Okay it wasn’t a rock concert, but there were lights, fog machines, and lots of people. I was at the Justice Conference Asia. The theme this year was Re-imagining. It was amazing, and I will write a separate post on it. In this post, I want to reflect on how the GH6 handled the conditions and show you the 3 minute video I put together.
Panasonic GH6
First I am relatively new to the GH6. I have owned it a little over a month and have not had a lot of time to play with it. It’s a M43 camera so it won’t be the best low light performer and I’m sure there are full frame cameras out there with better dynamic range. I will be honest with you my decision to take it to the conference was last minute. Seven years ago when I attended the Justice Conference Asia, the staff told me that I couldn’t shoot video. I was afraid this year would be the same, but to my surprise, no one said anything. I saw lots of people with their phones out and a few attendees with cameras. Of course, the Justice Conference Asia staff were there with their cameras capturing everything.
Nice Images
I wish I had brought a monopod. Also if I had it to do over again, I would have checked to see that I was shooting in raw and jpeg. I normally shoot everything in Raw. Unfortunately, the camera was set to jpeg only. That would have really been a problem with my previous M43 cameras. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the jpeg pictures turned out. Yes, I tweaked them a little bit in Capture One, but I the level of quality I was getting without going through the raw image to process them myself really stood out to me.
10 Bit Video
For video I had the camera set to 4K 10 bit 420. I appreciate the fact that this camera has a ton of codec options. My S1 can shoot 4K 10 bit 422, but then I have to convert it afterwards to use it in the free version of Davinci Resolve or in my Sony Vegas Pro video editor. Here’s a post on the Panasonic S1. Lots of people have shared about the advantage of 10 bit being for color grading. Yes, it’s good for that, but I have another reason in mind, an 8 bit image falls apart a lot faster when you are panning the camera. 10 bit has a lot more data so it stays together better.
That brings me to another advantage of this camera and that is its image stabilization. It’s got 7.5 stops of image stabilization. That’s even better than my S1 camera which is already good. In the below video, I shot with the camera led up around eye level without a monopod. There were takes that I needed to use post image stabilization for, but I don’t think I used it for the clip I used in the below video. That’s impressive
Auto Fucus Performance
Ok, now it’s time to talk about the auto focus. Yes, I know the Panasonic GH6 is still using their old DFD technology. However, it is using a Venus engine that is 3 times faster than the processing chip in the GH5. The results are pretty good. No, they are not perfect, but there are lot of options for tuning the auto focus that if you are willing to work with can really help. In my case, I think the camera got distracted by smoke from the fog machine and by the people standing in front of me. If I could have had a third hand to have used focus peaking and manual focus or to have set the one area focus and kept it on my subject I would have. Obviously, my primary concern was holding the camera steady and getting smooth footage.
Lastly I will mention, it’s weight. Holding any camera over your shoulders is going to get tiring after awhile. The GH6 has been called “The King of M43” cameras and it’s body is as big as some full from cameras. Still, if I compare it to my S1 with a lens, it is significantly lighter. That really helped me out at the Justice Conference.
Audio
As mentioned above it wasn’t a rock concert, but don’t let that fool you. It was still pretty loud. There was a guy in front of me plugging his ears. Personally, I enjoyed the sound. Anyway, a lot of cameras don’t offer much for audio options. The GH6 really stands out here. There is a dedicated audio button next to the video record button for audio settings and there is a low gain option. That’s really important for events like this. There’s a bit difference between the audio when I used that and when I didn’t. Without it there’s just too much clipping. Also the GH6 has the capability of accepting 4 microphone inputs. Yes, you need buy an extra adaptor for that, but still it’s impossible on most cameras. If you want to know more about the GH6, I recommend you check out DP Review’s post.
All in all I was impressed. Stay tuned for a post or posts on the content of the Justice Conference.
