Ken Ross

Sure, give me the word Jon, and I'll be over in 10 minutes.

Use 1-area AF if you want the best results. Period. In my tests I did not activate the custom AF settings and got very little hunting when I did the 'now you see the lens, now you don't' test. The same test that was a total failure for Max. IMO, for most uses, there's no need to use the custome speed and sensitivity, but if you insist, watch this video where he does adjust it but still gets better results than Max, because he used 1-area. Many subjects will also do fine when using the AF lock, which will totally eliminate hunting. Then there's MF, but nobody wants to discuss that. I just don't know what else to say on this topic, I'm worn out. Orangenz, unless I'm misunderstanding you, if you're using 1-area AF, you should be able to just tap anywhere on the LCD and get the camera to focus where you finger lands. It simply moves the AF box to the new area, but does it instantly. If you then hit the joy stick, it will return to the central area focus point. Ah, so even my 4 hour estimate was too high. Good to know.

Davey, it's such a pity the word doesn't get out. Such a great camera where AF can absolutely be used successully with the proper settings. I was over at a friend's house just yesterday and he had been disappointed with some of the AF results he had gotten. I set the camera up for him and he's now delighted.

And how long have I preached the 1-area AF for the GH5? I've hit my head against the wall on the internet preaching this and showing that Max's tests were simply not giving the results I and others had gotten with 1-area. You can see in this guy's test that with the proper speed & sensitivity (and hey, he is absolutely correct that you might even get better results by turning the damn AF custom settings off) the results are essentially perfect.

It seemed to me when he was exposing for highlights, looking at the split screen, the GH5 did better at retaining details in those highlights as evidenced by the white building in the background. Low light seemed fairly close up to about ISO3200. After that the Sony pulled away.

Orangenz, I bolded out your comment only because some will actually believe it takes all day to charge the battery. In reality I think it takes about 4 hours. Not exactly quick for sure, but not quite all day. The camera's had enough bad press with the AF, let's leave it at that.

I haven't us Emanuel,I haven't used it that much, but I'd have to believe that you'd experience the same amount of hunting you would with ordinary CAF. I see no reason it would be different since the camera will always be looking within the selected box for things to focus on. For so much of this, AF lock is your friend.

Auto. In MF you can't get that kind of error unless the subject distance changes...assuming you focused accurately in the first place. I've found tap to focus to be very accurate.

Honestly, I've had the same thing happen with every camera I've ever owned...PDAF or contrast. Nah, just playing. Sometimes we need to lighten things up. The GH5 overall imagery is so close to the G85 (only with better capabilities), I'd say if you gave Jon the GH5, he'd achieve the same or better results. As I've experienced it on the GH5, tap to focus in manual mode does not work. When in manual mode, there is a small AF box in the lower right. By touching that, you will get an AF execution within the relatively large rectangular area shown on the LCD. It will not refocus after that until you next hit the AF box in the lower right. Using tap to focus in AF mode, you will force the camera to focus on the area you select, but if you change your framing, the focus will continue to change within that box if you've selected continuous AF within the camera's menu.

Jon, I would never say you look better OOF than in focus...not me.

Orangenz, when I googled up that charger and clicked on the links, it often said 'no longer available'. Is it a current item or are there different iterations of this same charger? Jon, I think that's a pretty good ballpark number and one that's close to what I've seen. We have all different shooting habits, so battery life can vary.

Jon, I can tell you first hand, owning both, the GH5 has much better AF than the G85. The funny thing is, what you experienced I've also had happen with both the Sony A6300 & A7Rii. It would absolutely amaze me that someones head could fill up 1/2 to 2/3rds of the frame, and the camera would still insist on focusing on the background. I guess all these cameras can do that at the most inopportune time...except maybe the Canons? Never used em. And hey, why were you readjusting WB after hitting record? Did the lighting change that much? Isn't there a law in Vietnam about adjusting WB and vlogging at the same time?

Or, even easier, just use AF lock. That takes a 2 step process (achieving focus and then switching to MF) to a 1 step process, press the AF lock button if you've programmed it that way.

I guess he and I got the only good ones. Seriously, if only people would learn how to use these, they ARE capable of good AF. And yes, many of his clips in many of his videos with other cameras are badly out of focus...and that includes Sonys. I thought this was actually one of the better ones. Oh the irony, oh the irony. On a related note, I had gotten a request from PhotoJoe for my AF settings (he had seen my videos that try to mirror Max's tests), but I got the request too late for his shootout with Max. I tried to respond on his website as he requested, but I'm not even sure it went though.

That's pretty funny when a guy like him uses the GH5 with all of the AF naysaying. It's also funny that the AF worked far better for him than it ever did for Max. In fact if you've seen some of his other videos, he's gotten far worse results with other cameras. I guess he's another guy that got a pretty good one.

Fritz, I do admit to being pretty steady, but the IBIS surely helps a great deal. With my prior Sonys with IBIS and/or OIS (A7Rii & A6300), my steadiness was compromised by the Sony's jitter. The GH5's IBIS is really worlds better.

Well that's 11+ minutes of my life I'll never get back. I'm not sure what he said or what his point was. The time being spent with these endless discussions on AF, that arrive at either no conclusion, the AF sucks, the AF can work if you learn it and finally the 'who knows, let me get back to you on that'. It's endless.

Are you finding there's a pay back at high ISOs? Personally I'm not finding the noise particularly objectionable. There's quite a fine grain structure to the noise on the GH5.

I find the IBIS on the GH5 to be excellent for hand-holding and far better than the Sony A6500 I tried. I do think that video is accurate in that if you do 'walking videos' (I don't), the motion that's not as well damped is the lateral motion. I'm sure with a refined walking style, that can be minimized.

Hanriverprod, here's a pan I just did in the house. If you're still seeing a jerking motion when the pan begins, you're definitely seeing something I can't see. It's very smooth and any lack of smoothness during the pan is due to the nature of hand-held panning. There's no trace of 'sticking' at the beginning of the pan, as occurred with the pre-firmware G85 update.

Jon, where do you have in-camera NR set?

Orangenz, yeah, lighting in venues like this is often odd and on the dim side. Couple that with a slow lens and a further reduction in available light as the result of zooming, doesn't provide the ideal recipe for the best skin tones. I had noise reduction at default (I never use intelligent resolution), but it would have been interesting to dial it all the way down. But given the conditions and a slow zoom, I was actually pretty happy with the results. For the record, it looked far better on my 65" OLED than on my 5K IMac.

I'll try to get to doing another pan in the next day or so under better conditions. I really don't see this as an issue and I can't recall anyone else commenting on it with GH5 footage. But we've learned that everyone sees different things.

And Jon, you're terrified of new cameras too! JK. Actually I just recalled when we had our son do the face painting thing. He was 5, but when he saw his face in the mirror, he got hysterical crying. My wife and I did our best to not show him we were laughing.

Thanks, Jon. I was laughing at that too, Jon! He wanted no part of the face painting and only submitted to hand painting. Pretty funny.