GH5S for Wedding Shoot

[Tom Roper]

I can't see using this camera in an AF "patience" mode. I also hate the non-linear manual servo focus mode on all my M43 Pana and Leicas. The one Olympus lens I have, 40-150 F2.8 has much better manual focusing but less useful focal range.

3 years ago I put a GH5 on a tripod to record two entertainers gently swaying, singing the standards at a wedding reception. Behind them were the usual cocktail/Christmas lights on a string. The camera was in continuous AF mode, which it did hold focus on the entertainers but in the background the breathing absolutely wrecked the footage, the lights/bokeh swelled and shrunk. I decided after that to never do that again, just aim for a deeper DOF iris/iso combo and leave it in MF. Adequate DOF shouldn't be a problem for M43. At other times I saw AF latch onto the lights on a Christmas tree people were standing in front of and not let go. That made me berserk.

In no way have I ever meant to imply DFD even remotely compares to Canon or Sony DPAF, just that it did improve in a meaningful way when they added face tracking on the GH5s in V1.6, and when used with a fast focusing lens like the 12-60 and not the glacial slow focusing 42.5 mm F1.2 portrait lens. (And it worked well for me yesterday on the gimbal at 60p, which is the role I want for it now.) The "Abe" roll

[ahalpert]

That losing focus shot doesn't seem too bad. It didnt take it long to recover, I mean. Sort of odd that it focused in the near direction, though. Was it because of the umbrella pole you passed in the foreground? The near corner of the bar? Something about the contrast on the guy's shirt? A little odd.

When I got my S1 and Lumix 24-105, I turned on AF and walked towards the stove in my kitchen. It lost focus immediately and took forever to catch up, so I just said screw it. Maybe I gave up too soon or it just needed a firmware update.

Someone recently posted in the S5 thread that they've been using the Olympus Em1mk2 or whatever and that it has fabulous AF and fabulous color (and fabulous IBIS). That made me a little jealous, although the codecs and the sensitivity/DR are not on par. Olympus made/makes cool cameras and lenses

I haven't yet used continuous AF to shoot an 8interview and hold a swaying face/eye with shallow DOF. I might need a longer or faster lens than just my 24-70 f/2.8 to encounter that problem anyway. But that would be a boon if the A7SIII could cleanly handle that for me

[Jim Arthurs]

I don’t really know how to say this, not much discussion on the GH5S model, the Panasonic DFD autofocus system maligned reputation is carved in stone yet the V1.6 update with face recognition worked super good for me yesterday. I mounted the GH5S on a Zhiyun Crane gimbal with PanaLeica 12-60 F2.8-4.0 with OIS on and EIS enabled in-camera; the 4K 60p video was buttery smooth..(drum roll), the AF was excellent. In 92GB (24 clips) of gimbal footage, there were only two of the *very briefest* (less than 1 sec.) out of focus moments where it instantly recovered both times. There was never an instance of latching onto a background, nor was there any back and forth hunting. It just just did a perfect job of focusing on the faces whether in the sun or shadows, even going from outdoors to indoors. This the first time I’ve been satisfied with Panasonic AF performance, and there will be no complaints about these clips. I have hated the 12-60 PanaLeica for it’s non-linear servo focus ring, yet now it’s not even needed to use. It otherwise has excellent optics, great OIS and now fast accurate AF on GH5S. I could go on, already said too much, no one would be convinced anyway. I will later post up the two instances of brief out of focus moments and seamless recovery, built confidence for me.

I decided to give it a go this week with my aerospace client, as I had three days with lots of gimbal work. Upgraded the GH5s to the latest firmware, and had promising results with the version 2 Panasonic 14-140mm around the house on furniture and objects. I was going to rent the 12-60mm just to keep apples to apples, but I knew I'd be needing to snap out to 140mm more often than I'd like during the day. However, the excitement was short lived, as I started seeing pretty much the same old Panny behavior when you had actual PEOPLE in frame... The miss rate was pretty high, only slightly better (or at least different) than the success at pulling focus manually, but at least with manual there wasn't all the focus buzzing. And of course with the Ronin-s, and USBC tether to the GH5s, you loose the camera's LCD screen when shooting while HDMI is in use, so no ability to tap and fix.

It is what is is, I guess, and I gave it a fair shot and super glad you got great results in your shooting environment.

It's very frustrating, as a Panny user, because you can just sense what good A7SIII autofocus might be like, but I couldn't, even for one moment relax about any aspect of what I was doing with AF on the GH5s and only occasionally tried it when I had a moment or two to experiment during low risk moments. It's all rather disappointing, because I've found the GH5s is a superb and robust/capable camera in all other areas. I only have two similar shoot days coming up over the next few weeks with the client, and yet I've almost talked myself into a shiny new A7SIII if I can find one for sale...

[NorBro]

It's been a real shame for the last several years.

In business though, it make sense. If the S5 had perfect AF, most camera sales would stop overnight.

But take away one of the top 2 features in all cameras and the circus continues.

In my own opinion, I'd go as far as saying the miscalculations are randomly programmed in (no facts, just a theory). Maybe with a timer, if you will...I think we've seen that somewhere before.

Such unpredictable AF behavior just doesn't make much sense (even with that particular focusing system).