A review of the GH5 camera after 15,000 exposures under all kinds of light, and a few hours of video thrown in as well.

I'm slowing winnowing my way toward minimalist gear status, when it comes to camera equipment. Rightly or wrongly I'm making the assumption that we're moving away from the "precious item" concept of photography to a different understanding of photography altogether. A period in which the photographic and video content and style are much more important than the ultimate qualities of traditional presentation. Now, whenever I say this a big swath of people get their panties in a bunch and tell me that they practice making beautiful and majestic prints as their art and don't give a rat's ass which way the trends bend. I try to gently remind them that my blog is not entitled, "The Leisure Photographic Life of Retired and Semi-retired Old Guys from Other Professions" rather it is called the Visual Science Lab and it's very clearly about the styles, times and trends that impact current commercial image making and multi-media. If you love making 20 x 30 inch prints, with inexhaustible detail and grandeur, of the "found objects" that catch your eye then that's what you should do but, unless you are the indefatigable Peter Lik,  I can pretty much assume you won't be making a living selling them....

My kid has one more year of college that I'm paying for so I make business decisions based on trying my best to read the hieroglyphics on the internet walls and adapt my business posture to at least sustain profits. 

In my latest shift (hopefully shifting with the market) I've purchased two GH5 cameras and a smattering of really good Olympus Pro series lenses (and Panasonic/Leica lenses) and have started using this system for pretty much everything that comes into the job queue. 

I never really feel comfortable writing about cameras until I've put in at least my first 10,000 shots so I've been relatively quiet here on the blog about making GH5 pronouncements. But looking at the image count across my two cameras over the last month and a half shows me that we're closing in on the 20,000 frame mark, and that doesn't include the work

Finally, a reason to use the second memory card slot in the GH5s.

I'm photographing a three day show in downtown Austin and here's the technical ask from the client:


"We want really nice, big, juicy raw files of our speakers, the panels, the breakouts and all the rest of our corporate event stuff for the three days of the conference but we also want to be able to upload ample selections of images in almost real time in order to share them on our varied social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.). So, we want you to also be able to deliver small (1,000 pixel) jpegs from each session to our social media guy ---- who is in another city. The best possible scenario would be to shoot a session until you know you have good stuff and then to head to the media room to upload the images while the session is still.....in session."

I read the manual for the GH5 and found that I could customize how I use the card slots. I have identical 128GB V60 cards in every SD card slot. The #1 card is set to receive raw files while the #2 card slot is set up to receive much smaller Jpegs and video files.

I pull the #2 card out of the camera once I feel a session is well covered, stick it in my laptop and upload all the new Jpeg files to a Smugmug Gallery dedicated to my client's event.

The social media guy checks the gallery for new stuff and incorporates the images into the social feed.

Finally, a rational, real world reason for the existence of dual SD card slots on modern, reliable cameras!

Redundant back up? Naw, this is not rocket surgery...

Rating the relative effectiveness of various cameras' image stabilization.

A handheld, image stabilized still shot from "Singing in the Rain." 

It's hard to make definitive statements about the effectiveness of  image stabilization across brands, models and different sizes of image sensors but...someone asked and I thought I'd give it a try. I haven't shot with all that many cameras so I'll focus on the ones I know of from experience. 

The current top dog of image stabilization, with utterly miraculous performance, is the latest Olympus EM-1 mark 2. Nothing else can touch it. Unless you are a ten cup per day coffee drinker you can pretty much ditch your tripod. This should not surprise anyone who had previously shot the EM-5 mark 2. I owned several of them and they were steady enough to use hand held when shooting video (see the Cantine video for end to end Olympus EM-5 mark 2 samples --- in motion).

The one addition that makes the EM-1.2 the best of the best is the ability of that camera system to use both the lens I.S. and the in body I.S. together. At best the system delivers 6.5 stops of stabilization. If not for the god awful menu system I might have bought that camera instead of the GH5.

The GH5 also has a dual I.S. feature and it works very, very well with a limited number of lenses from Panasonic. Using just the in body stabilization is very, very good as well. I've been using it with several Olympus zooms and several current Panasonic primes and find it to be in the same class, overall, as the Olympus EM-5.2.

The stabilization in both the RX10ii + iii, as well as the Panasonic FZ2500, is equally good. It's the latest five axis variety and since the lenses are built specifically for the body/sensor system I believe they are able to optimize their I.S. to good effect. 

As we move up the format size in cameras that use in-body image stabilization we get less and less overall effectiveness from their systems. The Sony a6500 is at least a stop or a stop and a half behind the m4:3rds cameras and the Sony A7ii and A7Rii are at least a stop worse off than the a6500. And most of the bigger cameras have yet to incorporate competitive dual body+lens I.S. systems. 

All bets are off when it comes to comparing systems that only use lens stabilization. For one thing not every lens you want to use is stabilized. But when done well the lens stabilization can be quite good. 

When I worked with Nikon I bit the bullet and bought an 18-200mm lens even though I knew it was not a spectacular performer optically. I bought it because there were situations when I really needed stabilization and would not have time to use lights or a tripod. That lens delivered a stable shooting platform and was an eye opener. Rock steady shots but humdrum optical performance. A trade off. 

Not so with the newest Panasonic and Olympus flagship systems. You get rock solid stability and great optical performance from their Pro series lenses. My least satisfying image stabilization experiences have been with cameras like the Sony a850 and a900 full frame cameras. They gave, at most two stops of stabilization (which is nothing to sneeze at compared to ancient times) but with some lenses they seemed to perform with less enthusiasm, delivering maybe a stop different at longer focal lengths. 

My (unproven) assumption is that it's all about overall sensor size, acceleration and physics. The smaller the mass you have to move and the smaller the distance you have to move it the higher the performance is going to be and the more accurate the corrections will be. 

All things being equal (but they never are) logic would suggest that one inch sensors should be the easiest to imbue with the highest stability performance followed by the m4:3rds and then the APS-C sensors and finally, in next to last place, the full frame sensor cameras. In last place would certainly be the medium format cameras whose only advantage is sensor size and, when dealing with camera motion whose biggest disadvantage is.... sensor size. 

1200+ images shot handheld with the GH5 and some Olympus Pro lenses last night show me that the system is highly competent and workable for me. If I wanted the best offered anywhere I'd be putting those Olympus lenses on the front of an EM-1.2 camera body and never look back. But I.S. is only one factor among many in the pursuit of good photography. Compromises abound. That's what makes it all so interesting. 

(For Ed).