Is anyone moving to GH5? (non provocative question)

[Kisaha]

It is the talk of the town, and I thought to bring the question to our circle.

It seems like the GH5 is the camera to get for video these days (well, 4-6 months later actually!).

It seems like most (video) people will start moving to GH5 (m4/3 owners, a6500 probable buyers, NX users, Canon -I am not waiting anymore, Nikon - I CAN'T really wait anymore).

What are your thoughts about where the industry is going right now? Is the weak NX codec, and the lack of IBIS (and the not evolving system of course) panicking us? Is the HDR here and we have to produce HDR content? Is 10 bit a necessity, and can we afford the hardware upgrade for edit and deliver? Just some thoughts between a boring editing session!

[Marco Tecno]

Not much a video guy. Say 5% or less, compared to stills. I'll wait for an apsc camera able to surpass nx1 in stills AND video.

[SMGJohn]

It seems the camera industry is moving away from enthusiast photographers to professionals for full steam now, the reason why I think the NX series did so badly is because they were targeting regular people like smartphone users instead of the professionals. 

I come to a point in my life were having the latest and best is vanity, I had my Xperia Z for almost 4 years now and I see that I rarely use it for much else than what you would not be able to do in a low end device anyway, sure it may not have the fastest processor out there and not the greatest camera even for its own class back then, but it gets the job done.

The same goes for my camera, its materialistic obsessive to continue purchasing newer and newer products because you want the quality to be superior, its not true a good camera wont make you a good photographer, its the way you use that camera that makes you a good photographer, whether your work turns out good or not. 
I seen modern Chinese movies shot with 16mm Soviet cameras you can get off eBay for like 80 dollars and these movies have better cinematography than most Hollywood movies and they were a lot more enjoyable story wise too. 

GH5 looks like a good camera no doubt and price wise is very good as well 1999 dollars for such great features? Its a steal if you ask me. 

But I too used to be like "Quality matters" but I had time to use my NX1 now which in a few months now is almost 3 years old, think about that for a second, over 2 years old and still produces excellent images and video, the hack has also done a lot for us but it would been even better if they managed to make it spit out MJPEG's with little to no in-camera processing specially making it shoot 2160p60, but I wont complain they did an excellent job non the less. 

I for one wont be upgrading for a long while, this camera will stay with me for at least 6 years in total, and one day I will use it for a full feature film, I grew up with Soviet cinema and I know that masterpieces are not dependant on camera equipment but only the ingenuity if their production crews. 

This does not mean a shitty Nokia phone camera is the tool for the job, there is of course a limit and there always will be, for photography most pro photographers seem to say that around 4 to 6 megapixels is really the sweet spot for digital delivery but if you go print you must go higher, 1080p seems to be that sweet spot too, even though 35mm produces up to 6k digital prints if it is low clean ISO film, 1080p still looks great even on a big screen but for me 2k is minimum in a cinema, most cinema projectors are only 2k too. 

Its been a while since 4k has been out and overall the adoption of 4k screens is very slow still, 1080p came out for the first time in the late 80s, you can start to imagine now how long it will be before 4k is universal standard for everything. They did not even start to get serious about 1080p until 2006 when Blu Ray was being released despite there being a delivery format that supported HD delivery in the 90s like the D-VHS and MuseLD.

Another thing I noticed, majority of movies and TV-series are produced at low cost and quality is not generally very important, often they just rent big 4k cameras without giving much about its capabilities as long as it just shoots the resolution they are happy enough. 
Also most Hollywood films these days are shot behind green screens and more time is spent in the editing rooms than the scene. 
A good camera is not essential these days even in the industry as most movies uses low range colours and shadows and purposely crushed, video for TV are usually decapitated before being broadcasted in order to limit the bitrate they often kill colour depth and destroy dynamic range to fit it in the standard hence they end up looking very greyish. 

[Drew Veeneman]

The GH5 looks really good but I'll be sticking with my NX1 and NX500. I prefer recording 4k in H.265 recording format and APS-C sensor size.

The 400 mbs All-I frame recording sounds a little scary. 10-bit 4:2:2 is huge though...

[Parker]

I might take another look at the gh5 in the summertime once it has been out in the wild for a while and recieved all the promised firmware updates and features fully added. I can't really see myself getting one new though, $2k plus a $650 speed booster (a must-have for m43 in my opinion) means it's not exactly a cheap option to move right over to.

My NX1 and NX500 continue to astound me, especially now that I have one of Luca's super awesome NX-L's to play with. IQ wise, for me, the files coming out of the Samsung's have more than enough dynamic range, detail, color, and yes even low-light ability (with a fast lens I just very rarely need anything higher than 1600). I had a wedding shoot earlier this week with awesome results and I'm shooting a short film tomorrow with them and am fully confident in their ability to capture great images.

I will certainly be very jealous of the 4k 60p, 10-bit color and super cool 6k 4:3 anamorphic mode that GH5 users are going to get to play with though.

 

[Kisaha]

I am not sure I could be able to edit the best of the GH5 files right now, and I wouldn't like to change all my hardware this year (2500euros for the GH5 kit is nothing versus the investment in editing hardware).

My most serious issue with NX right now is the low light performance in video, obviously the sensor is better than that. From early footage it seems that 3200 GH5 is more usable than NX 3200. The codec doesn't seem too efficient either. 

When the GH4 was out it was the must buy for video orientated people, now it is GH5, like then I waited for something different, and NX delivered. Until I decide move on to GH5 I can see someone else offer a more suitable and more mature camera (Fuji?Canon?Nikon?even a7000 Sony?). 

Also, I do not see a similar all around lens in any system like the 16-50S, this keeps me firmly attached to the system for now.

p.s Is anyone going to review the NX-L ??!!

[Marco Tecno]

consider that GH5 at 3200 could be cheating a little bit. I mean that perhaps you'll need 3200 "sooner", being more like a 2000 real ISO. At least GH4 is like this.

[Parker]

@Kisaha I've been meaning to write about my thoughts on the nx-l for a while, now that I've put it through the paces a little bit with several shoots. I really like it... Definitely does what it's supposed to, happily makes lenses wider and faster. I've done a few shots with the same lens with and without for comparison, but nothing crazy clinical like I assume people on here are interested in seeing, as far as a scientific breakdown of how chromatic aberration and sharpness might be affected by the adapter. 

One negative, I was sad to realize that my contax Zeiss lenses won't mount to the nx-l at all, so that was a bummer. Oh well. Lenses I've used and liked so far with it include the rokinon 50 and 85, Nikkor 80-200 2.8 and 28mm 2.8 ais, Helios 44-2 and tokina 28-70 f2.6-2.8. The venerable sigma 18-35 is still surprisingly useable as well, with vignetting obviously but on the longer range good enough for my uses. 

The design Luca created is pretty ingenious, the back element, which is square, spins around freely so that it can sit right up near the sensor and then the rest of the adapter can spin around it and lock into place. The build quality is fantastic, really looks very smooth and professional, like it was made by samsung for the nx1. 

I've got images and video I've made with it that I can post if people are interested, but once again I just haven't taken the time to do super scientific comparisons or anything. It's just immediately become a part of my image-gathering workflow and I consider it money very well-spent. 

[Kisaha]

@Parker Just a few video examples with different lenses would be useful if possible.

@Marco Tecno  NX is the closest to the truth! but I was talking about "real" ISO, how the camera acts in real low light conditions, I am sure we will see in the near future (which is not so near anyway)

6400ISO 

Samsung NX1 5281 ISO

Sony a6000 5185 ISO

Canon 7DmarkII 5105 ISO

Nikon D500 4705 ISO

Olympus E-M1 3870 ISO

Panasonic GH4 3835 ISO

[sondreg]

On 6.1.2017 at 9:55 PM, Parker said:

@Kisaha

I've got images and video I've made with it that I can post if people are interested, but once again I just haven't taken the time to do super scientific comparisons or anything. It's just immediately become a part of my image-gathering workflow and I consider it money very well-spent. 

please do!

[Jimmy]

I'm having both.... keeping nx1, selling a7s... buying gh5.

Adios Sony..... will be happy to see you leave.

I love the nx1... will be great alongside the gh5