My thoughts on shooting video with the Panasonic GH5. I only had the camera for a few days and here are a few other points about the camera that I didn’t get a chance to talk about in the video.
The Picture
I shot all of the footage in the above video using the “Like 709” picture profile which is essentially a natural Rec.709 picture look which is a television industry standardised look. I prefer that style of neutral look straight out of the camera as I’m used to shooting that way so it gives me a good base to compare the picture quality out of different cameras.
I actually really quite like the picture coming out of the GH5 and it has a nice “organic” for the want of a better word look to the footage. A common bug bear I have with Sony cameras is that Sony footage can look “video-ish” and often requires grading or LUT’s to make it hum. A lot of us are use to the Canon DSLR video look and Canon’s definitely seem to have their colour science dialed in.
The GH5 has many other picture profiles and its v-log profile which you have to buy the license for.
Image Stabilisation
I brushed over this a little in the video but the GH5 image stabilisation works extremely well, I was hand holding the camera at the 120mm end of the zoom lens and getting good steady, usable video shots. I also tried the GH5 on my Zhiyun crane and it worked well which I’m sure was also helped by the GH5’s image stabilisation.
High Frame Rate Soft Picture?
The ability to shoot and record video at 180fps in-camera is amazing. I did however notice that quite a few of my 180fps shots were a little soft? This could have been me not hitting my focus correctly and I didn’t do enough tests to figure this out one way or the other.
Battery Life
I’ll keep this short, it was good! The GH5 uses the same battery as the GH4 and doesn’t suffer the limited battery life that some of the current Sony’s do.
Final Thoughts
There is no doubt that this is a fully spec-ed video shooting monster with just about everything a video shooter could want packed into a small form mirror-less package. I’ve mentioned a few bug-bears but that was really just being picky and none of them would be deal breakers for me. As I said in the video, my biggest obstacle to purchasing a GH5 would be having to invest in the micro four thirds lens system which I don’t really have.
My final thought…… I want one!