GH5 GH5s Dual I.S. perfomance versus 5-axis stabilization of GH5.

Thomas, I agree with your general sentiment, but I do think it is valid to acknowledge that technology and economics are now such that a camera manufacturer *could* actually make a reasonably priced "good enough" camera that ticked all of the boxes...if they wanted to. So far, Panasonic and Sony have shown the most willingness to go down this road, but neither of them is quite willing to jump in the deep end.

It's kind of like CG's uncanny valley - the closer we get to a perfect camera, the more glaring the deficiencies that remain.
 
Well, I am just approaching it from a job point of view. You could have the greatest tool in the world but if you can not use it on a job in the way you want, it will not be seen as the greatest in your eyes. I don't think this is entitled. It is the free market. Panasonic is not my friend and they don't see me as their friend. They make cameras and we decide if we want to buy them. It is an equation.

I do appreciate Panasonic and the effort they are putting forward. So I will act in the only way a consumer rewards a business and that is to buy their product.

Is anybody buying a camera that is lacking features in their mind just because they are thankful for the opportunity? I see what you are saying and I want people to treat me well that I do business with but I respectfully disagree when it comes to multinational corporations.
 
joe12south said:
What "official" video? I've heard some ambassadors mention it, but not from Panasonic.
Remember, 13 stops would double the range. 14 stops would quadruple it.
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13 stops of DR has not twice the range of 12 stops of DR. From one fstop to another, yes, you double the amount of light, but the range in Dynamic range is from minimum value (black) to the highest value (white).
 
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TheTrickster said:
From the official Panasonic Lumix Video Channel


At 1:43min

I'm surprised this was allowed to feature on their official channel without vetting the contents.
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I'm not terribly surprised. Panasonic traditionally has not been very strict about what ambassadors say. Unless an actual company employee says something, you can't really rely on it as technical truth.

Moreover, Panasonic has stated multiple times that they don't like publishing DR figures because of how much interpretation is involved in determining "usable" dynamic range. When hard pressed, they talked about it some on the GH5, but you could always see the pain on Sean's face.

Regardless, I think the available footage indicates that there is probably not 14 stops of DR. A cleaner, more usable 12 stops is probably more realistic. Until we can get our hands on one or someone posts an actual test, we can't know for certain.
 
Doug_EX said:
13 stops of DR has not twice the range of 12 stops of DR. From one fstop to another, yes, you double the amount of light, but the range in Dynamic range is from minimum value (black) to the highest value (white).
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And the difference in steps is double the light value. "In photography, stops are also a unit used to quantify ratios of light or exposure, with each added stop meaning a factor of two."
 
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TheDingo said:
I'm going to assume that the GH5s DR is as good as the GH5 at low ISO speeds, and significantly better (at least 2 f-stops) for ISO speeds of 2500 or higher.
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That seems like a safe assumption. It's clear that shadows are cleaner no matter the ISO, so I wouldn't be surprised if we can push an extra 1/2 stop or so into the shadows in a pinch. In scenarios in which we need to underexpose a touch to protect highlights, raising the shadows shouldn't be such an ugly/painful experience in post. (I'm looking at you, VLOG-L.)
 
Everything we are seeing is also from pre production models. We know from the EVA1 that dynamic range was tweaked up until the final hour. Might be good to holdout judgement until we get the final release and see what the dynamic range can do in the hands of those that actually know how to push the dynamic range. I have seen a ton of GH5 vs BMD 4k and RED comparisons where I honestly could not see a difference. You really have to put the cameras in an extreme environment to see a day and night advantage of anything over 12 stops. Still waiting to find any examples at all that show the GH5 getting spanked in terms of dynamic range and not due to poor grading of V-log or a luma range issue from an external recorder.
 
dynamicrange.png


This graph might help visualize how big a difference there is between 12 stops of sensitivity and 14 stops. I would be shocked if the GH5s can resolve 14 stops.
 
filmguy123 said:
Dual IS refers to in-body + optical (in-lens).

So, GH5s does not have Dual IS. The GH5 has dual IS (lens + in-body).

The GH5s has optical (in-lens) only, depending on the lens.

In my experience, it is the in-body (IBIS) of the GH5 that makes the largest difference. It's a game changer.

Optical lens stabilization (IS), available with select lenses on the GH5s, is good to remove some micro jitters, etc. Don't count on it for performing quasi dolly movements handheld with the camera, etc.

Dual IS on the GH5 makes the biggest difference at long focal lengths and zoom lenses.

Hope this is helpful.
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And the FW added "IS Lock" feature for static video mode seems to add at least another stop. You can pan with it, and might get a slight hesitation initially, but then is smooth in my testing. Wish it were available for stills also...can't see why not.
 
joe12south said:
dynamicrange.png


This graph might help visualize how big a difference there is between 12 stops of sensitivity and 14 stops. I would be shocked if the GH5s can resolve 14 stops.
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That graph is very misleading and the reality is if you grab a 12 stop camera and 14 stop camera there is no way you see that amount of difference between the two. That graph makes it look like 12 stops is absolute garbage and that it should be virtually impossible to see anything on a 8 stop consumer display. I know without a doubt 14 stops is better, I'm not dumb but I think we need to put into better perspective what the real world implications are between a 12 stop camera and a 14 stop camera and not just the scientific explanation. I don't make it a habit to shoot charts for a living and shoot the real world.

Still waiting for somebody to show me real world examples of how the GH5 dynamic range sucks.

Honestly this is the same level of logic that says 4k is 4x better than HD. Sure it terms of math it is but when you view them side by side most people don't see much of difference. We need something similar to the HD viewing distance chart but for dynamic range. something that actually paints a real world picture of what those stop differences actually look like to the human eye.
 
joe12south said:
I would be shocked if the GH5s can resolve 14 stops.
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But you have to factor in how DR slowly melts away as you raise the ISO/GAIN settings on most cameras. It appears that the GH5s still has it's 12 stops of DR at it's native 2500 ISO, where the GH5 has 9.5 stops and the A7SII has 11 stops at 2500 ISO. So at 2500 ISO the GH5s has more DR than the GH5 or A7SII, and this likely continues as you raise the ISO higher.
 
Thomas Smet said:
That graph is very misleading and the reality is if you grab a 12 stop camera and 14 stop camera there is no way you see that amount of difference between the two. That graph makes it look like 12 stops is absolute garbage and that it should be virtually impossible to see anything on a 8 stop consumer display. I know without a doubt 14 stops is better, I'm not dumb but I think we need to put into better perspective what the real world implications are between a 12 stop camera and a 14 stop camera and not just the scientific explanation.

Honestly this is the same level of logic that says 4k is 4x better than HD. Sure it terms of math it is but when you view them side by side most people don't see much of difference. We need something similar to the HD viewing distance chart but for dynamic range. something that actually paints a real world picture of what those stop differences actually look like to the human eye.
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Couldn't agree more. This graph should only be used to illustrate the amount of light going to the sensor at any given f/stop, not for DR.
Looking at the graph, one could think that 14 stop of DR is 2 time better than 13 stops of DR, which is obviously not true.
 
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I think it is useful to understand our eye's logarithmic response to light compared to a sensor's linear response, and be reminded that stops are a logarithmic, not linear, scale. (It's very similar to how audio engineers need to understand the log nature of our hearing and how the decibel scale works.)

Do we perceive twice as much light to be twice as bright? No. Does a sensor need to be able to handle twice the signal level to capture it? Yes.

With this in mind, consider the engineering challenge to make a 13 stop camera compared to a 12 stop camera – even though we only perceive a relatively small improvement. That's good to know, and knowing is half the battle. ;-)

Nowhere have I said 12 stops is bad. Certainly, 12 cleaner stops over a wider ISO range is a worthwhile improvement. But that doesn't change the fact that 14 stops is desirable for a film-like response and 16 stops would do an even better job of approximating the limits of human vision. We're moving quickly into an HDR world, the status quo is going to be challenged, like it or not.
 
Doug_EX said:
Couldn't agree more. This graph should only be used to illustrate the amount of light going to the sensor at any given f/stop, not for DR.
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Other examples of diminishing returns on math and digital imaging is color depth. 8bit vs 10bit color to be more specific. On paper 10bit is 4x higher than 8bit and 12bit color is 16x higher than 8bit and yet if you looked at a 8bit and 12bit images side by side there is no way that 12bit image is 16x better looking.

All values in digital imaging have exponentially diminishing returns the higher you go. Thats just the nature of the physics involved here. Resolution, dynamic range and color depth all have a diminishing return the higher you go.
 
Thomas Smet said:
Other examples of diminishing returns on math and digital imaging is color depth. 8bit vs 10bit color to be more specific. On paper 10bit is 4x higher than 8bit and 12bit color is 16x higher than 8bit and yet if you looked at a 8bit and 12bit images side by side there is no way that 12bit image is 16x better looking.

All values in digital imaging have exponentially diminishing returns the higher you go. Thats just the nature of the physics involved here. Resolution, dynamic range and color depth all have a diminishing return the higher you go.
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Yup, and both our vision and our hearing are tuned to be more sensitive to the middle. That's why we can get away with something like using a log curve to cram more info into the middle at the expense of resolution at the extremes.
 
joe12south said:
I think it is useful to understand our eye's logarithmic response to light compared to a sensor's linear response, and be reminded that stops are a logarithmic, not linear, scale. (It's very similar to how audio engineers need to understand the log nature of our hearing and how the decibel scale works.)

Do we perceive twice as much light to be twice as bright? No. Does a sensor need to be able to handle twice the signal level to capture it? Yes.

With this in mind, consider the engineering challenge to make a 13 stop camera compared to a 12 stop camera – even though we only perceive a relatively small improvement. That's good to know, and knowing is half the battle. ;-)

Nowhere have I said 12 stops is bad. Certainly, 12 cleaner stops over a wider ISO range is a worthwhile improvement. But that doesn't change the fact that 14 stops is desirable for a film-like response and 16 stops would do an even better job of approximating the limits of human vision. We're moving quickly into an HDR world, the status quo is going to be challenged, like it or not.
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I hear you, but in reality, when looking at 2 identical images with one taken with a camera with 13 DR and the other with 14 of DR, the latter won't seem to have twice the dynamic range. That's why I'm saying also that the graph is misleading.
 
Doug_EX said:
I hear you, but in reality, when looking at 2 identical images with one taken with a camera with 13 DR and the other with 14 of DR, the latter won't seem to have twice the dynamic range. That's why I'm saying also that the graph is misleading.
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There is no great way to show 14 stops of DR on a display that can handle about 6. Any attempt is flawed in some way, just like any flat map of the earth has to be flawed in some way.

I stand by the fact that the chart is a useful tool for visualizing the fact that each step of additional dynamic range is twice as bright as the previous. A lot of people don't understand that, and when they think about stops of dynamic range, they're thinking linearly.
 
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