Help choosing between GH5 and a6500

M

mproust14

Active member
I am looking for a new camera, with one of the above two being the most likely candidates. I am leaning to the a6500, and willing to overlook the 10 bit internal in the GH5, for the following reasons:

I need something for gimbal work.
The a6500 is light and I have heard the autofocus is pretty darn good (both of which I need for gimbal work).

This video really impressed me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1XBkEevCuo

Forgive me for my ignorance (I have been manually focusing my entire life), so I don't really know how good the autofocus is and how it will handle on a gimbal with a shallower depth of field. If it is unusable I may as well get the GH5 cause I am familiar with the system.

Can anyone give me some info to help me decide?
 
I use my A7Rii on a cametv optimus gimbal and the autofocus is really good, A6500 reviewers are saying it is even better at autofocus (I have always been a manual focus user previously as well) As for the GH5 guess we will have to wait and see when it gets out there in the hands of general users.
 
The GH5 doesn't exist yet, so, I don't really think it could be a choice. But, anyway, let's say you have to choose between getting an a6500 or waiting to see how good the GH5 is.

What kind of images do you like most? I mean: is sharpness your main concern, or is it dynamic range. If sharpness, GH5 is probably the one, if dynamic range, it's probably the a6500.

Other than that, I think all I can say is: if you need a camera now, then a6500 is the only option. If you can wait, then wait and see.

Dave Dugdale shot some interesting AF tests recently, check them out.
 
I don't need a camera right now, but I would like to add gimbal work to my repertoire. The thing is I would be happy with the a6500 if it does what I want. DR is more important to me than sharpness. The 10 bit internal and 4k 60p would be nice sure, but it isn't something I would desperately need. I have been getting along just fine without it, and I'd rather be shooting in camera than grading. To me videography is more about camera movement and story than pretty pictures. I've just had zero experience with autofocus, so not sure what to expect, but judging by the tests, and I've seen Dugdale's, it looks to be pretty good.
 
What camera will you be trying to match it with?

If you're already shooting with Sony then I'd say get the a6500 so that the colour will match easily.
 
The gh4 which I'm running with a metabones speedbooster, EF lenses and external monitor. I can't get autofocus but I won't run it without a metabones because the sensor isn't large enough for depth of filed etc.
 
Sony cameras do AF well with Sony lenses. Panasonic does AF well with Panasonic lenses. Canon does AF well with Canon lenses.

I guess the moral of the above is that you may have to dump Canon lenses.
 
I have an a6300 with the kit lens for gimbal work and it is just fine. 4k has bad rolling shutter when handheld but to be honest, it might be fine on a gimbal as the camera does not move much. It is more about the jello than the rolling shutter. 1080p is fine in this regard and with a little higher detail settings the camera makes nice images with great color. AF is fine as most gimbal work is wide angle, so the AF has an easy day at the office. You could register faces for face tracking if needed.

How heavy do you want the gimbal to be? One hand or two? The a6300 allowed me to get a little lighter gimbal which is better for handholding. I would guess the GH5 will put you in the next bracket up for gimbal size. I would say both cameras will make beautiful images. But as DLD mentioned, it is best to get families of cameras and equipment if you are already in a system.
 
mproust14 said:
The gh4 which I'm running with a metabones speedbooster, EF lenses and external monitor. I can't get autofocus but I won't run it without a metabones because the sensor isn't large enough for depth of filed etc.
Click to expand...

Will you be replacing the GH4 as your main camera, or will you be supplementing it with a 2nd camera? Either way I'd say GH5 will give you the best upgrade. You won't really gain a whole lot from switching to the a6500 - slightly sharper and different colour science perhaps, but feature wise they are pretty close on paper. GH5, however, offers some very promising upgrades with 10 bit colour, and it does away with the extra crop in 4K, so native lenses with AF become an option. In fact, the sensor should be fairly close in size to the Red Raven at 4K, and that is more than enough to deliver shallow DOF.
 
I''l be keeping the GH4 for now but probably be replacing it down the track with an ursa as my main cam, which is why i am reluctant to get rid of my ef glass. My girlfriend and i do a lot of travelling and I hate lugging around excessive gear. I would want everything light. which usually means a one-handed gimbal. Ideally, I would have the a6500 with the 35mm 1.8 lens (or GH5 and switch to native lenses). The advantages for me are that the a6500 is lighter and from what I've read you can get nice bokeh with the 35mm and the autofocus does a good job keeping pace with the shallower depth of field. which I don't think the GH series gets close to (?). Personally I think this last feature alone is well worth the switch if it holds true. This shot has previously been impossible without a wireless focus system, and is really the mainstay of most larger productions. So if I can introduce that in my videos I think it can take me to the next step. And I think RS should be fine on the gimbal ye?
 
deltoidjohn said:
You won't really gain a whole lot from switching to the a6500 - slightly sharper and different colour science perhaps, but feature wise they are pretty close on paper.
Click to expand...

Several stops of dynamic range.
This is GH4 with CineLikeD and denoiser in post:
gh4nr.jpg


This is the same scene, shot on a7S with slog2:
a7s.jpg


I measured that difference at 3 stops. If you don't think it's that much, notice the lack of color in leftmost patches on the GH4 (I shot this so the shadows would be the same, and the highlights would show all the difference).

I still haven't managed to get anyone to show me how many extra stops you get with VlogL instead of CineLikeD.
 
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Other stuff:
* I haven't had any issues with RS on my also-very-bad-in-this-respect RX100IV when using a gimbal. Here, for example.
* I'm not a fan of that 35mm, it's not particularly sharp. And the Touit 32mm is not awesome either. It's a focal length for which I had a lot of troubles picking a lens. I ended up with the very cheap Sigma 30mm f/2.8 DN, just because it's cheap and small. See my struggles here.
 
Samuel H said:
Several stops of dynamic range.
This is GH4 with CineLikeD and denoiser in post:
gh4nr.jpg


This is the same scene, shot on a7S with slog2:
a7s.jpg


I measured that difference at 3 stops. If you don't think it's that much, notice the lack of color in leftmost patches on the GH4 (I shot this so the shadows would be the same, and the highlights would show all the difference).

I still haven't managed to get anyone to show me how many extra stops you get with VlogL instead of CineLikeD.
Click to expand...

And yet (to my eye) the GH4 picture look quite a bit nicer. The colors are more inviting and less clinical looking, again to me.

Would love to hear your overall take on both images.
 
BobbyMurcerFan said:
And yet (to my eye) the GH4 picture look quite a bit nicer. The colors are more inviting and less clinical looking, again to me.

Would love to hear your overall take on both images.
Click to expand...

The way I see it, you can fix the colors how you prefer but you can't bring the blownout highlights back on GH4. The data is lost forever... I would pick DR over nicer colors anytime.

A7s might be less appealing due to the noise you might see in the shadows in the current sample. If slog2 was overexposed by 1-2 stops and later brought down, you wouldn't see any noise then.

PS just re-read Samuel's comment, he actually used a denoiser on GH4 footage, that's why you don't see any there.
 
Indeed, the GH4 is denoised, because it was absolutely mandatory.
The a7S is overexposed by one stop, but still has ugly colors, particularly on the shadows. This was sorted out on the a7S II, which has much better color than the I.
And yes, I can fix colors in post but I can't fix blown out highlights. And three stops is a HUGE difference. You could expose the a7S three stops higher than this, and *then* the highlights would look as bad as they look on the GH4 here. Or you could expose the GH4 three stops lower, so you'd get your highlights back, but then half the frame would be basically black and we wouldn't be having any arguments about colors.
(again: no idea how much VlogL would reduce that number)
 
as has been mentioned quite a few times now, Adam Wilt and others have found the gh4 with vlog to have 12 stops of dr and it's been reported the gh5 to have a little more
 
Samuel H said:
This is GH4 with CineLikeD and denoiser in post:
gh4nr.jpg


This is the same scene, shot on a7S with slog2:
a7s.jpg
Click to expand...

Samuel,

Did you use tungstens on these tests?

Reason I ask is the black on the "Prada" packaging, or whatever that is, looks like it's suffering infrared contamination on the A7s example.
 
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One 650W tungsten fresnel, yes. But I don't think it's IR pollution, it's just ugly shadows. In particular, it was the only light in the room, so, that shadow area wouldn't get IR just as it doesn't get visible light. I'd need an a7S II to confirm that, though.
 
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