Panasonic GH5 Performance

Good to excellent performance for a mirrorless ILC.

Startup time was a little faster-than-average for a mirrorless camera, and switching from Play to Record and taking a shot was fairly quick.

The Panasonic GH5's autofocus speed was excellent in our tests, especially for a camera that uses contrast detection only. In the lab, the GH5 produced a full-autofocus shutter lag (with the subject at a fixed distance) of 0.129 second using 1-area (center) AF-S mode with the Panasonic Leica DG 12-60mm f/2.8-4 lens at about 25mm (50mm equivalent).

When manually focused, the GH5's lag time dropped to 0.066 second, which is very good. The GH5's prefocused shutter lag time was 0.056 second, also quite fast.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance.

Single-shot cycle times were quite fast at 0.33 second for best quality JPEGs and 0.42 second for RAW+JPEG. (Note that we no longer test single-shot mode with just RAW files, as the results are usually somewhere in between JPEG and RAW+JPEG.)

The Continuous High Speed "H" mode burst rate was excellent at 11.9 frames per second no matter the file type, just shy of Panasonic's 12 fps spec.

Full-resolution buffer depth was essentially limited only by card capacity when shooting Large/Fine JPEGs (Panasonic claims over 600 frames and we've confirmed that). When shooting RAW files, buffer depth was a very generous 65 frames, falling only slightly to 63 frames when shooting RAW+JPEG files.

Buffer clearing was a little slow with a very fast 2000x UHS-II card, ranging from 20 seconds after a long burst of JPEGs to 28 seconds after a 63-frame burst of RAW+JPEG files. You can however take additional photos and adjust settings while the buffer is clearing.

Bottom line, the Panasonic GH5's performance is generally quite good to excellent for its class. Startup and mode switching are reasonably fast, while autofocus speeds and shutter lag are quite fast. Burst performance is excellent, as are buffer depths, however buffer clearing can be sluggish despite UHS-II card support.

Good battery life for a mirrorless ILC.

The Panasonic GH5 uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and dedicated battery charger. The CIPA-rated 410 shots per charge when using the LCD monitor and 400 shots with the EVF are above average for a mirrorless ILC (but keep in mind there no built-in flash with is normally fired for 50% of shots for CIPA testing), however battery life is much lower than a typical DSLR when using an optical viewfinder. The GH5 does however have a Power Save LVF mode which can increase battery life to a whopping 1,000 shots. Still, we recommend getting a second battery for your GH5 if you plan any extended outings, and consider purchasing the optional DMW-BGGH5 battery grip which can double battery life with a second battery.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))