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Yeah, I made that mistake on my last laptop, so this time I went with the 1TB drive, which allows ample room for proxies from several projects (I still have many projects waiting on editing where I shot them with long-GOP and rendered proxies already). There was no way I would even fit in one real project if it was the original footage, so I just assumed I could edit off an SSD in that case.

HELP! Does anyone know how to change the Exposure Mode (eg, aperture priority, manual, shutter priority) in a custom mode on the GX85? I cannot find it in the menus anywhere, can't assign it to a button, nada. I know that you can change the mode dial to M or S etc and then save that config to a custom slot, but this would overwrite all the settings in that slot with the default ones and I've got existing profiles that have custom buttons and the CineD profile selected and who knows what else - when I got the camera I went through every option and set them all how I like it and then saved and forgot about what I changed. I really don't want to have to create the profile from scratch again! @BTM_Pix @projectwoofer @PannySVHS

I'm surprised your Sandisk USB drive was so slow. I bought a USB SSD maybe 5 or more years ago that was as fast as my internal SSD in my MBP.

Yeah, but it pays to be first to commercialise it widely. Just wait for the TikTok advertising folks and music video folks to get a hold of it - someone can potentially make a bag of cash and a career for themselves if a big name music act sees you doing this sort of thing and wants you to do their next video. I'll rename him from "I compare smartphones to my original Alexa" Jet.

Many of the Panasonic cameras have Open Gate modes, going back to the GH5 which I own. On the GH5 the open gate modes were less sharpened than the 16:9 modes, which was definitely welcome. The GH5 also used h265 on the open gate modes instead of h264, which gives the same visual quality with half the bitrate, so in theory the image should be a little better in those open gate modes, however if you use normal spherical lenses then you'll be cropping out part of the image and therefore throwing away some of that bitrate, so it might even out. H265 is also harder to edit, so that's a factor too. On the GH6 you have the option of Prores which (in other cameras) is traditionally much less sharpened, but I'm yet to see any comparisons between the h264/h265 and the Prores. If you're using anamorphics then it's a no-brainer, just use it and enjoy!

Great news and thanks for running the test. Did you have the DR Boost mode on or off? Perhaps that is a bit more power hungry? In video it is highly recommended to get the White Balance (WB) correct when shooting. The best way is to manually white balance at every location with a grey card (a physical thing you carry that has been designed to be a completely neutral grey - they're widely available to buy). If you manually white balance then it will get the white balance right in every location. Choosing the right WB preset (e.g. Daylight, Clouds, etc) is quicker and much more convenient and should give a pretty good result. I'm familiar with the videos you share on YouTube and this is probably the best bet for your work. Choosing auto-WB (as I do) means you have to fine-tune the WB in post, and this can be extremely difficult, and the WB sometimes changes during the shot, giving you all kinds of colour problems to adjust in post. I wouldn't use this mode unless you absolutely have to.

One thing that really changes this is the gradual adoption of in-camera charging, and now USB charging. I figure that you're either: On a dedicated shoot with a rig etc Doing handheld run-n-gun where the cameras are on your person the whole time, being used or just being carried Being on a tripod, either waiting or recording long takes The first is sort of a professional set and so operator can factor in a change of battery every so often, or can rig a V-mount. Longer battery life is a consideration but something that I'd imagine can be managed. The second is what I do. I typically have two cameras, one in-hand and the other clipped to a strap of my backpack. In this configuration I could have a USB charger and a cable routed in my bag to emerge near the mount on my chest, so when a camera was clipped in there it was also charging. The third could simply include a USB charger on the tripod. If someone was taking a camera on and off the tripod then the tripod would act as a charging station for it, essentially meaning that every time it was taken off the tripod it would have a refreshed (or completely charged) battery. Assuming battery life being the better part of an hour (or more) then these situations seem quite convenient. I travelled with my GH5 for weeks across multiple trips and had long days shooting where I would carry the camera for long periods and turn it on to take shots then turn it off again. I only own two batteries for it and never ran out of battery or had power anxiety. I am careful to always fully charge both batteries and to download from the card each night, but it was never a stress, and most days I didn't even need the second battery. I standardised on a charging setup of a wall-powered USB charging hub (with 6 super-speed USB charging ports) running into the third-party dual battery chargers, so I can charge two batteries on one USB cable. Its travel friendly as the USB power hub takes 110-240V 50-60Hz, plus I could use the chargers from my laptop if I wanted to, and even from a USB hub in my bag if I really needed that support in the field, but I've never needed the chargers to leave the hotel room. I might if, for example, I went on safari in Africa and was staying away from mains power. I have those USB double-chargers for the XC10/BMMCC (same battery type), the GH5, the BMPCC, the GX85/GF3 (also same battery type), and two for the Sony X3000 action camera (one for the camera and one for the monitor). Often they come as a package with a couple of third-party batteries (I recommend Wasabi) so they're very affordable. A good tip for a setup like that designed for travel is to make sure you use it at home too, so that way you've verified that it is working and reliable. I normally travel with a spare USB charging hub and also the charger that comes with the camera as a default, although if the camera can charge internally, I wouldn't need the factory wall charger as the camera could be the fallback option. I'd imagine you have a slightly more serious setup for weddings, with multiple cameras and many more batteries, but the principles would be similar I would imagine. A good idea that I saw once, maybe from the f-stoppers guys (?), was to mount all the adapters and chargers onto a piece of corflute (corrugated plastic) with zip ties. It weighs almost nothing but you can make a nice compact layout, neatly route the cables, means that packing and unpacking it is one item not a dozen (so you don't forget any) and it can even be mounted vertically in the hotel or vehicle etc whereas a bunch of floating chargers would need a flat surface and get tangled and generally be a pain. I haven't done this yet because I typically travel with different cameras each trip, plus the location of wall outlets etc changes a lot between hotels. I also travel with a USB charger for my phone and a power brick for my MBP. Both of these are also backups for charging if I needed them. USB as a charging standard really is great as it centralises all this stuff.

Why are people moaning about battery life? I think a huge proportion of camera criticism is emotional, not rational. Take the GH6 for example, people were comparing the battery life between GH5 and GH6 (perhaps without facts) and are critical of that, but then they compare the DR to something like the P6K and are critical again. This thread is full of combinations like that. Instead, had they compared the DR between the GH5 and GH6 they'd be complimentary, and compared the battery life between GH6 and P6K they'd also be complimentary. Realistically, you have to compare all aspects of one camera with all aspects of another. Comparing the DR to camera X and battery life to camera Y implies that I can buy a camera with the DR of camera X and the DR of camera Y, which of course doesn't make any sense. Anyway, I'm very curious to hear about how the battery life compares. In terms of how to compare the GH5 vs GH6 battery life on standby, use the timelapse mode on your phone (and have it on charge) and put a clock in the shot. You only need a rough comparison (if they're within a minute or two of each other then that's good enough) and there's no huge file-sizes to deal with, and no media management - just review it on the phone at the end to see the times they shut down and then delete the clip!

Ah, of course! My bad.

Yeah, that's the common methodology. As someone who has overheated an iPhone while out shooting because it was over 40C / 104F and in direct sunlight, I'm not spending even $100 on something that was only guaranteed to work flawlessly in Iceland, let alone $2000! I've seen a few YouTubers have cabinets they test things in now, so they do their tests at 40/104 or 38/100 which makes more sense. This is the only temperature test worth anything, unless your camera never goes outside.

How long does the battery last with the screen on and it displaying full-screen video? I'd imagine it's not long enough....

What was the ambient temp?

With the latest cameras being 10-bit with full log profiles, I think that's changing. It used to be the case though. That was my impression as well.

Great stuff... Mounting it on the bottom might be slightly more ergonomic and a bit more stealth perhaps? And keen to see what you come up with for cleaner cable routing. It seems that with my BMMCC it doesn't matter how snug you get the camera and screen, the cables still triple the size of the whole thing, giving it that "look at me!" vibe when shooting in public.

10.5 stops isn't world-record territory, but there's a chance that the camera can encode the full DR of the sensor isn't there? I thought that most cameras with log profiles would capture the whole DR, it was just in the picture profiles that they'd lose a stop or two.

While the test isn't a stress test, it certainly covers a range of compositions and so does function as a reference of what can be captured. From this perspective, I agree with you that it looks average. With a great colourist working on it, or with more intentional compositions (like narrative, but also weddings where much effort has gone into making everything look nice) then I'm sure much nicer results can be gotten from it.

The way I think about it is that every camera takes the real-world and creates a stylised version of it, with a unique way to represent colour, luminance, noise, etc, etc. Some scenes will look better when given the treatment that camera A gives rather than camera B, but a different scene might be better with camera B instead. This is kind of like when you grade footage, you take the input and change it in a unique way. In just the same way that a grade that works nicely on one project won't always look nice on the next, every camera probably has its own unique situation where it provides just what is needed. Maybe the GH4 is the camera you've always wanted for filming hysterically happy mannequins in high-DR mixed lighting?

I have vague memories that the grain size on the B&W film was smaller than the colour stock, so that might be what you're remembering, but that's not to say that colour doesn't have a perceptual impact on sharpness - it well might. The more I learn about colour the more I find out about crazy stuff going on that you wouldn't think is happening, and the more complicated it all is.

I suspect that you're right for most cases. I've tried sharpening the GF3 image and it just reveals the compression around edges coming from the poor codec (17Mbps just isn't enough), and I've found that higher bitrates mostly don't need sharpening and higher resolutions don't need it. What did need it though was the RAW and Prores 1080p from the OG BMPCC and BMMCC, as it was a little too soft straight out of the camera for my tastes. I'm not sure how much this was due to the lens sharpness (the specific video I'm remembering was the BMMCC with 14mm F2.5 lens wide open - maybe if it was stopped down where it's ultra-sharp that might not have needed it?). Anyway, apart from the BM cameras, I've never needed to sharpen, only to soften, but maybe there's a combo of camera / codec / lens that benefits from a little sharpening. Adding a little sharpening in post can be invisible. In my test where I zoomed in post to 150% it was obvious which the zoomed image was until I added some sharpening to match and then they were indistinguishable and the image didn't look sharpened at all. Anyway, all this is why I need to do the tests.

I keep thinking I should do a sharpness test of the cameras / modes / lenses I have. For example, obviously the 4K on the GX85 will be sharper than the 1080p from the GF3, but I haven't yet tested the 1080p24 or 1080p60 on the GX85. Of course, you can't test a codec without a lens, and how will (say) the GF3 with the 12-35/2.8 at F4 compare to the GX85 with the RMC Tokina 28-70 / 3.5-4.5 on the m42 SB? Not sure. I've tested the GF3 with various lenses before and established that I only find the image acceptable if the lens is quite sharp to compensate for the soft codec, but how much softening does the GX85 need from a lens? Not sure. What about the P2K or BMMCC, also not sure. How much can be achieved through sharpening in post? By which mechanisms (I think Resolve has at least three ways to do it)? Essentially it's about knowing what I like and then making pairings that can give me that (maybe with some treatment in post), and also give the right stabilisation and focal length and aperture combinations for whatever it is that I'm shooting on that occasion. Lots more work to do yet.

Thanks for posting this - I hadn't seen it and I really enjoy doing these blind tests as they reveal what products you like and also reveal what things you're looking for (I look for colour first and foremost, then texture). My results were as follows: F BMCC D GH4 B- NX1, C100 B GH2, Z6 B+ GH1 A 1DC, EVA1 A+ GH6 The BMCC looked like it had colour issues (likely IR pollution). Most of the cameras got marked down for looking "dirty" which came from shadows being too blue or the image being unacceptably noisy (some noise is fine). I went back and forth on the top five as some of them made the saturated colours in the checker look neon and others made them darker and desaturated them slightly (like film does) so this aspect is sort-of personal taste. I must say that I wouldn't have predicted the GH6 coming out on top next to the Z6, 1DC and EVA1 in there, but if the test had included a more modern Canon camera, a current BM camera, a Sony FF camera, or a Sigma FP then I suspect the GH6 might have struggled as those are all excellent. It's also sad it didn't include a OG BMPCC or BMMCC. Here's a video that @mercer showed me that is just spectacular.

I stopped being a tech early adopter a long time ago, now I wait for the tech behemoths to beta-test their products on other people and work out the bugs (you know, or don't) before jumping in. My plan is to hold off on buying anything until I start travelling again, which is COVID dependent and let's just say that I think that'll be a long time. Even then, with the improvements in Resolve and my glacially-improving colour grading skills, I could easily hold-off for a trip or three and just keep using the GH5. Right now, the cameras that are most interesting to me are my BMMCC and my GF3.

Amusing comment about the influencers rigging out their cameras. I think if you gave them a camera, asked them why they rigged it, fixed that thing so the camera did it without needing rigging, then went around that loop half-a-dozen times I think you'd find they'd get to a point where they'd still rig it but wouldn't be able to tell you why (or would give you some stupid answer that is fluff like personal preference). Ultimately, I think the "unknown last answer" as to why they want to rig things up is that without a rig they don't feel as important or as "professional" as they feel with a rig. Hardly any of them would admit this and most probably don't even know it themselves, but I think it's there, underneath all the other reasons that get thrown around. I must admit the A74 caught my eye, just out of sheer dynamic range per dollar. Sony has gotten their colour science sorted since the original days of the A7S when everything was green - now they are almost indistinguishable in a blind test between a Sony and Canon when the footage from each just has the official LUT put on top. For my purposes, I really want Prores HQ in downsampled 1080p from a camera. The GH5 has the 200Mbps 10-bit 422 ALL-I h264 mode that's pretty good, but I'd prefer Prores if I can get it in a camera. It's partly for the file-sizes, but it's also for the ease of editing on my laptop and not needing to generate proxies. For some reason I've seen that the Prores from cameras that do it is much better looking than the h264 or h265 from cameras that use those codecs. I'm not sure if it's the processing that the cameras do (after all, only the more professional cameras use prores, so maybe they sharpen and NR far less) but the experience in post is very different when grading, and I much prefer the more analog film-like aesthetic rather than the hyper-modern aesthetic. I'm contemplating moving to shoot 48p with a 1/60s shutter. On a 24p timeline this would allow me to either get real-time playback with a 144 degree shutter (and have the NLE only use every second frame), or conform the 48p to 24p (using every frame) and get 50% slow-motion with an almost 288 degree shutter. Those shutter angles would give the real-time footage a relatively neutral aesthetic, and give the 50% speed footage a dreamy slightly surreal aesthetic, but would allow me to choose which aesthetic I use in the edit once I get to post-production. There are a lot of times when I'm out and hit record and I don't really know what the shot will be, so I can't really decide before I hit record. I have been in an Italian town square and hit record and been getting a shot of my friends eating ice-cream in the sun and talking and then I see the flock of birds get startled by a little kid running and so follow them as they fly overhead and around the square waiting for the ground to be safe again. Another example is when I'm shooting a group of people talking and one of them flashes a smile that only lasts a second or two. One part of those shots works better in real-time with audio and the other in slow-motion without it, and shooting 48p 1/60s would give me the ability to choose in post, or even transition in-between them if I was editing in a particularly stylistic fashion. That will depend on what camera I end up with though, as not many cameras shoot 48p. I could put it in PAL mode and shoot 50p for a 25p timeline, or even 60p for a 30p timeline, or even 60p for a 24p timeline and a 3:2 pulldown but I'm not that keen on any of those, as my other cameras all have 24p but not 25p, so I'd end up with 24p vs 25p audio sync issues. I've recorded footage in 60p and not liked the horrible bitrate options and I've recorded 24/25p and tried time-stretching the footage in post, but neither gives a result that is worth having the option of the slow-motion footage. These days most of my shots are normal speed, static compositions (with the occasional slow pan/tilt) so that's the priority, but it would be nice to have the option for the odd shot where its warranted.

The GH6 is the likely replacement for my GH5 but I'm waiting until I start travelling again until I buy something. I'm hoping that Panasonic will gradually "fill out" the modes and options. Off the top of my head, these are some of the things that people are talking about: Digital zoom (2x and 3x would be great)** 1080p48** Prores 444 (12-bit!!)** Prores LT (UHD 328Mbps or 6K ~750Mbps) UHD resolution modes More of the lower resolution modes (like you're saying with the 3.3K anamorphic) SSD recording USB-C charging ** - these are the things that I'm seriously hoping for. The GH6 anamorphic modes and especially anamorphic stabilisation will only become a larger and larger feature once the new batch of anamorphic glass from China really comes in. At the moment the camera market seems to be very fragmented and the GH6 has a number of very serious but unlikely competitors. For me, the weaknesses of the GH5 are the DR and lacklustre colour science. The camera industry has made huge improvements on these since the GH5 and the GH6 doesn't appear to have caught up to the leaders. As such, and chasing those things, the two main competitors are the Sigma FP (FF, spectacular DR and colour, lacking codecs and stabilisation - either IBIS or OIS lens options), or potentially something from Blackmagic if they get their shit together and release a camera with the image of the 6K or 12K UMP but that will fit into the same seat as me on planes/trains/ferries/etc. However, if someone (Deezid?) is getting Alexa-like results from it then I'm all ears (or eyes!) about how that's possible and what working methods that might involve.