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GH5 focus excellence


Asmundma
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2 hours ago, matthere said:

The key seems to be to test and learn the camera settings..

Using an external recorder and being a paid Panasonic Lumix Luminary is also key ;)

Only kidding. As long as folk spend a good few days training up muscle memory, then finding the right combination of autofocus settings for the job in hand will be no different to taking the lens cap off an a6500 and hitting record.

Sort of.

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13 minutes ago, hijodeibn said:

So we have to choose between bad autofocus and dead skintones?….I can live with bad autofocus…..dead people only for zombie movies…. GH5 far better!

From 7:59 onward, good skin tones, no hunting AF.

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23 minutes ago, hijodeibn said:

So we have to choose between bad autofocus and dead skintones?….I can live with bad autofocus…..dead people only for zombie movies…. GH5 far better!

The GH5 has far better straight out of the box colour than any prosumer Sony, though decent skin tones can be achieved using tweaked profiles and correct WB. No idea what Max was thinking when setting up the a6500, because it potentially undermines whatever he was doing in setting the various Panny focus parameters.

People will say "He's had that Sony for many months and still can't set it up correctly, so why should we trust his findings with a week old GH5?"

 

31 minutes ago, rotgg said:

I just did interview that was over 3hr long wonder how the a6500 auto focus would have fared by the end :) 

I would be more concerned that you escaped the ensuing house fire.

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6 hours ago, hijodeibn said:

So we have to choose between bad autofocus and dead skintones?….I can live with bad autofocus…..dead people only for zombie movies…. GH5 far better!

Just as it's possible to exorcise bad colors and RS wobble from a Sony (given you are paying attention to it and are willing to invest some time for research and testing), it's obviously possible to use the GH5 on a gimbal with CAF (given you did some exhaustive testing). I call this mastering the shortcomings. A much more dangerous attitude is to rely on your camera's strengths. Remember the days when, in order to shoot with a steadicam, you only had wide lenses and small apertures ...

I find one aspect very underrated: the influence of the autofocus breathing the lens produces. You can test this by focussing manually, thereby you can better distinguish hunting from breathing. I promise you: the differences between lenses are dramatic. 

Avoid hunting (no big issue with the A6500): use a more moderate aperture. Never track focus if the motif is not completely within range, test different focus speeds. Avoid breathing: don't force the AF to perform extreme focus transitions. And use an "apneatic" lens ;-)

 

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Its now quite clear. The PhotoJoseph due had to back off - he admits in the comments of his video. Had expected GOD (the English guy you know)  to comment, but he seems still to be testing. (please do not take it unfriendly)

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And so I feel compelled to show the shots I've taken with my GH5, 2 or 3 of which tried to mirror Max's shots. The first video duplicates Max's video performing the same 'lens in front of the lens' clip. His failed each time. The 2nd mirrors his outdoors shots that also failed. The indoor video, again using CAF, was taken in quite dark conditions as we were having heavy rain and I left all the lights off. The 4th video, candid mall shots, was done just because my A6300 failed at times in the same mall and the same area. I wanted to see a) could the GH5 focus on the subject and not the background and b) could it retain focus and not drift to the background as my A6300 has.

I'm showing this only because a) some may not have seen these shots and b) it's the right place for it to show that a GH5 can focus correctly in AVC mode. All I did was use the central area focusing with no changes to speed or responsiveness. It would appear this worked far better than anything Max used.

I really don't know what else to say or do to show folks that Max's test may not be indicative of the GH5's AF performance. It's simply one data point. There are many many GH5 videos out there that show none of the issues Max was having.

 

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I looked at those videos.  yeah, the GH5 focusing sucks.  Don't look at the subject, but look at the surrounding area.  You can see the camera going back and forth even in static shots trying to anticipate movement.  In the shallow depth of field videos, the back and forth caused the blurred background to "bloom" and de-"bloom".  The a7sii does the same thing and it annoys the hell out of me.  The a6500 doesn't and that is one of the reason I still have it (even though it has horrible rolling shutter).  a6500 is a focusing god compared to the a7sii and apparently to the gh5 also.  Oh, well, I guess Panasonic wouldn't be selling as many gh5s as they thought they would.  The company was focusing on image quality while a lot of people have "moved on" from image quality and are looking for things like good auto focusing.

Photojoseph guy.. dude, what a shill.  His videos show the lens focusing back and forth.  Yeah, the subject (him) is in focus, but the camera is still focusing back and forth trying to anticipate movement.  Good focusing cameras don't do that.  Perhaps, I'm wrong.  Maybe, he's not a shill, but just ignorant. Or maybe he doesn't care that the camera was "hunting" because the subject was in focus.  However, no real video professional would accept that type of focusing.  I cannot think of any movie that has that type of focusing without doing it on purpose.  And I'm having a hard time remembering any movie, tv show that would do that on purpose.

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