Panasonic GH6

[MrSMW]

9 hours ago, Marcio Kabke Pinheiro said:

Japanese pride make camera manufacturers VERY stubborn.

Lucky the camera industry is not French…

The cameras would have a styling circa 1950’s (not necessarily a bad thing) but would randomly go on strike, the manual could only be provided as a (thick) paper document (and you would have to apply in person 2 hours from your home and wait at least 6 weeks for it to arrive) plus would have a permanent whiff of garlic/gauloises in the hard bakerlite shell.

And only shoot B&W.

All models would be called ‘Le De Gaulle’ and we would currently be on the LDG7, the 7th model since the first as new models are released with marginal ‘upgrades’ every decade.

[kye]

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Lucky the camera industry is not French…

The cameras would have a styling circa 1950’s (not necessarily a bad thing) but would randomly go on strike, the manual could only be provided as a (thick) paper document (and you would have to apply in person 2 hours from your home and wait at least 6 weeks for it to arrive) plus would have a permanent whiff of garlic/gauloises in the hard bakerlite shell.

And only shoot B&W.

All models would be called ‘Le De Gaulle’ and we would currently be on the LDG7, the 7th model since the first as new models are released with marginal ‘upgrades’ every decade.

Yeah, I don't think that the Japanese nor the French have a monopoly on stupidity and other human failings!  All countries / cultures have their pros and cons.  It's just personal preference that makes each of us prefer one over the other 🙂 

[MrSMW]

I know... just look at America. 

Or the Brits... 😜

It's what makes the world both interesting a frustrating in equal measures!

[Thpriest]

If it was a British camera it wouldn't work after 2 years and it'd cost you a lot of money. They'd release a new version which was exactly the same as the old one but with a different name, it'd still cost you a lot of money and wouldn't work. They'd repeat the trick a few times till the last one went totally bonkers and blew up in your face. You'd then have no money left to buy a different brand as your "British camera and money" were deemed worthless.🇬🇧 🤡💩💥

I'm glad we've left it to the Japanese to get on with the camera business.

[hyalinejim]

On 9/24/2022 at 10:20 AM, PannySVHS said:

Also @hyalinejim
would love to hear your observations.

Well, the first thing that's worth mentioning is that I got USB power bank that I can hang from my tripod in its little bag. Now I can shoot all day (from a tripod!) without changing battery or getting into rigging. So that's cool.

The other thing is that I had been shooting a bit in DR Boost in order to get extra highlight range and to help with shooting indoors in natural light. BUT! I noticed the midtones were quite noisy so I did a little investigation. I shot a step wedge (from +1 to -8 in whole stops) at various ISO levels, slapped on the VLog to V709 conversion and looked at where the noise is, in a bid to figure out whether I should be aiming to shoot at 250 or 2000DRB in general

Here is ISO 250 and it's a familiar noise pattern. Midtones are clean, shadows are a bit noisy:

 

Compare this to ISO 2000 with Dynamic Range Boost on:

The extreme shadows are cleaner up to around stop -4, where noise is similar to ISO 250. But from stop-3 all the way up to stop +1 this is clearly much noisier than ISO 250! It's noisy in the midtones and clean in the shadows. Weird! And it looks a bit weird when you see it in a real world clip.

For comparison's sake, here's ISO 2000 without DR Boost:

Right around the midtones, from stop -1 to +1 the regular old ISO 2000 is cleaner than with DR Boost. Below that point the shadows get noisier in a way we are used to seeing.

So what's the conclusion? Well, I use some colour treatments that really push visible noise a bit, especially chroma noise. If I'm going to shoot with DR Boost on I get some distracting looking midtone noise. It depends on the shot but sometimes it's really quite shitty looking. NeatVideo's temporal settings do a good job of cleaning it up, though. So my conclusion is that I'm going to start using a bit of noise reduction again, when I need it.

DR Boost is not simply "one stop extra in the highlights" and that's that. It comes at the cost of noise in the midtones.

PS: all shots were long GOP

[Skropi]

I am wondering about the dummy battery options out there. Do the dcc12 dummy batteries work without issues with the GH6? Cfexpress cards are too expensive with less capacity than ssd's, so I am planning to use the usb-c port for ssd use, and not for powering the camera.

[Phil A]

So here in Switzerland, the GH6 released for 2499 CHF in end of February.

Today I've seen it for 1757 CHF with an additional 200 CHF cash back offer.
So basically price dropped by nearly 38% in just 8 months.

Is it now time to say Micro4/3 is dead? 🤐
I assume the fact that the market is saturated with affordable new/used full frame options and the majority of buyers of dedicated camera systems being into photography is pretty bad for the M43 ecosystem.
BlackmagicDesign has moved on to APS-C sensors, the Sharp 8k M43 camera never materialized. People who want to shoot vintage S16 glass just use a high-res FF/APS-C body with a crop function.

[Thpriest]

Not sure but that's why I sold all my m43 gear when the S5 came out. There's not much I miss about m43 as the Panasonic FF image is lovely but I did enjoy the GH5 for a number of years. They are still good cameras but there are so many options now in the same price range.

[newfoundmass]

1 hour ago, Phil A said:

So here in Switzerland, the GH6 released for 2499 CHF in end of February.

Today I've seen it for 1757 CHF with an additional 200 CHF cash back offer.
So basically price dropped by nearly 38% in just 8 months.

Is it now time to say Micro4/3 is dead? 🤐
I assume the fact that the market is saturated with affordable new/used full frame options and the majority of buyers of dedicated camera systems being into photography is pretty bad for the M43 ecosystem.
BlackmagicDesign has moved on to APS-C sensors, the Sharp 8k M43 camera never materialized. People who want to shoot vintage S16 glass just use a high-res FF/APS-C body with a crop function.

M43 will live on for as long as Panasonic and OMD decide to keep making cameras, and will continue on for years after that because it has a dedicated user base. While I'm in the process of downsizing my M43 gear, I still plan to keep a GH5 and a couple lenses. In a couple of years, if I'm still with Panasonic, I'll probably pick up a used GH6 to replace it. Is the "heyday" over? Probably, but people have been rushing to proclaim the system dead for years. Unless you're looking to invest into the system, I wouldn't worry about it.

[hyalinejim]

Well, it's certainly true that the GH6 has not made the same kind of splash that the GH5 did. Personally, I don't find M43 to be too much of a burden when shooting with a 0.64x Speedbooster. It's kind of a sweet spot of boosted light for exposure and manageable DOF. For me full frame has too little when shooting wide open with fast glass and I think that approximately APS-C or Super35 sensor size is pretty good. M43 is too small, but with a 0.64x speedbooster it's actually "bigger" than APS-C at 1.28x crop relative to full frame.

Here are a few clips shot wide open with an Iscorama 36 on an Olympus OM 50 1.8 manual lens. Talk about making life difficult for myself with an Iscorama shooting wide open - swapping diopters between almost every single shot! A lesson in patience! Oh well, it's worth it for the bokeh and the flares I guess 😂

 

[TomTheDP]

The BM pocket 4k is still a super dope B-cam or budget A-cam. It's easy to match to almost any camera because you have the light 4k compressed RAW internal. You can't get anything with that capability for the same price. 

[kye]

Why do people have this secret desire to be a coroner?

[kye]

6 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

Well, it's certainly true that the GH6 has not made the same kind of splash that the GH5 did. Personally, I don't find M43 to be too much of a burden when shooting with a 0.64x Speedbooster. It's kind of a sweet spot of boosted light for exposure and manageable DOF. For me full frame has too little when shooting wide open with fast glass and I think that approximately APS-C or Super35 sensor size is pretty good. M43 is too small, but with a 0.64x speedbooster it's actually "bigger" than APS-C at 1.28x crop relative to full frame.

Here are a few clips shot wide open with an Iscorama 36 on an Olympus OM 50 1.8 manual lens. Talk about making life difficult for myself with an Iscorama shooting wide open - swapping diopters between almost every single shot! A lesson in patience! Oh well, it's worth it for the bokeh and the flares I guess 😂

Very nice!

I'm glad to see that at least one person on the internet hasn't forgotten how to put some feeling into their images!

Almost all videos these days look like a lens sharpness test that's been graded as a sharpening-in-post stress-test...

[hyalinejim]

3 hours ago, kye said:

Almost all videos these days look like a lens sharpness test

Lol! The combination of taking lens + Iscorama + diopter + vari ND = so many layers of glass that focus peaking doesn't even work anymore, even on the highest setting you just see nothing 😂 

I did another video the same day (more for the model than for me): slo-mo, vertical format, AF tracking with the Leica 12-60 (which worked most of the time btw) .... you know the kind of thing. It's fine, but it doesn't have much in the way of atmosphere.

[Phil A]

14 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

M43 will live on for as long as Panasonic and OMD decide to keep making cameras, and will continue on for years after that because it has a dedicated user base. While I'm in the process of downsizing my M43 gear, I still plan to keep a GH5 and a couple lenses. In a couple of years, if I'm still with Panasonic, I'll probably pick up a used GH6 to replace it. Is the "heyday" over? Probably, but people have been rushing to proclaim the system dead for years. Unless you're looking to invest into the system, I wouldn't worry about it.

I still have my GH5 because I couldn't pull the trigger on selling it. It's a camera I always had 100% confidence in, imho top notch user experience too, and I wish the S5 would have been just basically a carbon copy of its features and body with a bigger sensor (biggest deal breaker for me was the step back with the EVF; S1 obviously with a great EVF but just too big & heavy).

I also believe that the GH6 is a great camera with a huge feature set. But I've seen reviews where they said that the sensor is actually a downgrade to the GH5 when it comes to quality for still images, which is a big downside for a hybrid. There's the mentioned BMPCC4k, but that's a 4 year old camera with no signs of them updating it (looks like they moved on to APS-C, which would be more interesting to me if it retained a mirrorless mount).

Generally I look at these things sometimes a bit in a different perspective because I'm not working in a creative / art endeavor but in an industrial field where there is less emotion involved. It's good to have variety of choice and many different niche options, but Panasonic is heavily cutting prices and the people who do buy their cameras prefer to shoot with 3rd party lenses (because half of the M43 lenses nowadays are the same size as APS-C/FF) on 3rd party adapters while using 3rd party batteries. There was always that talk about Canon selling lenses over cameras when it was EF mount, seems for Panasonic it is pretty much the reverse. There is no real "manufacturer ecosystem" that people are locked in because they often buy nothing from the camera manufacturer besides the body. People like to talk about what corporations ought to do for their loyal customers, the good of mankind/art, etc. but in the end, when you look behind all the mission/vision talk, most big companies operate to make higher profit to increase shareholder value.

[kye]

4 hours ago, Phil A said:

I still have my GH5 because I couldn't pull the trigger on selling it. It's a camera I always had 100% confidence in, imho top notch user experience too, and I wish the S5 would have been just basically a carbon copy of its features and body with a bigger sensor (biggest deal breaker for me was the step back with the EVF; S1 obviously with a great EVF but just too big & heavy).

I also believe that the GH6 is a great camera with a huge feature set. But I've seen reviews where they said that the sensor is actually a downgrade to the GH5 when it comes to quality for still images, which is a big downside for a hybrid. There's the mentioned BMPCC4k, but that's a 4 year old camera with no signs of them updating it (looks like they moved on to APS-C, which would be more interesting to me if it retained a mirrorless mount).

Generally I look at these things sometimes a bit in a different perspective because I'm not working in a creative / art endeavor but in an industrial field where there is less emotion involved. It's good to have variety of choice and many different niche options, but Panasonic is heavily cutting prices and the people who do buy their cameras prefer to shoot with 3rd party lenses (because half of the M43 lenses nowadays are the same size as APS-C/FF) on 3rd party adapters while using 3rd party batteries. There was always that talk about Canon selling lenses over cameras when it was EF mount, seems for Panasonic it is pretty much the reverse. There is no real "manufacturer ecosystem" that people are locked in because they often buy nothing from the camera manufacturer besides the body. People like to talk about what corporations ought to do for their loyal customers, the good of mankind/art, etc. but in the end, when you look behind all the mission/vision talk, most big companies operate to make higher profit to increase shareholder value.

I have kept my GH5 despite other offerings being a pretty amazing in many ways, for several reasons:

• I was looking for a backup camera / tiny camera and ended up buying a GX85 which further locked me into the MFT ecosystem, and I really don't want to have to re-buy all my lenses
• The GH6 has that horizontal streaking issue that Panasonic don't appear to be motivated to fix, and I don't feel motivated to risk having to fix in post (although I think with much careful fiddling it could be done)
• The GH5 can look great and although it's not the best colour science in the world, my ability to colour grade is definitely the weak link in my setup
• I started studying award winning productions in the same genre that I shoot (and I mean studying seriously, breaking down 45 minute episodes sometimes frame-by-frame, dissecting audio and sound design, etc) and the more I looked at Emmy Award-Winning stuff the more I realised that the images looked OK, but it was everything else around that (editing, sound design, narration, music, etc) that made it great 
• It's reliable, I enjoy using it, and keeping it is free....  which is good because despite me buying it in 2018, the pandemic has meant that I didn't get to use it on nearly as many trips as I had planned to do before being tempted to upgrade

Some months ago I bought a BM Resolve Micro colour grading panel with the goal to teach myself to grade the way that the pros mostly learned (using the basic tools but using a control surface) and kind of justified the purchase to myself by saying I would buy it to learn instead of buying a new camera.  I had planned on just putting in an hour or so grading practice per day, but I got distracted with other things (life!) - however I found that I got noticeably better for every two hours or so I put into grading.  I have a huge backlog of footage from past trips that a skills upgrade will improve but not new camera can influence, so I'm more motivated to upgrade myself rather than the camera.

[MrSMW]

It’s doomed, doomed I tell you.

Nah, like so many things, there is a place for everything.

It depends on so many things such as your needs, budget etc…

I feel I could quite easily go with M4/3 for most if not all of my video needs.

Where it begins to fall apart for me is on the stills side where I am going to argue that no M4/3 camera is going to best any recent Fuji APSC camera in any regard, never mind the latest and greatest full frame.

Regarding image quality and low light capability on a ‘like for like basis’. There are some faster focusing and smaller, cheaper longer lens options etc, but I am talking raw camera stills ability.

That’s just physics.

The GH6 for me is a great bit of kit and had it been launched 2 years earlier, would probably be my workhorse.

The OM-1 still could be but struggling to see any area where I would choose it over an XH2/s.

I do love that dinky little fucker and if Fuji did not exist…

[hyalinejim]

10 hours ago, Phil A said:

I've seen reviews where they said that the sensor is actually a downgrade to the GH5 when it comes to quality for still images, which is a big downside for a hybrid

Yes, the dynamic range appears to be slightly lower than the GH5 when shooting at non-DR Boost ISOs. And using DR Boost gives appears to give an extra highlight stop, cleaner shadows but noisier midtones (as outlined above) which is a bit weird. For video, I've realised that both the GH5 and GH6 have enough dynamic range for me. I normally favour an amount of contrast that delivers approximately 7.5 obvious stops with a roll-off into whatever is above and below - so the 10 or 11 or 12 stops of the GH5 or GH6, depending on how you count them, is plenty for me and leaves room for accidental over and under exposure.

But for photos, I never even think of using a GH5 or GH6. I know they can take photos as I've taken one or two when I was absolutely stuck. I'd much rather reach for my long-in-the-tooth 5D3. I'd say its dynamic range is probably roughly similar, so it has more to do with the fact that it's familiar to use and I trust its autofocus. But I can understand how the message that "dynamic range is worse than its predecessor" would turn photographers away from the GH6. There's little attraction in investing in a new body where a fundamental spec is going backwards, rather than forwards as it should.

6 hours ago, kye said:

The GH6 has that horizontal streaking issue that Panasonic don't appear to be motivated to fix

Mine has it and I know because I went looking for it, but I have yet to see it in any of my clips that I shot in "real life", if it makes you feel any better!

[QuickHitRecord]

On 10/27/2022 at 11:59 AM, hyalinejim said:

 

I just want to say that this is the first footage I've seen in ages that makes me want to brush the dust off of my anamorphic lens for the first time in seven years and take it out for a spin. And I have never seen anything from a GH5 that I've liked so much -- I am usually put off by footage from that camera. Really lovely. Thanks for sharing.

[kye]

6 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

Mine has it and I know because I went looking for it, but I have yet to see it in any of my clips that I shot in "real life", if it makes you feel any better!

How much do you shoot with really high DR conditions?

I seem to be shooting quite a lot in conditions that exceed the DR of the GH5 so would imagine that those would run the risk of streaking.