GH5 focus excellence

[jonpais]

3 hours ago, Chris Adams said:

I just posted a test which kind of does that. Once the camera starts recording no interaction with it other than pointing at objects in the test field - pan / tilt / back and forward on slider. Shallow depth of field, range of objects, varying light intensity.  Sound seems to get neglected round here so put a bit of effort into that too. 

 

Take my money! ? That in-camera mic sounds great! ?

[Davey]

9 minutes ago, jonpais said:

That's exactly how I shoot with my G85 - dial focus assist to 10X, go into the menus, AFF/AFS, select AFS, then use AF lock for just about everything. Or tap to focus on the image app. Last night though, the app kept freezing on me, not sure why. This morning, all seems fine again.

I've heard that the Panasonic apps are quite good. Once I have a fair bit of footage in the can (building muscle memory and seeing what I can get away with in post using Natural / -5 everything) I'll look into them.

[Chris Adams]

3 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Take my money! ? That in-camera mic sounds great! ?

Ah .... sorry Jon, I think you guessed, and this is probably a cardinal EOSHD sin but the audio setup (Sennheiser 416, Rycote suspension, RME FF800 pre / interface) cost me more than the camera and kit lens  

That said, the onboard mic / AD convertor isn't too shabby. With a decent pop filter and maybe something like this: https://www.seelectronics.com/reflexion-filter-pro you could get decent results ... maybe. 

[jonpais]

Just now, Chris Adams said:

Ah .... sorry Jon, I think you guessed, and this is probably a cardinal EOSHD sin but the audio setup (Sennheiser 416, Rycote suspension, RME FF800 pre / interface) cost me more than the camera and kit lens  

That said, the onboard mic / AD convertor isn't too shabby. With a decent pop filter and maybe something like this: https://www.seelectronics.com/reflexion-filter-pro you could get decent results ... maybe. 

I was going to say that in- camera mic sounded just like a Sennheiser. ? Even a $200 shotgun mic is going to sound tremendously better than the in-camera mic. I've been loving the RodeLink, but your setup has much better sound for sure!

[Ken Ross]

4 hours ago, Chris Adams said:

I just posted a test which kind of does that. Once the camera starts recording no interaction with it other than pointing at objects in the test field - pan / tilt / back and forward on slider. Shallow depth of field, range of objects, varying light intensity.  Sound seems to get neglected round here so put a bit of effort into that too. 

 

Great job Chris! You certainly showed how effective 1-area AF can be. However I suspect no matter what you or I say or do, there will always be the doubters. It's impressive that your video wasn't even shot in the higher frame rate...but of course you'll be chastised for using an external recorder.

3 hours ago, Davey said:

Just set my GX80 up as single point, smallest box, back button focus - nice and snappy when shooting video (even in low light) with a 14-140ii.

The GH5 should be equally as fast if you avoid all this complicated fannying about with settings nobody really understands.

Edit: AF-S and not AF-C 

Yes, we must spread the word and make believers out of the doubters!

3 hours ago, Borbarad said:

GH5 AF Fix done??? It seems!!! See video description for details!

 

Works with 4K 60p and also slightly slower with 24p

B

Here here Borbarad, well done!

[jonpais]

6 hours ago, Ken Ross said:

Great job Chris! You certainly showed how effective 1-area AF can be. However I suspect no matter what you or I say or do, there will always be the doubters. It's impressive that your video wasn't even shot in the higher frame rate...but of course you'll be chastised for using an external recorder.

Yes, we must spread the word and make believers out of the doubters!

Here here Borbarad, well done!

So it seems to do well when you're walking around the house pointing at different stuff - so why won't it focus properly when you're doing something like an unboxing video? Like when Max and Joseph were doing their beauty shot test. Algorithm?

[wonderboy]

Using these settings the GH5 should become a AF Monster! So no more AF controversy?

 

[Dimitris Stasinos]

39 minutes ago, wonderboy said:

Using these settings the GH5 should become a AF Monster! So no more AF controversy?

 

AF seems to work fine here, but the shots look stuttery (is this a word?) on my monitor, very distracting...I don't see any words about shutter speed on his description, so i can only guess that this was shot on high shutter speed to minimise DOF and test AF?

[jonpais]

44 minutes ago, Dimitris Stasinos said:

AF seems to work fine here, but the shots look stuttery (is this a word?) on my monitor, very distracting...I don't see any words about shutter speed on his description, so i can only guess that this was shot on high shutter speed to minimise DOF and test AF?

That was my guess too, it looks stuttery on my monitor as well. ND filters are your friend.

[Chris Adams]

3 hours ago, jonpais said:

So it seems to do well when you're walking around the house pointing at different stuff - so why won't it focus properly when you're doing something like an unboxing video? Like when Max and Joseph were doing their beauty shot test. Algorithm?

Difficult to say ... if there's one thing I'd take from the PhotoJospeh / Max day out in Spokane video, and the test I did, the GH5 AF-C definitely likes text - most of the objects in my test had some form of text and some of the best results in theirs did too. 

That said, to me autofocus is mainly about situations where you have minimal control over what's happening in the field of view, but want to capture footage from within it - quite different from their test scenarios which one way or another were setup quite formally. Maybe we need an International Standard for Continuous Autofocus Testing?

 

 

[Ken Ross]

5 hours ago, jonpais said:

So it seems to do well when you're walking around the house pointing at different stuff - so why won't it focus properly when you're doing something like an unboxing video? Like when Max and Joseph were doing their beauty shot test. Algorithm?

Jon, honestly, I've given up trying to figure out why there's such a diversity of results. I certainly don't begin to have those failures and many other shooters don't. It's a mystery, it really is. The one thing that's clear in some of the videos that Max does, is he tends to place things much closer to the lens than I and others might typically do. Is that a factor? Who knows. But then I did the same 'lens in front of the camera' test and mine was fine. 

Most of my tests were done with the 14-140 lens and I suspect that lens might also be a quicker focuser than those that Max used. My just acquired Panasonic 15mm 1.7 focuses well, but not quite as quickly. I also know that Max tends not to use 1-area AF and I'd guarantee that's a major factor. Lots of variables.

[scotchtape]

I've been using 1 area af-c since day one.  It's ok sometimes but still inconsistent. For example I just tried it with Panasonic 25mm f1.7 moving towards and away from a teabox with text.  It did not do well.

It's better than previous models but still not nearly as good as competition or whatever the panny reps hyped it up to be, which is the main reason for the "controversy" and they have only themselves to blame.  

On the other hand it does sometimes have it's act together and if you use it properly you can get some decent gimbal shots.  Yesterday I tracked some planes in the sky and used it to follow some people with f2.8 35-100mm.

Speaking of which, zhiyun crane + gh5 + 35-100mm and dual is can actually be a thing.  I need to review the footage on the big screen but back of camers looked ok, and 10x zoom looked white stable. Finally they saved this lens (ok fine they saved it with gx85 and g85).

[Ken Ross]

4 hours ago, wonderboy said:

Using these settings the GH5 should become a AF Monster! So no more AF controversy?

 

With all the Sony fanboys out there? Nope. This video and 1,000 more won't end the AF controversy. But with that said, Panasonic should tweak some of the other settings that aren't working as expected and are overly complicated.

[Mattias Burling]

18 minutes ago, Ken Ross said:

With all the Sony fanboys out there? 

I seem to recall you more than once bashing the crap out of the GH4 and other cameras in favor for Sony. Are you saying that if you still where, you wouldn't have accepted these results?

[Ken Ross]

10 minutes ago, Mattias Burling said:

I seem to recall you more than once bashing the crap out of the GH4 and other cameras in favor for Sony. Are you saying that if you still where, you wouldn't have accepted these results?

Mattias, it simply proves I'm not a 'fanboy', but I wouldn't characterize my GH4 criticism as 'bashing the crap out of it'. I buy and use the cameras I think work the best, such as some Sonys, the Samsung NX1 and now the GH5. I have zero brand loyalty to virtually anything I buy since the 'best' can be a highly variable phenemona. I actually bought the GH4, did you know that? My criticism was not baseless and random in nature. I was very unhappy with a number of things about it. I was not happy with the obvious aperture stepping that was visible in many of my shots. I was not happy with the AF. I was not happy with the OIS of the lens I was using that gave some very odd artifacts. All this contributed to a negative feeling about the camera. But this was based on use and not a defense of something I currently owned.

My comments are directed at those that are simply 'defending' their current equipment and tend to find fault even in areas where objective people know there isn't fault to be found.

[Fritz Pierre]

The AF controversy seems to keep reverting back to the Panasonic Reps claiming that the GH5 AF is much better than the GH4...well...it is!...so nothing amiss there..I don't think I've seen a single line anywhere about someone blaming Sony reps for not disclosing that their cameras overheat quickly...lol...criticism seems to be as subjective as image quality...

[Emanuel]

BTW, tap-to-focus is actually part of the GH5 AF system, the point is that works in both AF and MF modes, so... AF, whatever the finest settings we find, could never be such a deal breaker at all! :-)

 

[scotchtape]

When recording how are you using tap to focus? I can't do it in mf or af-c.  In MF mode I have to drag the box, in af-c it brings up the dialog and asks you to "set" the new focus area if you tap the screen.. I wouldn't really consider  that tap to focus.  Because when you need two taps to focus + lag of dialogue box which takes 1.5 seconds to activate.

[Emanuel]

18 minutes ago, scotchtape said:

When recording how are you using tap to focus? I can't do it in mf or af-c.  In MF mode I have to drag the box, in af-c it brings up the dialog and asks you to "set" the new focus area if you tap the screen.. I wouldn't really consider  that tap to focus.  Because when you need two taps to focus + lag of dialogue box which takes 1.5 seconds to activate.

No GH5 here yet, but as far as I could understand from what I've seen from other users' videos, in MF, you have to drag it, right.

In AF-C, it is the way you describe.

But, you can always use it in other AF mode than AF-C or not?

As for instance here:

Or here:

 

[Emanuel]

AF on 6K Photo mode: