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kye

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  1. Like
    kye reacted to Jimmy G in The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)   
    Hi Kye, wow, what an in-depth look into this camera...methinks you're very interested to the point of becoming a future owner?! 😉
    I'll reserve my points to "output quality" as each of the internal mechanical aspects and features of the camera will appeal (or not) differently to individual users.
    To that end, you've covered quite nicely (and better than I have been able to do) the need for wider dynamic range when shooting outdoor environments...the f/stop range on a typical sunny day is just too much for 8-bit Rec709 to contend with for those of us who need/desire/require that the sum of our frame includes everything from the brightest clouds and specular highlights to the detail and vibrancy going on in the shaded regions. Our eyes capture all of that and I have never been ashamed to ask for and seek out equipment that gets me closer to being able to capture that same natural view. I laugh every time I hear/read someone say that this is niche...no more niche than what I came to expect from my old love, Kodachrome 25! LOL
    Getting to understand how HDR and 10-,12- (14-, and 16-) bit imaging can help "get me there" has been a challenge up to now...hard for any of us to realize the benefits of these things when viewed on SDR monitors! Ha! Enter my new M1 Max Macbook Pro with its HDR panel, I've devoted this year to finally educating myself on what is possible (and desirable) with the 10-bit footage I've been accumulating with my S1 for the past few years...in fact, I've decided to hunt down a used Ninja V just so I can become familiar with using 12-bit ProRes RAW at learning what it might and might not be "most practical for" for my style of nature shooting. Clearly, not every situation calls for such bit-depth or, even, DR and learning those lessons through shooting will help educate and inform me as to when varying codec choices are called for...all the more reason for my wanting it all internal to the camera (GH6 and future releases), call up a Custom setting and off one goes, er, shoots, no fuss no muss (f*** external recorders, really, I mean that from the bottom of my heart, Panasonic).
    Anyhoo, I thought this article and the accompanying two videos would be of particular interest to you (and to all our fellow folks trying figure out the whens and whys and needs for HDR and high bit-depth)...a two-part interview with Kevin Shaw, CSI and founder of the International Colorist Academy (ICA), where he demonstrates where and how the benefits of HDR acquisition come into play...
    Is 2022 the Year You Buy Into HDR? - Frame.io Insider
    https://blog.frame.io/2022/01/17/hdr-in-2022/
    ...a college-level education from someone who knows. 😉
     
  2. Like
    kye got a reaction from Adept in The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)   
    I think the GH6 is a triumph of incremental upgrades that provide a real difference when shooting run-n-gun video in the real world.
    With the headline features so prominent, it's easy to miss the many smaller improvements that can actually make a big difference to shooting.
    We talk about cameras like they're museum pieces or engineering spectacles, but often these things don't translate to the real world.  The following are my views of the GH6 from the perspective of a travel videographer upgrading from the GH5.  I've tried to include as many example images as I can - please note that these aren't fully graded and are often compromised due to me pushing the limits of what is possible from the GH5, what was possible under the circumstances, and what my limited skills could create...
    But let's get some obvious things out of the way first.
    Things I don't care about.....
    Autofocus
    The AF is improved.  People who used the GH5 AF will like the GH6 AF, and people who didn't like the GH5 AF probably won't be moved by the GH6 AF.  I don't use it, basically ever, so I don't care.  If you do care, then good for you..  move along, nothing to see here.
    Extra resolution
    There's more resolution, but the GH5 had enough resolution for downsampled DCI4K and lower resolutions, and the 2x digital zoom and ETC modes provided useful cropping modes as well.  The extra resolution doesn't really matter to me.
    Size and weight
    I care about this a lot actually, but it's not substantially larger than the GH5 from the front, which is the dimension that matters when filming in public.  The extra depth is immaterial when you have a lens on the camera.  The extra weight is unfortunate, but isn't that much and is well worth it for the fan and screen improvements.
    Internal Prores
    Prores is a professional codec that offers considerable improvements throughout the whole workflow.  I'm not going to say much else on this as I created another thread to talk about this but it's great to have the option, and I definitely appreciate it.  Many people were happy with the GH5s codecs, especially the 10-bit 422 ALL-I codecs, which were a shining beacon in a sea of poor-quality IPB cameras, but even those have been improved....
    Huge improvements on h264/h265 codecs
    The GH5 had 200Mbps 1080p and 400Mbps DCI4K, but the slow-motion modes are limited to 150Mbps (4K60) 200Mbps (1080p60) or 100Mbps (1080pVFR up to 180fps) and the effective bitrate dropped significantly when you conform your 60p or 180p footage to 24p - as low as 13Mbps!!.  The GH6 has 4K60 at up to 600Mbps (SD card) or 800Mbps (CFexpress type B) - an effective bitrate of 320Mbps, and in 1080p240 800Mbps which is an effective bitrate of 80Mbps.  
    Oh, and these are all 10-bit 422 ALL-I, as opposed to the GH5 8-bit 420 IPB.
    Oh, and also also, the 120p is now in 4K too.
    If you're shooting sports this is a big deal as often players are in direct sunlight, depending on the time of day there might not be much ambient fill light, and any reflections from the field may be strange colours such as green grass, or various coloured artificial turf, which will drastically benefit from the 422 10-bit when colour correcting footage.  The extra bitrate is also great for having clean images when players may be bright against a very dark background really highlighting any compression nasties on their edges.  The ALL-I will be great in post too.
    I'm curious to see what the 300fps looks like in real-world situations, but I've shot a lot of sports with 120p and it seems slow enough to me.
    Dynamic Range Boost
    This is a big deal for anyone recording in uncontrolled conditions, and especially for travel.  This isn't a vanity exercise or BS tech nerdery, this is a real creative consideration.  When you're shooting travel, the film is about the location and the experience of the people in that location, and the weather is a key consideration of this.  With the GH5 I often had to choose between clipping the highlights (ie, sky) and exposing for the people.  I also chose to expose for the sky on my XC10 and in combination with 8-bit C-Log recorded a large amount of spectacularly-awful looking footage of my honeymoon.
    Here's a frame of C-Log SOOC from that debacle:

    The shot was also mixed lighting with the subject in the shade, being lit by a coloured Italian shop-front immediately behind me that was in full sun....

    Being forced to decide between the subject and the sky is problematic if the shot you want is "person at location X at sunset" and you can't feature that person and also the sunset.
    It's also relevant for anywhere with tall buildings that create deep shade - the below is a nice dynamic image but it's a tad overdone and not how we actually see the world:

    My experience with shooting the OG BMPCC / BMMCC is that their ~2 stop advantage in DR over the GH5 almost completely covers this gap.  Images with someone standing in-front of a sunset no longer feature either an anonymous shadow person swimming in technicolour-grain or a digitally clipped sky.
    The GH6 DR Boost feature will help in these situations, allowing subjects to be filmed in-context rather than only in select locations were the light is just right but the scene is irrelevant.
    Would more be better?  Sure.  I can hear lots of people thinking "go full frame then - moron" but the GH5 was (until now) a camera with a unique set of features not bettered by any other offering for this type of travel shooting, so while the current alternatives give with one hand they also take away with the other, normally taking away a lot more than they give.
    Full V-Log
    Having a colour profile that is supported natively by Resolve is a huge thing for me, as it allows WB and exposure adjustments to be done in post without screwing up the colours.  This is important because in shooting travel there are times when you can't even stop walking to get a shot, let alone have enough time to pause, get exposure dialled in, and heaven-forbid to pull out a grey-card and do a custom WB!  A great man once said "tell him he's dreamin"!
    This lighting all looked neutral to the naked eye - GH5 HLG SOOC:

    The advice I got from the colourists on that was to lean into it and just pick one or the other and balance to those, but sometimes the mixed lighting isn't really something you want to lean into....  GH5 HLG SOOC - look at the colour temperatures on the grey sleeve from what appears to be the strip-light from hell hanging just above their heads:

    Better Low-light performance
    Filming in available light in uncontrolled conditions often means needing to use high ISO settings.
    This is a shot I've posted many times before, and the BTS of me shooting it, in a row-boat lit only by the floodlights on the river bank maybe 50m away.  

    Notice that the smartphone taking the BTS photo couldn't even focus due to the low-lighting.

    It was using the GH5 in full-auto (likely a 360-degree shutter) and with the Voigtlander wide open at F0.95.  I don't know what the ISO on the shot would have been, but there's quite a bit of noise, especially considering this is a UHD clip downsampled from 5K in-camera (200% zoom on a UHD timeline):

    I don't mind the quality of the noise actually, and it responds to sharpening really well giving quite an analogue image feel, but if the image is this noisy then the colours aren't going to be at their best, and that isn't desirable.
    There are a number of fast primes on MFT (ie, faster than F2) but getting sharp images wide-open is problematic, even from the very-expensive Voigtlander f0.95 primes.
    The GH6's improved low-light is great, and not only does it allow recording in ever-darker environments, but it also allows the use of modest lenses and faster lenses stopped down to be within a higher quality part of their aperture range.  An extra $1000 cost on the body of a camera seems like a lot, but if it saves you $500 on every lens because you can buy slower lenses then it's an investment that has a reasonable return.
    ...and lest you think that the above is an extreme example, having good low-light performance is really just about filming people doing what they're doing, and in case somehow you haven't noticed, it's dark outside about half the time and people go out into it and do things.
    Another example, here's a shot taken right at the end of blue-hour:

    and minutes later, here's a shot showing what you can get when lit only by the light of a phone, and providing a reference for how dark this location was:

    Think of the benefits of better low-light performance here.... it's very low-light, mixed colour temperature lighting, and the main feature is skintones.  The noise on the GH5, with the Voigtlander wide open is pretty brutal:

    New Screen
    My XC10 has amongst the nicest ergonomics of any camera and a big part of that for me was the tilt screen that didn't get in the way when using your right hand to hold the camera and the left to support the camera and manually focus the lens.  The fact that the new GH6 screen allows for both tilting as well as for flipping is great.
    Contrary to what many believe, the 'flippy' screen is actually very useful for filming things other than yourself.  Any time when you cannot stand directly behind the camera is when the flipping screen is useful.  I have used it while filming out of windows (such as in moving vehicles, filming the view around the corner of a panorama framed by an arch, or taking a sneaky shot of the kids around a corner without them spotting me and pulling faces).  
    Sometimes you need to hold the camera in funny ways to get a shot:

    They're also very useful for those who want to take vertical photos from a low or high angle.
    Fan
    The GH5 never overheated on me, even in desert conditions, unlike my iPhones have on many occasions, and the GH6 will never overheat either.  It's not an "improvement" in the sense that it doesn't offer anything new, but it is a guarantee that all the extra other features won't come at an unacceptable cost.  Having a camera that overheats is just stupid, and Panasonic doesn't insult us by providing tools that aren't reliable.
    Punch-in while recording
    Checking focus while recording is a pretty fundamental thing, and the GH5 didn't have it (and didn't have the best focus peaking either) but now the GH6 does.  Boom.
    Custom Frame Guides
    The frame guides on the GH5 were worthless - pale dotted lines that were difficult to see under ideal conditions, let alone while holding the camera at arms length in a moving vehicle. The GH6 has custom frame guides that have a much more visible outline and also dim the out-of-area image, making it super easy and intuitive to use.
    Frame from @Tito Ferradans review on YouTube:
     

    I might be tempted to engage this for a 2.35:1 permanently and then choose what ratio to use in-post when I get to editing.  I've tried to shoot for this ratio before with the GH5, forgot and couldn't see the frame guides and intuitively composed like normal, and then downloaded the footage and found that I'd framed every shot too close for the ratio.  Fail. 
    Buttons and controls
    The GH6 has more programmable buttons than the GH5 (which was already great), and the extra custom slot C4 on the mode dial is very welcome.  I have my GH5 configured to be C1 1080p24, C2 1080p60, C3-1 1080p120, C3-2 4K24 (in case there's something I'd need 24p for), and C3-3 as 4K manual everything for shooting camera tests.  The first four modes are ones I want to just be one dial away while I'm out shooting, so having the extra one is really useful.
    The GH5 also saved the preset focal lengths for the IBIS on a per-profile basis, so when you switch profiles you switch focal lengths.  This is important because when the camera goes to sleep it wakes up but forgets the focal length and goes back to the default one for that profile.  As such, you could duplicate profiles and use them to swap between focal lengths, like if you were recording sports on a manual zoom lens, just to name a purely-theoretical example that no-one would ever contemplate....

    Better IBIS
    The GH5 IBIS is great, and when you shoot with fully manual primes and without a rig, is an important function.  Having improved IBIS on the GH6 is very welcome and can really help salvage shots that wouldn't otherwise have made the cut.  One of the killer features of action cameras is that you can put them anywhere and get a huge variety of images while out in the real world, and that works for MILCs too, but if you're balancing on a chair and shooting at full arms-reach to get a shot and the IBIS isn't able to take up the slack and stabilise it, then it won't make the edit.
    It doesn't matter how good the stabilisation of something is, there are instances where it will fail, and I seem to keep finding them.
    USB-C port
    The Prores and high bitrates will chew through storage and the ability directly record to an SSD would be spectacular.  Being able to charge the camera with USB-C would also be useful in some instances. 
    In camera LUT support
    I'm yet to see how this is implemented but LUTs can be great references while shooting.  You can use LUTs for things like false-colour, sure, but I'll be very interested in experimenting with ones that are very high contrast to allow for better visibility in bright conditions, and other more extreme applications that help you get the shot.
    I normally use the EVF on the GH5 as it eliminates ambient light and adds another point of contact for better stabilisation, but sometimes you have to use the screen and it's not always ideal, so these could be useful for that.
    Better colour science?
    The GH5 colour science wasn't winning any awards, and the GH6 combination of V-Log + Prores + higher bitrates + higher DR seems to be noticeably better, which is a welcome improvement for me, especially as I am struggling to shoot in difficult situations often involving mixed WB lighting and other nasties.
    The latitude tests from CineD look spectacular:



    This will allow huge flexibility for imperfect shooting conditions.  Many times I pull up the shadows in an image (maybe I was trying to get the subject and the sky in the shot - shock horror) only to find the shadows a tinted awful mess.  If they look like the above then it will be tremendously useful in practice.
    4-channel audio recording with the XLR module
    This is slightly tempting for me.
    In post I want a stereo ambient sound, and I also want a directional audio from a shotgun mic, ideally with a safety-track.  I can get either of those with the GH5 pretty easily by using the Rode Videomic Pro Plus with the safety-track feature enabled, and simply unplug it when I want a stereo ambience track using the cameras internal microphones (which are good enough if you're only using this in combination with music and other sound-design).
    But the problem is that I don't know when something will happen, so if I'm recording stereo ambient sound I don't know if my subject will say something at the same time that a car goes past behind me, and I also don't know if my subject will say nothing while I'm recording directional mono audio and then before I know it we'll be somewhere else and I'll have no ambient audio from that location.  If this situation seems far-fetched, you've obviously never been on a tour bus in a third-world country before, where you might get dropped off near a small market, you then walk though the market with your group, where there is a stall every 5 steps with a different composition / lighting / and ambient sounds, and there is literally only room for people to walk single-file and you don't have time to stop at each interesting booth for a minute as you capture different compositions and audio options without losing your tour guide.  
    Being able to stop for a few seconds, smile at the person there, and grab a few seconds of action with directional audio and ambient sounds would be really useful.
     

    I don't fancy the added size of the module though.  
    Audio screen
    The GH6 has an audio button function that brings up an audio screen showing all the audio things you'd want.  Perfect for quickly checking how the audio is going.  With so much going on while shooting it's easy to forget to look at the meters OSD, and having everything in one place seems excellent.
    I've screwed up the audio on many occasions, so this will be quite useful.
    In summary....
    The GH6 has tonnes of little improvements that I think will make it a much more useful camera when out in the field recording things in difficult conditions as they happen.  It looks like Panasonic has done a great job in not just grabbing headlines, but in actually taking the things that niggle or limit real shooters and making them better.
    Now, if only the world would return to a state where I'd feel remotely comfortable wandering out into it with a camera in hand.....
  3. Like
    kye got a reaction from Mark Romero 2 in The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)   
    I think the GH6 is a triumph of incremental upgrades that provide a real difference when shooting run-n-gun video in the real world.
    With the headline features so prominent, it's easy to miss the many smaller improvements that can actually make a big difference to shooting.
    We talk about cameras like they're museum pieces or engineering spectacles, but often these things don't translate to the real world.  The following are my views of the GH6 from the perspective of a travel videographer upgrading from the GH5.  I've tried to include as many example images as I can - please note that these aren't fully graded and are often compromised due to me pushing the limits of what is possible from the GH5, what was possible under the circumstances, and what my limited skills could create...
    But let's get some obvious things out of the way first.
    Things I don't care about.....
    Autofocus
    The AF is improved.  People who used the GH5 AF will like the GH6 AF, and people who didn't like the GH5 AF probably won't be moved by the GH6 AF.  I don't use it, basically ever, so I don't care.  If you do care, then good for you..  move along, nothing to see here.
    Extra resolution
    There's more resolution, but the GH5 had enough resolution for downsampled DCI4K and lower resolutions, and the 2x digital zoom and ETC modes provided useful cropping modes as well.  The extra resolution doesn't really matter to me.
    Size and weight
    I care about this a lot actually, but it's not substantially larger than the GH5 from the front, which is the dimension that matters when filming in public.  The extra depth is immaterial when you have a lens on the camera.  The extra weight is unfortunate, but isn't that much and is well worth it for the fan and screen improvements.
    Internal Prores
    Prores is a professional codec that offers considerable improvements throughout the whole workflow.  I'm not going to say much else on this as I created another thread to talk about this but it's great to have the option, and I definitely appreciate it.  Many people were happy with the GH5s codecs, especially the 10-bit 422 ALL-I codecs, which were a shining beacon in a sea of poor-quality IPB cameras, but even those have been improved....
    Huge improvements on h264/h265 codecs
    The GH5 had 200Mbps 1080p and 400Mbps DCI4K, but the slow-motion modes are limited to 150Mbps (4K60) 200Mbps (1080p60) or 100Mbps (1080pVFR up to 180fps) and the effective bitrate dropped significantly when you conform your 60p or 180p footage to 24p - as low as 13Mbps!!.  The GH6 has 4K60 at up to 600Mbps (SD card) or 800Mbps (CFexpress type B) - an effective bitrate of 320Mbps, and in 1080p240 800Mbps which is an effective bitrate of 80Mbps.  
    Oh, and these are all 10-bit 422 ALL-I, as opposed to the GH5 8-bit 420 IPB.
    Oh, and also also, the 120p is now in 4K too.
    If you're shooting sports this is a big deal as often players are in direct sunlight, depending on the time of day there might not be much ambient fill light, and any reflections from the field may be strange colours such as green grass, or various coloured artificial turf, which will drastically benefit from the 422 10-bit when colour correcting footage.  The extra bitrate is also great for having clean images when players may be bright against a very dark background really highlighting any compression nasties on their edges.  The ALL-I will be great in post too.
    I'm curious to see what the 300fps looks like in real-world situations, but I've shot a lot of sports with 120p and it seems slow enough to me.
    Dynamic Range Boost
    This is a big deal for anyone recording in uncontrolled conditions, and especially for travel.  This isn't a vanity exercise or BS tech nerdery, this is a real creative consideration.  When you're shooting travel, the film is about the location and the experience of the people in that location, and the weather is a key consideration of this.  With the GH5 I often had to choose between clipping the highlights (ie, sky) and exposing for the people.  I also chose to expose for the sky on my XC10 and in combination with 8-bit C-Log recorded a large amount of spectacularly-awful looking footage of my honeymoon.
    Here's a frame of C-Log SOOC from that debacle:

    The shot was also mixed lighting with the subject in the shade, being lit by a coloured Italian shop-front immediately behind me that was in full sun....

    Being forced to decide between the subject and the sky is problematic if the shot you want is "person at location X at sunset" and you can't feature that person and also the sunset.
    It's also relevant for anywhere with tall buildings that create deep shade - the below is a nice dynamic image but it's a tad overdone and not how we actually see the world:

    My experience with shooting the OG BMPCC / BMMCC is that their ~2 stop advantage in DR over the GH5 almost completely covers this gap.  Images with someone standing in-front of a sunset no longer feature either an anonymous shadow person swimming in technicolour-grain or a digitally clipped sky.
    The GH6 DR Boost feature will help in these situations, allowing subjects to be filmed in-context rather than only in select locations were the light is just right but the scene is irrelevant.
    Would more be better?  Sure.  I can hear lots of people thinking "go full frame then - moron" but the GH5 was (until now) a camera with a unique set of features not bettered by any other offering for this type of travel shooting, so while the current alternatives give with one hand they also take away with the other, normally taking away a lot more than they give.
    Full V-Log
    Having a colour profile that is supported natively by Resolve is a huge thing for me, as it allows WB and exposure adjustments to be done in post without screwing up the colours.  This is important because in shooting travel there are times when you can't even stop walking to get a shot, let alone have enough time to pause, get exposure dialled in, and heaven-forbid to pull out a grey-card and do a custom WB!  A great man once said "tell him he's dreamin"!
    This lighting all looked neutral to the naked eye - GH5 HLG SOOC:

    The advice I got from the colourists on that was to lean into it and just pick one or the other and balance to those, but sometimes the mixed lighting isn't really something you want to lean into....  GH5 HLG SOOC - look at the colour temperatures on the grey sleeve from what appears to be the strip-light from hell hanging just above their heads:

    Better Low-light performance
    Filming in available light in uncontrolled conditions often means needing to use high ISO settings.
    This is a shot I've posted many times before, and the BTS of me shooting it, in a row-boat lit only by the floodlights on the river bank maybe 50m away.  

    Notice that the smartphone taking the BTS photo couldn't even focus due to the low-lighting.

    It was using the GH5 in full-auto (likely a 360-degree shutter) and with the Voigtlander wide open at F0.95.  I don't know what the ISO on the shot would have been, but there's quite a bit of noise, especially considering this is a UHD clip downsampled from 5K in-camera (200% zoom on a UHD timeline):

    I don't mind the quality of the noise actually, and it responds to sharpening really well giving quite an analogue image feel, but if the image is this noisy then the colours aren't going to be at their best, and that isn't desirable.
    There are a number of fast primes on MFT (ie, faster than F2) but getting sharp images wide-open is problematic, even from the very-expensive Voigtlander f0.95 primes.
    The GH6's improved low-light is great, and not only does it allow recording in ever-darker environments, but it also allows the use of modest lenses and faster lenses stopped down to be within a higher quality part of their aperture range.  An extra $1000 cost on the body of a camera seems like a lot, but if it saves you $500 on every lens because you can buy slower lenses then it's an investment that has a reasonable return.
    ...and lest you think that the above is an extreme example, having good low-light performance is really just about filming people doing what they're doing, and in case somehow you haven't noticed, it's dark outside about half the time and people go out into it and do things.
    Another example, here's a shot taken right at the end of blue-hour:

    and minutes later, here's a shot showing what you can get when lit only by the light of a phone, and providing a reference for how dark this location was:

    Think of the benefits of better low-light performance here.... it's very low-light, mixed colour temperature lighting, and the main feature is skintones.  The noise on the GH5, with the Voigtlander wide open is pretty brutal:

    New Screen
    My XC10 has amongst the nicest ergonomics of any camera and a big part of that for me was the tilt screen that didn't get in the way when using your right hand to hold the camera and the left to support the camera and manually focus the lens.  The fact that the new GH6 screen allows for both tilting as well as for flipping is great.
    Contrary to what many believe, the 'flippy' screen is actually very useful for filming things other than yourself.  Any time when you cannot stand directly behind the camera is when the flipping screen is useful.  I have used it while filming out of windows (such as in moving vehicles, filming the view around the corner of a panorama framed by an arch, or taking a sneaky shot of the kids around a corner without them spotting me and pulling faces).  
    Sometimes you need to hold the camera in funny ways to get a shot:

    They're also very useful for those who want to take vertical photos from a low or high angle.
    Fan
    The GH5 never overheated on me, even in desert conditions, unlike my iPhones have on many occasions, and the GH6 will never overheat either.  It's not an "improvement" in the sense that it doesn't offer anything new, but it is a guarantee that all the extra other features won't come at an unacceptable cost.  Having a camera that overheats is just stupid, and Panasonic doesn't insult us by providing tools that aren't reliable.
    Punch-in while recording
    Checking focus while recording is a pretty fundamental thing, and the GH5 didn't have it (and didn't have the best focus peaking either) but now the GH6 does.  Boom.
    Custom Frame Guides
    The frame guides on the GH5 were worthless - pale dotted lines that were difficult to see under ideal conditions, let alone while holding the camera at arms length in a moving vehicle. The GH6 has custom frame guides that have a much more visible outline and also dim the out-of-area image, making it super easy and intuitive to use.
    Frame from @Tito Ferradans review on YouTube:
     

    I might be tempted to engage this for a 2.35:1 permanently and then choose what ratio to use in-post when I get to editing.  I've tried to shoot for this ratio before with the GH5, forgot and couldn't see the frame guides and intuitively composed like normal, and then downloaded the footage and found that I'd framed every shot too close for the ratio.  Fail. 
    Buttons and controls
    The GH6 has more programmable buttons than the GH5 (which was already great), and the extra custom slot C4 on the mode dial is very welcome.  I have my GH5 configured to be C1 1080p24, C2 1080p60, C3-1 1080p120, C3-2 4K24 (in case there's something I'd need 24p for), and C3-3 as 4K manual everything for shooting camera tests.  The first four modes are ones I want to just be one dial away while I'm out shooting, so having the extra one is really useful.
    The GH5 also saved the preset focal lengths for the IBIS on a per-profile basis, so when you switch profiles you switch focal lengths.  This is important because when the camera goes to sleep it wakes up but forgets the focal length and goes back to the default one for that profile.  As such, you could duplicate profiles and use them to swap between focal lengths, like if you were recording sports on a manual zoom lens, just to name a purely-theoretical example that no-one would ever contemplate....

    Better IBIS
    The GH5 IBIS is great, and when you shoot with fully manual primes and without a rig, is an important function.  Having improved IBIS on the GH6 is very welcome and can really help salvage shots that wouldn't otherwise have made the cut.  One of the killer features of action cameras is that you can put them anywhere and get a huge variety of images while out in the real world, and that works for MILCs too, but if you're balancing on a chair and shooting at full arms-reach to get a shot and the IBIS isn't able to take up the slack and stabilise it, then it won't make the edit.
    It doesn't matter how good the stabilisation of something is, there are instances where it will fail, and I seem to keep finding them.
    USB-C port
    The Prores and high bitrates will chew through storage and the ability directly record to an SSD would be spectacular.  Being able to charge the camera with USB-C would also be useful in some instances. 
    In camera LUT support
    I'm yet to see how this is implemented but LUTs can be great references while shooting.  You can use LUTs for things like false-colour, sure, but I'll be very interested in experimenting with ones that are very high contrast to allow for better visibility in bright conditions, and other more extreme applications that help you get the shot.
    I normally use the EVF on the GH5 as it eliminates ambient light and adds another point of contact for better stabilisation, but sometimes you have to use the screen and it's not always ideal, so these could be useful for that.
    Better colour science?
    The GH5 colour science wasn't winning any awards, and the GH6 combination of V-Log + Prores + higher bitrates + higher DR seems to be noticeably better, which is a welcome improvement for me, especially as I am struggling to shoot in difficult situations often involving mixed WB lighting and other nasties.
    The latitude tests from CineD look spectacular:



    This will allow huge flexibility for imperfect shooting conditions.  Many times I pull up the shadows in an image (maybe I was trying to get the subject and the sky in the shot - shock horror) only to find the shadows a tinted awful mess.  If they look like the above then it will be tremendously useful in practice.
    4-channel audio recording with the XLR module
    This is slightly tempting for me.
    In post I want a stereo ambient sound, and I also want a directional audio from a shotgun mic, ideally with a safety-track.  I can get either of those with the GH5 pretty easily by using the Rode Videomic Pro Plus with the safety-track feature enabled, and simply unplug it when I want a stereo ambience track using the cameras internal microphones (which are good enough if you're only using this in combination with music and other sound-design).
    But the problem is that I don't know when something will happen, so if I'm recording stereo ambient sound I don't know if my subject will say something at the same time that a car goes past behind me, and I also don't know if my subject will say nothing while I'm recording directional mono audio and then before I know it we'll be somewhere else and I'll have no ambient audio from that location.  If this situation seems far-fetched, you've obviously never been on a tour bus in a third-world country before, where you might get dropped off near a small market, you then walk though the market with your group, where there is a stall every 5 steps with a different composition / lighting / and ambient sounds, and there is literally only room for people to walk single-file and you don't have time to stop at each interesting booth for a minute as you capture different compositions and audio options without losing your tour guide.  
    Being able to stop for a few seconds, smile at the person there, and grab a few seconds of action with directional audio and ambient sounds would be really useful.
     

    I don't fancy the added size of the module though.  
    Audio screen
    The GH6 has an audio button function that brings up an audio screen showing all the audio things you'd want.  Perfect for quickly checking how the audio is going.  With so much going on while shooting it's easy to forget to look at the meters OSD, and having everything in one place seems excellent.
    I've screwed up the audio on many occasions, so this will be quite useful.
    In summary....
    The GH6 has tonnes of little improvements that I think will make it a much more useful camera when out in the field recording things in difficult conditions as they happen.  It looks like Panasonic has done a great job in not just grabbing headlines, but in actually taking the things that niggle or limit real shooters and making them better.
    Now, if only the world would return to a state where I'd feel remotely comfortable wandering out into it with a camera in hand.....
  4. Like
    kye got a reaction from HockeyFan12 in Prores is irrelevant, and also spectacular!   
    True, but I'm not sure what you were referring to?
    I've heard that most professional productions shoot Prores rather than RAW, and that RAW is typically only used by the big budget productions and by amateurs.  
    I'm keen to hear more about that.  it makes sense to me, but my experience of the internet camera ecosystem (YT, social media, forums like this) and also of most solo-operators is that they're completely insulated from the industry proper, who interact in parallel discussions like liftgammagain.com, the CML mailing list, etc, and who have very different working methods and mindsets to the whole topic of making films.
  5. Like
    kye got a reaction from Jimmy G in The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)   
    I think the GH6 is a triumph of incremental upgrades that provide a real difference when shooting run-n-gun video in the real world.
    With the headline features so prominent, it's easy to miss the many smaller improvements that can actually make a big difference to shooting.
    We talk about cameras like they're museum pieces or engineering spectacles, but often these things don't translate to the real world.  The following are my views of the GH6 from the perspective of a travel videographer upgrading from the GH5.  I've tried to include as many example images as I can - please note that these aren't fully graded and are often compromised due to me pushing the limits of what is possible from the GH5, what was possible under the circumstances, and what my limited skills could create...
    But let's get some obvious things out of the way first.
    Things I don't care about.....
    Autofocus
    The AF is improved.  People who used the GH5 AF will like the GH6 AF, and people who didn't like the GH5 AF probably won't be moved by the GH6 AF.  I don't use it, basically ever, so I don't care.  If you do care, then good for you..  move along, nothing to see here.
    Extra resolution
    There's more resolution, but the GH5 had enough resolution for downsampled DCI4K and lower resolutions, and the 2x digital zoom and ETC modes provided useful cropping modes as well.  The extra resolution doesn't really matter to me.
    Size and weight
    I care about this a lot actually, but it's not substantially larger than the GH5 from the front, which is the dimension that matters when filming in public.  The extra depth is immaterial when you have a lens on the camera.  The extra weight is unfortunate, but isn't that much and is well worth it for the fan and screen improvements.
    Internal Prores
    Prores is a professional codec that offers considerable improvements throughout the whole workflow.  I'm not going to say much else on this as I created another thread to talk about this but it's great to have the option, and I definitely appreciate it.  Many people were happy with the GH5s codecs, especially the 10-bit 422 ALL-I codecs, which were a shining beacon in a sea of poor-quality IPB cameras, but even those have been improved....
    Huge improvements on h264/h265 codecs
    The GH5 had 200Mbps 1080p and 400Mbps DCI4K, but the slow-motion modes are limited to 150Mbps (4K60) 200Mbps (1080p60) or 100Mbps (1080pVFR up to 180fps) and the effective bitrate dropped significantly when you conform your 60p or 180p footage to 24p - as low as 13Mbps!!.  The GH6 has 4K60 at up to 600Mbps (SD card) or 800Mbps (CFexpress type B) - an effective bitrate of 320Mbps, and in 1080p240 800Mbps which is an effective bitrate of 80Mbps.  
    Oh, and these are all 10-bit 422 ALL-I, as opposed to the GH5 8-bit 420 IPB.
    Oh, and also also, the 120p is now in 4K too.
    If you're shooting sports this is a big deal as often players are in direct sunlight, depending on the time of day there might not be much ambient fill light, and any reflections from the field may be strange colours such as green grass, or various coloured artificial turf, which will drastically benefit from the 422 10-bit when colour correcting footage.  The extra bitrate is also great for having clean images when players may be bright against a very dark background really highlighting any compression nasties on their edges.  The ALL-I will be great in post too.
    I'm curious to see what the 300fps looks like in real-world situations, but I've shot a lot of sports with 120p and it seems slow enough to me.
    Dynamic Range Boost
    This is a big deal for anyone recording in uncontrolled conditions, and especially for travel.  This isn't a vanity exercise or BS tech nerdery, this is a real creative consideration.  When you're shooting travel, the film is about the location and the experience of the people in that location, and the weather is a key consideration of this.  With the GH5 I often had to choose between clipping the highlights (ie, sky) and exposing for the people.  I also chose to expose for the sky on my XC10 and in combination with 8-bit C-Log recorded a large amount of spectacularly-awful looking footage of my honeymoon.
    Here's a frame of C-Log SOOC from that debacle:

    The shot was also mixed lighting with the subject in the shade, being lit by a coloured Italian shop-front immediately behind me that was in full sun....

    Being forced to decide between the subject and the sky is problematic if the shot you want is "person at location X at sunset" and you can't feature that person and also the sunset.
    It's also relevant for anywhere with tall buildings that create deep shade - the below is a nice dynamic image but it's a tad overdone and not how we actually see the world:

    My experience with shooting the OG BMPCC / BMMCC is that their ~2 stop advantage in DR over the GH5 almost completely covers this gap.  Images with someone standing in-front of a sunset no longer feature either an anonymous shadow person swimming in technicolour-grain or a digitally clipped sky.
    The GH6 DR Boost feature will help in these situations, allowing subjects to be filmed in-context rather than only in select locations were the light is just right but the scene is irrelevant.
    Would more be better?  Sure.  I can hear lots of people thinking "go full frame then - moron" but the GH5 was (until now) a camera with a unique set of features not bettered by any other offering for this type of travel shooting, so while the current alternatives give with one hand they also take away with the other, normally taking away a lot more than they give.
    Full V-Log
    Having a colour profile that is supported natively by Resolve is a huge thing for me, as it allows WB and exposure adjustments to be done in post without screwing up the colours.  This is important because in shooting travel there are times when you can't even stop walking to get a shot, let alone have enough time to pause, get exposure dialled in, and heaven-forbid to pull out a grey-card and do a custom WB!  A great man once said "tell him he's dreamin"!
    This lighting all looked neutral to the naked eye - GH5 HLG SOOC:

    The advice I got from the colourists on that was to lean into it and just pick one or the other and balance to those, but sometimes the mixed lighting isn't really something you want to lean into....  GH5 HLG SOOC - look at the colour temperatures on the grey sleeve from what appears to be the strip-light from hell hanging just above their heads:

    Better Low-light performance
    Filming in available light in uncontrolled conditions often means needing to use high ISO settings.
    This is a shot I've posted many times before, and the BTS of me shooting it, in a row-boat lit only by the floodlights on the river bank maybe 50m away.  

    Notice that the smartphone taking the BTS photo couldn't even focus due to the low-lighting.

    It was using the GH5 in full-auto (likely a 360-degree shutter) and with the Voigtlander wide open at F0.95.  I don't know what the ISO on the shot would have been, but there's quite a bit of noise, especially considering this is a UHD clip downsampled from 5K in-camera (200% zoom on a UHD timeline):

    I don't mind the quality of the noise actually, and it responds to sharpening really well giving quite an analogue image feel, but if the image is this noisy then the colours aren't going to be at their best, and that isn't desirable.
    There are a number of fast primes on MFT (ie, faster than F2) but getting sharp images wide-open is problematic, even from the very-expensive Voigtlander f0.95 primes.
    The GH6's improved low-light is great, and not only does it allow recording in ever-darker environments, but it also allows the use of modest lenses and faster lenses stopped down to be within a higher quality part of their aperture range.  An extra $1000 cost on the body of a camera seems like a lot, but if it saves you $500 on every lens because you can buy slower lenses then it's an investment that has a reasonable return.
    ...and lest you think that the above is an extreme example, having good low-light performance is really just about filming people doing what they're doing, and in case somehow you haven't noticed, it's dark outside about half the time and people go out into it and do things.
    Another example, here's a shot taken right at the end of blue-hour:

    and minutes later, here's a shot showing what you can get when lit only by the light of a phone, and providing a reference for how dark this location was:

    Think of the benefits of better low-light performance here.... it's very low-light, mixed colour temperature lighting, and the main feature is skintones.  The noise on the GH5, with the Voigtlander wide open is pretty brutal:

    New Screen
    My XC10 has amongst the nicest ergonomics of any camera and a big part of that for me was the tilt screen that didn't get in the way when using your right hand to hold the camera and the left to support the camera and manually focus the lens.  The fact that the new GH6 screen allows for both tilting as well as for flipping is great.
    Contrary to what many believe, the 'flippy' screen is actually very useful for filming things other than yourself.  Any time when you cannot stand directly behind the camera is when the flipping screen is useful.  I have used it while filming out of windows (such as in moving vehicles, filming the view around the corner of a panorama framed by an arch, or taking a sneaky shot of the kids around a corner without them spotting me and pulling faces).  
    Sometimes you need to hold the camera in funny ways to get a shot:

    They're also very useful for those who want to take vertical photos from a low or high angle.
    Fan
    The GH5 never overheated on me, even in desert conditions, unlike my iPhones have on many occasions, and the GH6 will never overheat either.  It's not an "improvement" in the sense that it doesn't offer anything new, but it is a guarantee that all the extra other features won't come at an unacceptable cost.  Having a camera that overheats is just stupid, and Panasonic doesn't insult us by providing tools that aren't reliable.
    Punch-in while recording
    Checking focus while recording is a pretty fundamental thing, and the GH5 didn't have it (and didn't have the best focus peaking either) but now the GH6 does.  Boom.
    Custom Frame Guides
    The frame guides on the GH5 were worthless - pale dotted lines that were difficult to see under ideal conditions, let alone while holding the camera at arms length in a moving vehicle. The GH6 has custom frame guides that have a much more visible outline and also dim the out-of-area image, making it super easy and intuitive to use.
    Frame from @Tito Ferradans review on YouTube:
     

    I might be tempted to engage this for a 2.35:1 permanently and then choose what ratio to use in-post when I get to editing.  I've tried to shoot for this ratio before with the GH5, forgot and couldn't see the frame guides and intuitively composed like normal, and then downloaded the footage and found that I'd framed every shot too close for the ratio.  Fail. 
    Buttons and controls
    The GH6 has more programmable buttons than the GH5 (which was already great), and the extra custom slot C4 on the mode dial is very welcome.  I have my GH5 configured to be C1 1080p24, C2 1080p60, C3-1 1080p120, C3-2 4K24 (in case there's something I'd need 24p for), and C3-3 as 4K manual everything for shooting camera tests.  The first four modes are ones I want to just be one dial away while I'm out shooting, so having the extra one is really useful.
    The GH5 also saved the preset focal lengths for the IBIS on a per-profile basis, so when you switch profiles you switch focal lengths.  This is important because when the camera goes to sleep it wakes up but forgets the focal length and goes back to the default one for that profile.  As such, you could duplicate profiles and use them to swap between focal lengths, like if you were recording sports on a manual zoom lens, just to name a purely-theoretical example that no-one would ever contemplate....

    Better IBIS
    The GH5 IBIS is great, and when you shoot with fully manual primes and without a rig, is an important function.  Having improved IBIS on the GH6 is very welcome and can really help salvage shots that wouldn't otherwise have made the cut.  One of the killer features of action cameras is that you can put them anywhere and get a huge variety of images while out in the real world, and that works for MILCs too, but if you're balancing on a chair and shooting at full arms-reach to get a shot and the IBIS isn't able to take up the slack and stabilise it, then it won't make the edit.
    It doesn't matter how good the stabilisation of something is, there are instances where it will fail, and I seem to keep finding them.
    USB-C port
    The Prores and high bitrates will chew through storage and the ability directly record to an SSD would be spectacular.  Being able to charge the camera with USB-C would also be useful in some instances. 
    In camera LUT support
    I'm yet to see how this is implemented but LUTs can be great references while shooting.  You can use LUTs for things like false-colour, sure, but I'll be very interested in experimenting with ones that are very high contrast to allow for better visibility in bright conditions, and other more extreme applications that help you get the shot.
    I normally use the EVF on the GH5 as it eliminates ambient light and adds another point of contact for better stabilisation, but sometimes you have to use the screen and it's not always ideal, so these could be useful for that.
    Better colour science?
    The GH5 colour science wasn't winning any awards, and the GH6 combination of V-Log + Prores + higher bitrates + higher DR seems to be noticeably better, which is a welcome improvement for me, especially as I am struggling to shoot in difficult situations often involving mixed WB lighting and other nasties.
    The latitude tests from CineD look spectacular:



    This will allow huge flexibility for imperfect shooting conditions.  Many times I pull up the shadows in an image (maybe I was trying to get the subject and the sky in the shot - shock horror) only to find the shadows a tinted awful mess.  If they look like the above then it will be tremendously useful in practice.
    4-channel audio recording with the XLR module
    This is slightly tempting for me.
    In post I want a stereo ambient sound, and I also want a directional audio from a shotgun mic, ideally with a safety-track.  I can get either of those with the GH5 pretty easily by using the Rode Videomic Pro Plus with the safety-track feature enabled, and simply unplug it when I want a stereo ambience track using the cameras internal microphones (which are good enough if you're only using this in combination with music and other sound-design).
    But the problem is that I don't know when something will happen, so if I'm recording stereo ambient sound I don't know if my subject will say something at the same time that a car goes past behind me, and I also don't know if my subject will say nothing while I'm recording directional mono audio and then before I know it we'll be somewhere else and I'll have no ambient audio from that location.  If this situation seems far-fetched, you've obviously never been on a tour bus in a third-world country before, where you might get dropped off near a small market, you then walk though the market with your group, where there is a stall every 5 steps with a different composition / lighting / and ambient sounds, and there is literally only room for people to walk single-file and you don't have time to stop at each interesting booth for a minute as you capture different compositions and audio options without losing your tour guide.  
    Being able to stop for a few seconds, smile at the person there, and grab a few seconds of action with directional audio and ambient sounds would be really useful.
     

    I don't fancy the added size of the module though.  
    Audio screen
    The GH6 has an audio button function that brings up an audio screen showing all the audio things you'd want.  Perfect for quickly checking how the audio is going.  With so much going on while shooting it's easy to forget to look at the meters OSD, and having everything in one place seems excellent.
    I've screwed up the audio on many occasions, so this will be quite useful.
    In summary....
    The GH6 has tonnes of little improvements that I think will make it a much more useful camera when out in the field recording things in difficult conditions as they happen.  It looks like Panasonic has done a great job in not just grabbing headlines, but in actually taking the things that niggle or limit real shooters and making them better.
    Now, if only the world would return to a state where I'd feel remotely comfortable wandering out into it with a camera in hand.....
  6. Like
    kye got a reaction from Mmmbeats in The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)   
    I think the GH6 is a triumph of incremental upgrades that provide a real difference when shooting run-n-gun video in the real world.
    With the headline features so prominent, it's easy to miss the many smaller improvements that can actually make a big difference to shooting.
    We talk about cameras like they're museum pieces or engineering spectacles, but often these things don't translate to the real world.  The following are my views of the GH6 from the perspective of a travel videographer upgrading from the GH5.  I've tried to include as many example images as I can - please note that these aren't fully graded and are often compromised due to me pushing the limits of what is possible from the GH5, what was possible under the circumstances, and what my limited skills could create...
    But let's get some obvious things out of the way first.
    Things I don't care about.....
    Autofocus
    The AF is improved.  People who used the GH5 AF will like the GH6 AF, and people who didn't like the GH5 AF probably won't be moved by the GH6 AF.  I don't use it, basically ever, so I don't care.  If you do care, then good for you..  move along, nothing to see here.
    Extra resolution
    There's more resolution, but the GH5 had enough resolution for downsampled DCI4K and lower resolutions, and the 2x digital zoom and ETC modes provided useful cropping modes as well.  The extra resolution doesn't really matter to me.
    Size and weight
    I care about this a lot actually, but it's not substantially larger than the GH5 from the front, which is the dimension that matters when filming in public.  The extra depth is immaterial when you have a lens on the camera.  The extra weight is unfortunate, but isn't that much and is well worth it for the fan and screen improvements.
    Internal Prores
    Prores is a professional codec that offers considerable improvements throughout the whole workflow.  I'm not going to say much else on this as I created another thread to talk about this but it's great to have the option, and I definitely appreciate it.  Many people were happy with the GH5s codecs, especially the 10-bit 422 ALL-I codecs, which were a shining beacon in a sea of poor-quality IPB cameras, but even those have been improved....
    Huge improvements on h264/h265 codecs
    The GH5 had 200Mbps 1080p and 400Mbps DCI4K, but the slow-motion modes are limited to 150Mbps (4K60) 200Mbps (1080p60) or 100Mbps (1080pVFR up to 180fps) and the effective bitrate dropped significantly when you conform your 60p or 180p footage to 24p - as low as 13Mbps!!.  The GH6 has 4K60 at up to 600Mbps (SD card) or 800Mbps (CFexpress type B) - an effective bitrate of 320Mbps, and in 1080p240 800Mbps which is an effective bitrate of 80Mbps.  
    Oh, and these are all 10-bit 422 ALL-I, as opposed to the GH5 8-bit 420 IPB.
    Oh, and also also, the 120p is now in 4K too.
    If you're shooting sports this is a big deal as often players are in direct sunlight, depending on the time of day there might not be much ambient fill light, and any reflections from the field may be strange colours such as green grass, or various coloured artificial turf, which will drastically benefit from the 422 10-bit when colour correcting footage.  The extra bitrate is also great for having clean images when players may be bright against a very dark background really highlighting any compression nasties on their edges.  The ALL-I will be great in post too.
    I'm curious to see what the 300fps looks like in real-world situations, but I've shot a lot of sports with 120p and it seems slow enough to me.
    Dynamic Range Boost
    This is a big deal for anyone recording in uncontrolled conditions, and especially for travel.  This isn't a vanity exercise or BS tech nerdery, this is a real creative consideration.  When you're shooting travel, the film is about the location and the experience of the people in that location, and the weather is a key consideration of this.  With the GH5 I often had to choose between clipping the highlights (ie, sky) and exposing for the people.  I also chose to expose for the sky on my XC10 and in combination with 8-bit C-Log recorded a large amount of spectacularly-awful looking footage of my honeymoon.
    Here's a frame of C-Log SOOC from that debacle:

    The shot was also mixed lighting with the subject in the shade, being lit by a coloured Italian shop-front immediately behind me that was in full sun....

    Being forced to decide between the subject and the sky is problematic if the shot you want is "person at location X at sunset" and you can't feature that person and also the sunset.
    It's also relevant for anywhere with tall buildings that create deep shade - the below is a nice dynamic image but it's a tad overdone and not how we actually see the world:

    My experience with shooting the OG BMPCC / BMMCC is that their ~2 stop advantage in DR over the GH5 almost completely covers this gap.  Images with someone standing in-front of a sunset no longer feature either an anonymous shadow person swimming in technicolour-grain or a digitally clipped sky.
    The GH6 DR Boost feature will help in these situations, allowing subjects to be filmed in-context rather than only in select locations were the light is just right but the scene is irrelevant.
    Would more be better?  Sure.  I can hear lots of people thinking "go full frame then - moron" but the GH5 was (until now) a camera with a unique set of features not bettered by any other offering for this type of travel shooting, so while the current alternatives give with one hand they also take away with the other, normally taking away a lot more than they give.
    Full V-Log
    Having a colour profile that is supported natively by Resolve is a huge thing for me, as it allows WB and exposure adjustments to be done in post without screwing up the colours.  This is important because in shooting travel there are times when you can't even stop walking to get a shot, let alone have enough time to pause, get exposure dialled in, and heaven-forbid to pull out a grey-card and do a custom WB!  A great man once said "tell him he's dreamin"!
    This lighting all looked neutral to the naked eye - GH5 HLG SOOC:

    The advice I got from the colourists on that was to lean into it and just pick one or the other and balance to those, but sometimes the mixed lighting isn't really something you want to lean into....  GH5 HLG SOOC - look at the colour temperatures on the grey sleeve from what appears to be the strip-light from hell hanging just above their heads:

    Better Low-light performance
    Filming in available light in uncontrolled conditions often means needing to use high ISO settings.
    This is a shot I've posted many times before, and the BTS of me shooting it, in a row-boat lit only by the floodlights on the river bank maybe 50m away.  

    Notice that the smartphone taking the BTS photo couldn't even focus due to the low-lighting.

    It was using the GH5 in full-auto (likely a 360-degree shutter) and with the Voigtlander wide open at F0.95.  I don't know what the ISO on the shot would have been, but there's quite a bit of noise, especially considering this is a UHD clip downsampled from 5K in-camera (200% zoom on a UHD timeline):

    I don't mind the quality of the noise actually, and it responds to sharpening really well giving quite an analogue image feel, but if the image is this noisy then the colours aren't going to be at their best, and that isn't desirable.
    There are a number of fast primes on MFT (ie, faster than F2) but getting sharp images wide-open is problematic, even from the very-expensive Voigtlander f0.95 primes.
    The GH6's improved low-light is great, and not only does it allow recording in ever-darker environments, but it also allows the use of modest lenses and faster lenses stopped down to be within a higher quality part of their aperture range.  An extra $1000 cost on the body of a camera seems like a lot, but if it saves you $500 on every lens because you can buy slower lenses then it's an investment that has a reasonable return.
    ...and lest you think that the above is an extreme example, having good low-light performance is really just about filming people doing what they're doing, and in case somehow you haven't noticed, it's dark outside about half the time and people go out into it and do things.
    Another example, here's a shot taken right at the end of blue-hour:

    and minutes later, here's a shot showing what you can get when lit only by the light of a phone, and providing a reference for how dark this location was:

    Think of the benefits of better low-light performance here.... it's very low-light, mixed colour temperature lighting, and the main feature is skintones.  The noise on the GH5, with the Voigtlander wide open is pretty brutal:

    New Screen
    My XC10 has amongst the nicest ergonomics of any camera and a big part of that for me was the tilt screen that didn't get in the way when using your right hand to hold the camera and the left to support the camera and manually focus the lens.  The fact that the new GH6 screen allows for both tilting as well as for flipping is great.
    Contrary to what many believe, the 'flippy' screen is actually very useful for filming things other than yourself.  Any time when you cannot stand directly behind the camera is when the flipping screen is useful.  I have used it while filming out of windows (such as in moving vehicles, filming the view around the corner of a panorama framed by an arch, or taking a sneaky shot of the kids around a corner without them spotting me and pulling faces).  
    Sometimes you need to hold the camera in funny ways to get a shot:

    They're also very useful for those who want to take vertical photos from a low or high angle.
    Fan
    The GH5 never overheated on me, even in desert conditions, unlike my iPhones have on many occasions, and the GH6 will never overheat either.  It's not an "improvement" in the sense that it doesn't offer anything new, but it is a guarantee that all the extra other features won't come at an unacceptable cost.  Having a camera that overheats is just stupid, and Panasonic doesn't insult us by providing tools that aren't reliable.
    Punch-in while recording
    Checking focus while recording is a pretty fundamental thing, and the GH5 didn't have it (and didn't have the best focus peaking either) but now the GH6 does.  Boom.
    Custom Frame Guides
    The frame guides on the GH5 were worthless - pale dotted lines that were difficult to see under ideal conditions, let alone while holding the camera at arms length in a moving vehicle. The GH6 has custom frame guides that have a much more visible outline and also dim the out-of-area image, making it super easy and intuitive to use.
    Frame from @Tito Ferradans review on YouTube:
     

    I might be tempted to engage this for a 2.35:1 permanently and then choose what ratio to use in-post when I get to editing.  I've tried to shoot for this ratio before with the GH5, forgot and couldn't see the frame guides and intuitively composed like normal, and then downloaded the footage and found that I'd framed every shot too close for the ratio.  Fail. 
    Buttons and controls
    The GH6 has more programmable buttons than the GH5 (which was already great), and the extra custom slot C4 on the mode dial is very welcome.  I have my GH5 configured to be C1 1080p24, C2 1080p60, C3-1 1080p120, C3-2 4K24 (in case there's something I'd need 24p for), and C3-3 as 4K manual everything for shooting camera tests.  The first four modes are ones I want to just be one dial away while I'm out shooting, so having the extra one is really useful.
    The GH5 also saved the preset focal lengths for the IBIS on a per-profile basis, so when you switch profiles you switch focal lengths.  This is important because when the camera goes to sleep it wakes up but forgets the focal length and goes back to the default one for that profile.  As such, you could duplicate profiles and use them to swap between focal lengths, like if you were recording sports on a manual zoom lens, just to name a purely-theoretical example that no-one would ever contemplate....

    Better IBIS
    The GH5 IBIS is great, and when you shoot with fully manual primes and without a rig, is an important function.  Having improved IBIS on the GH6 is very welcome and can really help salvage shots that wouldn't otherwise have made the cut.  One of the killer features of action cameras is that you can put them anywhere and get a huge variety of images while out in the real world, and that works for MILCs too, but if you're balancing on a chair and shooting at full arms-reach to get a shot and the IBIS isn't able to take up the slack and stabilise it, then it won't make the edit.
    It doesn't matter how good the stabilisation of something is, there are instances where it will fail, and I seem to keep finding them.
    USB-C port
    The Prores and high bitrates will chew through storage and the ability directly record to an SSD would be spectacular.  Being able to charge the camera with USB-C would also be useful in some instances. 
    In camera LUT support
    I'm yet to see how this is implemented but LUTs can be great references while shooting.  You can use LUTs for things like false-colour, sure, but I'll be very interested in experimenting with ones that are very high contrast to allow for better visibility in bright conditions, and other more extreme applications that help you get the shot.
    I normally use the EVF on the GH5 as it eliminates ambient light and adds another point of contact for better stabilisation, but sometimes you have to use the screen and it's not always ideal, so these could be useful for that.
    Better colour science?
    The GH5 colour science wasn't winning any awards, and the GH6 combination of V-Log + Prores + higher bitrates + higher DR seems to be noticeably better, which is a welcome improvement for me, especially as I am struggling to shoot in difficult situations often involving mixed WB lighting and other nasties.
    The latitude tests from CineD look spectacular:



    This will allow huge flexibility for imperfect shooting conditions.  Many times I pull up the shadows in an image (maybe I was trying to get the subject and the sky in the shot - shock horror) only to find the shadows a tinted awful mess.  If they look like the above then it will be tremendously useful in practice.
    4-channel audio recording with the XLR module
    This is slightly tempting for me.
    In post I want a stereo ambient sound, and I also want a directional audio from a shotgun mic, ideally with a safety-track.  I can get either of those with the GH5 pretty easily by using the Rode Videomic Pro Plus with the safety-track feature enabled, and simply unplug it when I want a stereo ambience track using the cameras internal microphones (which are good enough if you're only using this in combination with music and other sound-design).
    But the problem is that I don't know when something will happen, so if I'm recording stereo ambient sound I don't know if my subject will say something at the same time that a car goes past behind me, and I also don't know if my subject will say nothing while I'm recording directional mono audio and then before I know it we'll be somewhere else and I'll have no ambient audio from that location.  If this situation seems far-fetched, you've obviously never been on a tour bus in a third-world country before, where you might get dropped off near a small market, you then walk though the market with your group, where there is a stall every 5 steps with a different composition / lighting / and ambient sounds, and there is literally only room for people to walk single-file and you don't have time to stop at each interesting booth for a minute as you capture different compositions and audio options without losing your tour guide.  
    Being able to stop for a few seconds, smile at the person there, and grab a few seconds of action with directional audio and ambient sounds would be really useful.
     

    I don't fancy the added size of the module though.  
    Audio screen
    The GH6 has an audio button function that brings up an audio screen showing all the audio things you'd want.  Perfect for quickly checking how the audio is going.  With so much going on while shooting it's easy to forget to look at the meters OSD, and having everything in one place seems excellent.
    I've screwed up the audio on many occasions, so this will be quite useful.
    In summary....
    The GH6 has tonnes of little improvements that I think will make it a much more useful camera when out in the field recording things in difficult conditions as they happen.  It looks like Panasonic has done a great job in not just grabbing headlines, but in actually taking the things that niggle or limit real shooters and making them better.
    Now, if only the world would return to a state where I'd feel remotely comfortable wandering out into it with a camera in hand.....
  7. Thanks
    kye got a reaction from hoodlum in The GH6 is a triumph of practical upgrades (especially for shooting travel)   
    I think the GH6 is a triumph of incremental upgrades that provide a real difference when shooting run-n-gun video in the real world.
    With the headline features so prominent, it's easy to miss the many smaller improvements that can actually make a big difference to shooting.
    We talk about cameras like they're museum pieces or engineering spectacles, but often these things don't translate to the real world.  The following are my views of the GH6 from the perspective of a travel videographer upgrading from the GH5.  I've tried to include as many example images as I can - please note that these aren't fully graded and are often compromised due to me pushing the limits of what is possible from the GH5, what was possible under the circumstances, and what my limited skills could create...
    But let's get some obvious things out of the way first.
    Things I don't care about.....
    Autofocus
    The AF is improved.  People who used the GH5 AF will like the GH6 AF, and people who didn't like the GH5 AF probably won't be moved by the GH6 AF.  I don't use it, basically ever, so I don't care.  If you do care, then good for you..  move along, nothing to see here.
    Extra resolution
    There's more resolution, but the GH5 had enough resolution for downsampled DCI4K and lower resolutions, and the 2x digital zoom and ETC modes provided useful cropping modes as well.  The extra resolution doesn't really matter to me.
    Size and weight
    I care about this a lot actually, but it's not substantially larger than the GH5 from the front, which is the dimension that matters when filming in public.  The extra depth is immaterial when you have a lens on the camera.  The extra weight is unfortunate, but isn't that much and is well worth it for the fan and screen improvements.
    Internal Prores
    Prores is a professional codec that offers considerable improvements throughout the whole workflow.  I'm not going to say much else on this as I created another thread to talk about this but it's great to have the option, and I definitely appreciate it.  Many people were happy with the GH5s codecs, especially the 10-bit 422 ALL-I codecs, which were a shining beacon in a sea of poor-quality IPB cameras, but even those have been improved....
    Huge improvements on h264/h265 codecs
    The GH5 had 200Mbps 1080p and 400Mbps DCI4K, but the slow-motion modes are limited to 150Mbps (4K60) 200Mbps (1080p60) or 100Mbps (1080pVFR up to 180fps) and the effective bitrate dropped significantly when you conform your 60p or 180p footage to 24p - as low as 13Mbps!!.  The GH6 has 4K60 at up to 600Mbps (SD card) or 800Mbps (CFexpress type B) - an effective bitrate of 320Mbps, and in 1080p240 800Mbps which is an effective bitrate of 80Mbps.  
    Oh, and these are all 10-bit 422 ALL-I, as opposed to the GH5 8-bit 420 IPB.
    Oh, and also also, the 120p is now in 4K too.
    If you're shooting sports this is a big deal as often players are in direct sunlight, depending on the time of day there might not be much ambient fill light, and any reflections from the field may be strange colours such as green grass, or various coloured artificial turf, which will drastically benefit from the 422 10-bit when colour correcting footage.  The extra bitrate is also great for having clean images when players may be bright against a very dark background really highlighting any compression nasties on their edges.  The ALL-I will be great in post too.
    I'm curious to see what the 300fps looks like in real-world situations, but I've shot a lot of sports with 120p and it seems slow enough to me.
    Dynamic Range Boost
    This is a big deal for anyone recording in uncontrolled conditions, and especially for travel.  This isn't a vanity exercise or BS tech nerdery, this is a real creative consideration.  When you're shooting travel, the film is about the location and the experience of the people in that location, and the weather is a key consideration of this.  With the GH5 I often had to choose between clipping the highlights (ie, sky) and exposing for the people.  I also chose to expose for the sky on my XC10 and in combination with 8-bit C-Log recorded a large amount of spectacularly-awful looking footage of my honeymoon.
    Here's a frame of C-Log SOOC from that debacle:

    The shot was also mixed lighting with the subject in the shade, being lit by a coloured Italian shop-front immediately behind me that was in full sun....

    Being forced to decide between the subject and the sky is problematic if the shot you want is "person at location X at sunset" and you can't feature that person and also the sunset.
    It's also relevant for anywhere with tall buildings that create deep shade - the below is a nice dynamic image but it's a tad overdone and not how we actually see the world:

    My experience with shooting the OG BMPCC / BMMCC is that their ~2 stop advantage in DR over the GH5 almost completely covers this gap.  Images with someone standing in-front of a sunset no longer feature either an anonymous shadow person swimming in technicolour-grain or a digitally clipped sky.
    The GH6 DR Boost feature will help in these situations, allowing subjects to be filmed in-context rather than only in select locations were the light is just right but the scene is irrelevant.
    Would more be better?  Sure.  I can hear lots of people thinking "go full frame then - moron" but the GH5 was (until now) a camera with a unique set of features not bettered by any other offering for this type of travel shooting, so while the current alternatives give with one hand they also take away with the other, normally taking away a lot more than they give.
    Full V-Log
    Having a colour profile that is supported natively by Resolve is a huge thing for me, as it allows WB and exposure adjustments to be done in post without screwing up the colours.  This is important because in shooting travel there are times when you can't even stop walking to get a shot, let alone have enough time to pause, get exposure dialled in, and heaven-forbid to pull out a grey-card and do a custom WB!  A great man once said "tell him he's dreamin"!
    This lighting all looked neutral to the naked eye - GH5 HLG SOOC:

    The advice I got from the colourists on that was to lean into it and just pick one or the other and balance to those, but sometimes the mixed lighting isn't really something you want to lean into....  GH5 HLG SOOC - look at the colour temperatures on the grey sleeve from what appears to be the strip-light from hell hanging just above their heads:

    Better Low-light performance
    Filming in available light in uncontrolled conditions often means needing to use high ISO settings.
    This is a shot I've posted many times before, and the BTS of me shooting it, in a row-boat lit only by the floodlights on the river bank maybe 50m away.  

    Notice that the smartphone taking the BTS photo couldn't even focus due to the low-lighting.

    It was using the GH5 in full-auto (likely a 360-degree shutter) and with the Voigtlander wide open at F0.95.  I don't know what the ISO on the shot would have been, but there's quite a bit of noise, especially considering this is a UHD clip downsampled from 5K in-camera (200% zoom on a UHD timeline):

    I don't mind the quality of the noise actually, and it responds to sharpening really well giving quite an analogue image feel, but if the image is this noisy then the colours aren't going to be at their best, and that isn't desirable.
    There are a number of fast primes on MFT (ie, faster than F2) but getting sharp images wide-open is problematic, even from the very-expensive Voigtlander f0.95 primes.
    The GH6's improved low-light is great, and not only does it allow recording in ever-darker environments, but it also allows the use of modest lenses and faster lenses stopped down to be within a higher quality part of their aperture range.  An extra $1000 cost on the body of a camera seems like a lot, but if it saves you $500 on every lens because you can buy slower lenses then it's an investment that has a reasonable return.
    ...and lest you think that the above is an extreme example, having good low-light performance is really just about filming people doing what they're doing, and in case somehow you haven't noticed, it's dark outside about half the time and people go out into it and do things.
    Another example, here's a shot taken right at the end of blue-hour:

    and minutes later, here's a shot showing what you can get when lit only by the light of a phone, and providing a reference for how dark this location was:

    Think of the benefits of better low-light performance here.... it's very low-light, mixed colour temperature lighting, and the main feature is skintones.  The noise on the GH5, with the Voigtlander wide open is pretty brutal:

    New Screen
    My XC10 has amongst the nicest ergonomics of any camera and a big part of that for me was the tilt screen that didn't get in the way when using your right hand to hold the camera and the left to support the camera and manually focus the lens.  The fact that the new GH6 screen allows for both tilting as well as for flipping is great.
    Contrary to what many believe, the 'flippy' screen is actually very useful for filming things other than yourself.  Any time when you cannot stand directly behind the camera is when the flipping screen is useful.  I have used it while filming out of windows (such as in moving vehicles, filming the view around the corner of a panorama framed by an arch, or taking a sneaky shot of the kids around a corner without them spotting me and pulling faces).  
    Sometimes you need to hold the camera in funny ways to get a shot:

    They're also very useful for those who want to take vertical photos from a low or high angle.
    Fan
    The GH5 never overheated on me, even in desert conditions, unlike my iPhones have on many occasions, and the GH6 will never overheat either.  It's not an "improvement" in the sense that it doesn't offer anything new, but it is a guarantee that all the extra other features won't come at an unacceptable cost.  Having a camera that overheats is just stupid, and Panasonic doesn't insult us by providing tools that aren't reliable.
    Punch-in while recording
    Checking focus while recording is a pretty fundamental thing, and the GH5 didn't have it (and didn't have the best focus peaking either) but now the GH6 does.  Boom.
    Custom Frame Guides
    The frame guides on the GH5 were worthless - pale dotted lines that were difficult to see under ideal conditions, let alone while holding the camera at arms length in a moving vehicle. The GH6 has custom frame guides that have a much more visible outline and also dim the out-of-area image, making it super easy and intuitive to use.
    Frame from @Tito Ferradans review on YouTube:
     

    I might be tempted to engage this for a 2.35:1 permanently and then choose what ratio to use in-post when I get to editing.  I've tried to shoot for this ratio before with the GH5, forgot and couldn't see the frame guides and intuitively composed like normal, and then downloaded the footage and found that I'd framed every shot too close for the ratio.  Fail. 
    Buttons and controls
    The GH6 has more programmable buttons than the GH5 (which was already great), and the extra custom slot C4 on the mode dial is very welcome.  I have my GH5 configured to be C1 1080p24, C2 1080p60, C3-1 1080p120, C3-2 4K24 (in case there's something I'd need 24p for), and C3-3 as 4K manual everything for shooting camera tests.  The first four modes are ones I want to just be one dial away while I'm out shooting, so having the extra one is really useful.
    The GH5 also saved the preset focal lengths for the IBIS on a per-profile basis, so when you switch profiles you switch focal lengths.  This is important because when the camera goes to sleep it wakes up but forgets the focal length and goes back to the default one for that profile.  As such, you could duplicate profiles and use them to swap between focal lengths, like if you were recording sports on a manual zoom lens, just to name a purely-theoretical example that no-one would ever contemplate....

    Better IBIS
    The GH5 IBIS is great, and when you shoot with fully manual primes and without a rig, is an important function.  Having improved IBIS on the GH6 is very welcome and can really help salvage shots that wouldn't otherwise have made the cut.  One of the killer features of action cameras is that you can put them anywhere and get a huge variety of images while out in the real world, and that works for MILCs too, but if you're balancing on a chair and shooting at full arms-reach to get a shot and the IBIS isn't able to take up the slack and stabilise it, then it won't make the edit.
    It doesn't matter how good the stabilisation of something is, there are instances where it will fail, and I seem to keep finding them.
    USB-C port
    The Prores and high bitrates will chew through storage and the ability directly record to an SSD would be spectacular.  Being able to charge the camera with USB-C would also be useful in some instances. 
    In camera LUT support
    I'm yet to see how this is implemented but LUTs can be great references while shooting.  You can use LUTs for things like false-colour, sure, but I'll be very interested in experimenting with ones that are very high contrast to allow for better visibility in bright conditions, and other more extreme applications that help you get the shot.
    I normally use the EVF on the GH5 as it eliminates ambient light and adds another point of contact for better stabilisation, but sometimes you have to use the screen and it's not always ideal, so these could be useful for that.
    Better colour science?
    The GH5 colour science wasn't winning any awards, and the GH6 combination of V-Log + Prores + higher bitrates + higher DR seems to be noticeably better, which is a welcome improvement for me, especially as I am struggling to shoot in difficult situations often involving mixed WB lighting and other nasties.
    The latitude tests from CineD look spectacular:



    This will allow huge flexibility for imperfect shooting conditions.  Many times I pull up the shadows in an image (maybe I was trying to get the subject and the sky in the shot - shock horror) only to find the shadows a tinted awful mess.  If they look like the above then it will be tremendously useful in practice.
    4-channel audio recording with the XLR module
    This is slightly tempting for me.
    In post I want a stereo ambient sound, and I also want a directional audio from a shotgun mic, ideally with a safety-track.  I can get either of those with the GH5 pretty easily by using the Rode Videomic Pro Plus with the safety-track feature enabled, and simply unplug it when I want a stereo ambience track using the cameras internal microphones (which are good enough if you're only using this in combination with music and other sound-design).
    But the problem is that I don't know when something will happen, so if I'm recording stereo ambient sound I don't know if my subject will say something at the same time that a car goes past behind me, and I also don't know if my subject will say nothing while I'm recording directional mono audio and then before I know it we'll be somewhere else and I'll have no ambient audio from that location.  If this situation seems far-fetched, you've obviously never been on a tour bus in a third-world country before, where you might get dropped off near a small market, you then walk though the market with your group, where there is a stall every 5 steps with a different composition / lighting / and ambient sounds, and there is literally only room for people to walk single-file and you don't have time to stop at each interesting booth for a minute as you capture different compositions and audio options without losing your tour guide.  
    Being able to stop for a few seconds, smile at the person there, and grab a few seconds of action with directional audio and ambient sounds would be really useful.
     

    I don't fancy the added size of the module though.  
    Audio screen
    The GH6 has an audio button function that brings up an audio screen showing all the audio things you'd want.  Perfect for quickly checking how the audio is going.  With so much going on while shooting it's easy to forget to look at the meters OSD, and having everything in one place seems excellent.
    I've screwed up the audio on many occasions, so this will be quite useful.
    In summary....
    The GH6 has tonnes of little improvements that I think will make it a much more useful camera when out in the field recording things in difficult conditions as they happen.  It looks like Panasonic has done a great job in not just grabbing headlines, but in actually taking the things that niggle or limit real shooters and making them better.
    Now, if only the world would return to a state where I'd feel remotely comfortable wandering out into it with a camera in hand.....
  8. Like
    kye reacted to Mmmbeats in Canon C70 User Experience   
    You are both correct, as this is just a different way of describing the apparent DoF.

    @herein2020 is technically correct (yes, yes everybody - 'the best kind of correct' 😉), and @M_Williams is correct for practical purposes.

    DoF is in fact the same whether using the speedbooster or not.  However, in order to achieve the same framing on the 50mm lens example you would have to alter the distance between the camera and the subject, thus altering the DoF.

    I much prefer herein2020's way of stating it, but I have come to acknowledge that endlessly explaining this introduces just as much confusion as it clears up. 
  9. Like
    kye reacted to herein2020 in Canon C70 User Experience   
    Here is my first model promo video shot with the C70. @Django the DR really shows with the backlit direct sunlight shots, I did not use anything but daylight for this video. As far as stability, @kye about 80% of the video was shot handheld and I did not use any in camera digital stabilization. 
    I still am not 100% convinced the C70 has more DR than the S5, if anything I would say they are even, but the AF is so good even is good enough for me.  The touch to track is a cool feature but too unreliable IMO, I don't have anything to compare it to (since I don't own the R5 or R6), but it definitely seems like it is easy to lose the tracking at which point the camera becomes unpredictable especially since I only get the center 60% of the coverage area with the speed booster attached. 
    Overall, I am really glad I skipped the R5 and the R5C, those internal ND filters make all the difference here. Many times with the S5 I would just stop it down because there just wasn't time to pull out the variable ND. 
    The C70 combined with the DJI Ronin RS2 is an awesome combination. The RS2 is so much lighter than the DJI Ronin S that the C70 on the RS2 feels like the same weight as the S5 on the Ronin S. I am able to keep my full Shape cage on the C70 and balance it without needing counter weights even with the Canon 24mm-105mm L lens, however I did need the Smallrig extending base because the C70 was too wide for the DJI base and the Smallrig Manfrotto base plate since the one that comes with the Ronin RS2 is pretty much useless.
    The 1TB V30 Sandisk Extreme PRO card is working out great as well, no problems so far, I just keep the V90 card in slot 2 for just in case.
     
     
  10. Like
    kye reacted to Jimmy G in Panasonic GH6   
    Good to have that confirmation of what CineD had been reporting...

    ...and addresses Kye's previous questions...
    ...good to know for sure...thanks! 🙂
  11. Like
    kye got a reaction from webrunner5 in Prores is irrelevant, and also spectacular!   
    According to the CineD tests, here's the GH5 and BMPCC:

    and the GH6 has 12.8 / 11.5, so it's almost 2 stops, and slightly over the BMPCC sensor, which has a size disadvantage, but it's a reasonable question - technology marches on and 2012 was a looooooong time ago in silicon technology.  
    It'll be interesting to see how it feels when I get one - the differences between the DR on the two cameras is very obvious when you take them out in the real world on a sunny day, that's for sure! 
  12. Like
    kye got a reaction from Mmmbeats in Panasonic GH6   
    I suspect that they might be pushing the limits of the current technology so who knows what would be possible and what wouldn't be possible.
    I do know that CPU manufacturers have been hitting limitations on the technology and then having breakthroughs to surpass those limits every few years for decades and decades, and they're normally related to how small you can make things, so having a 6K sensor with all the processing and all the ADCs etc might well be nearing a limit, especially once you factor in the dual-gain functionality.  
    Both the C70 DGO sensor and the Alexa ALEV sensors are lower resolution and physically larger, so they might be really pushing it - who knows.
    Panasonic were pretty good about squeezing lots of stuff out of the GH5 in firmware updates, so I'd imagine they'll do the same with the GH6, so watch this space 🙂 
    The slow-motion is one thing the GH6 has really upped, with the 4K120 and 1080p240 10-bit at 800Mbps, which is a huge upgrade from the 1080p 8-bit VFR bitrates on the GH5.
    I wear polarising sunglasses basically the whole time I'm outside (Australia has much more glare than most other places) and I frequently see strange things like patterns in different types of safety glass and strange reflections / textures from objects etc that are to do with the polarisation of the light.  Even the blue of the sky doesn't look even because the polarisation of the very left of the sky is different from the middle and from the very right side, so lots of strange polarisation happens in real life.  
    I don't shoot with NDs so I normally don't see these issues, but yeah, it's an interesting one.  Might be worthwhile getting a set of fixed NDs to give you flexibility in case you hit something that just reacts strangely with the vNDs you have, and then you can just dial things in and fine-tune with aperture if required.
  13. Like
    kye got a reaction from sanveer in Dishonest Manufacturing?   
    It depends on what you're trying to do really.
    Before the DSLR revolution shooting a video was likely an auto-SS kind of situation and shooting a film was more of a completely controlled full-manual situation.
    Really, the concept of shooting something that looks like a film but is shot like a video (ie, with no control over the situation) is something quite new and quite indulgent, in a sense.  To want it all, so to speak.
    I will be the first to admit that it's what I do, I absolutely want to walk around in the world waving a camera around with one hand and somehow miraculously getting silver-screen quality images.  Vloggers and low-budget film-makers and corporate and wedding and event videographers are often in this camp as well.
    But the industry hasn't really caught up.  It will, and I'd imagine that in 5 years or so many video-first cameras will have auto-eND filters in them that can do it for you.  I look forward to that day, but in the meantime I just use auto-SS for my videos (as they are actually videos) because for what I shoot, speed matters in getting the shot, where I currently sometimes catch the moment only by a couple of seconds and if I added having to adjust exposure to my camera operating responsibilities then I'd often miss shots entirely.
  14. Like
    kye got a reaction from Mark Romero 2 in Panasonic GH6   
    I was really happy when I realised that the GH5 2x in 1080p was downsampled - it is even downsampled in the 1080p60 too, so if you shoot 1080p ALL-I codec then you get full-readout and 2x digital zoom downsampled in every framerate, and you also get the 1:1 ETC which is a ~2.5x zoom.
    How odd that the larger cameras don't have as good video modes in this way.  The GH5 was the flagship though so maybe the S1H has those modes?
    Fascinating about the 16-bit output.  I guess it might depend on the sensor mode.  IIRC other sensors sometimes have a higher bit-depth readout mode with limited fps, and then a reduced bit-depth mode where they get higher fps readouts, so maybe the 16-bit can only happen at 10fps or something.  
    It would be great to see if that's possible at the 60fps speeds that the DR boost feature can do for video.
    That makes sense.  Potentially then it's quite a different equation for your ND setup, but I keep thinking that all you need to do is work out what the maximum and minimum amount of ND you will need in daylight and just buy a fixed ND that compliments your vND to give you that range.  Then after sunset you remove the fixed ND and your vND should cover the range of shooting under artificial lights.  ISO 2000 should be a good base ISO for most low-light situations, so you should be using your vND even after dark anyway.
    The GH6 is 5760 x 4320 and the GH5 is 5184 x 3456 so if you multiply those out then you get a 38% increase in total number of pixels, or a 11% increase in width, so not entirely sure where they're getting that number either.
    Still, it's more pixels, and not stupidly more pixels, which is probably the right balance.
    Yeah, odd, but I agree that the GH6 is a winner.
    I see so many tiny little improvements they've made - I was contemplating writing a summary of what improvements I see that would be relevant to me in the real world and how I shoot.
    The ISO performance on the GH6 is pretty darn good!
  15. Like
    kye reacted to mercer in Feck me, Vimeo sucks now!   
    Yeah the site is annoying now, but the videos still look better than YouTube. FYI, you can refresh the screen instead of logging in and it will allow you to watch them. What annoys me the most is when you look at a users videos, they don't list them from newest to oldest and they don't tell you the upload date unless you click on it.
  16. Like
    kye reacted to mercer in Prores is irrelevant, and also spectacular!   
    I guess that depends...
    If the GH6 didn't have ProRes, I would yawn at this release. But I acknowledge that some of the updates could be useful to some people.
    But without a doubt, the ProRes propels the GH6 into next level territory... especially with the updated IBIS.
    I'm hoping the future ProRes updates will offer the 48p/60p in 1080p/4K but since I don't really shoot too much slow motion, it's not that big of a deal.
    The bump in dynamic range is minimal... what... about a stop and it's still under 12 stops. I'll take any extra they want to give, but that's not so great to go crazy over.
    Actually, I know there are limitations to what m4/3 can do, but how did BM get 13 stops on the OG Pocket, 9 years ago, but Panasonic can't seem to break 11.5 stops, even with the Go-Go-Gadget-Boost mode and full vLog?
  17. Like
    kye reacted to webrunner5 in Prores is irrelevant, and also spectacular!   
    Well you sort of implied that if you didn't buy a GH6 you don't need ProRes. Some people Have to use it like it or not. And I think this GH6 is going to make a GH5 pretty obsolete in a damn short time. I Never liked mine but this new one seems damn tempting. They seem to have fixed everything I hated in the GH5. Poor AF never really bothered me.
    If you are making a living doing video AF is about the bottom of the pile. Sure it would be nice but maybes are pretty weak way to make a living.
  18. Like
    kye reacted to sanveer in Dishonest Manufacturing?   
    We all know, that the Exposure Triangle is mostly not applicable for video. Because one cannot have super high shutter speeds for 24p video, or randonly keep varying the f-stop across frames or scenes. While ISO limits have probably becoming wider in terms of usability, camera which have minimum ISO for log profiles have lesser options, since the base ISO starts pretty high.
    While this may be acceptable for well controlled environments, it may not be possible for most run and gun shoots, or shoots without absolutely natural ideal lighting conditions (natural and cameras specs being coincidentally complimentary)  or shoots without elaborate controlled lighting. 
    So, would be be fair, that for video shooting, ILCs/DSLRs, not having internal NDs (whether manual or electronic), is actually a bad unfinished job. Because without internal NDs, the cameras are not truly factory ready for shooting video. They could be for photos, but not for video. So, why even make the video shooting devices without such NDs? 
    What do you think? 
  19. Like
    kye reacted to projectwoofer in Panasonic GH6   
    That’s crazy indeed! I guess the S1 being the first of the FF line has some functions missing that they added later to the other models. I’m really pleased with the S5, I like the fact that’s it’s light and small but the image quality is there.
     
    I’m really not sure why the FHD modes on the S-series are so soft though. @kye I shoot 4K mainly but the occasional FHD pixel pixel mode for extra reach or the ultra slow motion in FHD is sometimes useful. At least, the ultra slow motion from the S5 although still has moire, it’s not that pronounced as in the GH5. The GH5’s 120fps for example is a bit sharper but with much more moire artifacts than the S5’s. Anyway, I’m always upscaling that FHD footage to 4K with an AI upscaler and I know that is not what a purist would do but the upscaled footage looks so nice and usable so I’m happy with the result.
  20. Like
    kye reacted to sanveer in Panasonic GH6   
    Please do share the details here, too.
    (I find that the GH6 seems to have been improved in so many amazing ways. The 100MP handheld alone is pretty insane.).
  21. Like
    kye got a reaction from Mmmbeats in Panasonic GH6   
    I was really happy when I realised that the GH5 2x in 1080p was downsampled - it is even downsampled in the 1080p60 too, so if you shoot 1080p ALL-I codec then you get full-readout and 2x digital zoom downsampled in every framerate, and you also get the 1:1 ETC which is a ~2.5x zoom.
    How odd that the larger cameras don't have as good video modes in this way.  The GH5 was the flagship though so maybe the S1H has those modes?
    Fascinating about the 16-bit output.  I guess it might depend on the sensor mode.  IIRC other sensors sometimes have a higher bit-depth readout mode with limited fps, and then a reduced bit-depth mode where they get higher fps readouts, so maybe the 16-bit can only happen at 10fps or something.  
    It would be great to see if that's possible at the 60fps speeds that the DR boost feature can do for video.
    That makes sense.  Potentially then it's quite a different equation for your ND setup, but I keep thinking that all you need to do is work out what the maximum and minimum amount of ND you will need in daylight and just buy a fixed ND that compliments your vND to give you that range.  Then after sunset you remove the fixed ND and your vND should cover the range of shooting under artificial lights.  ISO 2000 should be a good base ISO for most low-light situations, so you should be using your vND even after dark anyway.
    The GH6 is 5760 x 4320 and the GH5 is 5184 x 3456 so if you multiply those out then you get a 38% increase in total number of pixels, or a 11% increase in width, so not entirely sure where they're getting that number either.
    Still, it's more pixels, and not stupidly more pixels, which is probably the right balance.
    Yeah, odd, but I agree that the GH6 is a winner.
    I see so many tiny little improvements they've made - I was contemplating writing a summary of what improvements I see that would be relevant to me in the real world and how I shoot.
    The ISO performance on the GH6 is pretty darn good!
  22. Like
    kye got a reaction from sanveer in Panasonic GH6   
    I was really happy when I realised that the GH5 2x in 1080p was downsampled - it is even downsampled in the 1080p60 too, so if you shoot 1080p ALL-I codec then you get full-readout and 2x digital zoom downsampled in every framerate, and you also get the 1:1 ETC which is a ~2.5x zoom.
    How odd that the larger cameras don't have as good video modes in this way.  The GH5 was the flagship though so maybe the S1H has those modes?
    Fascinating about the 16-bit output.  I guess it might depend on the sensor mode.  IIRC other sensors sometimes have a higher bit-depth readout mode with limited fps, and then a reduced bit-depth mode where they get higher fps readouts, so maybe the 16-bit can only happen at 10fps or something.  
    It would be great to see if that's possible at the 60fps speeds that the DR boost feature can do for video.
    That makes sense.  Potentially then it's quite a different equation for your ND setup, but I keep thinking that all you need to do is work out what the maximum and minimum amount of ND you will need in daylight and just buy a fixed ND that compliments your vND to give you that range.  Then after sunset you remove the fixed ND and your vND should cover the range of shooting under artificial lights.  ISO 2000 should be a good base ISO for most low-light situations, so you should be using your vND even after dark anyway.
    The GH6 is 5760 x 4320 and the GH5 is 5184 x 3456 so if you multiply those out then you get a 38% increase in total number of pixels, or a 11% increase in width, so not entirely sure where they're getting that number either.
    Still, it's more pixels, and not stupidly more pixels, which is probably the right balance.
    Yeah, odd, but I agree that the GH6 is a winner.
    I see so many tiny little improvements they've made - I was contemplating writing a summary of what improvements I see that would be relevant to me in the real world and how I shoot.
    The ISO performance on the GH6 is pretty darn good!
  23. Like
    kye got a reaction from hyalinejim in 35mm photo film emulation - LUT design   
    Yeah, send me a few frames - happy to have a play.
  24. Like
    kye reacted to hyalinejim in 35mm photo film emulation - LUT design   
    Skin looks good! What do you think about the level of contrast?
     
    Thanks for that @webrunner5 If you still have your GH5 or some old VLog files lying around maybe you could give it a whirl on your own footage and check it out in more detail. 
     
    Also, I meant to ask @kye if you have access to any downloadable VLog would you mind having a look? Your opinion on the contrast level would be really valuable. Or I could send you some frames to mess around with.
  25. Like
    kye reacted to webrunner5 in 35mm photo film emulation - LUT design   
    WoW is all I can say. I guess I will take back my original criticisms since I have seen more evidence. Well done.
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