FHDcrew

Agreed. I felt the same about the G9II. Lowlight is good. Full frame cameras seem to just be INSANELY good. And seems like the crop of full frame cameras for the most part has been this way for the last few years. I owned the Nikon Z6 OG from 2020-2025. It has the same IMX410 sensor found in the Sony a7iii, Panasonic S5/S1/S5II/S5IIX. That sensor despite being used in 7 yr old bodies like the z6 or a7iii is great in lowlight, 12,800 ISO and 25,600 ISO never looked bad to me I used to push the z6 so hard with wedding films even dipping into 51,200 ISO and noise was always usable. I dabbled a bit with the G9II in January and lowlight seemed noticeably worse, but at the same time it wasn’t BAD per se and cleaned up well in post. Again I think it’s just that full frame cameras are insanely good. But then again so are crop sensors lol…I was just running some lowlight tests with my friends $649 Canon R50V. With some Denoise in Davinci resolve, 12,800 ISO looked great to my eye. Nuts! 12,800! $649 used to get me a Panasonic G7 and decent lens…how far all these cameras have come. I couldn’t dream of getting that type of result on the G7. But this $649 R50V was extremely impressive lol. We are so dang spoiled. I ended up getting a used canon r6 OG for a very good price ($929), overheating aside its a wonderful cam for $1k average. And looks great at ISO 25,600… I think my biggest isssue with the g9II was PDAF seemed to shut off or be used a lot less when above ISO 2500 or 3200 in a lot of cases. Meaning if you want to rely on autofocus it’s hard to really push things. Because I did find that with some Denoise ISO 6400 and 12,800 were honestly not bad. Maybe I also didn’t have the most optimal lens choices…but when I was recently filming at a summer camp where they had a canon r5 (so I could use the r5 when I wanted and my G9II when I wanted), the r5 seemed to wipe the floor with the g9II at 3200ISO and above especially when pushing things. And unfortunately I just seem to have times where I need to shoot in very very lowlight settings. So full frame is a big help.

My oh my what an original comment.

Fair points for sure.

How about Matti Haapoja’s “epic fpv sea transition” video that was just an artlist AI ad disguised as a helpful video. The same bro who was gonna “take a break from YouTube and really get back to his creative roots for a year” now shilling Higgsfield AI whilst reviewing yet another lens in a sea of perfectly imperfect but still perfect lenses that are all the same and can be made to look however you want because there’s no bad gear anymore just the potential to either acquire or lack skill.

My path has been both of these lol. I’ve been a massive tech enthusiast since I was 8 years old…so I definitely have loved learning about and getting hype over gear, although it’s also very overblown and I don’t like the cycle we are in now. But I also fell in love with the creative process, the ability to improve my skills to be creative and get better at crafting cool images and edits to tell impactful stories. I’ve both drooled over camera’s and simultaneously gotten immense satisfaction when I figured out how to make my 7 yr old 8 bit Nikon footage look and grade just the way I wanted. I’m a gear head who also thinks spec wars are overblown anymore. A camera nerd who gets sick of the hype machine, but still enjoys to watch. A creative, who was horrible at any science or math class in high school, but who loves tech and can understand complex broadcast equipment and understand the technical aspects of this industry easily. An artist who hates painting and drawing but constantly has visual ideas. I’m a weird mix of both of those lol. But I also think many of us are this way.

@Djangoif you go c50 + gyroflow route then invest in the RSMB motion blur plugin. It’s the most realistic and dependable motion blur plugin I’ve owned and does a nice job adding back in convincing motion blur when you need to crank your shutter for gyroflow.

Literally the older canon r5 has ample dynamic range in the real world they all have ample DR.

Makes me feel we haven’t gotten amazing IQ leaps in the last 5 yrs…I mean heck the fx3 sensor in the a7siii also came out 5 yrs ago and I don’t see any “superior” lowlight cams on the market. Only “comparable”. For example a c50 will hold its own against the a7siii. But it’s not better. Or worse. Just a 5 year newer camera.

Very true. My first camera was a Panasonic G7. The g9II still obliterates the g7 in lowlight lol. But yeah most of the full frame options from the last 7 years are all outstanding. Also it’s funny how 5-7 yr old full frame bodies are still excellent. My Canon R6 came out 5 yrs ago. The Nikon Z6 I used to shoot with came out 7 yrs ago. I filmed recently with an original Sony a7iii at 8,000 ISO (but a very very well exposed image) and the image was incredibly clean. We are so spoiled with choices anymore.

Yep. Also you can lowkey get full frame at a similar size with slower lenses and higher high ISO. The Canon R6 at 25,600 ISO is much cleaner that the G9II in 6400 ISO. 2 stops cleaner. But also r6 is applying a lot more internal NR which is up to users taste on if they like. I don’t mind saves me time in post but I get how some might want a more pure image they can Denoise later.

Also it needs to be warp stabilizer; any of the stabilization algorithms in Davinci resolve don’t do as well and end up making the result worse. Warp stabilizer set to substance warp is quite good however. I actually am currently paying for just after efffects alone and have some scripts that let me quickly render a single clip in Davinci resolve, apply warp stabilizer in AE, render and import quickly back to Davinci.

I completely understand. What I can say is for some reason solid handheld technique + Canon IBIS + Canon DIS + ADOBE warp stabilizer is very consistent and stable. Worth a try. But I do get it, gyroflow is great too and uses real motion data. I’ve done a ton of filming on canon bodies though and this technique works really well. It’s not 100% perfect but I’d call it 95% perfect with a bit of tweaking.

Sadly sold the G9II. I realized I need good high ISO performance, and seems PDAF is disabled at real high ISOs. I scored a canon r6 for $929 and other than the overheating it’s great. And I can live wijt the overheating for how I shoot. IBIS can genuinely compete with LUMIX by having DIS on standard and using adobe’s warp stabilizer, somehow warp stabilizer absolutely thrives at stabilizing the type of leftover shakiness and artifacts of canon’s IBIS + DIS combo. Very consistently stable without warpy artifacts. Great high ISO performance. Lovely image in CLOG3. I did like the G9II. Its image was great. Best Ibis I’ve ever used. Very comfortable. Just realized I need better high ISO performance. Yes I could have gotten a super fast zoom like the sigma 18-35 1.8/speedbooster or Panasonic 10-25mm 1.7. But sometimes I REALLY need to push things at weddings or concerts, shooting at ISOs like 25,600. That’s beyond what the Gh7/G9II can handle.

This does require a good technique ofc meaning good crouched heel toe walk, holding the camera a bit loose and even using a neck strap helps. But when I shoot this way with canon IBIS + DIS Standard and then use warp stabilizer, the results are excellent and very consistent.

Something interesting about canon bodies with IBIS is that I find with a good walking workflow and adobe’s warp stabilizer the results rival gyroflow. Especially on wide lenses I can very consistently get beautifully stable resultS across multiple canon bodies with IBIS. For some reason adobe’s warp stabilizer absolutely thrives at stabilizing the type of footage coming out of these camera bodies with a good workflow. I’ve been able to get amazing results on an original canon r6, r5 and r7. For best results put DIS on Standard and then use warp stabilizer to carry it the rest of the way. 1-3% on warp stabilizer smooths out the jittery IBIS motion. 5% looks like a steadicam. 10% is near gimbal level. 50% is insane. so in some ways the r6 iii with this workflow could be more useful. The IBIS helps in this workflow meaning you in a lot of situations can keep your shutter at 1/50 and stabilize. Gyroflow without IBIS you really have to shoot at 1/200 or above.

Miss him. He also randomly deleted or privated a bunch of his older videos; I noticed this happen maybe 2-3 yrs ago. Tons of old Blackmagic videos, his awesome Canon XC10/XC15 review, etc etc.

Definitely. I did a brief comparison of a VLOG frame and shooting the same in flat with ISO lowered, I used the same node tree I did with my Nikon z6 8 bit flat and was able to get color and highlight rolloff real close.

Curious how you find the gh7 autofocus fares at the higher IsoS

Certainly agree I took a bit of time to test some stuff out yesterday evening. I do switch my picture profile from VLOG to FLAT I can lower my ISO from 5,000 to 1,000. Gotta do further test though on my ultimate thoughts on the autofocus.

I’m dead 🤣🤣

I’m actually thinking of in lowlight staying in Vlog and trying to keep my ISO at 2500 as much as I can. VLOG seems to have really solid under exposure latitude and AF seems to work at 4/5 stops under so instead of shooting at 12,800 ISO I could stay at 2500 ISO and raise exposure in post. The idea is that then PDAF stays enabled and gives me usable autofocus.

Formatting is being super weird right now ignore post

Some first impressions of the G9II; finally starting to shoot with it but will have my first very demanding shoot this weekend. I did some filming at a worship conference early this week. Image is thick and grades well. Lowlight is clean up to 3200 ISO and gets very noisy very fast. So far I shot on the super efficient mp4 4k 72mbps. When really pushing ISO at 6400 and 12,800 image seems to soften. This might not happen once I try the all-i codecs that have substantially higher bitrates. One thing I noticed, this camera has hybrid PDAF and Contrast-detect AF. At high ISOs the PDAF seems to turn off or become severely reduced...i start to get autofocus pulsing and it is not as responsive. It is not HORRIBLE and is still likely better than a gh5, but its not the snappy reliable PDAF that this camera normally operates at. I need to do more extensive testing, btu it seems up to around ISO 2500 or 3200 you can expect good AF performance, but seems to worsen from there. I will be shooting a big concert-style christian event this weekened and the venue has lots of contrasty DMX lighting which looks beautiful but is def a lower light scenereo. I am toying with shooting in CineD V2 in lowlight. What seems to happen is when I shoot in a flat 709 PP, I can lower my ISO and get a comparable exposure. I know that LOG needs a higher ISO in lowlight bc its capturing a much wider dynamic range...and once you grade LOG if its exposed well the noise differences vanish. But with CINEd V2 i can lower my ISO probably 1 to 1 1/2 stops and get a good exposure. Im thinking in terms of how the sensor behaves, it would allow me to more frequently keep the ISO at below 3200 which in tern means keeping good autofocus performance since it seems to again worsen above 3200 ISO. I am also thinking that since the picture profile will be more contrasty, if i need to crank my ISO ever the autofocus would be better because it is analyzing a more contrasty image. I think it will still grade well; it is still going to be 10 bit and i suppose the extra V-LOG DR is not terribly necessary in low light. Plus, the codec is still 10 bit so colors should manage well; i would run the footage through the same node tree i used for Nikon Z6 Flat 8 bit, which basically is modified CSTs in/out of Davinci Wide gamut with modifications to artificlaly smooth highlight rolloff.

Definitely. It’s super versatile.