GH5 GH6 rumors

FWIW, the incoming MFT Olympus EM5 MKIII is rumored to have an "old" 20 MPX sensor but will have a pixel-shifting HiRes 50 MPX mode even handheld. You figure that, should a 41 MPX camera come out by mid-late 2020, it will have close to 100 MPX via the same technology.
 
Well, they announced the GH5 on Jan 4th at CES in 2017. The next CES starts Jan 7th, 2020. 3 years since the GH5 announced - can you believe it?

NAB starts April 18th, while Photkina starts May 27th 2020.

So if it's going to happen in 2020, I'd guess in the next 4 and half months.
 
Good guesses. Wow, three years is kind of surprising and they are still working on the camera! I would guess that Photokina is going to have a new Canon mirrorless. The industry is probably seeing the cell phone led demise and I hope this means the trickle-out era has come to an end. The makers probably have 2-5 years before the carnage is complete. So now is the time to bring it unless they just go quietly into the night.
 
If I remember correctly, Panasonic teased some of the blockbuster GH5 features in late 2016 with the full announcement happening early 2017. Having seen no GH6 teases yet, I'm not sure we can expect much here. I hope I'm wrong!
 
I wouldn’t read into that, I think they’re giving the S1H and S1 series their 5 minutes of fame. January seems like a likely announcement time for a spring launch around NAB, or at least a preview with more news at NAB. I also wouldn’t be that surprised to see a new GH camera launch as late as fall. I would however be very surprised to hear nothing soon, this is an important market to them and there’s some stiff M43 competition at the moment.

As much as I love my S1H I’m very excited about this camera, if they can improve the image quality on it, it’s really an ideal tool for my travel shoots.
 
There's a "wish list" thread two doors down. It wouldn't exist if there was no camera.
 
I wouldn’t put much stock in previous release schedules. The GH6 will come out when it is ready and when Panasonic feels the need to compete in the market. The GH5 has faced a lot of competition and is no longer the gem in the market it once was. The GH5S was also likely not a big seller and may have been a bit of a bust for Panasonic. I don’t know of very many sold and hope I’m wrong but I see zero interest in that camera out there. The S just never seemed to generate as much interest.

I can’t imagine GH5 sales are all that spectacular anymore either. It’s an older model now and most of the indie film marketing community is all about raw right now and getting that on a $1,300 camera. Panasonic needs a new camera to be competitive and now seems like a pretty good time. That is assuming they even have a market left out there.

I’m still on a GH4 myself and at this stage will be skipping the GH5. Holding off to see what a GH6 may bring to the table but I’m very much leaning towards a BMD. I also shoot stills so BMD didn’t really appeal to me very much but for what the cost of the GH6 will likely be I can get the BMD P4K and a newer stills only focused m43 camera with IBIS. So the GH6 is going to really need to wow myself and others to stay in the game.
 
When the GH5 came out, it was $2,000 and had a ton of features for that price. It is now down to $1,300, and still has features that are either hard or impossible to find (in-camera 4K I-frame recording at 400 Mbps, for example). I think the GH5 is still pretty competitive. When I mention to potential collaborators that I have a GH5, they all react positively.

That's not saying there is no room for improvement with a GH6. I'm just saying that there is still life in the GH5, particularly at a price of $1,300.
 
can the panasonic g9 be included in the conversation with the latest update bestowing 10it capabilities?

thumbs up.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
 
Bassman2003 said:
The industry is probably seeing the cell phone led demise and I hope this means the trickle-out era has come to an end. The makers probably have 2-5 years before the carnage is complete. So now is the time to bring it unless they just go quietly into the night.
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The notion that camera manufacturers are cynically trickling out features is an odd one. If you were to apply the same logic to your own business you’d be out of business in short order. Do you provide a Red package for the same price as a GH5 package? Do you throw in a drone for free, or a gimbal, or a sound tech? I hope not. Like any business, price and feature spec is a combination of market competition, cost, available tech and many subjective value considerations. Throw in currency fluctuation on top of it- yikes. The decisions to target specs and price is not made in vacuum.

Of course manufacturers consider feature specs according to the market. Just like I do. Just like you should if you want to stay in business. Why is there a different expectation for them versus you (or me) ?

That said, to imply that the GH5 or it’s ilk was somehow knee-capped is a real tough sell. There’s a temptation is to compare the previous generation of tech with the current or pending new tech. Not quite a fair comparison. Compared to it’s peers, the GH5 is a value providing powerhouse imo.
 
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hotchkiss said:
The notion that camera manufacturers are cynically trickling out features is an odd one. If you were to apply the same logic to your own business you’d be out of business in short order...
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Not if you were a cartel. I don't see OPEC going out of business anytime soon.
 
DLD said:
Not if you were a cartel. I don't see OPEC going out of business anytime soon.
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Economic logic be damned. History be damned. DLD, your incessant assertion of a cartel with a stranglehold is so full of holes, I’m not sure where to begin. The Japanese camera cartel must be one of the biggest failures in the history of failed cartels. Cooperation is not a cartel, collaboration is not a cartel. Cartels are attempted, however they always fail, with one exception- those initiated and protected by governments. OPEC is a relevant example as a true cartel. However, even it has significant difficulty maintaining it’s hegemon.

Canon comes out with the XL1 in the late 90’s. Sony counters with the Vx-1000 and the Betacam starts a quick journey into irrelevance as an industry standard. Apparently no one told Canon about the cartel. In less than twenty years, we’ve gone from a Betacam 300 for $35K + to cameras a fraction of their cost with image quality and features magnitudes better.

There’s always new tech, new companies in a market space and someone willing to undercut the current paradigm. Should we talk about what smart phones have done to the point and shoot market... video ?

If there is a Japanese camera cartel, it has been a horrible and dismal failure.
 
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hotchkiss said:
... If there is a Japanese camera cartel, it has been a horrible and dismal failure.
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We can talk feature crippling and price niches until cows come home but this cartel is in the process of being destroyed by the forces it can't control, i.e., the smartphone industry. There the advances are coming at a much faster rate than the Japan, Inc. is comfortable with.

As to what happened 20 years ago is irrelevant. People still used film, among other things, then. And that had different dominant players, Kodak, Fuji, AGFA, etc.
 
DLD said:
As to what happened 20 years ago is irrelevant. People still used film, among other things, then. And that had different dominant players, Kodak, Fuji, AGFA, etc.
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FWIW, people still use film today. In the summer of 2018, I worked on a major motion picture that will come out in the spring of 2020. There were a couple of Red cameras on set shooting B-roll of big effects scenes, but the primary cameras rolled film. Yes, real film is still used by some at the high end of cinema production. I was surprised, actually.
 
hotchkiss said:
That said, to imply that the GH5 or it’s ilk was somehow knee-capped is a real tough sell.
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When it comes to the GH5s the European Broadcast Union review of the camera confirmed that the camera is losing more than 1 stop of dynamic range because of the limitations of Panasonic V-LOG L profile. Switching to the HLG profile added 1.5+ stops of DR in their tests. Revising the GH5s to include the full 16 stop V-LOG profile and giving it Panasonic IBIS would create a new MFT camera that many of us would buy : Better color, better DR, better low-light performance, lower FF crop...
 
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