Masters of darkness - Panasonic GH5S and Sony A7R III in extreme low light

[PannySVHS]

1 hour ago, anonim said:

 

My conclusion is that Panasonic's technicians has long way ahead to really mastered new sensor.

I see no plastic skin whatsoever. I see great, awesome lowlight, ready for big screens and projevtion. In raw photo mode it has the acclaimed 1.66 to 2 iso steps advantage above the GH5 in lowlight, in video even 2-2.5 iso steps. Especially skin looks richer with more sublte and accurate tones. Pixel perfect HD up to 105fps.

I think you will be proven wrong by your estimation. Professional users will purchase this camera and achieve exellent results. Just  like a variety of exellent launch films has shown.

[deezid]

1 hour ago, anonim said:

I'd say it is far away from true. From all samples I saw - including that last one from Max Yurev - for me it seems that at iso3200 video frames from GH5 have obviously more details than GH5s. It looks like GH5s has some enormously agresive noise reduction algorithm deep inside of codec usage. Testing samples, I found that up to iso 3200, GH5 with simple temporal noise reduction values in Resolve 14 keeps more image resolution than GH5s. Yes, GH5 is completely useless at iso6400, but level of plasticity in GH5s image at the same iso 6400 value simple is not at all for professional use as advertised.

I still didn't see any sample with sharpening and nr set to -5.
This may fix the problem. (I hope so...)

[PannySVHS]

1 minute ago, deezid said:

I still didn't see any sample with sharpening and nr set to -5.
This may fix the problem. (I hope so...)

slashcam is your friend, dee:) I think I saw some of your posts in the forum, fortunately not arguing about true 4K with that one eloquent senior member To me footage looks less sharpened than GH5 but still not in the same league as a lower dynamic range version of the EVA1 would be.

[deezid]

7 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

slashcam is your friend, dee:) I think I saw some of your posts in the forum, fortunately not arguing about true 4K with that one eloquent senior member To me footage looks less sharpened than GH5 but still not in the same league as a lower dynamic range version of the EVA1 would be.

True, the EVA1 blows both of them out of water easily. Biggest difference are indeed lack of internal processing (at least visible processing) and higher dynamic range as well as way nicer color.

 

https://***URL removed***/reviews/panasonic-lumix-dc-gh5s-review/8

Some horrible oversharpening in the video samples, the Sony A7sII looks way better to me. But then, probably standard Panasonic settings again...

[Robert Collins]

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Well this is what is so confusing. Image framing on a multi-aspect ratio sensor goes wider when you select a wider aspect ratio. To support this vs GH5, the GH5S sensor should be a bit wider than 17.3mm... more like 19mm wide. Then, if we do 36mm / 19mm we get 1.89x crop factor horizontally, which would make sense as you see more of the lens than on the 2x crop GH5, yet apply the 0.58x speed booster and it should be a 1.1x crop horizontally compared to full frame... and it just isn't... the field of view is significantly less wide horizontally.

So something is weird...

I do have a personal theory. The spec for an MFT sensor measures 18 mm × 13.5 mm (22.5 mm diagonal), with an imaging area of 17.3 mm × 13.0 mm. And if Panasonic is using 17.3mm for 4:3, then based on the 'pixel specs' the GH5s sensor needs to be around 19mm wide. So the consensus is that Panasonic is using a sensor 'wider than MFT spec' in the GH5s. But this doesnt make a lot of sense to me - introducing a marginally wider sensor is an expensive proposition. Furthermore, you cant really have a partnership of many companies based on one sensor spec, that allows any of its companies to produce 'bigger' sensors - it is a road to breaking down that partnership pretty quickly.

So what do 'I' think Panasonic has done. I think that Panasonic has given 4:3 a smaller part of the sensor (and therefore slightly greater crop - say 2.2x) in order to fit the wider formats onto the same size sensor. It makes sense on the basis that virtually noone is going to be using 4:3 with the GH5s in any case. Of course the only way to test this is to put the same lens on both the GH5 and GH5s, switch to 4:3 and see if they have the same FOV. I guess that the GH5s might be slightly narrower.

[Emanuel]

2 hours ago, deezid said:

I still didn't see any sample with sharpening and nr set to -5.
This may fix the problem. (I hope so...)

Dennis you and me, as usual always going after the same good mantra... LOL

Funny enough, I think they should hire us for their consulting team for once...

(E :-)

 

<PS> For the most aerial guys ;-)

 

 

[horshack]

5 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

If 3680 px width for 4 to 3 format photos goes along with sensor width of 17.3mm, then 4096px for C4K should have 4096px / 3860px x 17.3mm =19.25mm sensor width. Giving us a crop factor compared to FFrame as follows: 36mm/19.25mm = 1.87. Giving us theoretically a speedboosted factor of 1.87x0.58=1.08.

So math is right. But in practice it might be different, because the optics of the Bmpcc speedbooster work to its full extent with a factor 0.58 on the Bmpcc only. The larger the difference in sensor size goes, compared to the BMPCC s16 sensor, the less boost it´s giving us.

They show the 1.66 increase in sensitivity as advertised by Panasonic. In video it is rather a difference of 2-2.5 ISO steps in sensitivity, giving us better ISO 6400 than GH5 at 1600 ISO. They should come up with a video comparison as well.

The raws indicate a reduction in read noise rather than an increase in sensitivity. If sensitivity was increased the noise differential would be noticeable well below ISO 12,800. Btw, where did you get the 1.66 figure from?

[Stab]

1 hour ago, Robert Collins said:

I do have a personal theory. The spec for an MFT sensor measures 18 mm × 13.5 mm (22.5 mm diagonal), with an imaging area of 17.3 mm × 13.0 mm. And if Panasonic is using 17.3mm for 4:3, then based on the 'pixel specs' the GH5s sensor needs to be around 19mm wide. So the consensus is that Panasonic is using a sensor 'wider than MFT spec' in the GH5s. But this doesnt make a lot of sense to me - introducing a marginally wider sensor is an expensive proposition. Furthermore, you cant really have a partnership of many companies based on one sensor spec, that allows any of its companies to produce 'bigger' sensors - it is a road to breaking down that partnership pretty quickly.

So what do 'I' think Panasonic has done. I think that Panasonic has given 4:3 a smaller part of the sensor (and therefore slightly greater crop - say 2.2x) in order to fit the wider formats onto the same size sensor. It makes sense on the basis that virtually noone is going to be using 4:3 with the GH5s in any case. Of course the only way to test this is to put the same lens on both the GH5 and GH5s, switch to 4:3 and see if they have the same FOV. I guess that the GH5s might be slightly narrower.

Hmm, but then how do you explain that the GH5s has a wider FOV in 16:9 video mode than the GH5?

[Robert Collins]

18 minutes ago, Stab said:

Hmm, but then how do you explain that the GH5s has a wider FOV in 16:9 video mode than the GH5?

Well there is more 'room' on the existing sensor - it is 18mm wide while the GH5 only uses 17.3mm of width.

[Michael1]

On ‎2‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 4:00 AM, anonim said:

Quick noise reduction (Resolve 14) operation with GH5 ISO 6400 400% magnification fragment of Andrew Read's file.

 

This is an impressive amount of noise reduction.  Is that the built-in Resolve noise reduction, or the Neat Video plug-in?

[anonim]

4 hours ago, Michael1 said:

This is an impressive amount of noise reduction.  Is that the built-in Resolve noise reduction, or the Neat Video plug-in?

Simple Resolve temporal reduction. As I wrote above - and don't get appropriate answer to chalenge - i suspect that Panasonic mostly makes "advanced" and massive software manipulation in GH5s. GH5s's samples that I saw up to iso3200 could be very easy accomplished with elemental grading knowledge in GH5 - and retain better overal resolution. At iso 6400 and above we are in area of completely subjective taste what is too much of smoothnesed tretman/quality. Because operation of Noise reduction in these values are very very severe and visible... And I'm talking as an hardcore Panasonic fan truly interested to upgrade if newer Panny offer is really up to image quality expectation.

[anonim]

@PannySVHS

Even Panasonic luminaries have to explain what they already explained... and they are everything but independent. I say again - temporarily usage of GH5s sensor is ultimate example of inner software manipulation, even for Panasonic standard.

Moreover, in he recent Max Yurev test, at about 2:00 where he compares GH5 and GH5s, you can see serious focusing mistake by which he tries to convince that GH5s is cleaner. Even with that - hardly by chance mistake from such serious blogger - face area out of focus are cleaner and with noticable better resolution in GH5! not to speak about area in focus behind . Keep in mind that it is first time tha Yurev is invited by Panasonic team  

And all footages of costumed persons in the room for me are totally plasticky - as walking zombies. Every single shot lacks by great margin of "fat" color and subtle color gradation and is out of proper color balance. For me, all current Panasonic campaign it is not just a disaster for a 2500$ price and propagate highend results, but a some sort of shame... maybe firmware update or using extremely highend glasses could help to make image more natural.

[DBounce]

4 hours ago, anonim said:

@PannySVHS

Even Panasonic luminaries have to explain what they already explained... and they are everything but independent. I say again - temporarily usage of GH5s sensor is ultimate example of inner software manipulation, even for Panasonic standard.

Moreover, in he recent Max Yurev test, at about 2:00 where he compares GH5 and GH5s, you can see serious focusing mistake by which he tries to convince that GH5s is cleaner. Even with that - hardly by chance mistake from such serious blogger - face area out of focus are cleaner and with noticable better resolution in GH5! not to speak about area in focus behind . Keep in mind that it is first time tha Yurev is invited by Panasonic team  

And all footages of costumed persons in the room for me are totally plasticky - as walking zombies. Every single shot lacks by great margin of "fat" color and subtle color gradation and is out of proper color balance. For me, all current Panasonic campaign it is not just a disaster for a 2500$ price and propagate highend results, but a some sort of shame... maybe firmware update or using extremely highend glasses could help to make image more natural.

I can agree, but I think it’s him... not the camera. I say this because I have seen other footage that looks much better.

[PannySVHS]

GH5s processing is not making anything worse than that of GH5. Best to shoot both cameras with noise and sharpening at -5.

Look at Luk Neumanns launch video for enjoyment of what this camera has to offer. No denying in my opinion.

1.66 stop advantage over GH5 comes from Pana exec talking with the two kewl Gentleman from the channel I posted above, that advantages shows in the photo raw comparison tool of Dpreview.

[seku]

Well... i was interested in how well the GH5s compares to the GH5, 5dmk3 and the a7r3 in terms of lifted shadows on RAW images... just to see how good the sensors are.

From the recent dpreview, here's a screenshot of the 4 cams at +6 stops ... 

Imho, the raised shadows from the GH5s and the GH5 seem similar. They both beat my old 5dmk3 handily.

But damn, that A7r3 ... that image quality should be forbidden. If only its codec could keep up

 

[anonim]

@seku "Imho, the raised shadows from the GH5s and the GH5 seem similar..."

That's exactly the same I'm talking about.

@PannySVHS

Neumann's robot intro film is made with 30k Zeiss lens and I didn't even see really lowlight shots. From the clips of harbour, the best one is with Voigtlander 10.5 at ISO1000, at iso4000 there's noticable degrading in quality.

To sum-up - at the same time I apologize for bothering you - I did noise reduction and slightly color grading with Andrew's clip, and GH5 image is near the same at iso 6400 (!) out of camera. GH5s image has less resolution in all futages that I saw on the internet. Yes, out of camera GH5s looks cleaner than GH5 above iso3200, but it is result primarily of hard software operations inside of camera. I'm not at all technician, but I have to think also about possibility that high processing power for such strong internal manipulation in GH5s is maybe responsible for initial lack of ibis. Saying all of that, I don't thinks GH5s has not some advantages - but price for it is too high, especially considering that shockingly good ibis is one of the breakthrough advantage of GH5... Talks about amateurish side of using of ibis is complete nonsense - GH cameras are production instruments that work marvelously at the place and circumstances where other highend cameras couldn't. Explanation like using in the car-shots are childish caprice. I'm afraid that GH5s will very soon become obsolete. Fuji video oriented camera with ibis is knocking at the door, with lowlight performance probably easy surpasses GH5s offer and quality... As much as GH5 looks as thorougly thought  out product, GH5s looks like half baked... IMHO

[Stab]

On 6-2-2018 at 9:02 AM, anonim said:

 

And all footages of costumed persons in the room for me are totally plasticky - as walking zombies. Every single shot lacks by great margin of "fat" color and subtle color gradation and is out of proper color balance. For me, all current Panasonic campaign it is not just a disaster for a 2500$ price and propagate highend results, but a some sort of shame... maybe firmware update or using extremely highend glasses could help to make image more natural.

Well, to be fair that isnt the camera's fault I think. Those people are wearing very heavy make-up and foundation. That, in combination with the ugly yellow lighting is probably the reason why everyone looks plasticky.

 

[webrunner5]

Has this been shown on here somewhere?

 

[TheRenaissanceMan]

The micro four thirds standard specifies electronic communication protocols, mount specifications, and flange distance. It does not dictate a specific sensor size. So any implication that Panasonic couldn't put an oversized sensor in the GH5S without violating the standard is completely baseless.

[jonpais]

@TheRenaissanceMan Who said they couldn’t? just asking...