GH5 Pana President=we will enhance GH5 performance firmware "if there is customer demand"

joe12south said:
I actually don't buy into the belief that Panny only implements features that appeal to a large quantity of customers. If this was the case, we would not have a number of niche features that were added after the fact - anamorphic immediately springs to mind.

How many people *actually* shoot anamorphic? Very few. How visible is the feature? The PR value? Very high.

Photographers moving to video understand RAW - or at least they understand the value. RAW would be easy to market and have tremendous PR value. It's not completely outside of the range of moves Panny has made.
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Except anamorphic was pretty easy to support. The sensor could already do it and it was 4x3. Panasonic only needed to dump that 4x3 video into a file. With anamorphic the lens does most of the heavy lifting. The camera just needs a 4x3 sensor and the ability to pump out the pixels and dump into a video file of some kind. A niche feature but very easy to support.

Raw depends on the hardware being capable of bursting out the sensor and putting that into some kind of file. The GH5S has about as low of resolution as we can get for 4k video and still only manages a max raw burst speed of 12fps for up to around 60 frames. There is just no physical way to get raw video off of that sensor/processor. Even if Panasonic did a 2k crop of the sensor for raw I'm not sure the hardware could keep up and would people be ok with a ETC crop for 2k or HD raw? Thats a pretty large crop factor on an already smaller sensor camera. I have used ETC in the past and couldn't imagine always using it. I guess if shooting DCI on the GH5S and using a SpeedBooster XL you could get a 1.2x crop and with ETC that would be a 2.4x crop or very similar to the 4k DCI crop on the GH4 and that wouldn't be so bad. It would still be a 2k raw camera however but maybe people would be ok wit that. Still not sure the hardware could keep up for unlimited recording and could still be limited to 5 to 10 seconds or so.
 
Greg_E said:
I... I don't believe that Panasonic cares what we think anyway. If you aren't one of their special beta testers or maybe someplace like Hotrod cameras, your opinion probably doesn't matter. For the longest time, the engineers didn't even care what the USA company was requesting. They knew better than us stupid users over here in the USA. For the most part, the broadcast product lines are still pretty much this same way. Here's your camera, hope you like it because any requests you make will not happen. Sony, Panny, Ikegami, Hitachi, JVC, that's just how they operate.
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Wow, that sounds so entitled.....

And I hope that most of us have some of the same aspirations and wants as those beta testers and industry dealers. Are your needs so radically different?
 
I agree. They started a nice trend with the GH4 and have continued with the GH5. As much as I want to say I am skipping the GH5s I keep on coming back to thinking I will be fine with just the lens IS. Tough choice.
 
Thomas Smet said:
Except anamorphic was pretty easy to support. The sensor could already do it and it was 4x3. Panasonic only needed to dump that 4x3 video into a file. With anamorphic the lens does most of the heavy lifting. The camera just needs a 4x3 sensor and the ability to pump out the pixels and dump into a video file of some kind. A niche feature but very easy to support.

Raw depends on the hardware being capable of bursting out the sensor and putting that into some kind of file. The GH5S has about as low of resolution as we can get for 4k video and still only manages a max raw burst speed of 12fps for up to around 60 frames. There is just no physical way to get raw video off of that sensor/processor. Even if Panasonic did a 2k crop of the sensor for raw I'm not sure the hardware could keep up and would people be ok with a ETC crop for 2k or HD raw? Thats a pretty large crop factor on an already smaller sensor camera. I have used ETC in the past and couldn't imagine always using it. I guess if shooting DCI on the GH5S and using a SpeedBooster XL you could get a 1.2x crop and with ETC that would be a 2.4x crop or very similar to the 4k DCI crop on the GH4 and that wouldn't be so bad. It would still be a 2k raw camera however but maybe people would be ok wit that. Still not sure the hardware could keep up for unlimited recording and could still be limited to 5 to 10 seconds or so.
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Uncompressed RAW is constrained by the size of the pipe, not processing power. (It actually takes the least processing, right? It's just a simple transform and then dump.) v90 card speeds are fast enough to store a compressed RAW file, and simple RAW compression actually takes *less* processing horsepower than H264 or H265.

From a pure power standpoint, it's eminently doable (very old cameras with way less processing power have been hacked to do it.) But, in the real world, what we can't know is actual design of the system, and what parts of the imaging pipeline are reasonable to modify. To add RAW might be practically impossible from a design standpoint, but certainly not based on hardware specs.
 
Sorry, that was a long winded way of saying that at least in a white paper scenario, you can compress 4K RAW into a continuous 400mbps stream with the processing power found in modern cameras.
 
Bassman2003 said:
I agree. They started a nice trend with the GH4 and have continued with the GH5. As much as I want to say I am skipping the GH5s I keep on coming back to thinking I will be fine with just the lens IS. Tough choice.
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I really wish they had IBIS. I think/hope the GH6 will do both. In the meantime, keep in mind that there's only one camera on market that does IBIS/Dual IS well enough to make most happy, and that is the GH5. Other implementations work ok, but nothing quite like the GH5.

Point being, it's cutting edge and I think less than a year ago before we had GH5 cameras in hand, everyone here would have been nothing but thrilled with a m43 lowlight beast with dual ISO and supposedly ~14 stop DR camera. In fact, 12 months ago I would wager based on specs alone (before personal IBIS experiences) the forum would have been buzzing with everyone clearly opting for the S variant indicating IBIS to be a gimmick. (sure, we know better now, but funny how quickly things change).

I'll keep both, and hopefully the GH6 won't have such a compromise between options.
 
Actually, it could be down to a hardware issue for RAW, the ASIC may not be able to do it. But it also could be down to licensing, they may not have paid for that feature from the encoding ASIC manufacturer. Again we would need to know who makes the chip and what the licensing allows.

Amberella has some funny things, like licensing the ability to do a manual white balance??? Seems stupid but I have a camera that has the same chips as another camera. One camera offers manual WB, the other only full time auto. When I dug into the documents for the chips, theis was a licensed feature along with different preset WB (outdoors, indoors, cloudy, etc.). Strange things indeed.
 
filmguy123 said:
I really wish they had IBIS. I think/hope the GH6 will do both. In the meantime, keep in mind that there's only one camera on market that does IBIS/Dual IS well enough to make most happy, and that is the GH5. Other implementations work ok, but nothing quite like the GH5.

Point being, it's cutting edge and I think less than a year ago before we had GH5 cameras in hand, everyone here would have been nothing but thrilled with a m43 lowlight beast with dual ISO and supposedly ~14 stop DR camera. In fact, 12 months ago I would wager based on specs alone (before personal IBIS experiences) the forum would have been buzzing with everyone clearly opting for the S variant indicating IBIS to be a gimmick. (sure, we know better now, but funny how quickly things change).

I'll keep both, and hopefully the GH6 won't have such a compromise between options.
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I am going to do a little test with my 5DMKIII and the 24-105 f4IS lens. If I can handhold smoothly in a normal filming fashion then I am going with the GH5s. The Panasonic lenses on the GH5s should be a little better for video than the 5D (or at least I would expect that.) I have pretty smooth hands and do not need the world to be still, just the freedom to shoot handheld. I will not expect to walk with the camera etc... The benefits are there if I can satisfy this one criteria. Everything else will have to go on the gimbal until the GH6s arrives.
 
A whole bunch of users wanted IBIS, and the GH5 delivered.

A whole bunch of users wanted a multi-aspect ratio sensor. The GH5s delivers.

You can't both maximize sensor size AND move the sensor (without cropping.) It's just not physically possible. I know it can be a tough decision, but I for one am happy to have the choice.
 
Greg_E said:
Actually, it could be down to a hardware issue for RAW, the ASIC may not be able to do it. But it also could be down to licensing, they may not have paid for that feature from the encoding ASIC manufacturer. Again we would need to know who makes the chip and what the licensing allows.

Amberella has some funny things, like licensing the ability to do a manual white balance??? Seems stupid but I have a camera that has the same chips as another camera. One camera offers manual WB, the other only full time auto. When I dug into the documents for the chips, theis was a licensed feature along with different preset WB (outdoors, indoors, cloudy, etc.). Strange things indeed.
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Yup, there could be all kinds of reasons they can't do it, but only people involved with the design can know. My point is that the raw capability (processing horsepower and recording bandwidth) is there. I would be SHOCKED if we saw it in a firmware upgrade, but I've been shocked before. It's more likely (but still unlikely) to appear in the GH6 series. The GH6 is Panasonic's opportunity to be the first "good enough" camera that ticks all boxes and upsets the apple cart in the process.
 
joe12south said:
The GH6 is Panasonic's opportunity to be the first "good enough" camera that ticks all boxes and upsets the apple cart in the process.
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I'd argue that the GH4 was already Panasonic's "good enough" camera. It was absolutely groundbreaking at its time of release: internal 4K with a good codec, 10 bit 4:2:2 output, 96fps overcrank HD, and usability features far beyond what any other manufacturer was offering. I don't remember any gripes with it when released; it fulfilled everyone's needs at the time. Obviously, the landscape has changed now, so I do get your point.

I'm definitely not saying that the GH4 is the end-all, be-all. Just commenting that Panny has a history of releasing groundbreaking cameras in this space.
 
MurtlandPhoto said:
I'd argue that the GH4 was already Panasonic's "good enough" camera. It was absolutely groundbreaking at its time of release: internal 4K with a good codec, 10 bit 4:2:2 output, 96fps overcrank HD, and usability features far beyond what any other manufacturer was offering. I don't remember any gripes with it when released; it fulfilled everyone's needs at the time. Obviously, the landscape has changed now, so I do get your point.

I'm definitely not saying that the GH4 is the end-all, be-all. Just commenting that Panny has a history of releasing groundbreaking cameras in this space.
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I greatly enjoyed my GH4 (still use it in fact) but it requires a lot of compromise. I've got a specific definition for a "good enough" camera:
Back in the day, film cameras were pretty much all "good enough" to rarely need to upgrade. Sure there were new features here and there, and new film stocks every so often, but by-in-large, the combination of image quality and ergonomics was good enough to not require much compromise. No single shipping digital camera meets that definition - yet - but the technology is finally there. A manufacturer could choose to make such a camera if they wanted to.
 
joe12south said:
I greatly enjoyed my GH4 (still use it in fact) but it requires a lot of compromise. I've got a specific definition for a "good enough" camera:
Back in the day, film cameras were pretty much all "good enough" to rarely need to upgrade. Sure there were new features here and there, and new film stocks every so often, but by-in-large, the combination of image quality and ergonomics was good enough to not require much compromise. No single shipping digital camera meets that definition - yet - but the technology is finally there. A manufacturer could choose to make such a camera if they wanted to.
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Okay, I see what you mean and I do agree.
 
joe12south said:
Uncompressed RAW is constrained by the size of the pipe, not processing power. (It actually takes the least processing, right? It's just a simple transform and then dump.) v90 card speeds are fast enough to store a compressed RAW file, and simple RAW compression actually takes *less* processing horsepower than H264 or H265.

From a pure power standpoint, it's eminently doable (very old cameras with way less processing power have been hacked to do it.) But, in the real world, what we can't know is actual design of the system, and what parts of the imaging pipeline are reasonable to modify. To add RAW might be practically impossible from a design standpoint, but certainly not based on hardware specs.
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To be fair Magic Lantern at best supports HD or 2k video with a heavy crop or 3x pixel binning and even then may not always be 100% stable. Panasonic is not in the business of making unstable cameras and any format they use will have to be rock solid. Far from an ideal situation and very far from 4k raw from DSLR cameras. Maybe someday it will happen but that day is not today and not with a firmware update. Hardware is hardware and no matter if the reason is sensor, memory bandwidth, data write speed or any other combination of factors the reality is 4k raw is just not going to happen in a camera like this.

Like I said earlier a HD form of raw from a ETC type crop or (cringe) pixel binning could potentially be possible but after having 4k for this long I'm not entirely sure raw HD would really cut it anymore. Especially when you consider just how good 400mbps 10bit 4:2:2 log 4k already is in comparison to HD raw. Visually there is not much more there to have a huge quality impact. Magic Lantern had a rather decent impact on Canon cameras because their HD video was so badly butchered to begin with. Panasonic already gives us video that is very close to the look of the raw photo capabilities.
 
TheTrickster said:
  • Rear/Front Dial locking - function available on the G9
  • Visible ISO, Aperture, Shutter values when using a Program mode
  • Ability to perform AF-Lock before recording in VFR (So at least you can AF sort of)
  • Ability to assign the control dials, jog dial to SS, Aperture or ISO, in any order you require
  • 48fps with sound and AF (non VFR)
  • True 'One-Touch' Manual WB. Point at subject, press Fn button and hey presto white balance is set and you are ready to shoot (without have to do WB, Up, Set)
  • Ability to toggle HDMI Info overlay On/Off via an Fn command
  • Standardise the menu system of the GH5 to incorporate the menu layout improvements from the GH5s
  • Instead of the Flower / Mountain MF Scale, provide actual Mts/Ft where the focus is
  • If using a program mode and if the camera is unable to provide adequate exposure, display the actual exposure reading (-3 on the scale for example) and not just -/+ icon.
  • Add the option to display both Degrees and Gain at the same time instead of ISO/SS
  • Ability to use the focus-by-wire on Panasonic lenses in a linear fashion, so you can use 3rd party focus gearing
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To Add:

  • 20x Punch In (from the GH5s)
  • Ability to assign the 'My Menu' to a Fn button
    (If using anything other than C3, pressing Menu, takes you to 'My Menu', if enabled. However using C3, pressing Menu, takes you to the C3 Presets Menu, and so getting to 'My Menu' isn't convenient anymore)
  • Battery Grip - Ability to remove battery in grip while recording so enable hot swap (yes using a DC coupler solves this issue in theory)
 
Thomas Smet said:
To be fair Magic Lantern at best supports HD or 2k video with a heavy crop or 3x pixel binning and even then may not always be 100% stable. Panasonic is not in the business of making unstable cameras and any format they use will have to be rock solid. Far from an ideal situation and very far from 4k raw from DSLR cameras. Maybe someday it will happen but that day is not today and not with a firmware update. Hardware is hardware and no matter if the reason is sensor, memory bandwidth, data write speed or any other combination of factors the reality is 4k raw is just not going to happen in a camera like this.

Like I said earlier a HD form of raw from a ETC type crop or (cringe) pixel binning could potentially be possible but after having 4k for this long I'm not entirely sure raw HD would really cut it anymore. Especially when you consider just how good 400mbps 10bit 4:2:2 log 4k already is in comparison to HD raw. Visually there is not much more there to have a huge quality impact. Magic Lantern had a rather decent impact on Canon cameras because their HD video was so badly butchered to begin with. Panasonic already gives us video that is very close to the look of the raw photo capabilities.
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1. I know it's silly for us to argue this theoretical point, but what hackers can do with Canon's aging architecture isn't a good indication of the limits of what Panasonic's engineers could do with their own current processor. Look at what BMD did with very little horsepower in their pocket camera years ago. Raw hardware capability isn't what keeps RAW off of this class of cameras.
2. The video PQ of the GH-series is obviously inferior to the RAW still quality. Both color reproduction and dynamic range are VERY different – as should be expected. GH-series video is more accurately compared with JPEG stills.
 
Quick feature request.

We should have the ability to turn off individual viewfinder icons, especially the “mon/vlog hdmi/vlog” block which sits right in the middle of the screen. I know you can toggle the display button but then I lose the audio readout, which I need to monitor. The stabilizer icon needs to go away too. Is there something I’m missing or do you think they could add this in 2.3?
 
One thing that we make this camera unbeatable for documentary work would be an internal variable nd like the Sony fs7 mark ii. Just so Panasonic knows I would gladly pay double for that feature on the gh6 or whatever the next upgrade is. Just want to throw that out there.
 
wojdarm said:
One thing that we make this camera unbeatable for documentary work would be an internal variable nd like the Sony fs7 mark ii. Just so Panasonic knows I would gladly pay double for that feature on the gh6 or whatever the next upgrade is. Just want to throw that out there.
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Can't see what they couldn't make something similar to the Aperture VarND thing (but m43 to m43) and have the camera control the ND directly... that I would pay for
 
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