One Decade

[fuzzynormal]

The GH5 has been my workhorse for almost a decade now.  For whatever reason, the need to move on from it has never been necessary, so I've stuck with it.  For instance, AF is not an issue.  Manual focus is how lenses get used by me.  Slow-mo is a thing to do less of, not more of, imo.

A full 10 years on, what does a different camera offer; like really offer?  An extra stop of exposure?  An extra bit of DR?  

Looking at a GH7 the thought is, "MMM, pretty nice."  But then what?  A big difference in ... what ... gets captured?  Maybe the market has matured TOO much for me?

[Aussie Ash]

You probably deserve a medal fuzzy, for being satisfied with what you've got for ten years and not being seduced by camera "lust".

[fuzzynormal]

25 minutes ago, Aussie Ash said:

You probably deserve a medal fuzzy, for being satisfied with what you've got for ten years and not being seduced by camera "lust".

Well, I've other gear for specific jobs.  For instance I have a Fuji X-T5 that came along for a special birds-in-flight thing -- that fit a special lens, but it just sits on the shelf since that gig finished. 

The way the IBIS works in that camera bugs the hell out of me.

Anyone want to buy a used X-T5?  How about a fuji 150-600mm?  Got a 2x extender as well. 

[kye]

9 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

The GH5 has been my workhorse for almost a decade now.  For whatever reason, the need to move on from it has never been necessary, so I've stuck with it.  For instance, AF is not an issue.  Manual focus is how lenses get used by me.  Slow-mo is a thing to do less of, not more of, imo.

A full 10 years on, what does a different camera offer; like really offer?  An extra stop of exposure?  An extra bit of DR?  

Looking at a GH7 the thought is, "MMM, pretty nice."  But then what?  A big difference in ... what ... gets captured?  Maybe the market has matured TOO much for me?

Looking at my notes when I was upgrading from the GH5 to GH7, the main benefits of the GH7 over the GH5 were:

• PDAF
• Real V-Log (not V-Log-L or light or whatever it was) (*)
• Prores and Prores RAW internal
• Improved DR (*)
• Improved latitude - due to having real V-Log as well as the improved DR (*)
• Improved low-light (*)

and the cons were:

• Size / weight
• Cost (not only the body, but potentially the media and new batteries etc)
• Loss of modes between 1080p and UHD (3.3K 4:3 mode)

The items with the (*) are the ones that motivated me to take the plunge.  Obviously the size / weight / price also factored into things!

My take on your situation is that if upgrading doesn't offer you tangible improvements that will be worth the (considerable) hassle of upgrading, why change?

Modern cameras are improving all kinds of things that aren't needed / used in every situation (including many features that are actually incredibly niche), so if you happen to shoot in only situations where your existing kit is enough, then the upgrades are just cons/costs.

[kye]

9 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Maybe the market has matured TOO much for me?

Just a thought about that last statement..  if you're taking a practical approach to considering upgrades then I'd say it's the other way around....

...you've matured TOO much for the market 😉 

[MrSMW]

Not the GH5, but I am also at 'peak camera' with Lumix.

If I ever made any changes in the future now...and none planned, it would not be based on need, - the gear I have just does what I need it to do.

There's still a lens that does not exist for me and one day if it comes along, I'll pick it up, but otherwise, never really been that interested in the gear, despite waffling about it for over 2 decades. It was always a means to an end.

[fuzzynormal]

17 hours ago, kye said:

• Real V-Log (not V-Log-L or light or whatever it was) (*)
• Improved DR (*)
• Improved latitude - due to having real V-Log as well as the improved DR (*)
• Improved low-light (*)

Yeah.  Fair.

And I'm actually to the point where I'm like, "Do I even want the extra DR"?  The modern look of digital imaging seems almost too pristine to me anymore.  So I guess my reticence is actually morphing into a stylistic choice; which is a place I never thought I'd be when using consumer gear, honestly.  After all, we usually think "more is more" right?

Maybe it's just me being a stick in the mud because of my age.  However, when I watch old movies I'm always left thinking, "Well, I have more imaging power than they had.  What am I really chasing with this modern camera in my bag?"

[kye]

5 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Yeah.  Fair.

And I'm actually to the point where I'm like, "Do I even want the extra DR"?  The modern look of digital imaging seems almost too pristine to me anymore.  So I guess my reticence is actually morphing into a stylistic choice; which is a place I never thought I'd be when using consumer gear, honestly.  After all, we usually think "more is more" right?

Maybe it's just me being a stick in the mud because of my age.  However, when I watch old movies I'm always left thinking, "Well, I have more imaging power than they had.  What am I really chasing with this modern camera in my bag?"

When it comes to things like the extra DR, I think about practicalities.

Back in the day they had a certain amount of DR, so they filmed what they fit into that DR, modified scenes with too much DR where they could, simply didn't film other scenes with too much DR, or accepted sub-optimal results.  They often had far more budget and leeway for lighting etc than you or I have.  They also didn't tell some of the stories that you or I might want to tell.

You and I are filming things they might or might not have filmed, we are doing so with far less resources than they would have had (*), and are doing so for an audience that is far far far more discerning than audiences used to be.

(A note on resources..  Anyone who shot film automatically had a pretty large budget as just the line-items for negative film, development, and printing were absolutely huge compared to the entire project costs for what you and I are doing.  As such, for them the cost to add a light here or modify something there was drastically less percentage of their production.  I also suspect that back in the day the simple fact that someone was shooting on film gave them a sort-of legitimacy that would have meant they could get away with a more invasive shooting environment (adding lights etc) whereas now that level of legitimacy doesn't really come unless you're getting official permission.)

I think of extra DR as being the thing that lets me bridge a gap between the worse conditions I shoot in, the lack of ability to control or modify the scenes I'm shooting, and the far greater expectations of myself and anyone else watching.

Another note on DR, this is the curve from 250D:

This has easily more stops than the GH5 has, potentially more than the GH7 has, and is likely to respond to high-DR scenes in a more pleasing way as well.

Of course, the print stocks had far lower DR, like 2383 which only had 5-6 stops:

But they were still capturing the greater range and depending on how fancy they wanted to get in the darkroom (or if they had a DI to play with) they could definitely print the 5-6 stops of DR they wanted from the negative (essentially adjusting exposure in post) or they could extend the DR by printing different areas of the image differently, using graduated filters and all kinds of other tricks.

I sort-of feel like comparing film-making now to back in the day is a apples-vs-oranges kind of thing, so comparing the specs directly without acknowledging the situations were vastly different doesn't really make much sense.

However, to return to your situation in the present, I look at several factors to assess if equipment is good enough:

• Does it allow you to shoot what you want to shoot?
• Does it provide the speed / efficiency / convenience you need to create the work in the budget / schedule limitations you have?
• Does it provide a pleasant-enough experience while using it?
• Does it create the quality of results you are looking for?

If these things are all true, then why change?

[Aussie Ash]

colour movie film in the 1960s was only ASA 50 so they used extra lighting out doors on sunny days !!

This is on set Hitchcocks "The Birds " 1963 with two carbon arc lights in the back ground

now Fijifilm make a colour film rated at 1600 ISO (5 more stops beyond 50 ISO) and full frame sensors are way beyond the limitations of 50 ISO so yes it is far easier now ! 

[eatstoomuchjam]

3 hours ago, kye said:

When it comes to things like the extra DR, I think about practicalities.

 

This is a real thing and a very good point.

To give a personal and recent example, I was asked on Thursday of last week to jump in at the last minute to help finish someone's feature over the weekend.  I'm not sure of the details for why their DP became unavailable. The filmmaker had a shot list for Saturday that was 15 pages long taking place in 7 different locations - and both I and the other guy they brought in had a hard out at 4 or 5 in the afternoon.  Sunday's agenda was similar, but without either of us needing to leave.  We didn't finish the list for either day.  Likely, we'll be shooting again next Saturday.

It was all outdoors in parks, usually a several hundred meters from our cars.  None of our usual suspect gaffers were available/handy.  We had basically 0 time to light things and the director wanted a bunch of wides and tracking shots (both tend to take longer to light).  Controlling the light in any meaningful way was not a realistic option.  These are exactly the situations when an extra stop of dynamic range is nice to have to keep the sky at least a bit blue, but yet also still have some detail in some of the harsh shadows.

Real tough situation for the filmmaker - they definitely want to keep quality high and have they great ideas, but there are also budgetary and delivery date realities - the difference between a real indie film set and a reddit comments section.  😉

(Also, RIP colorist - there are like 5-6 different color profiles in play across all of the cameras that were used between the original DP and both of us last weekend, hopefully they only have to match 2 or 3 within any given scene)

2 hours ago, Aussie Ash said:

colour movie film in the 1960s was only ASA 50 so they used extra lighting out doors on sunny days !!

I'm not sure what ASA 50 has to do with needing extra light on a sunny day.  Assuming ~24 fps, that'd give a proper exposure at approximately F/16 in bright sunlight (1/48 second for 180 shutter + sunny 16 rule indicating a 1/50 shutter speed = close enough)  and you'd still need to use ND to open up the aperture beyond that.  I suspect those lights are for filling in the faces/front of talent in a wide, given that the sun is actually at about a 60-90 degree angle from the lights (judging by shadows).  From where the cameras are pointed, the subjects will be backlit.

[ac6000cw]

On 5/3/2026 at 9:13 PM, fuzzynormal said:

The GH5 has been my workhorse for almost a decade now.  For whatever reason, the need to move on from it has never been necessary, so I've stuck with it.  For instance, AF is not an issue.  Manual focus is how lenses get used by me.  Slow-mo is a thing to do less of, not more of, imo.

A full 10 years on, what does a different camera offer; like really offer?  An extra stop of exposure?  An extra bit of DR?  

Looking at a GH7 the thought is, "MMM, pretty nice."  But then what?  A big difference in ... what ... gets captured?  Maybe the market has matured TOO much for me?

I'd add IBIS upgrades to Kye's list of improvements - as I normally shoot handheld, that's been my main reason to upgrade my M43 cameras over the years. I still own an original G9 (derived from the GH5), but the Oly E-M1 iii and OM-1 I bought more recently have better IBIS.

Although I've been a faithful M43 user for about 15 years (starting with a Pana G3), due to the lack of a modern video-orientated small M43 camera I ventured into full-frame with an S9 recently (when the price dropped a lot). Now I've had enough time to get used to it, I have to say the video quality from it is noticeably better than the M43 cameras I own - it seems to have a 'richness' that is attractive. I usually put a Smallrig leather half-case and Sigma 18-50 F2.8 APS-C lens on it, and it's great as a run-and-gun camera (even though it's only using about half the sensor area in APS-C mode).

[kye]

1 hour ago, ac6000cw said:

I'd add IBIS upgrades to Kye's list of improvements - as I normally shoot handheld, that's been my main reason to upgrade my M43 cameras over the years. I still own an original G9 (derived from the GH5), but the Oly E-M1 iii and OM-1 I bought more recently have better IBIS.

TBH I never really noticed any improvement in the IBIS between the GH5 and GH7, although I didn't really use them that closely together so maybe I missed it.  The IBIS (and Dual IS with compatible lenses) on all the MFT cameras I have is pretty incredible actually, GX85, GH5 and GH7.

[fuzzynormal]

8 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

it seems to have a 'richness' that is attractive.

No doubt.  I have a 5DMII that I think still delivers in this regard as well.

What I have is good enough for me, so I've decide, "Eh, I'll stay where I'm at."

(for now) 😉