Former GH5 videographers, what did you upgrade to afterwards?

[kye]

4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

A lot depends on what race or nationality you shoot. You shoot mixed races together and you had better have some damn good DR. New smartphones are doing better than they really are because of stacking and HDR. But they don't always work so that is a touch and go option.

 I am surprised how far we have come video specs wise but overall, I don't think we have moved as far as we think, look at the earliest BM cameras. great DR  for the time. You still now have to buy some big ass, expensive as heck camera to get great consistent DR and great midtones.

Yeah, I keep saying this but no-one wants to hear it.

We had the OG BMPCC that shot RAW internal, had 13-stops of DR, and was under $1000, a decade ago.  What we have now - lots of cameras that barely improve upon this spec, except in resolution.

At the time there was the OG BMPCC (the camera we had and could afford) and the Alexa (the image we all wanted).  The Alexa had barely more pixels but staggeringly better quality pixels.  

What did the manufacturers do?  Basically zero improvement in pixel quality, but now we have 16 times as many of them.

*eyeroll*

BUT....  say that around here and the "progress is progress" people just shout you down.

Andrew was right about us getting what we deserve....  and what we got was manufacturers that just bamboozled people with BS and then everyone swallowed it.  Even with Yedlin proving that no-one could even see more than 1080p in most situations.

[PPNS]

On 3/27/2022 at 1:09 AM, kye said:

Yeah, I keep saying this but no-one wants to hear it.

We had the OG BMPCC that shot RAW internal, had 13-stops of DR, and was under $1000, a decade ago.  What we have now - lots of cameras that barely improve upon this spec, except in resolution.

At the time there was the OG BMPCC (the camera we had and could afford) and the Alexa (the image we all wanted).  The Alexa had barely more pixels but staggeringly better quality pixels.  

What did the manufacturers do?  Basically zero improvement in pixel quality, but now we have 16 times as many of them.

BUT....  say that around here and the "progress is progress" people just shout you down.

Andrew was right about us getting what we deserve....  and what we got was manufacturers that just bamboozled people with BS and then everyone swallowed it.  Even with Yedlin proving that no-one could even see more than 1080p in most situations.

I mean the p4k does have a bit more dynamic range than the original pocket. and twice the battery life. some would argue that is a bit of progress, even if it costs a bit more than 1000$ now.

[webrunner5]

Very true but it is a shame that it is still the smallest company out there with the best product DR wise that is affordable yet. What is wrong with that picture. Seems like the big boys are playing games as usual.

[kye]

10 hours ago, PPNS said:

I mean the p4k does have a bit more dynamic range than the original pocket. and twice the battery life. some would argue that is a bit of progress, even if it costs a bit more than 1000$ now.

Battery life is similar if you use current battery tech - I have personally recorded 49 minutes of uncompressed RAW from a single battery on the OG BMPCC.  Depending on which SNR figure you look at, the P4K has either 0.4 or 0.2 extra stops of DR.

Plus the P4K is almost 3x the size of the OG.

Definitely sounds like a decade well spent......  *cough*  *cough*  *cough*

[webrunner5]

Plus it lost the filmic Mojo look of the OG. It looks better than a lot of cameras but it is not better.

[PPNS]

10 hours ago, kye said:

Battery life is similar if you use current battery tech - I have personally recorded 49 minutes of uncompressed RAW from a single battery on the OG BMPCC.  Depending on which SNR figure you look at, the P4K has either 0.4 or 0.2 extra stops of DR.

Plus the P4K is almost 3x the size of the OG.

Definitely sounds like a decade well spent......  *cough*  *cough*  *cough*

i mean i dont get your complaints in this particular context, you can still get a really nice camera for a fairly cheap price. i agree with the sentiment that manufacturers got better at convincing people to buy bad cameras especially when they dont need them by using sales people and influencers.

 

13 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Plus it lost the filmic Mojo look of the OG. It looks better than a lot of cameras but it is not better.

i disagree. that shit is fake. the newer one collects more data, if you cant shape that data to look a particular way, that is frankly operator error. 

its not like the alexa is the thing that kye is missing. you can pretty easily search "alexa classic in 2022" in youtube and find a fairly recent video of a guy making that camera look like ass in even a controlled environment!

if whatever you're making doesn't look good through a cheap camera that can record in 12 bit and has decent dynamic range, whether it is an og pocket, or a p4k, it wont look good on an alexa either.

[webrunner5]

21 minutes ago, PPNS said:

ii disagree. that shit is fake. the newer one collects more data, if you cant shape that data to look a particular way, that is frankly operator error. 

its not like the alexa is the thing that kye is missing. you can pretty easily search "alexa classic in 2022" in youtube and find a fairly recent video of a guy making that camera look like ass in even a controlled environment!

if whatever you're making doesn't look good through a cheap camera that can record in 12 bit and has decent dynamic range, whether it is an og pocket, or a p4k, it wont look good on an alexa either.

There is no way in hell you are ever going to get the PK4 to look like the OG BMPCC looks like using Raw DNG. Blackmagic has lost it's magic since the PK4 came out. They looking nothing like the old stuff did. They look like everyone else now.

[MurtlandPhoto]

20 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

There is no way in hell you are ever going to get the PK4 to look like the OG BMPCC looks like using Raw DNG. Blackmagic has lost it's magic since the PK4 came out. They looking nothing like the old stuff did. They look like everyone else now.

A simple CST in Resolve to the original BM Film gamut and color space gets it 90% of the way there in 4 clicks. The last 10% comes from the s16 sensor size. In the end, the creature comforts of the P4K are just too great to ignore for me personally.

[webrunner5]

The PK4 to me is just too awkward of a camera body. And with a cage even more goofy. I get that 4k is never going to look like 1080p. It has it's uses. Even Arri doesn't really like a 4k camera. I doubt 4% of the world has a 4k TV let alone 8k. I don't, heck one of my 42" is 720p. Yeah, my 50" 1080p looks a Lot better. My 4k Monitor looks even better but...

[webrunner5]

Yeah Resolve has gotten pretty good now with the BM cameras on the Color Transformation thing. Amazing feature.

[kye]

 

6 hours ago, PPNS said:

i mean i dont get your complaints in this particular context, you can still get a really nice camera for a fairly cheap price. i agree with the sentiment that manufacturers got better at convincing people to buy bad cameras especially when they dont need them by using sales people and influencers.

You said "some would argue that is a bit of progress" and I pointed out that the DR hasn't increased and the battery life also hasn't really increased.

That was 5 years after the OG BMPCC.

Personally, I think that given the huge increase in size and the time elapsed they could have made more substantial improvements to it.

6 hours ago, PPNS said:

i disagree. that shit is fake. the newer one collects more data, if you cant shape that data to look a particular way, that is frankly operator error. 

its not like the alexa is the thing that kye is missing. you can pretty easily search "alexa classic in 2022" in youtube and find a fairly recent video of a guy making that camera look like ass in even a controlled environment!

if whatever you're making doesn't look good through a cheap camera that can record in 12 bit and has decent dynamic range, whether it is an og pocket, or a p4k, it wont look good on an alexa either.

If you can't see it then that's fine - more power to you, but just because you can't see it doesn't make it fake.

Otherwise, most of the stuff on earth is fake because I haven't seen it.

4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

The PK4 to me is just too awkward of a camera body. And with a cage even more goofy. I get that 4k is never going to look like 1080p. It has it's uses. Even Arri doesn't really like a 4k camera. I doubt 4% of the world has a 4k TV let alone 8k. I don't, heck one of my 42" is 720p. Yeah, my 50" 1080p looks a Lot better. My 4k Monitor looks even better but...

Actually, I think that a staggeringly huge number of people have 4K TVs now.

That's the whole point of the manufacturers flogging 4K and then 6K and now 8K and 12K.  They aren't doing that to sell more cameras, they're doing that to sell more TVs.  Go to your nearest big box store and see if they even sell a 1080p TV above a certain size....    I just went to target.com and looked at TVs from 30" up (they sell tiny portable ones too) and the cheapest one a 50" 4K for $319.

[webrunner5]

So you think people in Africa, India, China, etc. are buying the hell out of 4k tv's??? You do realize the west represents about 15% of the whole world population. And how many of them have a 4k TV? I don't. A 4k TV is about the last thing in hell I am looking to buy.

Speaking of buying, instead of buying a 4k TV I just bought a Canon 1Dc. Get it in a few days, has 2000 actuations. WAY better toy than a TV.

This is the breakdown. https://www.statista.com/statistics/237584/distribution-of-the-world-population-by-continent/

[TomTheDP]

The usefulness of resolution depends how close you will sit to any given screen.

A BMPCC with a better body definitely would have been nice to have.

[kye]

5 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

So you think people in Africa, India, China, etc. are buying the hell out of 4k tv's??? You do realize the west represents about 15% of the whole world population. And how many of them have a 4k TV? I don't. A 4k TV is about the last thing in hell I am looking to buy.

Speaking of buying, instead of buying a 4k TV I just bought a Canon 1Dc. Get it in a few days, has 2000 actuations. WAY better toy than a TV.

This is the breakdown. https://www.statista.com/statistics/237584/distribution-of-the-world-population-by-continent/

I did a quick google and couldn't find (non paywall) stats on how many TVs get sold by resolution, so this isn't something we're going to answer.  However, if you look at global income levels I would suggest that TV sales are more impacted by the US and EU than the people living on less than USD$5 per day:

[MrSMW]

I love how these threads develop.

We’re now onto 4K TV sales outside of the US/EU and meanwhile, I don’t think the OP ever came back to see the answer to his question which would now be:

Buy an OG BMP4K plus a 4K TV. I think… 😬

[PPNS]

13 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I get that 4k is never going to look like 1080p. 

i disagree, a good 1080p file doesnt look much different from 4k. 

 

8 hours ago, kye said:

You said "some would argue that is a bit of progress" and I pointed out that the DR hasn't increased and the battery life also hasn't really increased.

That was 5 years after the OG BMPCC.

Personally, I think that given the huge increase in size and the time elapsed they could have made more substantial improvements to it.

If you can't see it then that's fine - more power to you, but just because you can't see it doesn't make it fake.

well as you said, they did improve the DR a tiny bit. would i have loved a tiltable screen and internal nd's? sure. would i ever want to go back to the og pocket screen? hell no.

in a lot of ways, the original pocket was kind of enough. the cameras itself are basically good enough to capture a wide dynamic range and contain enough color information to make good looking, malleable moving images. 

sure an alexa, an ump, or whatever canon cinema camera might have even a bit more DR, but do you actually need that kye? or are you fixated on the wrong things? if you're striving for better looking images, you should try to control whatever is in front of the lens. 

maybe you should operationalize the variables of the mojo of the original pocket if you think it's still the best thing to record moving images with. maybe you'll learn to recreate whatever it is that you're missing on more modern cameras. maybe you will realise that some of what you're experiencing is some collective online confirmation bias. 

have you used both the 4k and og on the same shoot?

 

in regards to the original topic, i think videographers should go back to ENG camcorders instead of fighting against what are essentially photo cameras. 

[kye]

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I love how these threads develop.

We’re now onto 4K TV sales outside of the US/EU and meanwhile, I don’t think the OP ever came back to see the answer to his question which would now be:

Buy an OG BMP4K plus a 4K TV. I think… 😬

Like they say...  gotta be in it to win it!

41 minutes ago, PPNS said:

i disagree, a good 1080p file doesnt look much different from 4k. 

I'm just guessing here, but you prefer 4K images don't you?

41 minutes ago, PPNS said:

well as you said, they did improve the DR a tiny bit. would i have loved a tiltable screen and internal nd's? sure. would i ever want to go back to the og pocket screen? hell no.

in a lot of ways, the original pocket was kind of enough. the cameras itself are basically good enough to capture a wide dynamic range and contain enough color information to make good looking, malleable moving images. 

sure an alexa, an ump, or whatever canon cinema camera might have even a bit more DR, but do you actually need that kye? or are you fixated on the wrong things? if you're striving for better looking images, you should try to control whatever is in front of the lens. 

I shoot travel, often on the more adventure side of travel too.  

I love it when people tell me to control the scene.  Please tell me how I can better control:

• a landscape being shot out the window of a moving helicopter
• a sunset
• the buildings and people in a large city
• a cave while taking the tour
• a museum or world heritage site (eg, Pompeii)
• an amusement park with rides
• a market in an emerging economic country
• etc

Next you'll be telling me I don't need a weather-sealed camera because I should just control the weather!

To directly answer your question, yes, I need more DR.  and more robust images where I don't have to choose between photographing the sunset or the scene in front of it.

41 minutes ago, PPNS said:

maybe you should operationalize the variables of the mojo of the original pocket if you think it's still the best thing to record moving images with. maybe you'll learn to recreate whatever it is that you're missing on more modern cameras. maybe you will realise that some of what you're experiencing is some collective online confirmation bias. 

I bought the OG BMPCC and BMMCC specifically to study their images, both for the colour science and for their mojo.  I have studied them at length - you can find a small proportion of the tests I have done littered all through these forums over a period of years.  I am yet to locate almost anything that accounts for these factors that you claim do not exist.

41 minutes ago, PPNS said:

have you used both the 4k and og on the same shoot?

No, but I have shot both the OG BMPCC and BMMCC alongside the GH5 and tried to match the GH5 to the BM camera on many occasions (just search). 

P4K footage looks like GH5 footage, but better.  Neither looks much like the OG.

41 minutes ago, PPNS said:

in regards to the original topic, i think videographers should go back to ENG camcorders instead of fighting against what are essentially photo cameras. 

You don't like videographers do you?

I see this kind of dismissive prejudice all the time from snooty "film-makers".  The general tone is that "real film-makers" shoot in controlled conditions and should be free to create images that have nice colour and background separation and images that are expressive, and the people that don't shoot in controlled conditions should be happy with footage that looks like it was shot with a smartphone from 6 years ago.

It's kind of like when people say "go back to wherever you came from - you're not welcome here" only instead of 'here' being a place, it's a level of image quality.

[PPNS]

kye, my man, i think you're taking me the wrong way here.

On 3/30/2022 at 10:45 AM, kye said:

I'm just guessing here, but you prefer 4K images don't you?

this is actually the opposite of what i'm saying. if you showed me an exported finalised 10 bit prores 422 file in 1080p and 4k, i probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. especially on like a flanders grading monitor. 

On 3/30/2022 at 10:45 AM, kye said:

I shoot travel, often on the more adventure side of travel too.  

I love it when people tell me to control the scene.  Please tell me how I can better control:

• a landscape being shot out the window of a moving helicopter
• a sunset
• the buildings and people in a large city
• a cave while taking the tour
• a museum or world heritage site (eg, Pompeii)
• an amusement park with rides
• a market in an emerging economic country
• etc

Next you'll be telling me I don't need a weather-sealed camera because I should just control the weather!

To directly answer your question, yes, I need more DR.  and more robust images where I don't have to choose between photographing the sunset or the scene in front of it.

can i ask you what the finalised results are of these shoots? 

all of these things you should be able to do fine with the cameras you already have, without having to choose between the layer in front, or the background. maybe the p4k would help in a cave with its second iso range 🙂 . if you want the people in front of the sunset to be fully illuminated, while they aren't in real life, you have to accept that you're maybe asking for more dynamic range than the best video camera can give you. maybe you have to accept that the tech isn't there, and it never will be. that's where you come in as the camera operator, and where you have to make creative decisions based on your imposed limitations. that's why people add lights, or flags for neg fill, or simulate the same principles on location. you can only do so much without controlling the scene. that's where truly good image quality comes from, intended differences in light, together with interesting composition that go along with the intended meaning of the creator's audiovisual piece. 

 

On 3/30/2022 at 10:45 AM, kye said:

I bought the OG BMPCC and BMMCC specifically to study their images, both for the colour science and for their mojo.  I have studied them at length - you can find a small proportion of the tests I have done littered all through these forums over a period of years.  I am yet to locate almost anything that accounts for these factors that you claim do not exist

so what are the variables of said mojo and said color science? what are the conclusions? 

On 3/30/2022 at 10:45 AM, kye said:

No, but I have shot both the OG BMPCC and BMMCC alongside the GH5 and tried to match the GH5 to the BM camera on many occasions (just search). 

P4K footage looks like GH5 footage, but better.  Neither looks much like the OG.

i have used the sony fs5 a lot and it sucks. this also means that the sony f55 is a terrible camera. 

this statement is incorrect, yet it's based more in reality than whatever you said here, since the sensor should be the same and theyre made by the same manufacturer using allegedly the same color science.

this is also the case with the a7s3 and fx6. allegedly the same manufacturer, sensor, and color science, yet... they behave completely differently. one is a total piece of shit (and allegedly has a better dynamic range), and the other one is pretty pleasant to use.

you could have just said that you had no experience w the p4k instead of essentially, talking out of your ass, based on collective internet hysteria. 

i understand that you might have had trouble with matching the gh5 to the pocket, with its weaker codec and dr, but if you would shoot a scene with both the original and the 4k, and you cant match them, that says something about your skill as someone who's post-processing the footage. which is fine btw, i'm not the best at it either! the data should be all there in the negative. 

you could shoot something in 16mm and its going to have some cool ass grain, but if whatever you're shooting sucks, what's the point of the cool ass grain?

On 3/30/2022 at 10:45 AM, kye said:

You don't like videographers do you?

I see this kind of dismissive prejudice all the time from snooty "film-makers".  The general tone is that "real film-makers" shoot in controlled conditions and should be free to create images that have nice colour and background separation and images that are expressive, and the people that don't shoot in controlled conditions should be happy with footage that looks like it was shot with a smartphone from 6 years ago.

It's kind of like when people say "go back to wherever you came from - you're not welcome here" only instead of 'here' being a place, it's a level of image quality.

a lot of the work i do could easily be considered videography, so this would be considered counterproductive. yet a lot of videographers work in very counterproductive ways, and it's frankly a bit frustrating. 

great example here btw, how do you get expressive images with background seperation?

i mean you could be a hack on an oversized sensor with a wide open lens, or you could just backlight the subject. suddenly even that little change in whatever your seeing, could invoke a certain meaning or mood in the image.

once again, image quality is not decided by the camera anymore. if you're doing documentary stuff in tough conditions, people tend to make the compromise of perfect looking images vs. getting the actual shot. an alexa wont save you. ive seen enough dogshit filmed on an amira back in my editing days. your data capturing devices are almost at the same level, youre missing something else.

also going back to camcorders is objectively good advice for a lot of people!

[kye]

 

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

can i ask you what the finalised results are of these shoots? 

all of these things you should be able to do fine with the cameras you already have, without having to choose between the layer in front, or the background. maybe the p4k would help in a cave with its second iso range 🙂 . if you want the people in front of the sunset to be fully illuminated, while they aren't in real life, you have to accept that you're maybe asking for more dynamic range than the best video camera can give you. maybe you have to accept that the tech isn't there, and it never will be. that's where you come in as the camera operator, and where you have to make creative decisions based on your imposed limitations. that's why people add lights, or flags for neg fill, or simulate the same principles on location. you can only do so much without controlling the scene. that's where truly good image quality comes from, intended differences in light, together with interesting composition that go along with the intended meaning of the creator's audiovisual piece. 

There are cameras just becoming available that have sufficient DR to expose the sunset properly as well as get the shadow-side of a face well enough exposed to be able to see who it is and what they're doing, which is ultimately the goal.  The GH5 doesn't have enough DR for that, however, and I don't think the P4K does either.  That's really more the territory of things like the A7S3 or S1H.

I definitely understand the priority of getting the shot over the image quality of it.  I shot videos with the OG BMPCC and BMMCC and they were just too slow to work with, and didn't offer enough stabilisation to get the shot.  The shots they got were lovely, but the GH5 can get a significant amount more shots just because it's faster to use and so you're rolling with less delay, or the shots are steady enough from the GH5 but not from the others, etc.

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

so what are the variables of said mojo and said color science? what are the conclusions? 

I've lost count of the various things I've tried, but I wasn't able to isolate any perceptible differences.  

The conclusions are that:

• either it comes from a variable I haven't tested yet, or it comes from many variables that when isolated don't provide an appreciable enough bump to be discerned
• if I can't understand what the variable(s) are, then I can't optimise them, and so if I want it then I have to just buy it

Sadly, the cameras that have it are normally impractical (ie, they don't get enough shots in the situations I shoot in) and potentially they're also far too expensive.

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

i have used the sony fs5 a lot and it sucks. this also means that the sony f55 is a terrible camera. 

this statement is incorrect, yet it's based more in reality than whatever you said here, since the sensor should be the same and theyre made by the same manufacturer using allegedly the same color science.

this is also the case with the a7s3 and fx6. allegedly the same manufacturer, sensor, and color science, yet... they behave completely differently. one is a total piece of shit (and allegedly has a better dynamic range), and the other one is pretty pleasant to use.

One challenge that any discussion on camera tech faces is that there are so many variables being discussed.

Just off the top of my head, these are (some of) the things that are at play when comparing two cameras:

• IR/UV filter on sensor
• OLPF
• Bayer filter (or X-trans, etc)
• sensor itself (and the modes it is configured to use)
• analog processing circuitry
• ADCs
• digital processing algorithms
  (and, if it's not an uncompressed Linear RAW codec)
• image scaling / down-up sampling
• NR
• sharpening
• colour space / gamma transforms
• compression (both the bitrate/bitdepth as well as the quality of the algorithm and processor)

Needless to say, just because two sensors share the sensor and the "colour science" doesn't mean that those are the only variables at play.  Far from it.

When you compare two cameras, you're comparing all the factors above and more.

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

you could have just said that you had no experience w the p4k instead of essentially, talking out of your ass, based on collective internet hysteria. 

Not sure which part you think was out of my ass.  I'm speaking from personal experience here.

One of the primary things I have done over the years, in videography as well as in other pursuits, is to validate the things that "everyone knows" personally, to ensure that they are true.  As I'm sure you're aware, at least a third of the stuff that "everyone knows" is actually total BS, and can be proven so quite easily, should someone have the capability to perform even basic tests and, more importantly, to have a desire for the truth.

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

i understand that you might have had trouble with matching the gh5 to the pocket, with its weaker codec and dr, but if you would shoot a scene with both the original and the 4k, and you cant match them, that says something about your skill as someone who's post-processing the footage. which is fine btw, i'm not the best at it either! the data should be all there in the negative. 

I could match them sufficiently to intercut them, but I was talking in the context of the mojo of the image from the BM cameras.  The match was just fine, but the magic wasn't there.

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

great example here btw, how do you get expressive images with background seperation?

i mean you could be a hack on an oversized sensor with a wide open lens, or you could just backlight the subject. suddenly even that little change in whatever your seeing, could invoke a certain meaning or mood in the image.

once again, image quality is not decided by the camera anymore. if you're doing documentary stuff in tough conditions, people tend to make the compromise of perfect looking images vs. getting the actual shot. an alexa wont save you. ive seen enough dogshit filmed on an amira back in my editing days. your data capturing devices are almost at the same level, youre missing something else.

I shoot in very different situations and with very different goals to probably every other person here.

I shoot super-super fast.  I walk, carrying my camera in one hand by my side, wearing a wrist strap, and with my finger on the power switch.  When I see something about to happen (I've done lots of street photography so am anticipating things all the time) I start to raise the camera up to my face, and while on the way up I turn the camera on, and about the time I get the viewfinder to my eye I hit record.  The camera is set to auto-expose using SS, so while it is adjusting that I am then finding the composition and manually focusing the lens (I shoot with fast aperture primes for low light and a modest amount of background separation).  This takes perhaps 2s.

The result of this is that I often miss the moment, because I was too slow.  If I don't miss it entirely I am often using a clip starting with the first viable frame in the edit, and sometimes the shot only lasts a second or so.  I have in the past gotten only two usable frames and ended up doing a very slow slow-motion transition between them for a time-stands-still kind of moment.

To this end, the idea of me modifying literally anything about the shot is beyond ridiculous.  This isn't every shot I take, but it's quite a lot of them.  I shoot what happens, I don't direct, I don't control, I get what I get and I use what I can.

I end up with footage that suffers poor DR, exposure problems, mixed lighting temperatures, stabilisation issues, etc.  

When I'm shooting, every second counts, so when I say I would like a nicer codec and someone suggests a camera that would cause me to miss entirely many more shots, it's a silly suggestion.  The reality is that the GH5, while not the best in any single area, is actually the camera with the most overlap between a range of critical factors that allow usable images to be collected in difficult situations.

Any increase in image quality normally comes at the expensive of some practicality that is simply not a factor for most shooters.  I know I'm by far in the minority in this sense, but in a way I'm the perfect GH5 user.  Anyone that can take a huge sacrifice in something that the GH5 was really good at wasn't really at the centre of the aim for this camera.

To that end, the GH6 is really the only replacement for the GH5.  The P4K is deficient in so many areas that it makes about as good a replacement to the GH5 as a Mack truck makes as a replacement to a rally car.

28 minutes ago, PPNS said:

also going back to camcorders is objectively good advice for a lot of people!

Yes, but not me.  The lust for shallow DoF is really what has ruined camcorders in the marketplace I think.

Critics of the GH line who suddenly now NEED great AF (as it it has always existed, which is hilarious) will tell you that you can't possibly film an interview with fixed focus because if the talent flexes a muscle wrong then they'll be out of focus.  I mean, if your DoF is only a few CM deep, and you're filming a sit-down interview for heavens-sake, you don't need that DoF at all, just move the talent closer, film them in front of a screen-screen, or *shudder* stop down the lens a little!