Panasonic GH5 Field Test

Panasonic was clearly listening to its user base when it was developing the GH5, as the camera's body design and features answer just about every single issue -- both large and small -- that anyone seems to have ever brought up against the already-outstanding GH4. The Panasonic GH5 is one of the most shining examples of "we heard you" in any product I've ever encountered, and it's so rare to see this that the overwhelming sense of joy I have when I look at this camera is truly refreshing. When competitors are holding back features in flagship products, Panasonic took the road far less traveled and gave us everything we could possibly want, plus more.

This is probably the more difficult and generally most challenging part of any hybrid camera review: the video performance section. Though the GH5 is going to be primarily used as a video camera, it is no doubt a hybrid, and that brings with it different expectations from just about anyone who purchases it. Documentary filmmakers are going to be looking for different performance than a scripted filmmaker, and so on and so forth. There is a huge list of things to like about the GH5, and I'll do my best to highlight and enumerate those in a succinct fashion. That said, there are still those who will prefer other cameras on the market because of where the GH5 still struggles. Essentially, I plan to write this from a perspective of what I as a filmmaker look for, and I'll then do my best to answer/update the article with any other questions posed by the community if anything comes up that I didn't test myself.

The last few things I want to go over with the GH5 have to do with the special photo modes as well as looking at dynamic range, since now the raw files are available to edit in Adobe Camera Raw.

The GH5 has good dynamic range performance, but not a big leap over GH4

When I look at dynamic range, I do so more from the perspective of what you can expect to get out of the files, and less from a scientific lab test point of view. That is to say, I'm not going to provide an exact number of stops of dynamic range that the sensor offers, but more how the sensor handles different lighting conditions and what you can expect to draw out of your photos.