Panasonic GH6

[John Matthews]

2 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

How often do you need your backup files? If rarely ever, then I'd say keep your originals for a month after delivery, then once that date has elapsed have a batch script you run to convert the originals to teeny 1080 h265 8bit files to then store forever ("just in case" in an emergency) and delete the originals. 

Not a pro. Don't sell my services, but I do family events and just interested in the medium (for now). Really, no reason why 8bit 420 isn't enough for me for everything. But now, I have a camera that can do so much more and I'm looking for ways to use it to its full potential. I have all of my videos on SSDs, which is frankly unnecessary as they collect digital dust. I've been looking for the perfect workflow for me and I'd say the GH6 has thrown a wrench into the mix; it's great to have new tools, but now I need to find a way to use it. I'm thinking something like this:

1. record the best quality in-camera
2. initially cut/edit into more manageable files, making sure color and DR is "good enough" and that I can still do slight grading, probably H.265 422 10bit or Prores LT in 1080p
3. use these files later on for whatever project I have.

I think this process is almost necessary with the GH6 in that it has something really annoying (maybe possible to get rid of?) by having 4 mono audio channels on every video. In FCPX, I have to make them stereo and uncheck the unused channels. I don't want to have files that are on my disks that I can't really listen to because they've got audio weirdness. This could be a benefit some and I might be able to "adjust" my capture to make the sound stage even better.

[IronFilm]

On 11/26/2022 at 4:46 AM, John Matthews said:

FX30 looks good too, especially if you prioritize AF and DR over IBIS and color.

Sony has their Sony Catalyst Production Suite, and with their gyro sensors as well then they can get very good stabilization indeed. 

And Sony's color science in their latest generation cinema cameras are a massive leaps and bounds ahead of what their early generation a7S cameras were like. 

[IronFilm]

 (removed double post content via glitch in the forum software)

[John Matthews]

16 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Sony has their Sony Catalyst Production Suite, and with their gyro sensors as well then they can get very good stabilization indeed. 

And Sony's color science in their latest generation cinema cameras are a massive leaps and bounds ahead of what their early generation a7S cameras were like.

I think it's more a question, to my eye, of "embracing digital (Sony)" versus attempting a "filmic look (Panasonic)". You can always change color later anyway, for the most part.

My beef with Sony is that they seem quite arbitrary as to what camera gets what feature; you always end up hoping for an inevitable firmware update that eventually comes in the form of a new camera you have to buy.

Sony always seems more interested "business" than the "shooter", with the CEO having any decision decided by the company accountant that he has on speed-dial. They really do behave like a consumer electronics company rather than a camera company. Is Panasonic any better? Not sure, but we did get some promised features with the new firmware updates and I'm quite happy with that.

[Beritar]

On 11/28/2022 at 12:13 AM, deezid said:

There's way less NR on the GH6 than on the S1H even when shooting V-Log and even less so when shooting ProRes.
Really confused about the experiences here, was NR set to lowest (0) 😅

Maybe on the S1H, but not on the S5 and S1. The 4K of the GH6 is very clean compared to the GH5 but it uses more noise reduction, I compared with the GH5 and G9, and while the GH6 looks better with far less noise, there is less details. 
You can see the difference in this video : 

The 5,7K is really good though, there is better details and less noise reduction, too bad for the small crop, and the IBIS is bit weaker than on 4K.

[deezid]

3 hours ago, Beritar said:

Maybe on the S1H, but not on the S5 and S1. The 4K of the GH6 is very clean compared to the GH5 but it uses more noise reduction, I compared with the GH5 and G9, and while the GH6 looks better with far less noise, there is less details. 
You can see the difference in this video : 

The 5,7K is really good though, there is better details and less noise reduction, too bad for the small crop, and the IBIS is bit weaker than on 4K.

1st
Not using sRGB/Rec709 profiles here

2nd
Used standard settings? Sharpening/NR are super aggressive with standard settings with Rec709 profiles, which is definitely visible in your Video. Looks like when I push NR all the way up in V-Log, super mushy.

3rd
With V-Log the amount of noise reduction by default is super low, much lower than on the S series line up as well. There's tons of Chroma detail even in shadows which isn't really the case on the S series and other Lumix cameras.

[Emanuel]

On 11/29/2022 at 7:44 AM, John Matthews said:

I think it's more a question, to my eye, of "embracing digital (Sony)" versus attempting a "filmic look (Panasonic)". You can always change color later anyway, for the most part.

My beef with Sony is that they seem quite arbitrary as to what camera gets what feature; you always end up hoping for an inevitable firmware update that eventually comes in the form of a new camera you have to buy.

Sony always seems more interested "business" than the "shooter", with the CEO having any decision decided by the company accountant that he has on speed-dial. They really do behave like a consumer electronics company rather than a camera company. Is Panasonic any better? Not sure, but we did get some promised features with the new firmware updates and I'm quite happy with that.

Very frankly, I guess they are more or less the same today : ) Ah aside Sony's AF and multiple choices on GH series.

[Beritar]

9 hours ago, deezid said:

1st
Not using sRGB/Rec709 profiles here

2nd
Used standard settings? Sharpening/NR are super aggressive with standard settings with Rec709 profiles, which is definitely visible in your Video. Looks like when I push NR all the way up in V-Log, super mushy.

3rd
With V-Log the amount of noise reduction by default is super low, much lower than on the S series line up as well. There's tons of Chroma detail even in shadows which isn't really the case on the S series and other Lumix cameras.

This is not my video, but I had every GH cameras, the S1 and S5 and some Sony cameras (including the A7SIII, the champion of mushy details at very high ISO), so I can see when temporal noise reduction is used (and its intensity).

I don't use V-log in low light a lot so I was very surprised to see so much noise reduction in profile like Natural and Cine-V with the lowest NR value (-5), these profiles was good at keeping details below ISO 800 without so much noise before.
But on the GH6 although it looks very clean compared to the GH5 and G9, the details are not there anymore. There is a bit less noise reduction in V-log, but still too much. CineD stated that the dynamic range of V-log in the GH6 H265 was so good because of the noise reduction :

"But looking at the noise floor in the waveform plot it seems that it also has a lot more noise processing going on internally which cannot be turned “OFF”."

They also said the Prores HQ was better at keeping the "raw" sensor image, so I swapped my CFexpress from my S1 to put in my GH6 and indeed there is less noise reduction but the files are huge and you can't use them right of the bat without processing them in your video editor. From what I've seen only the Raw external Prores is noise processing free.
You can see the difference at 13m45s :

Do you use H265, Prores HQ or raw ? Because this is not my experience at all about the chroma details with the H265 codec, my S1 keeps a lot more details than my GH6 in low light. The Prores HQ is better and retains more details but certainly not more than the S1 or the S5.

Look at the guy's hairs at 0m38s (V-log profile was used), there is far less noise processing on the GH5 and S5, the GH5 has too much noise but also less noise reduction :

 

The GH6 is doing a very good job at preserving details but we can clearly see a lot of noise reduction are used, it look like oil painting (though I can't see how a 25MP M43 sensor could do better without using a lot of noise reduction).

The raw photo dynamic range is a better indicator of the performance of the sensor than the video and the GH6 is not stellar. We often see a difference in noise between photo and video because noise and dynamic range are measured differently in video and photo, for photos it's static, and for video it's dynamic and can be hidden by in camera noise processing. There is no way the GH6 could achieve such noise performance without using heavy noise reduction (It was the same thing  with the a7SIII which had 15 stops of DR in video DR and only 13 stops in photos). The DR boost is an expetion because its combining a high and low gain and we can't get this result in photo, however it comes with some restrictions.

I think for most people the noise reduction is not much a problem, especially if they don't crop or if they use V-log Prores HQ but the difference is very apparent in H265 and even more with other profiles. I much prefer to keep details (and sometimes removing noise in post) than deal with a very clean picture with mushy degraded details. The A7SIII uses the same trick and people seem to love it so I can understand why Panasonic is doing the same with their new 3D digital noise reduction. ISO noise grain is slowly being replaced with a sort of oil painting image with much less details. And there is no way to turn this 3D noise processing off. The first camera I had with this problem was the NX1 in 2014, I still own this camera but I never used it in low light.

I really like the GH6 for the improved colors and the slowmotion in daylight, but that's it. The GH4 and the GH5 were more impressive in their time in my opinion. My dream camera would be the S5 with the A74's AF and 4K 120fps.

[John Matthews]

22 hours ago, Beritar said:

The raw photo dynamic range is a better indicator of the performance of the sensor than the video and the GH6 is not stellar. We often see a difference in noise between photo and video because noise and dynamic range are measured differently in video and photo, for photos it's static, and for video it's dynamic and can be hidden by in camera noise processing. There is no way the GH6 could achieve such noise performance without using heavy noise reduction (It was the same thing  with the a7SIII which had 15 stops of DR in video DR and only 13 stops in photos). The DR boost is an expetion because its combining a high and low gain and we can't get this result in photo, however it comes with some restrictions.

The GH6, from my limited experience, doesn't behave the same as other cameras (at least in photo mode). The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that you need to expose more like the final image you intend on getting, not just shooting for the highlights. Also, you should know that the DR Boost mode is always ON in photo mode (Panasonic confirmed that in a live stream). 13 stops in video mode is probably generous on the GH6, but so is 15 stops on the A7sIII. Anyway, I think anything above 10 stops is AMAZING for rec709 and current viewing possibilities! 13 stops way more than what was going on just 10 years ago, and on a M43 sensor. I don't think we're going to get much more real differences with CMOS sensor tech anyway. Of course, there's still room for improvements, but we're not going to get 27 stops DR 20bit gigapixel images without a major change. In the meantime, we've got AI.

[Beritar]

On 12/2/2022 at 9:19 AM, John Matthews said:

The GH6, from my limited experience, doesn't behave the same as other cameras (at least in photo mode). The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that you need to expose more like the final image you intend on getting, not just shooting for the highlights. Also, you should know that the DR Boost mode is always ON in photo mode (Panasonic confirmed that in a live stream). 13 stops in video mode is probably generous on the GH6, but so is 15 stops on the A7sIII. Anyway, I think anything above 10 stops is AMAZING for rec709 and current viewing possibilities! 13 stops way more than what was going on just 10 years ago, and on a M43 sensor. I don't think we're going to get much more real differences with CMOS sensor tech anyway. Of course, there's still room for improvements, but we're not going to get 27 stops DR 20bit gigapixel images without a major change. In the meantime, we've got AI.

Yes you're right, DR Boost is ON in photo mode but not always, it is ON from ISO 800 (the same as video mode with other profiles than Vlog), this is why DPreview and Photonstophotos show a better dynamic range from ISO 800. 

I agree about dynamic range, 10 stops is ok. What bother me is the noise reduction, I prefer to get 10 stops with details than 12 stops with less details in shadows. I don't know why Panasonic don't let us the choice to use zero sharpening and noise reduction on the GH6, I know you can in RAW but this is not internal.

[John Matthews]

15 minutes ago, Beritar said:

Yes you're right, DR Boost is ON in photo mode but not always, it is ON from ISO 800 (the same as video mode with other profiles than Vlog), this is why DPreview and Photonstophotos show a better dynamic range from ISO 800. 

I agree about dynamic range, 10 stops is ok. What bother me is the noise reduction, I prefer to get 10 stops with details than 12 stops with less details in shadows. I don't know why Panasonic don't let us the choice to use zero sharpening and noise reduction on the GH6, I know you can in RAW but this is not internal.

For photos, I actually almost never see any noise on any of my M43 cameras with DXO. It does absolute magic for any ISO chosen to remove noise. In my real-world tests the GH6 does well. I'm also quite happy with the real-world DR for photos, but you need to expose more for the scene or ETTR as the ISO invariance on this camera doesn't really exist for photos- even though they are rather big in size(35-42mb). For video with DR Boost on, it goes above and beyond with me filming unlit interior shots with sunlight and sky hitting outside light-colored walls. Somehow, it still keeps highlights within the limits of VLOG and I can see details on the sunlit wall. This is not really how I would do things normally, but it's still impressive.

[deezid]

On 12/1/2022 at 11:17 AM, Beritar said:

This is not my video, but I had every GH cameras, the S1 and S5 and some Sony cameras (including the A7SIII, the champion of mushy details at very high ISO), so I can see when temporal noise reduction is used (and its intensity).

I don't use V-log in low light a lot so I was very surprised to see so much noise reduction in profile like Natural and Cine-V with the lowest NR value (-5), these profiles was good at keeping details below ISO 800 without so much noise before.
But on the GH6 although it looks very clean compared to the GH5 and G9, the details are not there anymore. There is a bit less noise reduction in V-log, but still too much. CineD stated that the dynamic range of V-log in the GH6 H265 was so good because of the noise reduction :

"But looking at the noise floor in the waveform plot it seems that it also has a lot more noise processing going on internally which cannot be turned “OFF”."

They also said the Prores HQ was better at keeping the "raw" sensor image, so I swapped my CFexpress from my S1 to put in my GH6 and indeed there is less noise reduction but the files are huge and you can't use them right of the bat without processing them in your video editor. From what I've seen only the Raw external Prores is noise processing free.
You can see the difference at 13m45s :

Do you use H265, Prores HQ or raw ? Because this is not my experience at all about the chroma details with the H265 codec, my S1 keeps a lot more details than my GH6 in low light. The Prores HQ is better and retains more details but certainly not more than the S1 or the S5.

Look at the guy's hairs at 0m38s (V-log profile was used), there is far less noise processing on the GH5 and S5, the GH5 has too much noise but also less noise reduction :

 

The GH6 is doing a very good job at preserving details but we can clearly see a lot of noise reduction are used, it look like oil painting (though I can't see how a 25MP M43 sensor could do better without using a lot of noise reduction).

Using V-Log and internal ProRes, the amount of noise reduction is by far the least I've seen on any Lumix camera, especially chroma NR. Which also means that it outperforms the S Series when it comes to capturing chroma detail below middle gray (important for skin, foliage etc). On the S Series I can achieve the same using external BRAW, but that comes with a culprit: strong sharpening and spatial luma filtering.

Also I really don't think the second video was shot using V-Log at all, the sharpening halos on the S5 footage alone are a huge give away of using a regular sRGB/Rec709 profile with standard settings, or someone played around with the NR/sharpening settings to manipulate the outcome. The S5 shooting V-Log with default settings doesn't show any sharpening artefacts.

 

[John Matthews]

I couldn’t help noticing (after filming this weekend) that the IBIS on the GH6 was much better with wobbly corners with my Panasonic 9mm f/1.7. It easily rivals my Olympus EM5 iii or EM1ii ( and same lens) with enhanced mode on (stab 1 setting with extra crop). This big difference is the GH6 was in NO CROP mode. Wow!

[John Matthews]

I learned a lot from this video (probably already posted). Presented by The great Driftwood himself (kudos to Panasonic for hiring him to do this). For you millennial noobs, Driftwood was the Englishman who gave us many important hack settings for the hacked GH2, arguably one of the cameras that really started everything for mirrorless cameras.

 

[Robb]

What is everyone's workflow with RAW RW2 pictures? With my GH5 I could send them through the Adobe converter and change them to DNGs so Davinci Resolve could read them, but now for some reason, the RW2 files out of the GH6 don't work in my Adobe DNG converter? I don't see what changed? It should still be a RW2 file so I don't understand why it's not working anymore. Haven't been able to find a work around yet. Thoughts? 

[hyalinejim]

Have you tried updating the converter?

[John Matthews]

8 hours ago, Robb said:

What is everyone's workflow with RAW RW2 pictures? With my GH5 I could send them through the Adobe converter and change them to DNGs so Davinci Resolve could read them, but now for some reason, the RW2 files out of the GH6 don't work in my Adobe DNG converter? I don't see what changed? It should still be a RW2 file so I don't understand why it's not working anymore. Haven't been able to find a work around yet. Thoughts? 

If I were you, I'd try converting them to a older version of DNG to assure compatibility... I've never really seen any real difference in the output. With your GH5, you were probably using Lightroom 4, so make it compatible with that and I bet it'll work.

[Robb]

On 12/18/2022 at 2:22 AM, hyalinejim said:

Have you tried updating the converter?

Yessir it said I was using the latest version. Going to uninstall and try again. What do you use? 

On 12/18/2022 at 3:32 AM, John Matthews said:

If I were you, I'd try converting them to a older version of DNG to assure compatibility... I've never really seen any real difference in the output. With your GH5, you were probably using Lightroom 4, so make it compatible with that and I bet it'll work.

I tried several old versions to no avail. What do you use? This method? 

[John Matthews]

41 minutes ago, Robb said:

I tried several old versions to no avail. What do you use? This method? 

I haven't done it recently, but I have converted GH6 RW2 to DNG successfully. I used the latest version of Adobe's DNG converter (because it wouldn't work if you didn't have the latest version). I don't use Davinci anymore, but I thought you could do it. I suppose you're trying to use the photos from the 75fps mode on the GH6? @Andrew Reid did something similar with the E-M1 ii a few years back. I've also tried it, but I think I resorted to exporting the files to jpg from lightroom and then using ffmeg to put them together. Theoretically, Davinci should be able to handle DNGs. Not completely sure what's going on here. However, in my limited time with the GH6, I've discovered that this camera has uncanny slow-mo abilities, yet mediocre photo capabilities (except the 100MP mode and 75fps). You really cannot shoot it like any other M43 camera I've used (protect the highlights and raise the shadows in post). You really need to nail exposure and increase ISO whenever necessary as you need that info in the shadows. The GH6 shines around 800-4000 ISO. Under 800 hasn't been better than almost any of my M43 cameras. In fact, I think you could just shoot video all the time and extract stills from it and I bet the results would be almost as good.

[Robb]

On 12/19/2022 at 2:05 PM, John Matthews said:

I haven't done it recently, but I have converted GH6 RW2 to DNG successfully. I used the latest version of Adobe's DNG converter (because it wouldn't work if you didn't have the latest version). I don't use Davinci anymore, but I thought you could do it. I suppose you're trying to use the photos from the 75fps mode on the GH6? @Andrew Reid did something similar with the E-M1 ii a few years back. I've also tried it, but I think I resorted to exporting the files to jpg from lightroom and then using ffmeg to put them together. Theoretically, Davinci should be able to handle DNGs. Not completely sure what's going on here. However, in my limited time with the GH6, I've discovered that this camera has uncanny slow-mo abilities, yet mediocre photo capabilities (except the 100MP mode and 75fps). You really cannot shoot it like any other M43 camera I've used (protect the highlights and raise the shadows in post). You really need to nail exposure and increase ISO whenever necessary as you need that info in the shadows. The GH6 shines around 800-4000 ISO. Under 800 hasn't been better than almost any of my M43 cameras. In fact, I think you could just shoot video all the time and extract stills from it and I bet the results would be almost as good.

Good to know. I'll try to delete it and redownload it. No I was just using regular photo mode. Davinci can for sure handle DNGs, I wish they would update to handle RW2 files though ..