why can't sony keep up to the gfh5

[KrocanX]

I would not agree with this statement when it comes to color correction or grading. My first jobs shooting GH5 10-bit footage under crappy hospital fluorescent lighting, showed a huge improvement when trying to correct color, especially for skin-tones. From this experience I would not want to go back to shooting 8-bit because of the better color 10-bit footage gives me. ( I've been playing with the GH5 V-LOG L ---> ARRI ALEXA color transform LUTs, and hope to soon try them on an actual job )

I must correct my previous statement. I did not mean that 10bit, IBIS and AF are just marketing things. Those are brilliant tools which makes life easier and bring better results without additional tools etc. BUT I meant that every new camera without 10 bit, IBIS or AF is usually doomed by some people only because it does not have those features even though camera is amazing. Look at GH5s.

 

[TheDingo]

...BUT I meant that every new camera without 10 bit, IBIS or AF is usually doomed by some people only because it does not have those features

Yeah, people have unrealistic expectations, including me. Once one camera has a new feature they expect all new cameras to do the same thing. ( i.e. Canon dual-pixel AF, Panasonic / Sony IBIS, Panasonic 4K 10-bit, Canon/Nikon/Sony FF 4K video, etc... )

Because the GH5s was rumored to have IBIS, I was a little disappointed when it didn't. I know that I've become spoiled with GH5 IBIS because I can do handheld shots now that I could not do before.

I don't expect Panasonic AF to be competitive for at least another year, so I live with what it can do now and hope this gets sorted out down the road.

I expect the new Sony A7S3 will give the GH5/GH5s a run for the money, so that Panasonic will keep pushing the envelope of what a small camera can do.

 

[Samuel H]

I also feel that maximum DR has been over rated by people comparing cameras using charts, when they should be comparing real world footage of the same scene. I honestly don't expect to see a lot of difference between 12 and 13 stops of DR in normal shooting. Highlight handling is more important to me than maximum DR, as I don't mind less DR if the highlights have a natural roll-off. ( this is the one thing that film was always great at )

I tend to agree with this, but only up to a point. I've shot with the GH4 and the highlight rolloff felt really nice to me. On my Sony, I have to make sure nothing clips on the highlights, otherwise all sorts of funky stuff can happen (the sky often goes bonkers in the transition, and highlights on the skin can look super ugly, for example), on the GH4 I could let stuff blow up and it would still look kind-of-good. But the difference was just too big for this to compensate me: yes, blown up highlights look OK, but I was having to blow them up way too often, and in particular in shots where I was completely sure my RX100IV would have absolutely no trouble capturing all the image without clipping.

(yes, bringing more lights could have solved this, but that experience was with the biggest crew I've ever had and it still was not big enough to allow me to sort these issues through crafted lighting; usually I can adjust things a bit but never as much as I would want)

 

[deltoidjohn]

I think most banding is caused by compression not lack of colour data.

So an 800mbs 8bit would wipe the floor with a 60mbs 10bit

Obviously compression plays a part too. There's no point having all those extra colour values if you've got no way to store/express them accurately.

But what your comparison ignores is that a camera with 10-bit colour generally also has better codecs and lower compression than cameras that are limited to 8-bit.

 

[morgan_moore]

Indeed but my point is that most mirrorless cameras have huge compression factors - you would expect 800mbs for 4K so any camera recording 4K in the 60-100 mbs zone is a compression crapshoot so 10 or 8 but doesn't really matter - doing tests matters - not the numbers in the box