DevonChris

VAT would not be charged for export to non EU countries. Interestingly when we leave the EU, we in the UK would not have to pay VAT if we bought goods from Europe (unless that gets negotiated away in the exit deal).

I use a GX8 daily for commercial photography and video and have never once encountered shutter shock. In fact I cannot remember taking a photo with camera shake or that is out of focus when using the 12-35 f/2.8. I now use a Voigt 25mm f/0.95 as my main lens so that takes more care (I much prefer manual lenses and love this Voigt), but I remain hugely impressed by this camera (I dumped my Nikon D810 and pro glass for it). The two factors that have elevated it for me are : Using the Voigt lens for photography. The still images are very close to Leica quality. Using a Ninja Star for video. the images look awesome and are very gradeable.

If the GH5 is to be predominantly for video then having in-built ND's would be hugely beneficial.

I use a NInja Star with a GX8 and the images quality is excellent. As I only shoot with one cam, I use prores HQ. I get that thick looking colour depth with good latitude for grading and that is just with the 8 bit stream from the GX8. 10 bit from the GH4 would be fantastic. I just stream 1080 to it from the GX8, but I will see if the NInja Star downscales 4K from the GX8. I think it probably won't.

Yay, it works on the GX8 Many thanks, John and Fuzzy. I've spent ages puzzling over how to get manual exposure to work with the custom modes and couldn't find out how to do it in the operating manual. I have just been using the motion picture setting with exposure mode set to "M". These Panny cameras are really excellent. I'm so pleased that I moved to the GX8 from Nikon FF for pro photo and video work.

Thanks, John. I'll try that on the GX8.

@John Mathews On the GX80 can you use manual exposure, setting both SS and aperture independently, in "C" mode? I have been trying for months to find a way to use manual mode on the GX8 in its version of "C" mode. Thanks, Chris

I found something about the GX8 out by accident today which blew my mind. I was setting up manual focus and double clicked the MF Assist which was set to full screen. I was recording via the Ninja Star at the same time, but when I checked the file after the shoot I had recorded the magnified MF assist screen, which created an amazing close up of the subject. It means that you can double tap the screen to punch in and out of zoom via the MF assist screen. The quality didn't seem to suffer either. The client was delighted that I had got such an amazing close up of his woodworking skills! It would be interesting to know if this happens with the other Panny cams when using an external recorder. Yes, it sounds like the GX80 would offer the better value and it is great to record both internally and externally at the same time for redundancy.

The poor old GX8 keeps being overlooked, yet it is the best of the Panny bunch for photography and superb for video too. I did a shoot today with the GX8/Nikon 28-70/Metabones/Atomos Ninja Star and the quality was really amazing at 1080. I love using the GX8 with the Ninja Star as it is so easy to get very high quality footage with long battery life in both the cam and external recorder and for some reason you still get live view when streaming via HDMI even though the manual says that you can't

I'll test out that WB adjustment, but not for my shoot today.

@jase it would be interesting for you to compare it to Natural -5,-5,-5,-5 but my bettting is that you won't notice much difference. Do you colour correct and do any grading before using FilmConvert or do you just use the OOC images with FilmConvert? I bought a Voigt 25mm 0.95 a couple of weeks ago and it is now my go to lens for video and photography. The more I use it, the better it becomes

Very nice. You're nailing it with this set up From my testing, I was surprised that: The Panasonic colours are actually accurate once that red channel is tamed. White balance is very accurate when you do a manual WB using a grey card. I'm intrigued that you use a WB adjust. Is that a permanent setting or did you use those values just for that shoot? I think people who complain about Panny colours are probably not using WB properly or haven't spent time learning the nuances of their camera.

I know this quote from Inazuma was a few weeks ago, but it is very good advice. I have been extensively testing various profile settings for my GX8 using an x-rite passport and resolve. In short I have made these findings : 1) Natural profile gives the best skin tones and overall accuracy of colours, but with too much saturation, particularly in the red channel 2) Standard just seems to add saturation to the base level natural profile -> Not so good 3) There is no point in Cinelike D as natural profile has more accurate colours and I could not detect any significantly increased DR 4) There is no need to de-saturate to -5 unless you want that for artistic reasons. -2 for saturation is optimal to reduce the Panny over saturated reds and give more accurate overall colour rendition. 5) I agree with Inazuma that Natural 0, -5, -5, -2 gives the best results so far, and that is what I will be using from now on, but testing will continue.....

I use an Atomos Ninja Star with my GX8 and the sound quality from the internal mic is actually quite good (but I still only use it for synching purposes). I think these cameras apply horrendous amounts of compresion to the audio, which is why the internally recorded audio is so bad. You can connect a zoom straight into the Ninja Star which gives excellent synched audio and video quality, at least with the GX8. Maybe this is the dream setup for your GX85 that you mentioned

I use Movie Studio Platinum and rate it almost as highly as you do. However there is one big problem that has driven me away from it into the arms of Resolve, which I also rate highly. The problem is that the UI is not compatible with 4K display resolutions so I struggle to see and use the interface on my Windows 10 laptop with a 4k display. I hope the new owners of these excellent Sony products sort this issue out soon, but I am very happy with Resolve 12.5.

I think the sharpness setting should depend on the lens. If you are using a Panny lens then I agree with the -5 setting, however if you are using a vintage lens which does not have that digital sharpening - Ai-S for example, then I think you should use a setting closer to 0.

No, this is no longer true. You don't need to define a user etc. You can simply create a new project and drag clips into the media pool and start editing straight away. If you are creating a very large project then smart bins help - they automatically store specific items like sound clips, stills etc

Whilst the eco system around Adobe products is far larger than for Resolve, there has been an explosion in the number of high quality tutorials since Resolve 11 started to become a viable alternative. I think you would be surprised by how large the Resolve community has become.

I used and really liked FCPX but had to switch to Windows and therefore used Premiere, which I didn't like as much as FCPX. I switched to Resolve 12 (now 12.5) which rocks. Black Magic are improving Resolve dramatically and I intend to stick with this now.

The free version allows export up to and including UHD. I took this quote from their website :

I realised a while back that using AWB was not working well for my Panny GX8 so I carry an x-rite color passport with me and do custom white balances whenever possible. It's made a huge difference to the colours for both photography and video.

I'm selling my Bourne Lens:

I use a Ninja Star with a Panasonix GX8 and that keeps streaming 1080P over HDMI. I haven't tried 4K out of the HDMI as that is not supported by the NInja Star.

Minolta developed a few of the Leica lenses, I believe. The Leica 35-70 costs £££'s but the Minolta 35-70 equivalent only costs ££'s. I think the Elmarit 28mm was also developed by Minolta. I don't know if the Leica versions have different coatings to their Minolta equivalents though. It would be interesting to see how close the Leica and Minolta lenses are in use.

I'm bowing out of this discussion as it is clear that some people don't understand the principles. The link that @Nikkor provided explains it perfectly, and mathematically supports the argument that sensor size does influence DoF. <edit> This is the important part of the article in the link : </edit>