GH5 Big Firmware Updates Coming November 19, 2019

[Bassman2003]

I see it as company DNA. The imaging division within Panasonic makes cameras. That is what they do. So to say they are going to throw away a entire line of cameras and lenses is a big deal. Especially when some of their current models have a favorable industry acceptance (all three that received the recent firmware). I see at least a next round of these cameras. There is always RAW video that will be a big feature. It is showing up and has to be in the GH series if they want to stay current.

FF is a stills format and sort of a badge for a company to wear in that world. It is also an opportunity to sell lenses. Creating a FF line is smart for Panasonic if they are already making cameras. It does not take anything away from the MFT line imho.

Was the GH5 a profitable camera? Forget about the entire MFT line. I can see the company morphing into sort of the broadcast side of Panasonic where they really only cater to high end professional users. Basically trim the camera line from the bottom up since most of that has gone to cell phones anyway.

The GH line is more threatened by the 'good enough' principle. An awesome GH6 will diminish the need for a GH7 etc... But, they are in a bind as if they make the GH6 weak then nobody will move off the GH5. So I think they are in a produce or get flushed situation which will result in a great effort to impress. I get the impression that the ethos within Panasonic is to be great and do great things. They do not seem to half-*ss anything. Stready solid development form the GH1 to the GH5 is proof which has built up a fair amount of trust with the community. Can they make enough money to focus more on the upper level users? We will see!

 

[Ron Evans]

Using an 8K camera to produce HD?
That's like driving a sports car on the highway at 45Mph.

Why ? Purpose is to have a fixed camera from which to extract a multicam like edit. That is exactly what Sony and Panasonic are suggesting for broadcast isn't it ? I do that now with the two GH5's they are essentially fixed for a show and I create the edit afterwards. That way nothing is missed and zooms, pans can be timed exactly and much smoother than I could ever achieve manually. I track action with medium framing with the GH5S but the GH5 is fixed full stage for shows. That way I can zoom in 2:1 on either camera and pan. Having 8K will make the full stage range a lot bigger to zoom. Sole reason for me for an 8K. Currently I have no wish for even UHD output either, most of my output is still DVD only edit in HD for the few BLuray.

 

[BobKo]

Why ? Purpose is to have a fixed camera from which to extract a multicam like edit. That way nothing is missed and zooms, pans can be timed exactly and much smoother than I could ever achieve manually. .... That way I can zoom in 2:1 on either camera and pan.

I've experimented with the same technique for concert videos, sometimes using two cameras and sometimes using one. If I shoot in 4K and render in HD, it can make a single-camera shoot look multi-camera. Here's one I shot with the GH5: https://youtu.be/dWKEDMnjTpY

 

[DLD]

Given how poorly received the Olympus E-M1x camera was ( deservedly so in my book because Olympus could not deliver the tech they had been promising ), I could see Olympus selling off their consumer camera division if they could get a fair price...

Unless there are some corporate accounting tricks here - and, with Olympus, one ever knows - it makes no sense for anyone to buy a money losing operation with the exception of breaking it up and selling undervalued assets. Which is far more rare in Japan than a zombie. And Olympus is looking like a prime candidate for the designation.

That said, Sony has a new 47 MPX MFT sensor, which seems like a viable candidate for the next series of the Olympus and Panasonic cameras. But, if it's 8K, it will be greatly helped by a more robust H265 codec for manageable file sizes.

 

[Bassman2003]

47 MPX sounds like a lot of pixels for MFT. I am imagining noise reduction gymnastics for higher ISO applications.

 

[Ron Evans]

I've experimented with the same technique for concert videos, sometimes using two cameras and sometimes using one. If I shoot in 4K and render in HD, it can make a single-camera shoot look multi-camera. Here's one I shot with the GH5: https://youtu.be/dWKEDMnjTpY

Nice. I always use at least two sometimes three cameras and if you then pan and zoom as well as crop you can make the edit look like many cameras that are manually controlled rather than just a crop. An 8K camera would give you at least 4:1 zoom capability with no loss with some interpolation maybe 8:1. As Sony has demonstrated this could remove the need for a cameraperson replaced by editor ( realtime or afterwards ). With sports a game can be shot with maybe just two cameras and with auto ball tracking etc run almost autonomously. For theatre or music shows cameras can be placed where it would be impossible to set up a manually run camera system and everything would be captured.

 

[Cary Knoop]

For such a small segment Olympus and Panasonic should work together.
I think it is ludicrous to have the same MFT mount for lenses but the image stabilization does not work across Panasonic and Olympus.

 

[DLD]

47 MPX sounds like a lot of pixels for MFT. I am imagining noise reduction gymnastics for higher ISO applications.

Samsung has a 108 MPX smartphone Isocell sensor, that is already appearing in Xiaomi Mi10. It's about 70 mm sq compared to MFT's 225. And it's a Quad-Bayer pattern, which outputs a 27 MPX image at low ISO. Sony has a similar QB sensor at 48 MPX.

And no camera wants to get upstaged by a smartphone.

 

[karma17]

Well, I just got the GH5 with the 3-year warranty, so I'm in it to win it for the next 3 years. It seems like a fantastic camera to me, and at $1,400, I don't see any camera even close to it, except for now, the G9. The technology is changing rapidly, but I believe a good camera is a good camera, so it is all GH5 for me for now.

The firmware upgrade is a bit underwhelming though, but I'm happy overall with its current capabilities. Maybe that will change. But for now, I think it is a great camera.

 

[jdv]

I see at least a next round of these cameras.

Oh, I do too. Little too close other MFT releases (like the 10-25mm) for them to throw in the towel on the GH series just yet. But I suspect the GH6 will not be a "WOW - I GOTTA GET THIS!" camera, but rather one that has some incremental improvements, most of which will be ergonomics (say moving the HDMI and headphone jack port to the other side of the camera).


Part of the problem for Panasonic is that the GH5 was (is) such a capable camera. It is such a workhorse. But the dynamic range, light sensitivity, and auto-focus issues remain problems to be solved, especially as other manufacturers begin to catch up with the GH5, and indeed pass it by, with larger sensor cameras no less.

Attempting 8K would be a disaster for the GH6 in terms of video. Yet who else would buy the camera except video users? What little remains of the still camera market long ago decided it wanted full frame, or at a minimum, S35. If anything, 20 megapixels are too many for MFT, at least if dynamic range and sensitivity are important to you.

Lastly, there's timing. Sony saw themselves with egg on their face when the mythical A7sIII was never announced even as camera after camera hit the market place. I know at least 3 pros who sold off oodles of their Sony glass once they realized it wasn't happening. Sure, the A7sIII could come out tomorrow, and while I think people will take a hard long look at it when (if) it does, the automatic "I MUST HAVE" feeling for it has long ago evaporated.

If Panasonic does the same, wait to long, then they will have effectively doomed the line-up anyway. MFT cameras must lead the way technologically, or lose more market share. Which is why I spent so much time pointing out that neither company seems hell bent for leather on developing that new tech for the format.

And while Panasonic is a huge company, the suggestion that their full frame line-up doesn't "steal" assets from the MFT format is a poor one. Panasonic has put massive amounts of time and money into the S1. Every bit of that time, money, and energy could have been aimed at a GH6.

Obviously, it wasn't.

 

[DLD]

A7SIII doesn't seem to be on Sony's roadmap. But A7IV is. Rumors have it with 5K/6K. Since it's the same sensor that's inside S1H (and Z6 and fp), this development seems a foregone conclusion.

The only catch is whether it'll have 8-bit or 10-bit codec. My money is on 8-bit.

 

[Bassman2003]

I see the S-Series as Panasonic wanting to stay in the imaging business but realizing the MFT market has a ceiling. We are in the overlap area now where both formats are needing full attention and development. If they are betting resolution is the most important factor for future sales, the FF is the only way to get there. So from this point of view, MFT is in a pickle but that is only if one looks at resolution. But imho, if Panasonic decides to pull a Canon with the GH6 it will kill the format even earlier as people will skip the release, keep their current cameras or move on to another option. But as I stated before, all they need to do is give the light sensitivity of the GH5s with IBIS along with other incremental advances and the camera will be a hit. Not the highest of bars to clear. For me:

Dual ISO (clean up to 6400)
IBIS
240 FPS
V-LOG or RAW

Winner winner, chicken dinner!

 

[jdv]

Dual ISO (clean up to 6400)
IBIS
240 FPS
V-LOG or RAW

Winner winner, chicken dinner!

Not a bad list, but even that might not be enough for most buyers, especially people looking at buying into a format. Essentially combining the GH5 with the S isn't exactly a big step forward especially if the new camera is using pre-existing sensor.

Put another way, how many people are going to pay $3,000 for a GH5s with IBIS and dual ISO? I'm guessing not many. Dual ISO can mixed a mixed bag in any event. And of course, we're assuming that what your describing is even possible with existing tech. And that's where the real problem lays....

The elephant in the room is that existing tech might be all we'll see going forward, at least in terms of sensors. I'm starting to doubt very much whether or not either company is doing any new R&D on MFT sensors. Olympus is almost certainly not doing so, and Panasonic can't be that far behind. And if they're totally relying on Sony to develop a new unicorn MFT sensor that's clean as ISO 6400 with better dynamic range, then that's a fairly dumb business strategy. Sony might do it... then again, they might not. I try to monitor all the rumor sites for such news, and nary a peep about anything close to a big step forward in tech.

Not many buyers will care about 240 FPS, especially as it would almost certainly be 8 bit 4:2:0 at 1080. Nice to have I guess, but not exactly a killer app.

 

[TheDingo]

Put another way, how many people are going to pay $3,000 for a GH5s with IBIS and dual ISO?

The current GH5s has more than 1 stop of dynamic range truncated from it's sensor because of the V-LOG L profile. If a GH6 comes out with the GH5s sensor and the S1 V-LOG profile, there's an automatic 1 stop of additional dynamic range over the GH5s. ( might not keep folks happy with the low photo resolution, but you can't have everything ) Add in an upgraded version of the GH5s dual ISO sensor processing and you are starting to deliver a different animal than the old GH5. If Panasonic can fix the C-AF performance too then you might get a quite a few GH5 users willing to upgrade: 1+ stops of DR over the GH5, 2 stops better low-light than the GH5, C-AF that is a lot more usable, and it all works with better than GH5 IBIS...

 

[Bassman2003]

I agree with the Dingo. There is enough there if the AF is solid and they add IBIS, V-LOG etc... I use 240fps for sports applications with a Sony RX10 II which is no spring chicken. I would have expected the more expensive cameras to have offered 240fps more often by now. The Gh5s sensor is rated for 240fps and I would like to see it in the GH6.

I would also expect the price to be closer to $2,000 than $3,000 as the S1 is $2,500.

I say all of this knowing these are video specs and video is a smaller market than stills. But, the GH5 is not known very much for its stills shooting. So is it worth only pursuing the GH line for us video folks?

 

[Ron Evans]

To the pure film maker using tripods a GH5S with full Vlog and RAW to Atomos ProRes RAW would be more useful to people like me. That could likely be done with a firmware update to the GH5S anyway. Next useful would be a servo zoom lens with on camera/remote control ( which is there now, I have an Olympus lens that works but would be nice to have a faster better lens ). I am sure there are others like me that do not take stills with the GH5 and do not hand hold so have no need for IBS. That is different for the FF S1 which is entering the stills market so must have IBS as it is the equivalent to the GH5 in the FF lineup. We have yet to see the equivalent to the GH5S or the G9 if they ever appear.

 

[DLD]

The dynamic range has more to do with the readout of the information that is already on the sensor rather than the dynamic range capabilities of the sensor itself. In other words, one can make a photo style dual exposure and then interpolate images into a single frame. But that'd need a lot of processing power, as it's likely require a readout in the 120 FPS neighborhood.

 

[karma17]

Got the V2.6 for GH5, this is definitely not a big update. Only 1, Exp Offset, new menu item added.

I have a funny feeling that there probably aren't many, if any, major updates planned for the GH5.

But that's okay; it is still a great camera and at least they are keeping it maintained and fixing bugs.

 

[MurtlandPhoto]

I have a funny feeling that there probably aren't many, if any, major updates planned for the GH5.

Perhaps you bought yours after this point, but there were already massive updates to the GH5 after release. Things like HLG, 400Mbps and All-I recording, 6K open gate recording, AF improvements, I.S. Lock mode, and FHD 10 bit were all added to the camera AFTER initial release through firmware updates. I'd say Panasonic has done more than enough to keep this camera current. Not to target you directly, but I've seen too many people complain about lack of updates. This camera has arguably the best feature updates of any camera ever. Thank you Panasonic.

 

[Ron Evans]

Perhaps you bought yours after this point, but there were already massive updates to the GH5 after release. Things like HLG, 400Mbps and All-I recording, 6K open gate recording, AF improvements, I.S. Lock mode, and FHD 10 bit were all added to the camera AFTER initial release through firmware updates. I'd say Panasonic has done more than enough to keep this camera current. Not to target you directly, but I've seen too many people complain about lack of updates. This camera has arguably the best feature updates of any camera ever. Thank you Panasonic.

Agreed. Since introduction it has had a very large range of updates. Other companies would have made you buy another camera. If it was Apple you would have bought two !!