GH5 GH5 or GH5s as a B-cam for Varicam LT

M

Milan O.

Well-known member
I'm looking into buying a GH5 or GH5s and use it as a B-cam for my Varicam LT. First I thought that the GH5s is the way to go but I've been seeing some complaints about lines of noise when shooting in VFR. Do all the GH5s cameras have this issue or has it been resolved?
Does the GH5 also have this issue or does it have other issues?

Another question: Is the autofocus completely useless when using a Metabones Speedbooster and a Sigma 18-35 with the GH5 cameras?
 
AFAIK, all GH5S have the VFR problem. Makes anything above 60p unusable. GH5 does not have this issue and looks pretty good up to 180fps, just be sure to expose and white balance correctly. It gets noisy fast but totally usable in most situations. Not sure about autofocus as I never use it. -N
 
The noise with the GH5S is horrendous when shooting V-Log-L. If you shoot Cine-D up to 120fps, the issue is greatly reduced. The color on the GH5S is a phenomenal improvement over the GH5, so if you don't need VFR, I'd certainly lean to the GH5S. I've even shot some pretty good looking 60p V-Log-L with the camera to handle any slo-mo needs.

The rumor is that a firmware announcement for the GH5S will happen tomorrow, and hopefully this will resolve the issue all together. This is the only issue I've had with the camera, so I've got my fingers crossed!
 
I bought the GH5s and aside from the VFR issue I'm more than pleased with it so far. I have only tested it for a couple of hours. I love all the adjustments that can be made with the function buttons, the pro camera division should learn from this and make handgrips similar to the right side of the camera. I'd gladly pay extra for that. I also bought the Lumix 12-35 2.8 II lens, and although the autofocus tracking for video isn't great, so far I think it's good enough for how I intend to use it. The image stabilization in the lens is good enough when having the camera "shoulder mounted" (I don't acutally have it on my shoulder, rather in front of me in a light weight set-up).
One of the best things is that I can monitor and control the camera with my smartphone, I love it. Then I can operate the LT and control this (if needed) via the phone, at the same time.

I also tried using Flmconvert with it, and in the not so good lighting in my kitchen I preferred the Varicam LT setting (vlog) rather than the GH5s setting (vlogl) for the GH5s.
 
The GH5S is a very well designed camera (so I've learned in the last month) and the programmability is fantastic.

Your dedicated WB/ISO/etc. buttons, function buttons, various menus (including the touch bar if you need it), joystick, arrows, dials...it's all adjustable (some more than others with certain options).

Most cameras allow you to change them to a certain extent (Sony is very good), but I think this one is the best I've seen. This is a major reason I like to shoot with mirrorless cameras and it doesn't get any easier than a GH5S if you take the time to learn the camera.

Everything is at your finger tips and able to be changed in seconds...from major operations to minor ones like turning on the wind filter or toggling your HDMI's LUT or choosing a saved WB or diving into the synchro scan if you need to, etc.
 
Exactly! It is so good that I'm almost thinking about ditching the Varicam LT. :)
Seriuosly though, this is a very important feature for an owner/operator and I'm surprised that higher end cameras aren't as well thought out like this one is, AND the image is actually very good from what I've seen so far.

This is so much more lightweight than the Varicam LT with a Zeiss LWZ on...
I'm not sure if I even need a cage for it, although a top handle would be nice. Maybe I'll get a more lightweight/smaller baseplate but apart from that I think it's a nice set-up for moving around quickly.

GH5s 1.jpgGH5s 2.jpg
 
Matt, yes it's nice and very lightweight.

Fboonzaier, it moves while breathing but when I'm breathing normally it hardly moves at all (there's more movement further down, so if it's pressed against the upper part of the chest there is very little movement) , not more than the rest of the body movement (since it's really hard to keep completely still).
 
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