Panasonic GH5 - all is revealed!

[hyalinejim]

1 hour ago, Ken Ross said:

Jon, I'm gonna hack mine and get it down to -50!!!

If it goes down to minus eleven I'll be happy

[Cas1]

I hope the GH5 can make it's photo and video look organic or video like. Like Ken and other say both have their uses!

It would be nice to dial in any look one likes in camera, and shoot as you envision it right on the SD card, for a fast workflow. Custom LUT profile!

For the times I want flexibility, I want a clean robust raw recording to massage and tune later on. My question is, will the GH5 offer a more clean, flexible and robust recording then the GH4?

To measure this I think an external recorder and RAW is needed to really see what comes out of the HDMI, which I assume will offer the highest bitrate 10 bit data signal.

For the run and gunner in me I also like to know how good the 10 bit 400Mb files are, the highest quality internal recording setting.

Recording the best signal goes together with the best settings. Lenses and light are also key, so comparing to other brands should ideally be done using the same glass for comparing colour rendition for instance.

For the sharpness setting, can we have something like "Off  to 10", the minus numbers make no sense to me. Or does it actually mean blur?

[dbp]

4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

To me I would agree that 4k is Over the Top, what I like is 4k down scaled to 1080p. I think that is My sweet spot, with a little mix of film look in it. I am not into the turquoise skies, crushed blacks, film grain from hell stuff. I want to see buttery smooth stuff with good definition in it. Yeah 35mm movie film has that, but we can't afford that.

Hmm, I think I just described sort of a BMPCC Raw look I like so much. Oh well.

Pocket Raw is amazing, no doubt. Gives you a lot of choice. No sharpening at all with stylistic grade? No problem. Sharpen a bit, for a bright, saturated nature show type of look? Also no problem. 

[hyalinejim]

10 hours ago, jonpais said:

the SlashCAM review says,  

In all video modes, only an estimated 4768 horizontal pixels are used, which corresponds to a crop factor of 2.26. This is true for full, 4K-UHD as well as for Cine4K formats.

This video just in, Panasonic rep says "they no longer crop the sensor - it's the full width"

Slashcam are now saying in their comments thread

Quote

The read-out behavior of the GH5 sensor has been very difficult to read in the network. We would like to change this article quickly ...

Not sure if that refers to the crop question. Source is here

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashcam.de%2Fartikel%2FTest%2FPanasonic-GH5-Sensor-Verhalten---Aufloesung--Slowmo--Rolling-Shutter-.html&edit-text=&act=url

And in another video (I think that these guys are the Hairy Bikers of the camera world)...

Nice feature for event shooters and run & gun: auto ISO seems to compensate for non-constant aperture in the 12-60 2.8-4

[hyalinejim]

AF is snappy enough. Watch when the dancer ducks below frame and pops back up. Focus shifts to the background and then back to her quite quickly. Towards the end the movement increases and she gets closer to the camera.

Rather than having AF constantly on, which I can't really envisage using, I presume there's some function whereby you can press a button to search for AF, and once you hit it you let it go and AF stops? And does touchscreen AF work like this?

[Simon Shasha]

Just had a look at that Cinema5D GH5 "review" (if you can even call it that).

Anyway, as I was going through the comments, the bloke that wrote the article commented this: "The 400mbit codec will be an all-i codec, which requires much more data for the same amount of information. I don’t expect this codec to fix any of the problems pointed out, as those are most probably related to processing and not encoding."

Is he suggesting that ALL-I 400mbps is equivalent to IPB 150mbps?

[jonpais]

10 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

This video just in, Panasonic rep says "they no longer crop the sensor - it's the full width"

 

He says you get a 5-year warranty if you preorder. Wonder if that's applicable in all countries, and what that warranty actually covers. Is there any other manufacturer offering a 5-year warranty on their cameras?

10 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

 

Nice feature for event shooters and run & gun: auto ISO seems to compensate for non-constant aperture in the 12-60 2.8-4

When he's testing the tracking AF in video mode, the image in the LCD is blurry, but he keeps exclaiming, 'absolutely brilliant'. If he was side-lit and wearing earrings, he might have stayed in focus.

[Vesku]

12 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

 

Nice feature for event shooters and run & gun: auto ISO seems to compensate for non-constant aperture in the 12-60 2.8-4

It is sad and disturbing that GH5 does not show auto iso value. It would be nice to see what iso the camera chooses. Fortunately GH5 can shoot video with 6k photo. It shows exposure information and iso reading all the time.

[jonpais]

6 minutes ago, Vesku said:

It is sad and disturbing that GH5 does not show auto iso value. It would be nice to see what iso the camera chooses. Fortunately GH5 can shoot video with 6k photo. It shows exposure information and iso reading all the time.

Can we presume that if you're shooting at ISO 200 and zoom in from 12mm f/2.8 to 60mm f/4 that the ISO will change to 400? I don't find that so disturbing. Though it would be cool to see the ISO values changing displayed on the LCD, it is constantly changing, so I don't see the inconvenience. It's only one stop after all.

[Vesku]

20 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Can we presume that if you're shooting at ISO 200 and zoom in from 12mm f/2.8 to 60mm f/4 that the ISO will change to 400? I don't find that so disturbing. Though it would be cool to see the ISO values changing displayed on the LCD, it is constantly changing, so I don't see the inconvenience. It's only one stop after all.

The point is that you cant know if the iso is iso200 or iso3200 in the first place.

[jonpais]

8 minutes ago, Vesku said:

The point is that you cant know if the iso is iso200 or iso3200 in the first place.

Can't be true. I don't know how it works, but you must be able to set the ISO before enabling the feature that changes ISO when zooming with a variable aperture lens. If not, like you say, it's sad and disappointing. And I would go so far as to say useless.

Edit: it's quite amusing in my opinion to read the comments in your post about this topic over at DPReview. One commenter writes:

The basic Auto ISO implemtation sucks, but I got the G85 anyway, and I quickly got used to setting aperture, shutter and iso manually.

He set them manually! Fucking amazing! I'm not making fun of you, but setting aperture, shutter speed and ISO on the G85 is a piece of cake.

[Vesku]

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

Can't be true. I don't know how it works, but you must be able to set the ISO before enabling the feature that changes ISO when zooming with a variable aperture lens. If not, like you say, it's sad and disappointing. And I would go so far as to say useless.

Edit: it's quite amusing in my opinion to read the comments in your post about this topic over at DPReview. One commenter writes:

The basic Auto ISO implemtation sucks, but I got the G85 anyway, and I quickly got used to setting aperture, shutter and iso manually.

He set them manually! Fucking amazing! I'm not making fun of you, but setting aperture, shutter speed and ISO on the G85 is a piece of cake.

Setting everything manually is fine and a way to get exactly what a user wants. It works well in Panasonics.

If someone wants to use automatic exposure (i.e. auto iso) it is not nice when Panasonic is making life harder by blocking exposure information. It is not always possible to use full manual but I still want to know roughly what is happening. Anyway I will be shooting with 6k photo 30P video and when using 4k 60P the exposure is not so critical compared to 30P.

edit:

"....feature that changes ISO when zooming with a variable aperture .... "

Obviously it works only with auto iso and then you cant know what current iso is.

 

[Vesku]

Can someone test how much better the 6k photo video is compared to normal (4k only) modes? Is the AF working properly with 6k photo video? Is the NR as good as in 4k video?

[webrunner5]

14 hours ago, Simon Shasha said:

Just had a look at that Cinema5D GH5 "review" (if you can even call it that).

Anyway, as I was going through the comments, the bloke that wrote the article commented this: "The 400mbit codec will be an all-i codec, which requires much more data for the same amount of information. I don’t expect this codec to fix any of the problems pointed out, as those are most probably related to processing and not encoding."

Is he suggesting that ALL-I 400mbps is equivalent to IPB 150mbps?

 

"Guy McLoughlin rutenrudi • 2 months ago

But the 400 Mbit spec is for an ALL-I format instead of an IPB format. From 10 years of experience shooting with both Panasonic professional and consumer cameras, the ALL-I formats rarely outperform the IPB formats at 1/3 of the data-rate. The only time I've ever seen an improvement is for high speed events where your subject is moving really quickly across the frame, and even then the difference in the finished image is not that big.

IPB encoding is really efficient but it requires a LOT of processing power to produce a finished image that matches the much higher bit-rate ALL-I encoded video.

Try comparing the GH4 50 Mbps IPB encoded 1080p footage with the 200 Mbps ALL-I encoded footage, and you will see that the 50 Mbps footage looks identical and occasionally better than the 200 Mbps footage.

rutenrudi Guy McLoughlin • 2 months ago

The 200mbit implementation of the GH4 is a joke, which is also why I don't feel that Lanny offers the great encoders that you claim.

Obviously it's not only about the Bitrate, but the 80-100mbit of a GH4 in 4K is already too little IMHO. Now you have way more data but not really the space to keep it.
For imagefilms and lowbudget stuff I can see how that's still appealing, for some users this is simply off, it's no help to sugarcoat this, especially when you think about existing formats and how they perform. And Panasonic is meant to rule with 2/3 the bandwidth, sure.

Guy McLoughlin rutenrudi • 2 months ago

But it's an ALL-I format, so there's really not much being done to the image. Each 200 Mbps frame is a separate entity that has nothing to do with the frames that came before it or after it.

IPB frames look at the frames that came before and after it, and only record the difference between the frames. This requires a LOT of processing power to work properly, or you end up with poor looking footage.

Generally when you compare Panasonic IPB footage with ALL-I footage shot at 4 times the data-rate, the IPB footage is pretty much identical, which shows just how good the IPB encoding is.

I've shot with a few Sony cameras ( both consumer and professional ) over the past 10 years, and the Sony IPB encoded footage has never looked as good as the Panasonic equivalent. Which is why I'm not worried about Panasonic 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 footage encoded at 150 Mbps."

Something to think about.

[Vesku]

20 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I've shot with a few Sony cameras ( both consumer and professional ) over the past 10 years, and the Sony IPB encoded footage has never looked as good as the Panasonic equivalent. Which is why I'm not worried about Panasonic 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 footage encoded at 150 Mbps."

Something to think about.

GH5 18 Mpixel 10bit 200Mbs HEVC video has twice the efficiency compared to h.264. So it has 3-4 times more video image data than 4K 10-bit 4:2:2.

[webrunner5]

2 minutes ago, Vesku said:

GH5 18 Mpixel 10bit 200Mbs HEVC video has twice the efficiency compared to h.264. So it has 3-4 times more video image data than 4K 10-bit 4:2:2.

Yeah but how many seconds can you shoot it?

[Vesku]

11 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Yeah but how many seconds can you shoot it?

The whole day if I want. With several memory cards and GH5 two hot swappable mem card slots.

[Georgios]

51 minutes ago, Vesku said:

GH5 18 Mpixel 10bit 200Mbs HEVC video has twice the efficiency compared to h.264. So it has 3-4 times more video image data than 4K 10-bit 4:2:2.

Is 6K available at 16:9 aspect?..i think it's for 4:3...

[Vesku]

3 minutes ago, Georgios said:

Is 6K available at 16:9 aspect?..i think it's for 4:3...

It is 1:1, 4:3 or 3:2. I wonder why 16:9 is not possible. 3:2 is good for post stabilization and post cropping.

[Simon Shasha]

3 hours ago, Vesku said:

GH5 18 Mpixel 10bit 200Mbs HEVC video has twice the efficiency compared to h.264. So it has 3-4 times more video image data than 4K 10-bit 4:2:2.

The GH5 doesn't shoot video with HEVC. Only in 6K photo-mode is the HEVC employed.

3 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

 

"Guy McLoughlin rutenrudi • 2 months ago

But the 400 Mbit spec is for an ALL-I format instead of an IPB format. From 10 years of experience shooting with both Panasonic professional and consumer cameras, the ALL-I formats rarely outperform the IPB formats at 1/3 of the data-rate. The only time I've ever seen an improvement is for high speed events where your subject is moving really quickly across the frame, and even then the difference in the finished image is not that big.

IPB encoding is really efficient but it requires a LOT of processing power to produce a finished image that matches the much higher bit-rate ALL-I encoded video.

Try comparing the GH4 50 Mbps IPB encoded 1080p footage with the 200 Mbps ALL-I encoded footage, and you will see that the 50 Mbps footage looks identical and occasionally better than the 200 Mbps footage.

rutenrudi Guy McLoughlin • 2 months ago

The 200mbit implementation of the GH4 is a joke, which is also why I don't feel that Lanny offers the great encoders that you claim.

Obviously it's not only about the Bitrate, but the 80-100mbit of a GH4 in 4K is already too little IMHO. Now you have way more data but not really the space to keep it.
For imagefilms and lowbudget stuff I can see how that's still appealing, for some users this is simply off, it's no help to sugarcoat this, especially when you think about existing formats and how they perform. And Panasonic is meant to rule with 2/3 the bandwidth, sure.

Guy McLoughlin rutenrudi • 2 months ago

But it's an ALL-I format, so there's really not much being done to the image. Each 200 Mbps frame is a separate entity that has nothing to do with the frames that came before it or after it.

IPB frames look at the frames that came before and after it, and only record the difference between the frames. This requires a LOT of processing power to work properly, or you end up with poor looking footage.

Generally when you compare Panasonic IPB footage with ALL-I footage shot at 4 times the data-rate, the IPB footage is pretty much identical, which shows just how good the IPB encoding is.

I've shot with a few Sony cameras ( both consumer and professional ) over the past 10 years, and the Sony IPB encoded footage has never looked as good as the Panasonic equivalent. Which is why I'm not worried about Panasonic 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 footage encoded at 150 Mbps."

Something to think about.

So, ultimately, strictly in terms of quality, IPB 150Mbps is identical, or better, than 400Mbps ALL-I?