Panasonic GH5 - all is revealed!

[wolf33d]

Last 2 reviews from iPhonedo and Newshooter say the AF is unusable, with plenty of exemples in multiple situations (unlike a few eoshd forum folks who tried to show otherwise in their poor test trying to convince themselves their 2000$ camera focus well). They tried all the AF settings too. 

Just received mine and first tries are quite bad. Will use it for my trip anyway and return it if AF really suck that much and get the next Sony. I prefer to have more work for colors in post, that I can fix, than the shitiest AF that I can't fix no matter what.

[Fritz Pierre]

56 minutes ago, Orangenz said:

They both indicate full once you take a charged battery and put it on the other charger. For the pana battery, one test was after charge on each charger. No significant difference, or to having the screen off for 20 min or so. I'm tempted to get another couple of brands to test but I also think I'll have to end up with panasonics at 5 times the price. 

Have been trying the afc touch to focus. It's so smooth??!! No dfd bump at each end?! Will play with this more

I'm contemplating the Atomos Power Staion for when I have it on rails and tripod with external recorder...the Shogun also devours batteries, and then I will have 2 extra GH 4 batteries for walking around...power consumption with the GH5 is definitely a step up over the 4 to consider as part of a complete system...

[webrunner5]

Well I must admit I had to go to the old innerweb to remember what the Hell was a "Atomos Power Station". First product I ever seen that has no specs to offer on it's website! Interesting. I guess you are Suppose to guess how much more time you have with it for the amazing low price of??

13 hours ago, Hanriverprod said:

This person contacted blackmagic about resolve not supporting gh5 10bit files and got this reply:

"You are correct, the 10 bit files recorded by the GH5 are not supported in the free release of Resolve.
As such you would require the Studio release in order to be able to import and work with these files.
It is worth noting that this is NOT a BUG IN THE APPLICATION.
I will mark this ticket as a feature request for the attention of the development team.
I cannot comment on the possibility of future features or give a timescale for the development of such features or updates.
In the mean time I would RECOMMEND TRANSCODING your files to a supported format such as ProRes or DNxHD."
(Technical Support of Blackmagic Design).

God I love railroad tracks! They looked awesome in the last part of the video. But Was that a Log or the final grade?? I know you didn't shoot it.

And I am not surprised about the Free Resolve. They only do updates on it every year or so compared to the Real one you buy! But it is what I use, So...glad I didn't buy a GH5 then! Hell, I might to have...had...to...buy...a...Apple!! Jesus, I felt almost ill for a second or two! You know a Resolve Dongle and a Apple Dongle, sort of sounds well, obscene! 

[Hanriverprod]

31 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Well I must admit I had to go to the old innerweb to remember what the Hell was a "Atomos Power Station". First product I ever seen that has no specs to offer on it's website! Interesting. I guess you are Suppose to guess how much more time you have with it for the amazing low price of??

God I love railroad tracks! They looked awesome in the last part of the video. But Was that a Log or the final grade?? I know you didn't shoot it.

And I am not surprised about the Free Resolve. They only do updates on it every year or so compared to the Real one you buy! But it is what I use, So...glad I didn't buy a GH5 then! Hell, I might to have...had...to...buy...a...Apple!! Jesus, I felt almost ill for a second or two! You know a Resolve Dongle and a Apple Dongle, sort of sounds well, obscene! 

I imagine there's a lot of people who wanted to grade the 10bit files in Resolve. I wonder if the new codec in the summer release will play nicer with these programs. Hopefully it will be early summer.

[webrunner5]

Well I went to Vimeo and I can see he edited all of it looks like. I thought the begining was a little too light, bright, overexposed, whatever you want to call it. But it was his grade not mine. SO he is happy and I am not.  But I did like it overall.

[Emanuel]

7 hours ago, Orangenz said:

I don't understand his point. He thinks the autofocus isn't worth $2000 and the example he talks about is focussing on the image on the wall behind him. No AF in the world knows your thoughts to change to the background then to you for no reason at all. Mobile app is great tool, love it. Wish was higher resolution. 

In AFC mode. I'm always in manual mode so never used it. In manual mode you have to drag the 1 area a little bit. 

Man, you need to test it. Pretty useful. Who cares for full AF after then? A machine can't beat the man. That's the whole point.

 

[Orangenz]

2 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Man, you need to test it. Pretty useful. Who cares for full AF after then? A machine can't beat the man. That's the whole point.

Will try it in an Easter shoot tomorrow. But even the EM1 has same thing. Main thing I need is the monitor. 4k focus hard! Usual workflow is press to AF then finetune manually. But really, all I care about is that vlog is just so special. I tried to work with it on the GH4 and it was hard work. The image wasn't quite robust for my needs and it never was quite right. This looks pretty in seconds. So love it! Will have to go back and rewatch Luke's grading tutorials now. 

 

[zerocool22]

6 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

 

And I am not surprised about the Free Resolve. They only do updates on it every year or so compared to the Real one you buy! But it is what I use, So...glad I didn't buy a GH5 then! Hell, I might to have...had...to...buy...a...Apple!! Jesus, I felt almost ill for a second or two! You know a Resolve Dongle and a Apple Dongle, sort of sounds well, obscene! 

What is obscene about it. You buy the dongle once and you got a NLE/color suite for life. As for Adobe you will keep paying and paying. (if you only buy adobe premiere montly it is 24€ per month, so after 3,5 years you are at the same pricepoint of a resolve dongle. Heck you even get one free if you buy one of their camera's.)  I really love this blackmagic approach!

[Emanuel]

1 hour ago, Orangenz said:

Will try it in an Easter shoot tomorrow. But even the EM1 has same thing. Main thing I need is the monitor. 4k focus hard! Usual workflow is press to AF then finetune manually. But really, all I care about is that vlog is just so special. I tried to work with it on the GH4 and it was hard work. The image wasn't quite robust for my needs and it never was quite right. This looks pretty in seconds. So love it!

 

Will look forward to follow up your testing! Interesting to follow it under distinct circumstances such as low light and poor contrast setup, obviously. Without hunting, tap-to-focus can shut up the FUD spread a bit all over internet against one of the most lovely pieces of hardware and cameras ever produced.

[Fritz Pierre]

12 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

Well I must admit I had to go to the old innerweb to remember what the Hell was a "Atomos Power Station". First product I ever seen that has no specs to offer on it's website! Interesting. I guess you are Suppose to guess how much more time you have with it for the amazing low price of??

Their batteries are rated at 5200Ah...GH4/5 batteries are 1860Ah...theoretically about 5 times + the power in the 2 battery pack Atomos...so the PowerStation is a nice sollution if you're not walking around with the camera...plus the batteries are hot swappable...and I already own a bunch of extra Sony batteries for my Shogun & Blade...as these cameras up the bit rate and processing game, so follows the power needs....the Shogun, which I record to, hogs power!!!...but you get Prores...so it's all good!....a handy solution for my personal needs...

[webrunner5]

Well I don't know if this has been posted. If it has delete it plz. Metabones firmware update for the GH5.

https://***URL not allowed***/metabones-firmware-upgrade-canon-cn-e-18-80mm-t4-4-panasonic-gh5-support/

[webrunner5]

Shooting Veydra Primes on the GH5. Good article.

http://www.newsshooter.com/2017/04/14/veydra-mini-primes-panasonic-gh5/

[Inazuma]

So I went to Jessops today and to my surprise they had a demo unit of the GH5 running!

I was super impressed with it. Body feels great, stabilisation is fantastic and the AF worked really well, at least with the kit lens. I think the image is stellar as well. And although it doesn't have the "beautifying" effect of Fuji, it does represent the scene quite well and I'm sure could polish up well

GH5 with kit lens, standard profile (-5 NR, sharpening):

XT2 18-55, Standard profile (-1 highlights/shadows, -4 sharpening):

The rep was a nice guy as well, although we did have a long discussion about equivalence  

[mechanicalEYE]

 

[SuperSet]

So, 1 area AF for 24p, 30p or 60p?  Not sure why they chopped it into 2 sentences there.

[Orangenz]

On 11/04/2017 at 1:37 AM, Orangenz said:

I'd add

- Try using 1-area af. Panasonic should probably label this as VIDEO FOCUS and have it as default or something for video shooting.

:D

[zetty]

I don't think Panasonic anticipated all this fuss about AF, so the settings and the manual aren't that well thought out.

Frankly, neither did I. Can't believe the % of attention this camera is getting that's going into this. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass about AF even if it could be a nice extra. I rarely use gimbal and can live with deep DOF or keeping appropriate distance and just tapping on my phone attached to my arm when I need to refocus. Now, with IBIS (which is truly amazing) I'll use gimbal even less as I don't mind slight handheld look most of the time.

FWIW, I think the Panasonic's excuse for not implementing PD focus because it degrades IQ is bullshit though. I reckon it was a commercial decision they had to make as clearly there is a limit of R&D that can go into a camera at this price.

[Orangenz]

7 minutes ago, zetty said:

I don't think Panasonic anticipated all this fuss about AF, so the settings and the manual aren't that well thought out.

Frankly, neither did I. Can't believe the % of attention this camera is getting that's going into this. Personally, I don't give a rat's ass about AF even if it could be a nice extra. I rarely use gimbal and can live with deep DOF or keeping appropriate distance and just tapping on my phone attached to my arm when I need to refocus. Now, with IBIS (which is truly amazing) I'll use gimbal even less as I don't mind slight handheld look most of the time.

FWIW, I think the Panasonic's excuse for not implementing PD focus because it degrades IQ is bullshit though. I reckon it was a commercial decision they had to make as clearly there is a limit of R&D that can go into a camera at this price.

Haha, I remember that interview yeah. There's got to be a lot of that sort of thing in commercial products though. It has to be self-sustaining or things fall down. Like printer manufacturers and the ink cartridges they make with ic chips. 

[Ken Ross]

5 hours ago, mechanicalEYE said:

 

Guys, I feel very vindicated at this point. I've been preaching precisely this from the day I got the camera. I always thought that 225 point AF that Santa Claus had suggested, on is site, was nonsense. How could that be effective when the camera decides where to focus and not you? 1-point was always the fastest and least error prone with the least amount of hunting. I also felt messing with the speed & sensitivity, in most cases, was more harmful than helpful. I still feel that way.

And, I'm sorry, but this is why I always felt that Max, more than anyone, was responsible for so much of this bad press. He never gave the proper settings a fair chance. I think he was trying to be helpful, but I posted videos that mirrored his as best I could and got entirely different results.

At any rate, hopefully this will turn the tide over some of the undeserved (IMO) bad press this camera has gotten.

[Orangenz]

5 hours ago, Ken Ross said:

...1-point was always the fastest...

1-AREA lolol