The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)

[kye]

6 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Thank you again, @kye, for once more making my life a living Hell...

😀

In all seriousness, I am thinking about getting a GH6 to replace my S1.

The better autofocus, lighter weight, bigger lens selection, ProRes 4:2:2 internal, ability to record to an SSD, all-i codecs, appeals to me, and at 4K 60fps (using the dynamic range boost) of the GH6, the DR is going to be roughly equivalent since I tend to be one of those people more likely to stop down a lens, and the added DOF of m43 would allow me to use faster lenses for the same DOF (so use one-stop lower aperture???) Math is not one on of my skills.

My only two real issue after that is mixing and matching lenses with my full frame S5, and the fact that the S5 has a thirty-minute time limit (and no internal 6K). 

I guess logically I would sell the S5, keep the S1 and add the GH6. But logic and I aren't really on speaking terms 🙈

Some thoughts.....

Think of the total ecosystem that you have
This includes cameras, lenses, batteries and chargers, and all your accessories, and then build a system that works for you.  Think about failures and having equipment redundancy too.
My travel setup is two MFT cameras and an action camera.  If I want to shoot simultaneously then I can use the same lenses across the two bodies.  If my action camera dies I can use a wide on a second body to emulate it.  If my main camera (GH5) and lens (Voigt 17.5mm) and mic (Rode VMP) disappear then I have backups for those three (GX85, 14mm f2.5, Rode Video Micro) which are small and I can easily carry as a spare.  If my backup / 2nd setup dies then I can use my action camera in a pinch and there's also my phone.

The difference in DoF is 2 between MFT and FF, so to match the FOV and DoF of a 50mm at F4 on a FF camera, you would need a 25mm F2 lens for an MFT camera.  But you should also think about the base ISO of 2000 on the GH6 as I'd assume you'd be using V-Log and DR Boost, which might require new NDs to suit the new lenses you'll probably have to buy.  
Don't just think of the fact that MFT has faster lenses with the same DoF, because the sensor is smaller and therefore has higher noise and therefore requires more light to get the same performance, but then technology of the sensor and processing all apply and then there's the sensors with dual-ISO or dual-gain and then there's blah blah blah blah.  Long story short - there are too many variables that factor in to be able to predict low-light capability.
The only real way to compare low-light is to look at a test of the two cameras you're comparing shooting the same scene with equivalent lenses.

[Mark Romero 2]

1 hour ago, kye said:

Some thoughts.....

Think of the total ecosystem that you have
This includes cameras, lenses, batteries and chargers, and all your accessories, and then build a system that works for you.  Think about failures and having equipment redundancy too.
My travel setup is two MFT cameras and an action camera.  If I want to shoot simultaneously then I can use the same lenses across the two bodies.  If my action camera dies I can use a wide on a second body to emulate it.  If my main camera (GH5) and lens (Voigt 17.5mm) and mic (Rode VMP) disappear then I have backups for those three (GX85, 14mm f2.5, Rode Video Micro) which are small and I can easily carry as a spare.  If my backup / 2nd setup dies then I can use my action camera in a pinch and there's also my phone.

The difference in DoF is 2 between MFT and FF, so to match the FOV and DoF of a 50mm at F4 on a FF camera, you would need a 25mm F2 lens for an MFT camera.  But you should also think about the base ISO of 2000 on the GH6 as I'd assume you'd be using V-Log and DR Boost, which might require new NDs to suit the new lenses you'll probably have to buy.  
Don't just think of the fact that MFT has faster lenses with the same DoF, because the sensor is smaller and therefore has higher noise and therefore requires more light to get the same performance, but then technology of the sensor and processing all apply and then there's the sensors with dual-ISO or dual-gain and then there's blah blah blah blah.  Long story short - there are too many variables that factor in to be able to predict low-light capability.
The only real way to compare low-light is to look at a test of the two cameras you're comparing shooting the same scene with equivalent lenses.

Thanks for the food for thought.

The one saving grace for me is that none of the m43 wide zooms have lens stabilization, and they all rely on IBIS instead.

For me, that will be difficult because even though I shoot my real estate videos on a gimbal, I basically NEED only TWO-axis IBIS, along with the three axis that are controlled with lens stabilization.

Otherwise, when shooting equivalent full frame of 16- 30mm (i.e., 8-15mm on m43) you get a lot of corner warping if only using IBIS.

At least as far as I have experienced so far. Maybe the GH6 will somehow rectify the corner warping problem???

[kye]

24 minutes ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Thanks for the food for thought.

The one saving grace for me is that none of the m43 wide zooms have lens stabilization, and they all rely on IBIS instead.

For me, that will be difficult because even though I shoot my real estate videos on a gimbal, I basically NEED only TWO-axis IBIS, along with the three axis that are controlled with lens stabilization.

Otherwise, when shooting equivalent full frame of 16- 30mm (i.e., 8-15mm on m43) you get a lot of corner warping if only using IBIS.

At least as far as I have experienced so far. Maybe the GH6 will somehow rectify the corner warping problem???

I'd doubt that it would help with the corner warping problem.  I suspect that it is simply a side effect of how the IBIS mechanism works and there's been no talk about an innovation in the stabilisation approach, just that it's now got more stops of stabilisation.

[Jimmy G]

19 hours ago, kye said:

The bitrates are available from most reviews of the camera, this one from newsshooter.com is pretty comprehensive, and for the higher frame rates I just multiply the bitrate by 24 and divide by the frame rate to get the effective bitrate that the viewer will see when the footage is played back at 24p.

Well, egg on my face, I missed the whole "conforming to 24P" thing on my first read, thanks for the clarification...sometimes this "old boy" needs a smack on the back of the head! LOL

 

19 hours ago, kye said:

In reality a slow-motion shot taken at 200Mbps / 240p won't have exactly the same image quality as a 20Mbps 24p file would have because the subject matter doesn't move nearly as much from frame to frame in the 240p one, but like anything it will be subject specific.  50Mbps is a good amount of bitrate for recording an interview mid-shot with a blurry background as not that much will be moving, but it's no-where near enough if you're recording trees and snow during a blizzard.

 Thanks for bringing this point up, as well, I'm thrilled to see Panasonic address this issue (in part) with some of the higher bit rates on the GH6 for all of the reasons you state. Learning to recognize which scenes will suffice with "good enough" and which scenes will require a, er, "heavier hammer" is an individual process, and it will be nice to finally see what ALL-I brings to the table for my needs as it's been something sorely lacking on my S1's. (Tap, tap, tap, Panasonic, if you're listening, this might be something you could finally provide for for my S1's expensive CFExpress cards? Maybe toss in a little of that "GH6 ProRes goodness" while you're at it?! Ha! The poor cards have been sitting idly by in their slots for the past few years wondering why I bought them. LOL >cough< Firmware update?!)

[kye]

Interesting video.  Seems lots more people are getting their hands on these in the wild now and really exploring what they have to offer.

This guy prefers it to the S5 in real-world use.