GH6 with ProRes

[icarusfilm]

I use tentacle sync recorders and tc-generators on my s1h I only record scratch sound on the camera. The recorders record in 32bit float recharge able batteries run for 10hrs recording I have 4 of them it’s an amazing set it and forget it System you can monitor all the recorded via app and can even listen in via phone. I have shot projects with extreme sound issiues without any problems. Just set the level to the voice and stop worrying about it. Also keeps the camera free of audio gak. I only get better results with a top tier sound guy.

 

[Samuel Dilworth]

Dale Baskin at DPReview reported that the GH6 reads out “the entire sensor in 17.6 ms and its DCI 4K region in 12.4ms”.

That is nearly as fast as the GH5S (around 11.5 ms for the DCI 4K) and obviously far faster than any comparably priced full-frame camera (and most full-framers full stop). Good going.

Does anyone know who makes the sensor yet?

 

[Samuel Dilworth]

me. For anamorphic stills.

The first of those two photos is beautiful. The aspect ratio reminds me of the XPan. What lens did you use for that?

 

[davedv]

Dale Baskin at DPReview reported that the GH6 reads out “the entire sensor in 17.6 ms and its DCI 4K region in 12.4ms”.

That is nearly as fast as the GH5S (around 11.5 ms for the DCI 4K) and obviously far faster than any comparably priced full-frame camera (and most full-framers full stop). Good going.

Does anyone know who makes the sensor yet?

Yes, it's a fairly fast sensor considering that the GH6 is reading out more pixels than the GH5S since the DCI 4K sensor area on the GH6 is about 5776 x 3058 resolution.

The readout speed when recording 120fps on the GH6 is even faster at 6.7ms for DCI 4K. And interestingly, there doesn't seem to be any drop in effective video resolution when shooting in 4K 120 compared to the oversampled 4K modes at lower frame rates of 24 to 60fps (this is judging from the tests Gordon Laing did in his review). Typically for cameras that use pixel binning or line skipping for higher frame rates, there is an associated drop in sharpness, but that doesn't seem to be the case up to 4K 120 fps on the GH6 (Gordon indicated that the 4K 120 fps on the GH6 seems to slightly outresolve the pixel binned/line skipped 4K 120 of the 8K-capable Sony a1 and Canon R5). This suggests to me that the GH6 may still be doing a full pixel readout (with oversampling) for 4K 120, but perhaps just lowering the bit depth to increase the readout speed.

Anyway, so it's mostly the recent stacked CMOS sensors, such as on the Sony a7S III or Olympus OM-1 (both lower resolution sensors), that are likely to have lower rolling shutter among recent mirrorless hybrid cameras.

In terms of who makes the sensor, there seems to be very little public information about this. Often there are leaks of sensor spec sheets and such in the lead up to a new camera release, but there's very little out there about the GH6 sensor. The most useful information I came across was from this DPreview article (https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonic-lumix-dc-gh6-initial-review) which speculates that it is likely to be a backside illuminated (BSI) sensor (but probably not stacked). And that apparently some Panasonic rep told them that the sensor is "not made by the company everyone always assumes we use." Given that pretty much all of the recent Panasonic mirrorless cameras have used Sony sensors, I interpret this to mean that the GH6 is not using a Sony sensor. Which would be surprising considering recent trends.

Of the recent mirrorless camera releases, almost all of the camera companies seem to be using Sony sensors. The lone exception is Canon, which still makes their own sensors. Panasonic used to have an image sensor business themselves, but sold their stake in it a couple of years ago to Nuvoton: https://www.photoxels.com/panasonic...ill-camera-to-nuvoton-technology-corporation/

The second largest image sensor manufacturer behind Sony is Samsung, but they seem to be mostly focused on smaller sensors for the smartphone market currently. Back when Samsung sold their own cameras (such as the NX1), they had an APS-C sensor, but I'm not sure that they have done any large format sensors since exiting the camera market.

Third largest in sensor market share is Omnivision, but they mostly seem to make sensors for the industrial, medical, and automotive markets. And there are a handful of other smaller sensor manufacturers such as ON semiconductor, which did the Arri Alexa sensor.

 

[DLD]

MIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel and TPSCo, Uozu, Japan, March 26, 2019 – TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry leader, and TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Company TPSCo, today announced they have signed a three-year agreement, extending its previous business partnership with Panasonic Semiconductor Solutions (PSCS) through 2022. ...

Through TPSCo, TowerJazz offers its customers advanced 300mm analog technology manufacturing platforms such as state-of-the-art 65nm CMOS image sensor solutions, RF SOI 65nm, and 65nm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) power management platform.

TowerJazz to maintain its 51% holding of TPSCo shares, with PSCS as a 49% shareholder.

https://towersemi.com/2019/03/26/26032019/

And, as a side note -

Intel to Acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 Billion

https://towersemi.com/2022/02/15/02152022/

 

[Clermond]

The first of those two photos is beautiful. The aspect ratio reminds me of the XPan. What lens did you use for that?

thanks.
It's a Helios 44-2 58mm as a taking lens, a ISCO Red Ultra Star 2x as scope and a SLR magic Rangefinder for single focus.
I sold the rangefinder and went for HCDNA instead but didn't use the anamorphic set for various reasons for
quite some time. I was just short before giving up anamorphic at all when Panasonic announced the GH6

Here are some shots 1st and 3rd from a walk in Chicago, 2nd somewhere at the Missisippi

 

[Thomas Smet]

Dale Baskin at DPReview reported that the GH6 reads out “the entire sensor in 17.6 ms and its DCI 4K region in 12.4ms”.

That is nearly as fast as the GH5S (around 11.5 ms for the DCI 4K) and obviously far faster than any comparably priced full-frame camera (and most full-framers full stop). Good going.

Does anyone know who makes the sensor yet?

Doesn't really matter who makes the sensor. All that matters is it delivers. The image we get has more to do with the DSP and the processing in camera. The sensor just converts light to electronic values which then gets turned into pixels with the DSP. Only thing a sensor really determines is how many pixels there are, the signal to noise ratio of those pixels, the dynamic range of those pixels and the speed at which it can convert light to electronic signals. Everything else about the look is the DSP.

Knowing who made the sensor isn't really going to change anything about the camera itself. Its pretty much worthless knowledge.

 

[ahalpert]

. Mentioned that despite pontifications of some youtubers etc M43 is not going anywhere.

Probably. But if they were about to phase out m43, they would definitely not say so

 

[ahalpert]

Dale Baskin at DPReview reported that the GH6 reads out “the entire sensor in 17.6 ms and its DCI 4K region in 12.4ms”.

That is nearly as fast as the GH5S (around 11.5 ms for the DCI 4K) and obviously far faster than any comparably priced full-frame camera (and most full-framers full stop). Good going.

Does anyone know who makes the sensor yet?

The a7siii costs 40% more and reads out full-frame UHD in 8.7ms. Gh6 readout speed is a good showing for its resolution but nothing to write home about, imo. And if there is, as Davedv suggests, a drop in readout bit-depth for 120fps, it's not ideal. Probably a minor hindrance. But a low resolution sensor like the a7siii can maintain full quality at 120fps (albeit with a 1.1x crop leading to a 7 7ms readout speed)

I understand the operational advantage of a hybrid. But I'm not truly sold on the concept. Seems preferable to have dedicated stills and video cameras whenever possible

 

[Thomas Smet]

The a7siii costs 40% more and reads out full-frame UHD in 8.7ms. Gh6 readout speed is a good showing for its resolution but nothing to write home about, imo. And if there is, as Davedv suggests, a drop in readout bit-depth for 120fps, it's not ideal. Probably a minor hindrance. But a low resolution sensor like the a7siii can maintain full quality at 120fps (albeit with a 1.1x crop leading to a 7 7ms readout speed)

I understand the operational advantage of a hybrid. But I'm not truly sold on the concept. Seems preferable to have dedicated stills and video cameras whenever possible

Normally I would agree and for many professional users that should be true. There are those however like myself that also want one camera to do it all. The less pro ones needs get the more hybrid makes sense. I like quality so for me hybrid makes sense for a family/vacation camera. Even in my professional usage of stills or video I don’t always want to context switch different cameras and it’s nice being able to get intimately familiar with one camera that can be used for both. That’s what the GH cameras always were to me. A camera that could do any kind of work.

I went down the path of a Canon camera just for stills and a P4k just for video and it was a hassle. I eventually consolidated back down to a single camera in the R6. I still have a P4k for certain types of projects but it’s nice having a good camera for stills and video.

 

[Peter C.]

It doesn't matter who makes the sensor but some people here were trying to argue that because it was a Sony sensor they had made Panasonic sign a contract to agree not to use phase detect. Which I thought was silly but it seems to be easier to believe that they're being held back against their will than to accept they didn't want to. Whether that's because the R&D cost or that they believe their contrast detect is good enough. It's actually typical for large companies to be resistant to change or become entrenched in a position.

As far as hybrid I tend to agree that it's useful to have one camera that can do it all. To have to buy two cameras and two separate lens system is expensive and cumbersome. Not only does this stuff depreciate quickly, lens systems can discontinued, having to remember the operational quirks and differences, batteries and accessories, bringing double the gear so you can also take photos...

I also believe these cameras are primarily marketed to journalists who are often asked to capture both video and photo. Now with social media people often post both to different platforms.

My thinking if you're buying a mirrorless as opposed to a dedicated video camera it needs to be flexible.

 

[Samuel Dilworth]

The a7siii costs 40% more and reads out full-frame UHD in 8.7ms.

Lucky Americans. The α7S III is €4200 compared to €2200 for the GH6 here. That’s nearly 100% more expensive.

European launch prices are usually higher than American ones but fall faster and eventually deeper. But the α7S III has remained stubbornly high for some reason (maybe supply constraints?).

Anyway, the α7S III (with FX3) is the big exception among full-frame readout times. The rest of them vary from slow (R5) to very slow (R6, a7 III, α7C, S1H, S5, Z6 II, and sadly even the new-sensor α7 IV), although most of those are at least cheaper than the α7S III.

Gh6 readout speed is a good showing for its resolution but nothing to write home about, imo.

Well, that’s the thing: for the pixel count it’s doing pretty good, and the pixel count is still low enough that the overall readout time is decent. Each pixel is read out faster than the α7S III does. At its price point, I think that’s worth writing home about.

I understand the operational advantage of a hybrid. But I'm not truly sold on the concept. Seems preferable to have dedicated stills and video cameras whenever possible

The hybrid label confuses me these days, but practically everyone buying the GH6 will use it for video. I think it’s wrong to suggest it’s less video-focused than the α7S III. If anything, it’s more video-focused (way more video tools and features).

The GH6 has the pixel-count it does for video reasons, namely oversampled 4K and 5.7K for post cropping. Some people want that.

Personally I don’t want that as much as I want still-lower readout times. I find it kinda comical to agonise about minuscule resolution differences while ignoring gross rolling-shutter problems, but that’s what most people do even on this purely video forum …

 

[Peter C.]

Personally I don’t want that as much as I want still-lower readout times. I find it kinda comical to agonise about minuscule resolution differences while ignoring gross rolling-shutter problems, but that’s what most people do even on this purely video forum …

The majority of people aren't going to notice rolling shutter. If you're filming interviews or other types of work are you going to be whipping the camera back and forth? I can see this being a problem for fast action sports but then again most will be using camcorder with a large dof to keep everything in focus.

 

[icarusfilm]

the biggest caveat with the gh6 is going to be the EVF and LCD quality after using the S1H that has an excellent EVF and a good lcd. Does anyone know anything about lag on the hdmi output?
The S1H has a terrible lag for anything besides sit-downs I remember the gh5 being somewhat better but not great I was just wondering if things got improved with the gh6.

 

[Thomas Smet]

the biggest caveat with the gh6 is going to be the EVF and LCD quality after using the S1H that has an excellent EVF and a good lcd. Does anyone know anything about lag on the hdmi output?
The S1H has a terrible lag for anything besides sit-downs I remember the gh5 being somewhat better but not great I was just wondering if things got improved with the gh6.

I have yet to see a Panasonic camera without a HDMI lag. I think that really good advanced processing comes at a cost.

 

[Thomas Smet]

https://www.cined.com/lumix-gh6-yama...our-questions/

 

[icarusfilm]

That can be a dealbreaker for me. I bought the s5 for a hot minute to work in tandem with the s1h and gave up on it because it was so irritating going from the one evf to the other.

 

[DLD]

It doesn't matter who makes the sensor but some people here were trying to argue that because it was a Sony sensor they had made Panasonic sign a contract to agree not to use phase detect. Which I thought was silly but it seems to be easier to believe that they're being held back against their will than to accept they didn't want to...

I haven't read the contract and I doubt that it's there in writing anyway but, considering that Olympus has been using the same MFT sensors and has both CD and PD, it's pretty reasonable to assume that Panasonic could have had it too. Furthermore, most smartphone cameras have both, which suggests that Panasonic could have and should have had it as well. And, to go even further, the Panasonic models across the front should have had an up-to-the-market auto focus by any means - CD, PD, LiDAR, AI - somewhere around 2015-2016. And that's all there is to it. The rest gives them the credibility of zero.

Which means that the "Panasonic answers questions" notion is similar to getting answers from Baghdad Bob or Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of defense informing his citizens about the Russian Army casualties in Ukraine, "We have very few ... Boris stubbed his toe playing soccer .. Ivan has a little sunburn ...Victor got a little food poisoning from eating too much caviar with his blinis .. all are expected to recover soon".

 

[Peter C.]

https://www.cined.com/lumix-gh6-yama...our-questions/

I don't think there is much to be learned from his answers. It's standard company line talk about the positives. If you watch his eyes he's reading from a script of prepared answers. The camera is fine they could have done a lot worse. Either it fits the type of work you do or not. What he said doesn't change that.

On the subject of AF, why they haven't adopted PD he dances around by the subject. He says that they have improved AF which is true but that could be said of any camera. He says they have explored PD but there wasn't enough time. The GH5 was released 5 years ago. I believe my old Canon 70d used phase detect that's 10 years ago. Which meant that Canon must have started development years before that. That's a lot of time considering its a technology that others have already brought to market and proven it works better.

 

[Thomas Smet]

Yes. But I believe them and trust their strong enthusiasm about the future of the platform, not just because they say so, but because I believe it makes a lot of sense. If it ends up being end of road, I don’t think it will be for lack of intent or dishonesty.

I agree. Panasonic is in a unique position. Eventually everyone will be FF and that has pros and cons. Some will view those pros and cons differently of course. Panasonic and m43 offer very good quality with very capable video features. The smaller sensors will almost be a step ahead of FF in terms of video resolutions and frame rate. Well that was true up until 8k that is. But I don't think 8k is going to take off nearly as well as HD or 4k did to a lesser degree. Many were dragged into 4k and still don't 100% feel its necessary to tell a story with stunning visuals. This isn't yet another 2k vs 4k debate but the reality is many are just getting used to 4k and it achieves more than many could have dreamed of. If one cannot produce award winning material with the 4k options we have today they are doing something wrong.

So I see Panasonic and m43 being that unique option that will only keep getting better. FF is going to chase 45MP and 80MP sensors. They may even chase 8k video to match those higher pixel count cameras. Panasonic can hover around the sweet spot of a 5k to 6k sensor and keep improving frame rates for video. They can keep pushing their dynamic range boost technology and vastly superior DSP production skills. We see smartphones do great things with smaller sensors thanks to the internal processing. Panasonic is taking a page out of that book and using their own advanced processing to make m43 punch way above its weight class. Some FF cameras would likely explode if they tried to implement that level of processing.

Processed video isn't for everyone but not everyone is into soft looking cinematic video either. There are likely more corporate, social media personalities and traditional video camera like people out there than film makers. Panasonic lends itself very well to those users and offers a true hybrid solution.

Not hybrid as in stills and video but hybrid in terms of where the camera works well. Anamorphic, film making, corporate video, internal broadcast formats, external broadcast formats, great IBIS and likely one of the most advanced DFD focus systems on the planet now. No other camera out there even comes close to the anamorphic support Panasonic has. Not many other cameras even support the DCI standard or true solid 24p.

On top of that Panasonic now has a 80 MP stills mode that is insanely good as long as there isn't too much movement in the shot like running water or fast moving sports. To me that makes sense since the only time I would use a 80MP still is more of a still life setting like landscape, a photo of art work or architectural photos. Not that 25MP isn't a lot for many situations.

What will be important for Panasonic going forward is to keep the price competitive of the bodies and lenses. In the beginning Panasonic had a huge lens advantage thanks to adapting lenses. Now that cameras are all going mirrorless that will eventually be a thing of the past. Many are now buying into mirrorless FF lenses which will never work on a m43 camera. BMD faces a similar issue with their use of m43 and EF mounts. Panasonic is going to really need to step up their lens game. Not just the ultra expensive high end glass but they need to provide more and better affordable options. If I have one concern for Panasonic in the future its the lenses. I have that concern for any camera body right now. Selling gears sucks now which means we may be stuck with the lenses we buy or practically give them away. Canon RF and Sony E mount are likely the only really safe options out there. Everything else is a bit risky to invest in.

With that said there is going to be a massive used EF market out there for many years to come. May even help bring down the cost considerably of some EF glass as photographers dump their EF lenses for RF lenses. We just will never see any new EF lens designs which kind of sucks. While m43 started off with the promise of any lens will work we now seem to be back to a rigid world where every manufacturer is a closed ecosystem. There will be 3rd party lenses but they will also be stuck in that format. If Sigma and Tamron were smart they would keep making EF lenses to be a better universal mount system. Not sure if they will.