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+1 on that. Also, sometimes you're pushing the ISO in ways you'd prefer not to. Some of the nicest shots I've got of the kids is when they're on their phones and the available light is so low that they're basically being exclusively lit by their phone. That's not a native 100 situation, at least on the single native ISO sensors! It's relatively typical for colourists (and film-emulation packages like FilmConvert and Dehancer) to apply grain to some parts of the image more than others. IIRC they apply more to the mids and almost none to the highlights and shadows, as I think that emulates the grain from a negative/positive film process, where the roll-offs lessen the strength of the grain. Don't quote me on that logic, but it sounds right. If I understand the math properly you can get basically the same effect by desaturating the brightest highlights on your image. I contemplated writing a DCTL plugin for Resolve to recover highlights on non-RAW footage (as you can't use the option in the RAW panel) and over the course of figuring out the logic this was where I got to.

Finally got around to looking at the TV episode I chopped up and, to be honest, I am completely blown away. The show is a long running and award winning travel show with a few interview / talking segments per episode with b-roll sections in-between, or so I thought. I've watched dozens and dozens of episodes from this show, so I am quite familiar with it, but on first inspection I have multiplied my understanding of it by perhaps a factor of 100. Some initial impressions: there is far more b-roll than I thought. There are multiple b-roll sequences between most interviews, there are V/O with b-roll sequences within the interviews, etc. the sheer quantity of shots is just immense. I have a pretty good intuitive understanding about how much shooting results in how much finished footage, and obviously I'm no-where near as good as these cinematographers, but even if their hit-rate is 10x mine, they're still shooting spectacular quantities of b-roll. the editors are doing strange things with structure, even "fading" between locations by cutting more and more b-roll into talking sections that the talking section kind of fades out and then gradually cutting in clips from the new location so there aren't any clear transitions and questions like "when does this scene end" become sort of meaningless it seems to be a lot like music with "call and response" where two or more things are intercut. it also seems to be very technical in terms of the rhythm, where any timing queues established (by music or talking or anything) need to be aligned to, but can be doubled, or switched to the "off-beat" etc. It really reminds me of programming break-beats when I was making electronic music. I've watched hundreds or even thousands of hours of content at this level but the editing is so seamless that I really had no clue about what was going on until I chopped it up and started to try and categorise and understand it. Perhaps the most significant impression is that this is completely beyond anything I have seen on YT, or even discussed anywhere online. and I mean, this is several orders of magnitude more sophisticated. Admittedly, I haven't found many good resources for editing online actually, so I'm hoping they are out there and that I'll find them. If anyone is reading this and is tempted to start cutting up great work then I encourage you to do so. Once you start looking you'll start noticing things immediately - it's like opening a window and looking through into another world, and you don't get to see it unless you pull it into an editor. Take a look at this: It's obvious from this that there are a series of sections of building intensity with faster and faster cuts, leading up to a change of pace and going much slower. One interesting thing is that the transition actually happens at the playhead (red line), and the two shots prior to that are the release of the tension before it changes. The playhead is where an ad break is placed. You might think that this would be obvious, but the problem is that the above image represents about 5 minutes, which is very difficult to watch and keep the overall structure clear in your head - the above is about 160 cuts! Also, if you look more carefully, it starts off with shorter bursts that then find a mid-level of pulsing intensity then a final push and then release. Even if you could keep track of the pattern of building intensity over and over you wouldn't be noticing that pattern. I'd imagine that not everything these masters are doing will be obvious from looking at the edit, but there's so much that is that it's an all-you-can-eat buffet regardless.

Simply wonderful! The tech is needed and is a necessary discipline and skillset. The first challenge we have (especially in forums such as this) is to remember that the tech serves the art. The second challenge we have is to understand how the tech serves the art. How shutter angle makes the viewer feel. Colour. Motion. Lighting. Depth of field. Composition. Dynamic range. etc. All have tangible emotional impacts on an audience. The third challenge we have is to understand how to align all the tech to push the art in the same direction so that the desired aesthetic and emotional experience is clear and strong, being supported from all angles and with all factors. Most discussion doesn't acknowledge these challenges even exist, let alone satisfy the first challenge, and then the others.

Is there room in an MFT mount for an eND? I have no idea how thick those things are. That would be a great addition for stills as well as video. DJI could really easily make an MFT camera. They've shown they're not afraid of shaking things up - the design process for the 4D seems to have been them brainstorming every crazy idea they could think of and then implementing every one of them they could get to work into the final product. It's a pity that it's the camera equivalent of carrying around a live duck, but a great testbed for the tech.

That (might) indicate it's not a bug, but a deliberate decision. It all seems rather odd to me.. I get why Canon etc cripple their cameras, but why would Fuji do it? and in such a strange way? My knowledge of X-Trans sensors is limited, but I thought they were simply an alternative layout of the RGB photosites in order to get an advantage when de-bayering. Nothing in that seems to indicate they'd have some sort of horrendous chroma noise issue that would require such brutal chroma NR.

I'm keen to read more about this - can you link the source? I'm not explaining the entire image pipeline in every post that I make, but even if I did no-one understands the details anyway so it wouldn't help. Perhaps instead of just saying I don't understand things, speak to something tangible that I can talk to. In terms of having used RAW footage? Sure. Probably more than a dozen. I own three cameras that shoot RAW - one Canon and two BM. What's your point? I'm trying to get the best colour possible. For that I have pulled apart the colour science from many brands, trying to understand what they are doing. I talk about ARRI mostly because they give the nicest colour by just applying their official LUT. RED is right up there too, along with BM 2012. BM 2018+ and Canon (RAW) are nice too, but aren't really at the highest level. I own the Emotive Colour matrix and don't talk about it much here, partly because I've pulled it apart and don't want to give away too much, and partly because the it's so fragile to use - if the stars didn't align then you're not getting good results. It doesn't like exposure changes much and doesn't deal with mixed colour temperatures basically at all, which is present in most situations I film in. I have also bought film simulations from Juan Melara, downloaded DCTL plugins from professional colourists, LUTs from post production houses, and many other things. Did you see the difference in image between the Alexa and the LF from that guy who did the comparison by splitting the light with a piece of glass to duplicate the cameras position between the two? The other manufacturers may have been closing the gap but that was ARRI leaping ahead by a mile. You don't seem to really acknowledge the differences, but I read lots of comments from people who are amazed at how much of an improvement they were able to make to what was already a world-leading performer. I suspect colour matters more to me than to you. Sadly, in the blind tests I always pick the most expensive cameras, even if I watch the comparison in 480p on YT. You missed my point. If I was a manufacturer including h264 in a camera, I know it's going to be targeted at consumers and videographers, so I will go a bit heavier on the processing because that's what this audience wants. If I then decide to include Prores, I know it's for a different target market who have different expectations about the image, and so I'm likely to apply far less processing when the camera is set to record Prores rather than h264. The anamorphic mode in the GH5 applies less processing than the 16:9 modes, so Panasonic clearly understand that it's for a different target audience. Panasonic would be insane to include consumer amounts of processing and NR when the camera is set to record Prores. Cool. Personally I record in a lower resolution than the sensor and don't want the camera to crop. For this, Prores is the winning option. Saying that would be plain wrong. Good thing I didn't say it! Thanks for pointing that out? I've done tests on a number of RAW cameras comparing the various bit-depths and also comparing the latitude of RAW vs Prores and mostly I'm ok with 10-bit Prores recording a log profile. I'd prefer a 12-bit Prores if it's available, but I'll happily take Prores HQ. Colour science quality (and image quality in general) has two factors for me, the first is how good things look when under the optimal conditions. This is how (you'd hope) most professionals working on controlled sets are working. The other main factor of colour science is how robust the image is when conditions are far from perfect. This is probably something you're not very experienced with, but it's the vast majority of clips that I shoot. I've mounted my BMMCC and GH5 together and put them through a number of sub-optimal situations and then pulled the footage into Resolve and graded them side-by-side and the results are eye-opening. The BM footage just does what you tell it to do, whereas the GH5 footage suffers almost immediately. The sweet spot of the GH5 is has pretty good colour, not great but good, but that very quickly disappears when pushing and pulling the footage, even just adjusting the WB reveals that the small amount of colour magic it does have is pretty fragile. I've graded files from the S1 and the colour in the sweet spot was nicer, the DR was higher, but the magic was still quite fragile and the footage felt like the GH5. I'm hoping that with colour science improvements and Prores that the files will have more colour science magic and that the magic will be more robust when graded.

Absolutely, and that's perhaps the biggest reason that I keep referencing ARRI. Their sensor is great, but it's the processing that they do to the image that really sets them apart. In fact, it's so valuable to them that they apply it in-camera rather than in LUTs that can be pulled apart and analysed. I'm not sure how much you know about colour science, but I have done many deep dives into pulling apart the colour science from a number of cameras, including Alexas, REDs, BMs, Canons, and Panasonics. I have spent a lot of time on the colourist forums reading their responses, reading the articles they link to, and studying their methods (and when I say "studying" I mean opening Resolve and trying to re-create the methods they explain, and then using those methods on my own footage to get a feel for what is going on - like how you do when you do assignments at school - literally studying). What I have found is that: most colour science is a long way from neutral, but are almost universally pushing the colours in the same ways, typically in the ways that film does you can take clips from multiple cameras and match them (and I'm talking about footage with larger colour checkers with lots of patches) and they look the same, but the ARRI or RED will have magic that the other simply won't have I have also observed time and time again that the colourists are doing very complicated adjustments (often in alternate colour spaces that work in very different ways) and applying them very subtly. What I conclude from both the comparisons I have done and the little tweaks that the colourists are willing to share (there is a lot they're not willing to share too) is that the magic is in the tiny little adjustments. Like in cooking how some chefs can add tiny amounts of various seasonings that are so subtle you can't pick them out but they really lift the flavour. You are absolutely right that each manufacturer has the opportunity to be building these things into their colour science (and not relying on their sensors), but the problem is that they just don't. Year on year they are getting incrementally better but really aren't closing the gap between their $2K-5K cameras and what the leaders are doing. The end result is that we're getting food that has come from the same ingredients (Sony sensors) and has only been seasoned with salt and pepper and therefore tastes rather bland in comparison to ARRI/RED who are demonstrating mastery in their use of spices. I don't have V-Log on my GH5 for precisely this purpose - it wouldn't get me anything. That's why I've been shooting HLG and testing it (it's not exactly either rec2020 or rec2100, but it's close enough to rec2100 to use that in Resolve). It would be great if the GH6 had real V-Log. I'm very keen to see how they go about using the Prores. Currently the GH5 HLG implementation is 10-bit rec2100-like colour and gamma, which isn't too bad to work with. The extra bit depth of Prores 4444 would be most welcome. In camera NR and sharpening are definitely an issue and I'd hope that implementing Prores will mean they'll tune the image to that codec and the expectations that pros would have. I don't think the idea that Prores isn't sharpened is true - I read somewhere that as Prores is compressed its best to add a small amount of sharpening to match the look of RAW. I can't remember where I read that but I remember it coming from a source beyond questioning - perhaps ARRI or RED or the like. It makes sense, as does the idea they would match the perceived sharpness of RAW. In a sense, Prores isn't just a codec, but a complete approach to the processing of the image. The flavours of Prores will be interesting to see. It is unfortunate that Prores wasn't included in the GH4 and GH5, but the bitrates might have been more than they could handle. With h264 there's no "right" bitrate, but with Prores there are standards, and it doesn't look so good on marketing if you're only giving people Prores LT, even though the bitrate of 4K Prores LT is 328Mbps - more than most other cameras and almost as much as the headline grabbing 400Mbps GH5 ALL-I codec. Marketing is real, and often irrational, unfortunately. In terms of saying prores doesn't matter because other cameras have internal RAW is just ridiculous. It's like someone saying that their Ferrari doesn't have cupholders and someone else saying that most family sedans now have cupholders. A different camera having a good codec doesn't matter if that other camera doesn't meet other criteria. I can't go outside and capture images using the sensor of one camera, the colour science of a second camera, and the codecs of a third camera. RAW is also different to Prores in that RAW tends to be a 1:1 sensor read-out, meaning that you either have to have the huge resolution and huge file sizes of the full sensor read-out or cope with some kind of crop which screws up your whole lens collection. Lots of people shoot with a lower-resolution codec than their sensor and enjoy having the benefits of downsampling. I am one of them, so RAW isn't of that much interest. One of the other benefits of Prores is that it was designed to be mostly indistinguishable from RAW under most conditions, so it's a very practical thing. Otherwise, why would every / most cinema cameras offer it in addition to shooting RAW?

Well, there's the gradual Sony-fication that has been happening in camera colour science. Hopefully this is a departure from that, more in the direction of manufacturers-that-cannot-be-named.

What a quirky and cool edit. Those people who make model profile videos have a lot to learn in terms of composition and posing! I love the variety of aspect ratios and cropping too 🙂

I'm not the biggest fan of the GH5 colour science either. Which makes me happy that Panasonic seem to be chasing a better image with the GH6 instead of just chasing endless resolution at the expense of everything else. The colour from the more recent Panasonic cameras has all been incremental improvements over the GH5, so I'm optimistic about what they'll do with a new sensor. The other aspect to making images pop is lenses, which there are more and more available all the time now with third-party manufacturers like 7artisans, TTartisans, Meike, Mikaton, etc making interesting offerings. To me they're interesting because they are a perfect-combination of features - they have simpler optical designs and simpler coatings that are reminiscent of vintage lenses that are now climbing radically in price, but due to cheap Chinese manufacturing are both low-cost and also relatively high-quality. Unlike modern high-resolution high-precision zero-distortion lenses which have a very dull and lifeless rendering, these third-party primes tend to exhibit the aberrations that make lenses like the "Zeiss 28mm f2 'Hollywood'" lens famous, plus with MFT or APS-C lenses you're seeing more of the edges of the image circle than you do from FF lenses and so you're getting more of those character-providing flaws. I'll be talking more about this in coming weeks, but there's a lot to talk about, let's just say that.

If you've built a FF glass collection then that's definitely a bridge to a mirrorless S35 or FF, so in a way you were always keeping your options open. In terms of low-light I'll be very interested in the GH6's low light as that's one of the aspects of the GH5 that I really push. For example, here's a shot I took with the Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 lens wide open - the scene is solely lit by the lights on the river bank: I'd recommend you wait for the sample footage and tests as the specifics of how they have implemented the sensor tech will really matter. The Alexa has definitely become the gold standard within some circles. Those circles are basically people who appreciate great colour. I actually don't want ARRI to have the best colour - I'd prefer if the GH6 ends up with the worlds best colour, having the best colour come from a camera I can't afford, couldn't carry, and couldn't realistically use would be a completely stupid wish. I just find it odd that people can say "Sony might include the Venice colour science in their next A7S camera" and it's fine, but saying "I wish someone would make colour science approaching ARRI" somehow is crazy talk, as if the Alexa is a magical unicorn instead of a sensor and a processor in a box... just like every other digital camera ever. I agree. People talk about high resolutions like a "just in case / when you need it it's there" kind of thing. I see that "ready for anything" aspect as the design brief of the GH line. Do people need GH5-level IBIS on every shot? No. Most of the time a lesser-IBIS would suffice, but are there times when you need it? Absolutely. I routinely push the GH5 IBIS past its limits on trips - maybe because I'm cold or low-blood sugar or I'm filming from a helicopter with the door open at 200kph or whatever. Do people need 10-bit on every shot? No. 8-bit cameras make gorgeous footage in when exposed properly and under modest-DR situations, but are there times when you need the flexibility in post? Absolutely. I shot with the XC10 in 8-bit C-Log on a 5-week trip to Italy and have really struggled to clean up the footage because it doesn't have the latitude the GH5 has. Same logic for high-bitrates. Every now and then you film in a situation where there's lots of chaotic movement like in rain or snow or with trees moving in the wind or whatever. Also, sometimes you want to crop in post a bit and not reveal compression nasties. +1 about not wanting an external recorder. People who don't care about camera size seem incapable of understanding that everyone isn't like them, it's rather odd. Its like saying you prefer chocolate ice cream and them saying "no you don't". Thanks for your thoughts on the ALEV vs the GH6 tech. Obviously the proof is in the pudding with the images, which I am really looking forward to, but once it arrives I must admit I'd be very interested in learning more about how it works 🙂 If all you care about is specs then you can make a complete comparison from the spec sheet. Some people will be comparing specs until we see the images, but sadly, other people here only care about specs, and when talking about cameras seem uninterested or incapable of understanding the various other considerations that go into making an engaging end product. Agreed - Prores is a big deal. One thing that people probably aren't aware of is how good a codec Prores really is. For reference, a very large proportion of the movies that people saw in the cinema between the mid 1990's and the mid 2010's probably went through Prores HQ, and a good chunk of those would have been Prores HQ in 1080p. It was the bread-and-butter codec for Hollywood and often still is. People don't seem to understand that.

Man, the GH6 looks so much larger with a huge lens on it than the others do without any lenses at all! GH5 is 725g, so basically zero extra weight. For me the size is really the height, with the width a distant second. For example, comparing my GH5 and GX85 the widths are almost the same, but the "look at me and my huge camera" factor comes from the height: I'd definitely trade height for depth.

There are all sorts of image processing algorithms they could be using. Whatever it is though, it's not high quality! It's such a pity as Fuji have such a great reputation for their colour science.

This is definitely a concern, considering how freakishly huge the S1H is. These pics aren't exactly the same angles, but using the mount should be a common reference point. GH6: GH5 II: GH6: GH5 II: The fan/screen on the GH6 definitely adds some thickness to it, but it doesn't look that much larger to me. Weight is another thing entirely, so who knows about that. Unless I missed a site with more GH6 details?

All great points and reminds me of my other idea for testing stabilisation mechanisms by putting the camera on a mount that will shake it in a controlled way. All you need to do is have it shake the camera at a few speeds (slow, medium, faster, etc) and gradually ramp up the amount of shake. If you took a picture of a control chart with a fixed exposure time then you can compare two cameras and see that camera X had perfect images until strength level 4, and the other was good up until level 7. Back to AF, I really agree with you. The DJI robochicken had a spectacular combination of AF with MF help. Really, almost no manufacturers have even tried. I think Olympus did with their clutches and the XC10 let you help it's AF by flicking it in the right direction when it was completely lost (more common than you'd hope for), but they were pretty pathetic really. Even down to things like on the GH5 it will do face-detect AF and face-detect exposure, but if you turn off the AF then it stops looking for faces and exposes the frame with general "put the histogram in the middle". I mean, if I don't have an AF lens then you'll do AE but you won't even look for faces? Grrrr.

Yeah, we'll have to see I guess. There's a shot of it with no lens showing the mount, so we should be able to compare it to the GH5 using that as a reference. I might give that a go and post in the other thread. I think one of the biggest challenges with cameras is that there are so many features. You can literally tell someone that you want 12 features, they recommend you a camera, and you realise that you'd eliminated that camera because of a 13th feature or criteria you forgot to mention. I mean, who'd have thought that along with all the crazy tech stuff that you'd have to specify to someone that the camera not shut down to stop itself catching fire. I mean, I also don't want my camera to give off toxic gas, but I wouldn't have thought that would need to be specified! This is one of the reasons I am so critical of almost every camera manufacturer focusing on resolution about 4K - it's a feature that most people don't want but it comes at the cost of almost every other feature.

It depends on how they've gone about making the chroma channel look like that. Maybe they blur the crap out of it and the compression algorithm just goes "ooh, no detail... wheeeee!" and auto-allocates it stuff all bitrate. You do have to look closely at the images to notice (although once you see it you can't un-see it).

I'm aware you shoot with a range of equipment as you've mentioned it in other threads, but you did literally just say "Give us S35/FF shooters a major incentive to revert to a smaller sensor" only 5 hours ago! The way that I think about the GH5 is that it fits a niche. That niche is where: you shoot handheld in rough enough conditions to need top-shelf stabilisation, or you shoot manual lenses handheld, or you want it for really long focal lengths you want 10-bit internal with >100Mbps codecs you care about camera size and weight Put simply, it's anyone that shoots in difficult uncontrolled conditions. Adventure film-makers, more wild events, serious travel, etc. 1) The stabilisation criteria eliminates most FF cameras as they don't have the IBIS travel. I've been reading carefully and almost all FF camera discussions include a few reputable people saying something like "the IBIS is good but isn't GH5-level". That leaves a number of MFT cameras and a few S35/FF cameras. 2) The 10-bit internal criteria eliminates most of the other MFT cameras, and the >100Mbps codec criteria eliminates most S35/FF cameras up until the most recent batch of RAW-capable ones (eg R5) or the high-bitrate ones (eg A7S3). Most of those are pretty expensive too. 3) The size and weight criteria eliminates almost all the rest, like the S1H, and eliminates all the ones that rely on external RAW and have poor internal codecs. I'm sure there's a few other candidates that meet the above, but it's not a huge number. There's a strange mindset in the camera industry that says you either: want a small camera and therefore you're an amateur who doesn't care about image quality want image quality and therefore you're happy to have a huge camera and rig it out This doesn't really cater to people who want a great image but want their setup to be super-portable and inconspicuous. Being inconspicuous is often misunderstood to mean doing something wrong, but in reality it means not having a massive impact on the things you're shooting. Having a large / complex camera (or a tripod) when shooting in public just means that instead of getting shots of real life you get shots of people all staring at you and then you get asked to leave by security. There's a reason that people who shoot in public a lot (eg Philip Bloom) use really freaking long lenses - not much use if you'd prefer a wide. The niche of small camera with great image quality is a very strange place, with things like the GH5, Sigma FP, BMPCC and precious few others, and almost all of those don't have stabilisation. I agree that those that don't fit this specific niche may be well catered for in other systems, or even the OM-1, but I still think there's a real niche where this is by far the best option, and depending on your situation, perhaps the only option.

Is this because it will impact the weather resistance? If that's what you mean, it makes sense. I've always been too afraid to test that kind of thing!

I agree. AF testing is one of the tests that is done the least realistically and also the least consistently. I'd prefer someone like DXO or similar to setup an automated test that simulated the various common scenarios can be repeated reliably between various cameras, lenses, firmware updates and various modes.

That's what I'm waiting for 🙂 I'm having devious thoughts about a fourth setup, but I'm not sure if I'd find the motivation to shoot and edit 4 submissions!

@Attila Bakos - great presentation! It's nothing to do with resolution @tupp, otherwise the RAW files would be impacted too, it's processing. I'm not convinced it's chroma NR either, as normally NR is just blurring. Could it just be extreme compression? If it gave the Y channel most of the bitrate maybe that's what happens to the colour channels?

It's a rare day when a camera ticks all boxes for anyone.. I'd suggest buying a lottery ticket! It will be interesting to see people really put the OM-1 (and GH6) through their paces, both technically and also with the image. Unfortunately cameras tend to be mine-fields of incompatible features, like not supporting feature X while feature Y is on and it's in resolution Z, etc. It needs the Gerald Undone treatment essentially. Hopefully someone will post some SOOC footage soon and we can see how robust the image is, etc..

There's obviously a pretty significant difference between you and I. It's probably safe to say that we don't understand each other. That's fine, and I'm very aware that people come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives and values. But here we are in a Panasonic thread talking about the GH6... ...me posting here as a long-term MFT shooter and GH5 owner who doesn't use AF, who has posted a lot about wanting Prores and better noise performance and various other things that the GH5 struggled with and the GH6 seems to have, who owns lots of nice fully-manual MFT glass, and who will probably buy a GH6 in the next couple of years, and I'm saying that AF isn't necessarily a critical factor. ...and you're posting here as a non-MFT user, who seems to have heavy interest in huge resolutions and in PDAF, disagreeing with me about what the average GH6 user would want. I guess I'm just wondering, what makes you think you understand the target audience for this camera? Like, at all?

I think we'll have to see. The OM-1 spec sheet wasn't gobsmacking, but the images looked good. If ARRI was about to release the Alexa and someone leaked the spec sheet and posted it to the forums then in only a few pages people would be dancing around each other singing "ARRIs going bankrupt!".