hello and welcome to my very first review! this is my old camera... and this is my new camera.and if you want to know which one is better, you'll know it after watching that intro! enjoy! before i choose the gh5 i was searching the web for all sorts of different cameras and i was thinking about what is the most important for me in a camera. i really love short depth of field and there's no other camera that can create that effect as easily, as a full frame sensor camera as for example the sony a7r ii. at the same time, bigger sensors are performing a lot better in low light situations.
these were the main things that were holding me back from getting the gh5. and then i found the metabones speedbooster. it is an adapter, which allows you to mount all your canon lenses on to the gh5 - autofocus working too! another great advantage you get with the speedbooster is that shallow depth of field, which is a lot easier to achieve because the speedbooster reduces the crop factor from 2.0 to 1.28 and makes every lens 1 & 1/3 f-stops faster, which works absolutely great, if you combine it with the sigma 18-35 f1.8! now lets take a look at an example: the following was shot on a full frame camera
without any crop-factor on a 50mm f1.4 lens. now if you don't change any settings and leave everything the same and take that same shot with a m43 sensor you'll get the following shot. now if you want to have the same field of view as on the full frame sensor you'll have to step back and that depth of field decreases. if you use the speedbooster xl the crop factor reduces from 2.0 to 1.28. normally a 50mm f1.4 on a m43 sensor would look like a 100mm f2.8.
the speedbooster gives it a wider field of view though and it also increases the f-stop because the light is concentrated on the smaller sensor. in combination with the speedbooster you'd get the look of a 62mm f1.8. the f-stop i'm talking about here is only affecting the depth of field though and not the actual light that hits the sensor. as already said, the speedbooster concentrates the light on the smaller m43 sensor. every lens gets faster by 1 & 1/3 f-stops. in terms of light the 50mm f1.4 is actually f0.9.
this makes the gh5 a great allrounder, even in low-light situations because the sensor-stabilization reduces judder and shaky video footage is almost as smooth as on a gimbal. as you can see there's many advantages you get with the speedbooster xl. there are some disadvantages though as well. the autofocus is fine, but by far not comparable with the native lenses from panasonic. especially in photo-mode native lenses are a lot faster! another disadvantage is that you need a variable nd filter most of the time, because you won't be able to film in bright sunlight.
the 18-35mm f1.8-f16 becomes a f1.1-f10, which makes it almost impossible to get proper exposure in bright sunlight. this is also due to the native iso of the gh5, which is 200 and those who'd like to film in a flat colour-profile (vlog-l) can only shoot at a minimum iso of 400. ofcourse you could change that shutter speed to get proper exposure, which will sometimes lead to stuttering footage though, because there's not enough motion blur. i don't really think these disadvantages are dealbreakers though, because i personally always focus manually and have a variable nd filter on board all the time.
the low light performance is also a huge plus and increases the possibilities, especially in slow-motion recordings, which need even more light, making the speedbooster an easy choice for every filmmaker. i'm sure that there'll still be some people that won't like the speedbooster though, especially if you don't want to carry even more weight. the speedbooster and the sigma 18-35 f1.8 offer many great possibilities. but do you really want to take something that bulky with you, when traveling? let's find out! at the end of the year i'll be abroad for around 100 days
in thailand, in the philippines and also in japan. this trip is one of the reasons i invested in the gh5, because i really wanted to get the best possible quality for all these memories! however there was another huge challenge: which lens do i take? i also got the panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 ii for comparison with the speedbooster combination and i can tell you one thing: the difference in weight is just huge! the panasonic lens is a lot lighter! however, there are some things that can not compete with the speedbooster combination. depth of field is a lot harder to achieve, because you are cropping in two times.
and also, since low light performance on m43 sensors is not as good as with bigger sensors, fast lenses are really important! i did not have a fast lens from panasonic to show in this test, i'm sorry! in well lit situations the panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 ii was showing great results though! as soon as it got a little darker, i had to bump the iso and everything started to look a lot worse. thanks to dual is 2, i was able to use both lens and sensor stabilization for improved images in low light
conditions. this is only working well though, if the subject is not moving a lot. there's another disadvantage you have with these panasonic lenses, which should be taken care of by everyone that wants to focus manually. the focus system is based on the the fly-by-wire system and i'm really not a huge fan of it. if you turn that focus ring by 90â° slowly, you get an absolutely different focus throw, than if you turn it by 90â° fast.
this makes manual focusing really hard, especially when the object you're trying to film is moving. this wouldn't be a problem if the gh5 had proper autofocus. at the time being though, it made absolutely no difference. native and adapted lenses were all, at least at the very moment i uploaded this video, not reliable enough for day to day use. i can still understand why panasonic choose the fly-by-wire system though. a mechanic focus system would have increased both weight and size of that small little lens, which i think is still a great allrounder, especially because
it is dust- and weather-resistent, just as the gh5 is and it is freeze proof even up to -10â°c! stills and videos are really sharp and clean if there's enough light. if you'll shoot in low-light situations a lot, you should choose another additional lens for that. i'm still not really sure, which lens i'll take with me on that journey because i'll definitely be seeing loi krathong in thailand this year (festival of lights) and i'm sure the speedbooster combination would work a lot better here! in comparison with my old canon 600d, the gh5 has ofcourse superior build quality and better grip.
at that price tag it has to be though. when i bought the 600d back then, i got it for around 400€ with the kit lens. the gh5 in combination with the panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 ii is almost 3000€ though! is it worth it? or should you get a 600d instead? let's find out! the gh5 has many functions, that are missing in the 600d. one of the main reasons for me was better video quality. the gh5 shoots uhd in up to 60 frames per second, which makes it a lot better than the 600d in terms of video capabilites.
while it is really not necessary to export in 4k it is still useful in post, because you can zoom in without losing any quality! the 600d is only able to capture 1080p in 30 frames and also, the quality of this footage is really not comparable with the gh5 in terms of quality and detail. the gh5 lets you record uhd 30 frames in 4:2:2 10-bit, which is a great deal if you combine it with the flat colour-profile vlog-l. this way you get better dynamic range and your footage looks more cinematic. now lets take a look at this comparison and without a doubt, you'll notice that the gh5 has a lot better details, even though i was using the same lens
and the same settings for both shots! both cameras were recording in flat colour-profiles to show the dynamic range and the differences between the two. i was using technicolors cinestyle on the 600d and vlog-l on the gh5. after colour-grading you can see even better, that the gh5 has a lot more details and generally looks a lot more natural. if you're filming a lot, you'll hate the display of the 600d, because it is really hard to read in bright sunlight. you can't look through the viewfinder in videos though, because the mirror is in the way as soon as you change into
video mode. the gh5 display is a lot easier to read. in some situations it might still not be enough, but trust me, that viewfinder is gorgeous and it works in every single mode! now if we take another look at some stills, we can see that the differences are not as big as in video. the 600d has an aps-c sized sensor and around 18mp, while the gh5 has a m43 sensor with roughly 20mp. the aspect ratio is also different on both cameras. the gh5 is 4:3, while the 600d is only 3:2.
i cropped the gh5 image so that both cameras have the same aspect ratio of 3:2. for both stills i used natural colour-profiles and reduced both contrast and sharpness, so that i could adjust it afterwards. the stills are different in terms of colours, have almost the same amount of details though (gh5 is a little better ofcourse). i have to admit though, that the canon colours look a lot more natural in this case. focusing through the viewfinder of the 600d is really fast. live-view mode.. not so much. once again, this is where the gh5 shines - is faster and a lot more accurate. the 600d has only 9 focusing points, while the gh5 has a whopping 225 focusing points.
there's an integrated touchscreen and joystick in the gh5, which helps with choosing the right focus point. as a conclusion, the gh5 is ofcourse the better camera in both videos and stills, because usability is even better and customization options make every workflow even faster! if you're still new to cameras or you'll only shoot stills, i'd suggest getting the 600d though, because it offers a lot for the money. now after comparing the two, let's take a look at some other gh5 features. there's a full size hdmi input, which is a lot more stable than the
smaller variants. there's also an input for both a microphone and headphones, so that you can monitor your own sound and eliminate problems immediately. you can fit two sd cards in the gh5, which can be configured for different things. you can either have stills saved to one and videos saved to the other card or mirror everything, so that you have a copy, in case something goes wrong with one card. you can zoom into the sensor, without losing any quality. this makes the 12-35mm f2.8 ii effectively two different focal ranges, which is awesome! another great feature: full hd in up to 180 frames.
at that many frames, quality isn't that good - slow it down to 120 frames and everything's brilliant again. the absolute best feature in my honest opinion though, is the integrated focus pulling system. after choosing up to three focus points, you can switch between them by using either the touchscreen or the joystick. this worked just as good with the speedbooster xl and sigma 18-35 f1.8 combination. after all, i am really happy, that i choose the gh5, because for me it is definitely worth the price, since i am focused a lot more on videos anyways.
however, i am still not sure, which lens i'll take, when i'll be traveling the world at the end of this year and that's where i'd like to ask you guys. what is more important for you? quality or weight? and if it's not the panasonic or sigma, is there anything else you can recommend? i'd really like to find out, so let me know in the comments below! also make sure to follow me both on my instagram and facebook page! that's it - thanks for watching! see you next time!