Panasonic GH5S 4K / 240fps low light monster

[Emanuel]

7 hours ago, Chrad said:

Well I can't say we'll never see it, or that it's impossible to do now, but I'd think the two together would be a massive power drain, no? Every Panasonic camera shortened in battery life from their predecessor when IBIS was introduced. GH5 can be powered on for much shorter than GH4. GH5s is only slightly less power hungry than the GH5, suggesting the dual ISO is also a big power drain. If these features were bundled together right now you might be looking at Blackmagic Pocket like battery life.

Right. So the reason why they left it out of there? When GH5 battery is much better than any of their direct camera competitors as for instance Blackmagic or Sony.

Or the business factor in order to not affect native GH5 sales? As their own inner concern... So not product centered. When people can end to buy both GH5 and GH5S bodies as myself.

That's the (whole) point IMHO :-)

[Chrad]

21 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Right. So the reason why they left it out of there? When GH5 battery is much better than any of their direct camera competitors as for instance Blackmagic or Sony.

Or the business factor in order to not affect native GH5 sales? As their own inner concern... So not product centered. When people can end to buy both GH5 and GH5S bodies as myself.

That's the (whole) point IMHO :-)

It probably is part of the point, but I think Panasonic care about their reputation as far as batteries are concerned. GH3 and GH4 could go all day on a single battery, and I like to think they were proud enough of the positive feedback they got for that feature that they'd have been hesitant about cutting it to the level of the GH5. If they cut the battery life further on this model, they'd sacrifice one of their perceived advantages, at a time when other camera companies are nipping at their heels. They did the same with IBIS, but I guess someone at Panasonic perceives 'reliability' as more important to the brand perception than 'stabilised'.

[Kisaha]

GH5 drains a lot more battery than the GH4. It is not even close, it is reaching Sony territory really (people are carrying similar amount of batteries in jobs I've noticed).

So, we already are talking about the GH6?! I have to accept that human race is so greedy. After 3 (+ EVA = 4) new cameras in less than 9 months, that cover -almost- all bases, people will be still waiting for the GH6 that may, or may not, ever come. Whatever..

[IronFilm]

20 hours ago, Jn- said:

TC has issues ... see from about 13 min. in ...

http://extrashot.co.uk/panasonic-gh5s-first-hands-on-review/

I posted about that a while ago. My desperate hope is the reviewers don't know what the hell they're talking about (which is very very likely!). 

[jonpais]

@Dimitris Stasinos My feelings exactly. 

[anonim]

For me it seems that - at least in this test - GH5 still has very slightly better tonal gradation in daylight comparison with GH5s (maybe result of downsampling?)

[Vesku]

 

 

From Slashcam: https://www.slashcam.de/artikel/News/Panasonic-GH5s---Die-Unterschiede-zur-GH5-am-Vorserienmodell-naeher-betrachtet--Bildqualitaet---Tendenzen-des-Vo.html

"Although the sensor only offers a 1: 1 readout due to the size of the sensor, the first impressions of the debayering look very cinematic: the finest details are clearly filtered, which accommodates the typical cine look and covers most debayering problems in a 1: 1 readout. So no chroma streaks and no zipper artifacts like many competitors. The clean 4K sharpness of the GH5, of course, can not be achieved due to oversampling due to additional pixels"

 

GH5 seems cleaner in low iso.

[jonpais]

Thing is, I think most here, myself included, would welcome less sharpness.

[IronFilm]

19 hours ago, Damphousse said:

That was a great bit of reporting I guess Kai, TCSTV, Gordon Laing, Wex Photo, CRFTSHO, Peter Gregg, Photo by Richard, Dan Watson, Max Yuryev, Three Blind Men and an Elephant, Art of the Image, Photo Joseph and Max Yuryev didn't have the journalistic skills to deliver to their audiences.

Most (but not quite all) of those guys are photographers, is it any wonder they get it wrong when they review a camera which is first a video camera? (and only secondarily a stills camera) Most photographers don't have a bloody clue how to do video right! (yet they still do it anyway unfortunately.... as their clients are asking them for it) Thus you see such total unbelievable nonsense in reviews such as saying increasing the shutter speed will reduce rolling shutter!!! wtf

This is why when extrashot (who *ARE* videographers) made a comment about a sound feature (the TC) of the GH5S, that I'm feeling skeptical that Panasonic really did screw it up that bad, and instead the reviewers just got it wrong. Because they're commenting about an aspect which is far outside their area of specialist expertise. 

 

 

18 hours ago, Damphousse said:

That's not how cannibalization works.  Any manufacturer would be happy if people passed on their lower priced offering and bought the higher priced product.

Hilarious to think about a company being worried a more expensive product (GH5S) will canabalize their cheaper product! (GH5)

LOL

[Emanuel]

1 hour ago, Chrad said:

It probably is part of the point, but I think Panasonic care about their reputation as far as batteries are concerned. GH3 and GH4 could go all day on a single battery, and I like to think they were proud enough of the positive feedback they got for that feature that they'd have been hesitant about cutting it to the level of the GH5. If they cut the battery life further on this model, they'd sacrifice one of their perceived advantages, at a time when other camera companies are nipping at their heels. They did the same with IBIS, but I guess someone at Panasonic perceives 'reliability' as more important to the brand perception than 'stabilised'.

Reliability is paramount. Nothing a bunch of batteries can't overcome. When any add-on of gear or even by software is truly PITA. Not feasible for hundreds of shooting scenarios. Mark my words, they would beg for a dozen of batteries if necessary. To be honest, I find barely unacceptable when professionals complain about handling several battery units.

Stabilization in-camera, well, is simply a game changer. They're going backwards on that one. Power supply is a weak excuse to my view.

GH5S is both a brilliant cinema camera and the best accessory to couple with GH5. Only an outdated hybrid though. Strictly because of a business decision under my perspective.

[jonpais]

@IronFilm My point wasn't about whether these men are qualified to review video gear or not, or their journalistic integrity. 

[IronFilm]

17 hours ago, Cliff Totten said:

You can bet that the Panasonic DVX200 will be the next camera with this sensor. That is going to be a SWEET ENG camera. (if Sony allows it to be sold for that purpose, that is)

Would be very nice. One of the great benefits of this amazing lowlight sensor would be with a superzoom lens on an ENG camera, that can still perform well even with a slow F stop at the end of the zoom

16 hours ago, jonpais said:

@Emanuel In the interview, Yosuke Yamane does say Panasonic developed the sensor. No mention of Sony. ? hmmm

Sometimes you get very complex arrangements around sensors. 

To give one very simplified example (actual reality could be even more complex!): One company will license a design, another company will extensively customise the design to develop the sensor for their own needs, then yet another company (a 3rd one) will be the one who actually physically manufactures the sensor. 

Any one of these three companies could describe the resulting product as "their sensor" if they wished to (and their contract allowed them to). 

[Emanuel]

3 hours ago, Vesku said:

GH5s is excellent in low light. 

But is it as good as GH5 in iso200? GH5 has very clean image because it down samples from 20Mpixel sensor. GH5s is not down sampling so it may have softer image. GH4 is 100% sensor pixels and it is softer than GH5 which down samples from 5180 to 3840.

GH5 is overprocessed to scream out proper softness handling at post. Good for large formats printing. A pain for excelling in the motion picture department, mate. As hybrid rules :-)

[IronFilm]

15 hours ago, RWR said:

Would love for that to be the case...especially given higher sensitivity..there will likely be something in the frame that's "hot". If so..that, along with timecode i/o would help in more pro setups.

Timecode is a game-changer in this camera class. Even c200 lacks it. Not just a multicam feature..more often it's for dual system audio crews.

Regarding Panny rep's comment on audio, hard to say whether there is improvement beyond the onboard mic. They need to put the monitoring latency bypass feature back in.

It is astonishing how many cameras lack TC!  C100/C200/FS5/FS7(if without XDCA)/FS700/FS100/EX1/etc etc etc

Seems five figures for a camera is the point at which then TC becomes "normal". Sub $10K RRP then TC is quite rare :-/ 

With a few exceptions, such as: Panasonic EVA1 and Panasonic GH5S!! Thank you very much Panasonic. 

Maybe, just maaaaaaaaaaaaybe, Panasonic saw the writing on the wall with the Tentacle Syncs and Zoom F8/F4 (Tentacles + F8 is a GAME CHANGER!! For bringing quality features + TC to a very low low price point, in very small packages too!) and thus Panasonic decided to implement timecode more widely with their products?

[Emanuel]

13 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Sometimes you get very complex arrangements around sensors. 

To give one very simplified example (actual reality could be even more complex!): One company will license a design, another company will extensively customise the design to develop the sensor for their own needs, then yet another company (a 3rd one) will be the one who actually physically manufactures the sensor. 

Any one of these three companies could describe the resulting product as "their sensor" if they wished to (and their contract allowed them to). 

Thanks David for your input. I guess we'll never know, actually. Here is why I also don't buy the technical explanation for IBIS absence on GH5S version.

[jonpais]

@IronFilm The same could be said for a dozen or more other features on the GH5* cameras.  

[Emanuel]

46 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Hilarious to think about a company being worried a more expensive product (GH5S) will canabalize their cheaper product! (GH5)

Yes, it is : ) Many a mickle makes a muckle. That's the way business works...

[jonpais]

@Emanuel I thought it was the other way 'round...

[IronFilm]

2 minutes ago, Emanuel said:

Thanks David for your input. I guess we'll never know, actually. Here is why I also don't buy the technical explanation for IBIS absence on GH5S version.

Well there are so many reasons, we don't need all of the theories to be right! Even if only one of them is the real reason, that is quite sufficient. 

For me just this one reason here strikes me as a highly likely one: COST! Because the GH5S is already the most expensive ever MFT camera, imagine how much of a backlash they might have got if they'd pushed the price even higher? 

I've got no idea how much IBIS would cost, but if the addition requires redesigning the body, then that will very very sharply increase the costs! (and get even more people mad that they need to throw out their GH3/GH4/GH5 cages, or worse... their waterproof case they'd spent mega $$$ on!)

 

2 minutes ago, jonpais said:

@IronFilm The same could be said for a dozen or more other features on the GH5* cameras.  

Such as? You can find 10bit or 4K or slow motion on quite a few sub $10K cameras. I was going to say perhaps waveforms is somewhat unique with only a handful sub $10K ones having that, but hang on once I think about that for even half a second I realise it is clearly nonsense, because hey even the lowly C100 has that! 

So what exactly are you referring to @jonpais that the GH5 has but very few sub $10K cameras have? (remember that 4K 60fps even exists on lowly action cameras now!)

[Emanuel]

2 minutes ago, jonpais said:

@Emanuel I thought it was the other way 'round...

The most ingenious here is the fact practice redefines theory... ; ) I've learned with what I've seen :-)