The Panasonic GH5 is gathering attention all over the camera world by making inroads into the professional video production space with it’s truly professional image quality 4:2:2 10 bit and video oriented workflow. There is already talk of the BBC being able to use it for productions and that is no small thing considering how demanding their image quality needs are.
We have gathered the few Full HD 180fps GH5 samples posted so far from pre production cameras so you can judge for yourself the quality delivered in this mode. From what we can see it is quite good at holding detail and sharpness compared to the GH4 but it still suffers from some moire and aliasing due to line skipping happening at some stage in the capture process.
The quality however is good enough to use as a real professional looking slow motion alternative below 200fps which exceeds the 120fps many cameras peak at. However we are still partial to the Sony RX100 V (Our 2016 pick for value) which offers 240 NTSC and or 250fps PAL near full HD slow motion for 4 seconds. Sure the GH5 can shoot continuously at 180fps but you are missing 70 frames which is a big deal for slowing down footage. You also loose the interchangeable lens aspect with the Sony RX and a larger sensor in the GH5 m4/3 vs 1 inch RX; but if you measure by frame rate alone it is a clean sweep.
GH5 Slow Motion Pre Production Samples:
Panasonic Lumix GH5 180fps 1080p Test by Steven Clarey:
Panasonic Lumix GH5 180fps in 50p mode is Best by Nick Driftwood:
180fps | Panasonic Lumix GH5: “Bored” (Downloadable Footage) by Neumannfilms:
180fps slow motion on the Panasonic GH5 by Griffin Hammond:
For Comparison here is 180fps footage from the Sony FS7 (Below) which is an $8,499 camera compared to the GH5 $1998.00. Looks as good at first glance but we will have to see final image quality from production versions of the GH5 camera to really do a final take.
Sony FS7 180 FPS Slow Motion by BLASTmedia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YQeu6mx1OU
As a bonus you should check this interview by Newsshooter.com’s Dan Chung at CES 2017 with Panasonic Marketing, Matt Frazer & Panasonic Camera Evangelist Griffin Hammond. They talk about all aspects of the GH5 camera and you might learn a thing or two. Dig in:
It will be exciting to see if some of this technology will get incorporated in one of the upcoming Panasonic camcorders. But it might also be that we have reached an era that camcorders are a thing of the past.
In relation to the Sony RX100 I think it is very personal when one has to choose between frame rates and recording time. 4 seconds recording time to me sounds more like a gadget for a mobile phone, not something to make serious productions with.
True the RX100 V it is not a production camera by any means and has a lot of drawbacks; but the slow motion that can be extracted is above in quality and frame rate than the GH4 and other higher priced cameras. 4 seconds is not that bad considering they convert to 41.6 seconds in a 24p timeline when shot at 250fps PAL frame rate. Most edits only require less than 10 seconds.