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Ask Nick Driftwood your questions about GH5
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  • @cas1

    Panasonic claims that the GH5 will focus in video as well as anything else on the market. They claim to have greatly reduced or eliminated focus "breathing"

    Go to 7:15 in the video.

    The reason for this is that they've upgraded to a 480Hz system and dramatically increased the number of focus changes that can happen per second. They've implemented more advanced subject/motion tracking capabilities.

    Basically, the video AF system is now as good as the stills AF system. You can expect massive improvements. This is one of the highlight features of the GH5

  • I suggested to skip this 'focus rocking' and only rely on DFD at the end of a focus shift in video mode.

    DFD can't replace contrast autofocus. All it can do is to get some idea on how far optimum focus are, so you can ramp or slow down lens focus speed.

  • AF performance. - does it still do the focus affirmation 'rock' after focussing? - I suggested to skip this 'focus rocking' and only rely on DFD at the end of a focus shift in video mode.

  • Can V-Log L be used in the 5K/6K mode?

  • Ill be doing GH5 tests with Atomos Shogun Inferno @sian next week. I got the Atomos today (beta fw for 60p GH5). At the moment GH5s in such incredible short supply - probably 5 in Europe! That everyone is after a piece of pie. My tests were done over a couple of days New Year then it went back. Ill have it again next week so I can thoroughly answer questions.

    My opinion so far. Its a really good camera for the price, doing some incredible things. You can't expect it all but it comes real close! In fact after giving it back after only 2 days use, I felt at a loss. I really did.

    For now, you can appreciate that none of my tests were in-depth, so Im sorry if you are frustrated. But I will get round to answering questions. Do you know Im getting hundreds of emails every day in my INBOX... its quite taxing when you've got to work as well.

  • I also wanted to add a couple other things. From looking at the 6K Photo stream, I would say it packs in an incredible amount of detail and probably close to rivaling the jpeg/RAW performance. Definitely far better than the past 4K modes on Panasonic cameras. This is actually usable for pro quality stills performance.

    The 6K photo stream can also be used to shoot 5K video (5120x2880) video with 1:1 pixels (i.e. no scaling, using the 3:2 6K Photo mode) or 6K anamorphic video (using the 4:3 6K Photo mode). You don't have to wait for Panasonic to release an anamorphic video mode to use this now.

    Also, you can do temporal NR on these 6K streams to reduce noise BETTER than you can with RAW/jpeg. Neat Video will work on this to actually extract more detail than you could with individual stills, and you can improve the SNR markedly. You can turn off the spatial NR entirely and still get very good NR. The high ISO performance using the 6K photo mode should be REALLY good if you use temporal NR or image stacking.

    Finally, I posted a link to the processed image above that didn't include the EXIF data. Here's the processed image with EXIF included.

    https://3.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~forums/58950941/d999de6dc7034e46abfcc332e703a153

    Again, it's a 4096x3456 crop of the original 5184x3456 image, so some of the image on the horizontal was cropped out.

  • Hi, this is a frame grab done from the 6K photo stream. It was processed through Sony Vegas Pro exclusively. Some sharpening (perhaps a bit much) and brightness/contrast adjustments made. This version of Sony Vegas Pro can only output a max of 4096 pixels, so the image is a 4096x3456 crop of the original 5184x3456. The EXIF is also included in the picture.

    https://4.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~forums/58949973/700af866f15f473797b5b32043431fb2

    The original stream was definitely undersharpened, if your goal is to just extract a frame and keep it as a still image with no further processing. But a lot of additional detail shows through if you add sharpening. If you're doing 6K Photo with the goal of having an 18MP photo, it might be better to turn up sharpening and contrast in camera. Just IMO.

  • I've played with a RED before (when scarlet came out) and I was just blown away with how much control you have over the raw footage, practically the same as if you'd import an .rw2 file into your image editing software, but for video. I don't recall what redcode format I had used, bitrate, bit depth or the chroma subsampling, non of that stuff, I didn't even know what those things meant back then... but I had really hoped we would someday see this type of process with our mirrorless cameras, since that would eliminate the use of all these color profiles (vlog and whatnots), since it wouldn't be burned into the footage, these things could always be applied later in the process chain.

    I doubt that having the 10-bit 422 gets us any closer to the process I had in mind though, but still it's a huge improvement.

  • @chipxsd it would need that much to do a proper 10-bit 422 but if Panasonic will bring 400Mbps mid-2017, they could very well make the hi-res anamorphic around 300Mbps 10-bit 422.

  • @Ralph_B these are VFR codecs, the bitrate will change based on the amount of info, you basically set the quality and the file size will float accordingly, so it doesn't change anything. It's like saying that 24p will be better quality because it has 20% less frames than 30p but it's not CBR. And the compression is not making the file fall apart, it's not like it would gain much by just a bit more data. It would still be a niche thing that Panasonic could solve with just crop markings for cheaper, there is not much upside on that, even more because with crop markings you still have extra room in post for fixing stuff.

  • @chipxsd

    Here are crops from your 16bit 6k frames converted to 8bit JPG. Looks much better than my versions extracted with Potplayer. I see no dithering.

    6kphoto-ok.jpg
    601 x 483 - 161K
    6kphoto-ok-sat80.jpg
    601 x 483 - 285K
  • I've been using a Ninja Assassin, and I'm done with internal codecs. I like what I've seen about GH5 the sensor so far, but not ever going back to internal codecs on a DSLR.

  • @heradicattor "even at -3 is still over sharpened and thats is not good in any way"

    It's soft like hell not overshared but full of compression artifacts. I think it needs at least 50% if not 100% more bit rate for the extracted images to look good.

  • @heradicattor

    Is this caused by h.265 compression or Potplayer de-compression and frame saving. I added saturation 80% in Photoshop. Some funny dithering comes visible in 6k photo sample.

    zoom1.jpg
    761 x 566 - 164K
  • @Eno @Vesku C'mon, see the footage, even at -3 is still over sharpened and thats is not good in any way, I see halos...

  • I think everyone is having issues with the footage, however transcoding it to something else (ProRes) fixes it for me.

  • @davjd, I have the same problem as you. :)

  • Hi, I'm having problems playing back or importing in Premiere CC (latest) the original 6K file Driftwood provided. What is missing on my system? Premiere warned me it had to install the Hevc codec to import the video, I clicked ok, but still doesn't work

  • @driftwood - Hello Nick, could you please tell us more about the Pana Leica 12-60 f 2.8-4 ? when is the f 4 coming , at 20mm,30mm 40mm ?

    thank you

  • @Vesku - that would be a sweet function!

  • Focus pull feature should have an option to drive focus motor using joystick. Speed1 - up/down, speed2 left/right.

  • @driftwood

    Nick, thanks for all the replies - I see you were bombarded with lots of questions.

    I've read through the chat and this thread, and I'm not sure if my questions on the GH5 have been answered yet.

    1. If in one of the priority modes (in creative movie mode), can you assign ISO to the dial that is not used for either Aperture/Shutter, without having to press the ISO button.

    2. When changing ISO with a dial (even having to press the ISO button first) does it remove the exposure meter, histogram from screen.

    3. Aperture Priority Mode - can we now have a minimum shutter speed, so we can limit it to 180' degrees (or any shutter speed we want 1/60 1/125 etc).

    4. Can we assign to a Fn button, the ability to turn on/off the HDMI Output of the OSD elements (Thinking when using an external recorder, you might want to quickly see all the GH5 stuff on the 7" screen before hitting record)

  • @Eno

    In Nicks first 6k video sharpness is -3 as you can see my exif txt file.

  • @heradicattor. On the contrary, I think there's to little sharpening dialed in camera and the footage looks to soft to start with. :))