameras typically have none at all, so who really cares. We made it work before, it's just that the latest Canon and Sony cameras spark desires. Wish there was another fast (f/1.2-1.4) option in the 17-20mm range for m43 than the Voigtländer. Also wondering if image quality is better with the Voigtländer 17.5mm or with the SpeedBooster XL + Canon/Nikkor 28mm f/1.8 .

Have to love that video at 10m32s where they look at the GH5 Extended Manual online and it actually says that the camera will probably struggle when autofocusing in UHD video but that's for accuracy, not a malfunction. Seems like sugar coating a lacking function. Also interesting that the part above that warns of overheating messages. Makes me curious if people will run into these or it's more hypothetical. Nevertheless, I'm really looking forward to seeing what people do with the camera once the autofocus arguments die down.

@Emanuel You keep saying they should use tap-to-focus and AF-S but I fail to see how one would use that one a gimbal? The big advantage of AF in video in my eyes is when you can't actually manually focus (and remote follow focus is really expensive and hard to do as one man crew when it quickly requires a bigger gimbal) and just put in AF-C (maybe even with face detect) and the camera takes care of the focus while you take care of framing and composition. Yesterday I've watched the "Should the GH5 be compared to a Sony A7sii?" video by Leftcoast Media House and once you notice the autofocus pulsating (the poster in the background goes sharper and softer all the time) you can't unsee it. If I'd get a GH5 I'd probably prefer using manual focus for the time being.

As long as there is no IP rating (I guess IP65 or IP66 would be a possibility with cameras like these?) that the manufacturer gives, nothing guarantees anything. Weather resistant / splash proof are just marketing phrases.Good luck getting a camera replaced by the manufacturer because their "weather resistant" camera has water damage.

Seeing how there's big discounts on the A7s II and A7r II I'd guess it's indeed very likely a A7 III series camera will be announced at NAB. Sony already has some ingredients around like the great AF-C of the A6x00 line or the way the screen articulates on the A99 II that would help make the next camera better. On the other hand it is to be seen if they can overcome the technical issues (rolling shutter, heat/energy management) or the marketing based hurdles (10bit color depth, higher bitrate codec). I'm really curious. I'm still considering a GH5 but I'd much rather buy another Sony.

Obviously that "everyday life vlogging" is really big and to be honest, like most of you, I can't really understand the appeal. My girlfriend watches Jamie&Nikki a lot and I just can't get over how that's basically just watching two random people do their every day blah. They have a million followers who care about what boring, regular things they do. I mean, I can kinda get why people watch Jon Olson, he's at least a ka-razy semi-celebrity, blowing money and living the life, so you watch him do stuff most of us will never do (still working on saving up for that lambo). You'd also think there's only so many ways you could go about contouring but make-up how-to channels are such a huge thing. At the same time you can see that usually production value is of no real interest to a lot of people. Same with Instagram, there's a lot of people with hundreds of thousands of followers with just the same composition of iPhone pictures over and over and over again. It's more about people's voyeuristic needs and identifying with the content creator than with the actual content. When it comes to technology, I kinda get why less might be more. I wanted to see how the GH5 fares by looking at what gets uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube and by god, if I have to see another video that is 100% slow motion flowers / dogs / people shopping I will scream! It's approaching "cooking video with ukulele background sound" territory. It seems that a lot of people who care about "filmic, cinematic videos" exclusively produce camera test videos. Gear is the purpose in itself, there will never be any output. That's actually also fine as a hobby but there's the tendency that these people only criticize and never create/contribute. I'm actually really re-evaluating what I want in a camera. Maybe I can do with "worse" image if it actually means I'll shoot more due to better usability?

It's an APS-C lens (1.5 crop) and with the SpeedBooster XL it's used on a sensor that behaves like it had a 1.3 crop so I think it's probably the IBIS moving the sensor into the outermost parts of the lens where it has the worst quality and that wouldn't be used on an APS-C sensor. Probably better off with the SpeedBooster Ultra instead of XL when using APS-C lenses?

@wolf33d Different strokes for different folks. I really couldn't get into Mac OS, my girlfriend has a MacBook Pro and I loathe using it. I'm a windows man through and through. I agree that it's great how Mac is such an integrated system, the energy saving functions are a lot better than on windows with its non-standardized hardware support woes. But then when you run the system at high load with active dedicated GPU, you suck every mobile system dry in no time. I decided to opt for a heavier and higher performance laptop in the willingness to always be plugged into the wall when I actually do work (Lightroom, Photoshop, Davinci Resolve, ...). Apple has the lead when you use optimized software, but that often gets lost when you use cross-platform products (Davinci Resolve for example is a resource waste, it's not optimized in any way. The system requirement manual is basically a huge "buy better hardware" flyer). I think it's nothing but personal preference. For me, give me Windows with file explorer, etc. But then I have an IT related degree so I don't mind to spend some time setting up a system from scratch to run well (I also don't fill them with garbage so I'm not one of the "format C:\ every 12 months" crew). I'd love if Apple came out with new, more performance oriented systems. Just like the Intel vs AMD thing, competition is good for consumers.

You do, it's just that that's how VLog L is specified according to the white paper apparently, the other profiles use the full 10bit.

Duet Display also works under Windows, I've used it in the past.

@Philip Lipetz If I understood their article right then yes. The issue is not the compression (as compared with the external recording remark) but the fact that the GH5 puts the DR within the 10bit, but it spreads it over the same area as the VariCam would use for that DR, leaving some space empty that is "reserved" for the additional DR of the VariCam. Hypothetical example, not accurate: OOOOOOOOOO 10bit VLog with 100% DR of the VariCam, filling the complete 10bit OOOOOOOOO_ 10bit VLog with 100% DR of the GH5, filling only slightly over 9bit out of 10 But behold, it's still double the values of 8bit. People in the know have to test if - and even more important when - that makes a real life difference.

@Turboguard But deciding is not only the weight but also how it is distributed. If it is a long and heavy lens, the momentum will be too big for the Crane to compensate. The Sigma is 12cm long and weighs 800g-ish, in comparison it's impossible to balance a Samyang 35mm 1.4 which is 11cm long and 750g on a Sony A6300. The video Axel linked to shows in my opinion that this is just a odd setup. He had to use x things to weighten down the camera, then even tape additional weights to the gimbal to balance it. If you have seen videos where people used Canon 6D cameras and alike, you know it won't be as smooth but have more quirks in the balancing. Plus you now get to weight levels where I would really prefer a two handed gimbal because I doubt you will be able to hold this for any reasonable amount of time.

https://www.slashcam.de/artikel/Ratgeber/Panasonic-GH5---Like709-Profil-das-bessere--und-kostenlose--V-Log-.html Another (german) article from Slashcam, this time about V-Log L and how good it fills the 10bit color depth on the GH5. Due to compatibility to V-Log on VariCam, the V-Log L apparently only uses ~545 of the available color values (so slightly more than 9 out of 10bit) in contrast to other profiles.They say Like709 is a very interesting alternative.

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I have seen some videos shot in ClassicChrome by Michael Evans and that must have been some of the best colors I've seen ever. Skin tones were a thing of art. Amount of blown highlights was a thing of horrors though. Makes me wonder how ClassicChrome with highlight and shadow reduction might be as a base for grading? Obviously less DR than F-Log / ProN all -5 / SLog but the colors on those shots were gorgeous. But then no IBIS and no OIS with the lenses I like and I have really shaky hands.

If it was true (which I'm 99% sure it's not), we would probably see a new "worst rolling shutter" champion, dethroning the a6300. The 5D iv has quite bad RS, reading out even more of the sensor will make it even worse. Also how would they suddenly manage downscaling and and XF-AFC (does that mean XF-AVC I guess?) with the same processors and encoders that only managed 1:1 read out and MJPEG so far? Not even the C700 can downscale but uses windowed mode if you use a resolution but full sensor raw and that thing is huge, expensive and has active cooling. Which is the last point: "installing a new heat sink". Like what? Do you think Canon left a huge empty space in the 5D iv body just so eventually a year down the line they can install a bigger heat sink? Sounds completely fabricated. Manufacturers don't run their product at 60% performance to then suddenly go "surprise mofos! We got a firmware update that makes everything so much better!". If this was Fuji, well maaaaybe, but Canon? Did they ever bring anything meaningful in a fw update except the one to extend the 7D sales cycle?

The A6500 is a good upgrade over the A6300, makes me wonder why they even bothered to bring a model for such a small time between. Override option for the overheating warning and IBIS together is worth the premium.Extra Fn button and touch screen are icing. I wonder what the next APS-C Sony will be like? But I feel like it will be quite a while until a better model will come out to fix the rolling shutter and screen dimming (my two main complaints).

135mm f/2 on a speedbooster, easily available.

I'm sitting here grinding my teeth reading this. The price question: how bad is the dimming compared to the A6x00 / A7s II?

Indeed. Seems to be still unavailable in Switzerland. Would have gone and bought one today to use on this weekend on a city trip (leaving tomorrow morning), now I'll wait and see the independent user reviews first. Germany is available, when I checked earlier there was even two kits left on Amazon Germany.