Mirrorless Cine Camera

Since the GH1, Panasonic GH cameras have become popular with amateur and independent filmmakers alike. So how tempting is its latest iteration, the GH5? Shridhar Kunte finds out.

Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GH5 will eventually replace the GH4, which was launched about two and half years ago. With the introduction of this new camera, Panasonic has taken a big stride forward in giving pro-like video features in its flagship mirror less camera. The Lumix GH5 is built around an all-new 20MP Live MOS sensor, weather-sealed magnesium alloy body and a vast array of buttons that can be customized.

Features

The camera boasts of a new Venus Engine, which is about 1.7 times faster. This enables the camera to speed up a few things—shot to-shot speed, start-up time—and improves on the signal-to-noise ratio. The camera has an impressive burst speed of 12fps in Super High speed mode (with AF-S). On the previous GH series cameras, it was limited to JPEG only. It now allows one to capture RAW+JPEG at a speed better or at par with some DSLRs at the same price point.

The 20MP GH5 shows an increase in pixel count by 25%, in comparison to the 16MP GH4, while also removing the optical low-pass filter. The new sensor provides a wider dynamic range, and a 2EV gain at the upper end of the ISO sensitivity scale— ISO 100 (extended), ISO 200 to 25,600, for still photos, and up to ISO 12,800 for video. The default aspect ratio is 4:3, but one can shoot in aspect ratios like 3:2 and 16:9 as well.

For focusing, the camera employs a newly improved ‘Depth from Defocus’ and Contrast AF technology, which not only calculates the distance to the subject by evaluating two images with different sharpness levels, but also comprehensively analyses the form, size and even motion of the subject. To aid the process, the new Venus 10 Engine reduces the time for measuring the distance to the subject by six times.