Panasonic GH6

[Robb]

To me, alot of these "grievances" are just talking points of preference. Yes, MFT doesn't have the same "bokeh" as full frame. But I've never needed or wanted more background blur with my line of Oly 1.2s....there's no autofocus. Ok well maybe this isn't for all the Youtubers. Yes it's annoying they didn't address that issue, but I rarely wish I had AF when I'm manually focus pulling. Roger Deakins doesn't use AF so I'm good. Low light for the GH6 is excellent, especially with fast glass. The GH5s is amazing with the 1.2s, so the GH6 will be even better, I can't wait.

My one of few complaints is that they took away the dual SD card slots for backup recording. Why not have 2 CFast card slodlys with 2 SD card slots inside? Now I'd I want to back up record I have to pony up for the CFast. I've pretty much decided I'm going to wait for the SSD card update,as those are much more cost effective for storage.

Other hope/expectation is that either ProRes RAW and/or BRAW externally with come via update. That would be awesome.

There are so many positive upgrades for this, I'm super excited. I spot with Alex Mack who makes the GHAlex Lut...he's super pumped about this camera and had already preordered one. He's got his files prepped to have a GH6Alex update as soon as it's out. Looking forward to utilizing they with Prores and full Vlog.

[leslie]

42 minutes ago, Robb said:

To me, alot of these "grievances" are just talking points of preference. Yes, MFT doesn't have the same "bokeh" as full frame. But I've never needed or wanted more background blur with my line of Oly 1.2s....there's no autofocus. Ok well maybe this isn't for all the Youtubers. Yes it's annoying they didn't address that issue, but I rarely wish I had AF when I'm manually focus pulling. Roger Deakins doesn't use AF so I'm good. Low light for the GH6 is excellent, especially with fast glass. The GH5s is amazing with the 1.2s, so the GH6 will be even better, I can't wait.

My one of few complaints is that they took away the dual SD card slots for backup recording. Why not have 2 CFast card slodlys with 2 SD card slots inside? Now I'd I want to back up record I have to pony up for the CFast. I've pretty much decided I'm going to wait for the SSD card update,as those are much more cost effective for storage.

Other hope/expectation is that either ProRes RAW and/or BRAW externally with come via update. That would be awesome.

There are so many positive upgrades for this, I'm super excited. I spot with Alex Mack who makes the GHAlex Lut...he's super pumped about this camera and had already preordered one. He's got his files prepped to have a GH6Alex update as soon as it's out. Looking forward to utilizing they with Prores and full Vlog.

mr Deakins probably has 10 people lined up ready to pull focus day or night 🤔

there's a chance that there's a Steven Hawking of videographers out there somewhere.  Af  and or focus motors for a dude like would be a godsend no doubt. I don't use af much. 8 out of 10 lenses that i have are vintage manual focus. Each to their own, i reckon.

[kye]

12 hours ago, Robb said:

To me, alot of these "grievances" are just talking points of preference. Yes, MFT doesn't have the same "bokeh" as full frame. But I've never needed or wanted more background blur with my line of Oly 1.2s....there's no autofocus. Ok well maybe this isn't for all the Youtubers. Yes it's annoying they didn't address that issue, but I rarely wish I had AF when I'm manually focus pulling. Roger Deakins doesn't use AF so I'm good. Low light for the GH6 is excellent, especially with fast glass. The GH5s is amazing with the 1.2s, so the GH6 will be even better, I can't wait.

My one of few complaints is that they took away the dual SD card slots for backup recording. Why not have 2 CFast card slodlys with 2 SD card slots inside? Now I'd I want to back up record I have to pony up for the CFast. I've pretty much decided I'm going to wait for the SSD card update,as those are much more cost effective for storage.

Other hope/expectation is that either ProRes RAW and/or BRAW externally with come via update. That would be awesome.

There are so many positive upgrades for this, I'm super excited. I spot with Alex Mack who makes the GHAlex Lut...he's super pumped about this camera and had already preordered one. He's got his files prepped to have a GH6Alex update as soon as it's out. Looking forward to utilizing they with Prores and full Vlog.

Panasonic have confirmed that the GH6 will get Prores RAW in a firmware update, so you can capture RAW if you like when that arrives.

Every time there's a MFT camera realised the people come out of the woodwork to try and tell us that AF and Toneh are somehow now mandatory for all film-making.  Once upon a time everyone laughed at digital photography saying that it would never replace film.

What's that saying?  The people saying something isn't possible should get out of the way of those who are doing it. 🙂 

[TomTheDP]

Imma buy this as soon as I can lol.

If it had internal prores RAW that would be icing on the cake, but we can thank RED for that not happening.

Even with the M1 chip mac H264 and H265 still suck for editing. Its a huge hassle to transcode to Prores. It makes me not want to shoot on the S1. External recorders are annoying as well.
 

There is a question of why not just get a Pocket 4k but I think the GH6 has many advantages including an inherently better DGO sensor. Of course you don't get BRAW, but I really don't need RAW. I am also a loyal Panasonic guy.

[webrunner5]

They might pay Adobe and let the GH6 use CinemaDNG.

[kye]

8 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

Imma buy this as soon as I can lol.

If it had internal prores RAW that would be icing on the cake, but we can thank RED for that not happening.

Even with the M1 chip mac H264 and H265 still suck for editing. Its a huge hassle to transcode to Prores. It makes me not want to shoot on the S1. External recorders are annoying as well.
 

There is a question of why not just get a Pocket 4k but I think the GH6 has many advantages including an inherently better DGO sensor. Of course you don't get BRAW, but I really don't need RAW. I am also a loyal Panasonic guy.

Wow, the S1 has no ALL-I codecs?  That's a bummer.

The P4K has about the same DR as the GH6 in DR Boost mode - 11.6 / 12.7 vs 11.5 / 12.8
(Source is the P6K tests where the make some comments about the P4K: https://www.cined.com/blackmagic-pocket-cinema-camera-6k-lab-test-dynamic-range-latitude-rolling-shutter-more/)

From my perspective the GH6 and P4K are so incredibly different that they're incomparable.  You'd have to be shooting in pretty narrow and controlled conditions for their differences to not be relevant - IBIS, battery life, photo mode, automatic settings, etc etc.

6 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

They might pay Adobe and let the GH6 use CinemaDNG.

I doubt it.  They've announced Prores RAW with Atomos and I doubt they'll provide a second RAW option - most cameras don't even provide one RAW option!!

[webrunner5]

Yeah but in this day and age who wants to fool around with a heavy big recorder on top pf your camera. That is old school stuff in 2022. It has a fan in it use it.

[webrunner5]

Interesting video with a different take. He makes some good points I think.

 

 

[92F]

Ideally, the market should not adapt by offering an ND filter for the GH6 which starts higher ?

[Mark Romero 2]

12 hours ago, kye said:

Wow, the S1 has no ALL-I codecs?  That's a bummer.

Correct, all the codecs on the S1 / S5 / S1R are Long GOP (unless you hook up a recorder, where you can record in ProRes, ProRes RAW, or BRAW.

Further, the S5 has internal recording time limits has no internal 6K (the S1 does). There is some "cheat" with 6K photo mode but I haven't used it really. I read that it is only 5K, not 6K or something like that.

@interceptor121 Did an examination of the h.264 codec Long GOP frame distributions and came to the conclusion that while the 10-bit codec have more color fidelity and flexibility, the 8-bit codecs offer better distribution of the GOP frames and would be less likely to suffer from motion artefacts.

I don't believe he was able to analyze the h.265 codec though, but he said from his experience it is probably better to use 200Mbps h.265 instead of the 150 / 100Mbps h.264 codecs.

I will admit that I haven't even TRIED shooting in h.265 at all because I thought it would kill my computer. Maybe my RTX 2060 Super has hardware acceleration for it though??? (I don't know how well my i7-6700, which is now three or four generations old, will handle decoding h.265).

I guess there is always transcoding, right???

 

[projectwoofer]

1 hour ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Correct, all the codecs on the S1 / S5 / S1R are Long GOP (unless you hook up a recorder, where you can record in ProRes, ProRes RAW, or BRAW.

Further, the S5 has internal recording time limits has no internal 6K (the S1 does). There is some "cheat" with 6K photo mode but I haven't used it really. I read that it is only 5K, not 6K or something like that.

@interceptor121 Did an examination of the h.264 codec Long GOP frame distributions and came to the conclusion that while the 10-bit codec have more color fidelity and flexibility, the 8-bit codecs offer better distribution of the GOP frames and would be less likely to suffer from motion artefacts.

I don't believe he was able to analyze the h.265 codec though, but he said from his experience it is probably better to use 200Mbps h.265 instead of the 150 / 100Mbps h.264 codecs.

I will admit that I haven't even TRIED shooting in h.265 at all because I thought it would kill my computer. Maybe my RTX 2060 Super has hardware acceleration for it though??? (I don't know how well my i7-6700, which is now three or four generations old, will handle decoding h.265).

I guess there is always transcoding, right???

 

Yeah, the 6K photo mode is actually 5.2K 200Mbit/s H.265. It’s not bad at all but it’s 30fps. As I mainly shoot in 24fps, I like the slight slowing down of the 30fps on a 24fps timeline. I usually don’t need that much resolution but it’s nice it’s there. As for the Long GOP codecs on the S-Series, I’ve read that they’re much more robust than the older Long GOP of the GH cameras. For this reason for example Alex from emotive color always recommended All-I on the GH5 but also Long GOP codecs from the S-Series for his LUTs.

[PannySVHS]

The 150mbit 10bit codecs on the GH5 and especially on the S series are very robust. It smokes the 240mbit codec from the FS7. It's no contest. The flavour on S1, S1H, S5 also does well compared to Braw being equally robust in the shadows.

I was amazed by the Gh5 under good and moderately low light. S series have a powerhouse of a 10bit Long Gop codec. Panny is a big boss when it comes to codecs.

[TomTheDP]

14 hours ago, kye said:

Wow, the S1 has no ALL-I codecs?  That's a bummer.

The P4K has about the same DR as the GH6 in DR Boost mode - 11.6 / 12.7 vs 11.5 / 12.8
(Source is the P6K tests where the make some comments about the P4K: https://www.cined.com/blackmagic-pocket-cinema-camera-6k-lab-test-dynamic-range-latitude-rolling-shutter-more/)

From my perspective the GH6 and P4K are so incredibly different that they're incomparable.  You'd have to be shooting in pretty narrow and controlled conditions for their differences to not be relevant - IBIS, battery life, photo mode, automatic settings, etc etc.

They have similar highlight latitude but when underexposed the P4K doesn't do as well, especially with color. Now the P6K is pretty excellent in that regard, however I have heard issues of fixed noise patterns when the sensor gets hot. The P6K also has no so great rolling shutter. Panasonic has also been known to have a less processed image with more texture.

[Django]

9 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

Panasonic has also been known to have a less processed image with more texture.

Really? I aways thought GH series had that sharpened / NR look. 

BMD cams in contrast have very little image processing especially if you shoot RAW.

As for GH6's "DGO" sensor, it does seem a little underwhelming when compared to the P4K.

Also pretty annoying DR boost mode turns base ISO to 2000. I'd rather it be at a low value like 400.

At 2000 you're going to need ND's or close the iris during daylight which is when you want that DR boost.. odd choice.

[Mmmbeats]

7 minutes ago, Django said:

Also pretty annoying DR boost mode turns base ISO to 2000. I'd rather it be at a low value like 400.

At 2000 you're going to need ND's or close the iris during daylight which is when you want that DR boost.. odd choice.

I doubt it was a choice.  Likely something technical to do with how they stack the exposures.  I doubt Panasonic were too pleased about that aspect of it either.

[TomTheDP]

50 minutes ago, Django said:

Really? I aways thought GH series had that sharpened / NR look. 

BMD cams in contrast have very little image processing especially if you shoot RAW.

As for GH6's "DGO" sensor, it does seem a little underwhelming when compared to the P4K.

Also pretty annoying DR boost mode turns base ISO to 2000. I'd rather it be at a low value like 400.

At 2000 you're going to need ND's or close the iris during daylight which is when you want that DR boost.. odd choice.

I don't know I am often needing dynamic range indoors when dealing with windows and often shoot at 4000 iso on my S1 indoors. Dynamic range in lower light situations is helpful, especially in the shadows which is where the DGO sensors seem to shine.

Yeah it would be nice if the GH6 had more dynamic range but its honestly very respectable and maintaining color accuracy throughout the dynamic range is more important than the dynamic range itself.

The S1H released with terrible NR baked in but it was later fixed. The S1 released without that issue and looks incredibly organic. The GH5 had the same NR issue upon release but was later fixed. The GH5 always did have a sharpened look, but the S1/S1H doesn't have that. BRAW has sort of a softer look, not sure why but its some sort of processing going on. If you shoot CDNG on BM cameras you'll see the difference in texture. It's a pretty subtle thing, probably doesn't really matter. Would be more apparent on the big screen like anything else.

[Robb]

On 3/5/2022 at 10:06 AM, kye said:

Panasonic have confirmed that the GH6 will get Prores RAW in a firmware update, so you can capture RAW if you like when that arrives.

Every time there's a MFT camera realised the people come out of the woodwork to try and tell us that AF and Toneh are somehow now mandatory for all film-making.  Once upon a time everyone laughed at digital photography saying that it would never replace film.

What's that saying?  The people saying something isn't possible should get out of the way of those who are doing it. 🙂 

I still wonder (and wouldn't be surprised) if we get BRAW to the Black magic recorder as the GH5s has it. I really hope so. Since I use a PC and Davinci this would be amazing

[Django]

7 minutes ago, TomTheDP said:

I don't know I am often needing dynamic range indoors when dealing with windows and often shoot at 4000 iso on my S1 indoors. Dynamic range in lower light situations is helpful, especially in the shadows which is where the DGO sensors seem to shine.

All DGO sensors don't work alike: from the test I've seen the DGO on GH6 increases the highlight range but doesn't do much to shadows. It's the opposite of the C70/C300III that emphasises clean shadows but doesn't really boost highlights. 

[hyalinejim]

3 minutes ago, Django said:

from the test I've seen the DGO on GH6 increases the highlight range but doesn't do much to shadows

I seem to remember that the CineD tests showed cleaner shadow noise in Boost.

[PannySVHS]

I have not seen convincing footage yet. Well, I have. Though convincing me rather of some dull image quality.

I realize how great of an image taker the pocket 4k is regarding the cinematic quality of resolution, smoothness, texture and all these attributes of a great image.

GH5 always has to be massaged in post. Good thing it is possible with digital diffusion.

GH6 still intriguing to me due to form factor, battery life, features, ease of use, screen and so on. Image wise I don´t see it above a BMPCC4K. But having a BMPCC4k in the form factor of a GH6 is perfect. 2200 is still good money but worth it if the image is up to BMPCC4K quality. Integrity of colours is one thing the Pocket 6K was superiour to the 4K when underexposed strongly.