GH5 GH5S Autofocus

sgttom said:
Its a neat find, just not the most useful for video as you have to use odd shutter speeds.
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Not sure what you mean. There is no way you can tell the difference between 1/59 and 1/60 shutter speed. Set the camera to 179 degree shutter angle and focusing becomes very, very good.
 
As someone who has spend a good portion of their career in product development/management, reading this makes my head cock sideways like a dog that is puzzled. I can't understand what happened with the Panasonic Engineering and Test departments that the autofocus is so bad and yet someone on the outside has to show us how to fix it. There needs to be some serious introspection in the GH5 team. How embarrassing. As a product manager, if I heard some outsider found a fix for shortcomings of my product and no one on my team knew about it, there would be some very loud discussions the next day in the office.
 
This hack improves the situation (the speed), but "solves" it? Not hardly. It's still totally unreliable. Sometimes it won't find focus at all. Only single point focus is even close to usable for anything approaching real work.
 
I've had good luck with Face Eye Recognition too. I wonder how this news was received at Panasonic and what their product development engineers have to say about the way the problem was solved………………….Has anyone received any feed back?
 
Yes, fix was a poor choice of words on my part. I'm surprised they released the product and actually said it has autofocus. It's more like the autofocus is a concept they are working on and here's what they have so far. I'm a Panasonic fan, but geez, sometimes you wonder.
 
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I think Panasonic was caught off-guard by how quickly how good Canon's autofocus became. Overnight, pro/semi-pro shooters went from not even considering autofocus to everyone demanding it as if life couldn't go on without it.
 
Yeah but even the old Sony A6000 auto focus is very useful. It's amazing compared to anything from panasonic
 
A quick review of specifying the AF area position on the setting screen will help everyone trying to get the best AF results from their GH5 cameras. If it isn’t set right it wont deliver the best results. Check out details on page 96 of the GH5 Owners Manual for advanced features.
 
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m43user said:
Not sure what you mean. There is no way you can tell the difference between 1/59 and 1/60 shutter speed. Set the camera to 179 degree shutter angle and focusing becomes very, very good.
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I was confused. I thought you had to use lower shutter speeds. I am going to try this tomorrow. This is very encouraging honestly.
 
Paul F said:
As someone who has spend a good portion of their career in product development/management, reading this makes my head cock sideways like a dog that is puzzled. I can't understand what happened with the Panasonic Engineering and Test departments that the autofocus is so bad and yet someone on the outside has to show us how to fix it. There needs to be some serious introspection in the GH5 team. How embarrassing. As a product manager, if I heard some outsider found a fix for shortcomings of my product and no one on my team knew about it, there would be some very loud discussions the next day in the office.
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It is interesting the team wasn't able to detect what was going on. It also makes sense after understanding the (speculative) math behind a 50% of the time open shutter and 49% of the time open shutter, which allows it to keep mathematically just under the threshold of two AF passes when using 25p on a 50hz frequency and 179 (or lower) shutter.

Now if only Panasonic could add a firmware with new frequency options of, say, 48.5 and 50.5 to allow for this to work on 24p 180 and 25p 180, a lot of people would be a lot more happy.

Course the underlying tech, even if running faster and in optimal sync, doesn't appear to be at the level of canon DPAF... but a clock frequency fix would be an unorthodox yet effective tweak in the interim that would likely satisfy the majority.
 
These are a couple of Panasonic Reps that should be able to shine some light on this Auto Focus Fix, if any of you know them personally ask for their comments?

Interviews with Panasonic Reps about the GH5

GH5 Firmware Update V2 0 with Mat Frazer from Panasonic 33min.. https://youtu.be/67ADhlVzZPo


1hr. and 16min. conversation about the GH5 with Sean Robinson from Panasonic. https://youtu.be/68JJgDgML1g
 
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Did some tests today with the 179 shutter degree angle at 30fps and was quite happy with the results. My main use for auto focus is gimbal operation and I find the auto focus now useable.
 
Which lens? My results seem mixed. Feels like scene contrast and light remain important factors, times when it remains stalled.
 
Tom Roper said:
Which lens? My results seem mixed. Feels like scene contrast and light remain important factors, times when it remains stalled.
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I used the Panasonic kit lens 14-42 I believe. Contrast still definitely plays a large role as its a contrast detect focus system unfortunately.
 
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