What's the deal with the GH6?

[mercer]

After watching at @Andrew Reid's entertaining new YouTube video discussing m4/3, and more specifically, the GH6, I decided to look for some videos on YouTube and Vimeo. Strangely, I had a hard time finding many videos. I am mostly interested in the internal ProRes features of the camera, especially in 1080p and DCI-4K. 5.7K is not really something I would need right now.

To my surprise, I had a real hard time finding many samples. The lion's share of the videos were ProRes Raw samples, which look very nice, it's just not what I find intriguing about the camera.

I know times have changed and with that interests have as well, but when I saw a c-mount lens attached to Andrew's GH6, I was dying to see some footage of it. And I thought there would be a bunch of samples on YouTube of people experimenting with different optics on the most advanced m4/3 camera ever made...

But nope.

Obviously, a lot of videographers/filmmakers have moved on from m4/3 to the greener pastures of FF. Being a FF shooter, I understand the appeal, but I still find it sad.

So that brings me back to the title of my post... what's the deal with the GH6?

I heard there were some issues with pink streaking... has that been solved or has it been discovered why it happens?

With all that said, are there any good or creative videos floating around? Have the Nick Driftwood's or anamorphic shooters moved on from GH cameras?

I haven't owned a Panasonic camera in a while, but I really enjoyed the ones I have owned/used and I find it sad that the interest is waning.

@Andrew Reid can you tell me your experience shooting c-mounts/s16 lenses with it? Do you have any samples you would share?

[Kisaha]

What FF are you shooting?

I work for a couple of production companies that still using the GH5 cameras coupled, usually, with the Olympus 12-100mm 4f. They do speciality TV episodes (kind of run and gun stuff) and both shows are very popular.

One production company considers moving to either GH6 or S5iiX, the other considers.. nothing at all! The cameras are good for the specific project, and their other projects are very big anyway, so they rent Arri or C300mkIII usually. I did a project with them recently using C70s also..

I have yet to see a GH6, which is strange, and that means that it hasn't sold a lot here in Greece. I know a lot of people that had both the GH5 and bought into BMP4K when first released, but now they have moved to BMP6K and abandon the m43 cameras altogether.

I am expecting a slow but steady sales figure for people having a lot of m43 glass and they do not care much to move to other formats, or are perfectly happy with their GH5 cameras anyway and will replace their old and beaten GH5 cameras, but for those, even the cheaper GH5ii maybe will be enough (and another source of sales leaking for the poor GH6..) or a less beaten used GH5 from all these sources that moving to S5ii cameras or other mounts..

All in all, is not 2017 anymore, and there are still GH5/GH5S/GH5mkII cameras to be sold out there while everyone has workhorse hybrid cameras that can bring bread to the table these days..

[hyalinejim]

6 hours ago, mercer said:

I heard there were some issues with pink streaking

The issue was with light streaking when a bright area is adjacent to a dark area. I was able to reproduce it on my cam but never saw it in real world footage. I'm not sure if some cameras are affected more than others, but people were having conniptions about it on FB and YT.

I think it's such a pity that phase AF did not make into the GH6 as it would have reinforced the iconic GH line's standing.

6 hours ago, mercer said:

are there any good or creative videos floating around?

Ha ha! No! Not for the GH6 or any other camera these days. People just make videos about cameras, it seems 😂 Joking aside, there was Olan Collardy's launch video for the GH6.

 

 

I mainly use mine for work and holiday stuff, but I did shoot this with an Isco 36 and gave it a bit of filmic colour treatment, grain etc.

 

[BTM_Pix]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:47 AM, mercer said:

To my surprise, I had a real hard time finding many samples.

Did you try adding “Cinematic vs iPhone vs ARRI vs Full Frame smash that like button buy my LUT that I created with ChatGPT should you still buy this vintage one year old camera in 2023” to your search term ?

A lot of stuff gets lost because people are trying to create titles that incorporate the phrases du jour that they hope will get them up the search rankings.

“Avoid these five scams when using the GH6 for stealth van life with otters” etc

From what I’ve seen, the “GH6 vs xyz” is the richest seam to mine as at least you get comparative stuff against known entities like the P4K etc.

[PannySVHS]

Does the Gh6 provide a 1.4 crop mode for giving it a S16 sensor width? For what I know it only has a 2x digizoom making suitable for 2/3 c-mount, b3 and b4 lenses. Love what i see regarding color from the Gh6. GH5ii is even more mysterious.

No Prores LT and nor Prores in some 4K modes is akward. This should have been an all in camera of what the hardware is capable of.

[mercer]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:23 AM, Kisaha said:

What FF are you shooting?

Hey Kisaha, I've been shooting full frame ML Raw on a Canon 5D Mark iii for the past 6 years, or so. I've also had a Sigma FP for about 6 months.

 

On 4/10/2023 at 8:23 AM, Kisaha said:

I have yet to see a GH6, which is strange, and that means that it hasn't sold a lot here in Greece. I know a lot of people that had both the GH5 and bought into BMP4K when first released, but now they have moved to BMP6K and abandon the m43 cameras altogether.

Yeah, this makes sense. Blackmagic offered a lot of features and a compelling image for the price.

[mercer]

On 4/10/2023 at 9:36 AM, hyalinejim said:

The issue was with light streaking when a bright area is adjacent to a dark area. I was able to reproduce it on my cam but never saw it in real world footage. I'm not sure if some cameras are affected more than others, but people were having conniptions about it on FB and YT.

Good to know, thanks.

 

On 4/10/2023 at 9:36 AM, hyalinejim said:

I think it's such a pity that phase AF did not make into the GH6 as it would have reinforced the iconic GH line's standing.

Yeah, I suppose. I've always liked the idea of good AF, but it has never been a make or break feature for me. And I think the videos that I'm missing, those filmmakers wouldn't care about AF either.

 

On 4/10/2023 at 9:36 AM, hyalinejim said:

I mainly use mine for work and holiday stuff, but I did shoot this with an Isco 36 and gave it a bit of filmic colour treatment, grain etc.

This look wicked. Thanks for sharing!

[mercer]

On 4/11/2023 at 5:42 AM, BTM_Pix said:

Did you try adding “Cinematic vs iPhone vs ARRI vs Full Frame smash that like button buy my LUT that I created with ChatGPT should you still buy this vintage one year old camera in 2023” to your search term ?

Haha! Adding cinematic helped a little.

It's a shame what YouTube has become and that Vimeo is barely even used any more.

[mercer]

On 4/11/2023 at 1:12 PM, PannySVHS said:

Does the Gh6 provide a 1.4 crop mode for giving it a S16 sensor width? For what I know it only has a 2x digizoom making suitable for 2/3 c-mount, b3 and b4 lenses. Love what i see regarding color from the Gh6. GH5ii is even more mysterious.

No Prores LT and nor Prores in some 4K modes is akward. This should have been an all in camera of what the hardware is capable of.

I had heard it has a 1.5x crop mode but I'm just investigating it right now. As far as ProRes... sure LT would have been nice, but I'd probably end up shooting HQ anyway because why not? You'd still have to use a CF Express card probably, so I may as well get the most data possible at that point. It does C4K and 1080p, up to 60p, in ProRes... what other modes would you want it in?

With the dropping price, I must say I am thinking about pulling the trigger on it.

[PannySVHS]

There is no Prores for UHD, meaning no 16 to 9 (3840x2160px) out of the box. One would need to crop in from the sides. That´s not a meaningful decision on part of Pana imo. @mercer

Other than that I yet have to see a meaningful test for my eyes, which shows the effect of the 3D noise reduction. Colour looks very good.

With the GH5 it was edge sharpness that gave away the most of its hybrid character, being the least cinema camera like attribute. GH5II has organic sharpness and sofore lack of that digital edge enhancement. That´s a cam I would like to test for sure.

I wished for the cam to have opened a variety of crop modes. S16 1 to 1.66, S16 4 to 3 with full width and so on..

[FHDcrew]

28 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

There is no Prores for UHD, meaning no 16 to 9 (3840x2160px) out of the box. One would need to crop in from the sides. That´s not a meaningful decision on part of Pana imo. @mercer

Other than that I yet have to see a meaningful test for my eyes, which shows the effect of the 3D noise reduction. Colour looks very good.

With the GH5 it was edge sharpness that gave away the most of its hybrid character, being the least cinema camera like attribute. GH5II has organic sharpness and sofore lack of that digital edge enhancement. That´s a cam I would like to test for sure.

I wished for the cam to have opened a variety of crop modes. S16 1 to 1.66, S16 4 to 3 with full width and so on..

Yes the lack of sharpening on the GH5II was a strange, random choice by Panasonic.  Not that it was bad by any means, but it's strange how that model got it and yet we have the fancy S5 II without this ability.  Must be a heck of an image though, an interesting run-and-gun alternative to the BMPCC4k, but still has some of the mojo because of the organic image quality primarily caused by the ability to fully disable internal sharpening.  A simple feature all cameras should have, but few do.

[MrSMW]

On 4/10/2023 at 2:36 PM, hyalinejim said:

I think it's such a pity that phase AF did not make into the GH6 as it would have reinforced the iconic GH line's standing.

Indeed. I came very close to getting one for video use and using OM-1’s for stills so I could share native (mount) lenses.

The lack of AF was the sole deal-breaker with that equation.

Tried the OM-1 and for stills it was good but hated the video.

Together they would have made a great combo.