GH5 GH4 as a B Cam for GH5

Michael_Richard

Michael_Richard

Active member
As prices for used GH4's continue to sink like a stone, I'm considering keeping the GH4 as a second cam. Will this be a good combo GH4 and GH5? I know the GH4 won't shoot 10bit without an external recorder. Most of my stuff ends up on youtube/vimeo and the GH4 has been fine for that. I shoot UHD and edit in a 1920x1080 timeline. If I want 10 bit I'll just use one cam. Opinions?
 
I use the combo often. It's definitely not a perfect match when it comes to colors, so you can't expect to set the profile the same on both cameras and have it match perfectly. This is particularly annoying when it comes to skin tones or anything else very sensitive for our perceptions when cutting clips. Otherwise, yes they work great together. 4k, same battery, etc.

Do you own the GH5 yet? If not, borrow or rent one and shoot a two camera interview. If you feel comfortable with how successful you are matching the two cams, then keep the GH4. If not, then you have to decide if it serves well enough as a B cam for your shooting needs.
 
I also use this combo, and have added my AF-100 as well, and they all are a very close match provided you use the same scene settings. With color correction being so powerful today, I've matched completely different cameras in Avid and Premiere easily, except when one camera has crushed blacks, that kills it.
 
I had planned to do this, but the color science is meaningfully different/better on the GH5, and I was not satisfied pairing them. If the GH4 is to be used just for b-roll it would be fine, but I often need to intercut two cameras as equals, and that didn't look good. Matching skin tones and sky blues was particularly disappointing because even after careful matching, the GH4 shots look dead compared to the GH5.
 
I think a lot of this really comes down to personal opinion to be honest. Sure the GH5 has better colors but it isn't as dramatically different as some think it is. Some people are going to be more sensitive to the color differences while others not so much. It kind of depends on the profile used as well. CineD is much better on the GH5 but if you shoot with a profile like Standard or Natural I think the color differences are much less significant. At least to the point of it not being that big of a deal.

Some people intermix very different cameras with stunning results and the GH4/GH5 combo will be a much closer match than trying to match a Canon 5Dmk4 to a GH5 no matter how bad some may think the GH4 color is.

My point is while the GH4 and GH5 may not be a perfect match, they are much closer than trying to match a BMD, RED, Canon, Nikon or Sony camera to a GH5. In a perfect world yes getting multiple GH5's would be the best solution but sometimes that isn't always an option and some productions may have started with a GH4 and move to a GH5. A skilled artist should be able to match just about any camera to the point of the audience not noticing. If we are talking out of the box color with zero effort then yes you may or may not notice a difference. Really depends on how sensitive you/your audience is to subtle color shifts and how accurate and meticulous you are at manually white balancing. If one shoots with auto white balance or a preset then there are much more severe color shifts to worry about then the differences between the GH4 and GH5.
 
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