I know, I know, another camera video, but anybody interested
in the GH5 is going to find this information crucial
and to my regular subscribers, I have a treat for you guys too.
Let's get Undone!
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He’s crazy ♪
What is happening, Donk Squad? I’m Gerald Undone
and today, I’m talking about the GH5 again.
To my regular subscribers, because I value
your watch minutes as much as everybody else's
and I know you may find this material, kind of, bland,
here’s a little, uh, side mission for you
to keep you entertained.
Try and count how many times, in the next few minutes,
I say the word “focus,"
and the one who gets the number
the most accurate will get one free...
[garbled coughing]
from me and, yeah, I’ll let you know in the comments.
But, to everybody else who’s here
to find out stuff about the GH5
autofocus situation, here’s what I’m going to do.
I have written down all of my findings after doing 178 tests.
I’m not even making that number up.
I counted how many video files I recorded
and, like, sent to my computer to, like, compare things.
178. So when I thought
about making this video, I thought,
"Oh, I'll just have to find fancy ways
to incorporate all the tests as B-roll," nah.
I'm not doing that. I’m not making a 53 minute
video on autofocus, when all you really want
to know is, “Where do I set my dial?”
So, that’s what I’m going to tell you guys, okay?
I’m just going to plow through it real quick.
What inspired this video? Well, a few days ago,
there was a video made by a YouTuber named YodaYeo,
I think, I’ll put the link to the video
in the description, but basically, he discovered
that his focus worked differently when he changed
his shutter angle lower than a 180°.
Everybody usually runs at a 180°, he changed it,
and all of a sudden it started focusing differently.
The test was very convincing, I decided to try it myself.
I also had a light bulb go off almost immediately
after watching that video.
I thought, well, if you can just turn it down
using the shutter angle, then I can probably
use Synchro Scan as well, to turn it down,
just like a couple degrees and see how that works.
And I tested the Synchro Scan settings at,
like, you know, one degree at a time, all the way down,
and I can report back my findings about that as well.
Anyway, so credit to the YodaYeo guy for starting this whole
train off, but what I did was I took that information
now that the focus works a little bit better,
and sort of figured out what are the best use scenarios now,
sort of updated 2018 use scenarios
for how to use the GH5 autofocus
and I am pleasantly surprised now at the results
that I’m getting, so let’s get right into it.
One of the original caveats was that
it's not going to work on 24p, that it's mainly
for, you know, 25p and 30p.
It actually does improve on 23.976 a decent amount.
Now, it still does have a tapering where 24p performs
the worst and 60p, you know, performs the best,
but there is an improvement across all levels here.
What you're watching right now,
I have not really checked my focus at all.
Normally, I use an app and I just dial in the manual focus,
so that I know I’m locked in and I’m good to go.
I am using continuous autofocus for this video,
the first time I’ve used continuous autofocus
for a talking head YouTube video in quite a while.
Anyway, right now I’m shooting 24p.
I have the shutter degree to 179°.
Now, that is the first step of how to immediately
improve your autofocus in, pretty much, all scenarios:
is turn on Synchro Scan,
which is-- I’m not gonna go over, like, if you don’t
know how to use a GH5, look up a manual
or something. We’re trying to make this a little bit faster.
Go to your menu, I think it’s, like, the top one.
Go over to the right, scroll down, look for the words
“Synchro Scan.” Go on there, turn it on.
When you turn it on, you can then dial it in,
basically you change
your shutter angle by degrees instead.
If you already had it at a 180, great, turn on Synchro Scan.
Knock it down one, to 179. It does not matter.
From my tests, whether you're at 170, 178, 179, 165, 150.
I’ve read things in the comments of people in varying degrees,
I think it might be a placebo effect.
One thing to keep in mind is that this is contrast detection.
It's not exactly the exact same effect all the time anyway.
You're going to get variance just doing the exact
same test three times over again.
So, I think it’s a placebo effect.
I think a 179° is enough to lock in the improvement
and then you stay, you know, 99.5% the same
amount of motion blur that you would get that you were
used to with at 180°, so it’s way less,
you know, changing your exposure and different things
to mind your wrap around-- “mind your wrap around?”
Wrap your mind around. So just stick with 179.
Put 179, Synchro Scan, done! Half the battle’s already done!
As far as the rest of the settings, almost none
of them really matter. If you want Quick AF on,
turn it on, you want AF Assist Beam,
turn it on, everyone always lists those settings
in the description, they don’t matter.
They don’t really matter at all.
The only one that does matter
is the continuous autofocus settings,
the custom settings which controls the sensitivity
and responsiveness and the speed.
Those are the only ones we’re going to change
and there’s only going to be two usage settings.
We don’t need to, like, “-5 on this,
-3 on that,” for, like, 20 different scenarios.
There’s only two scenarios and I can tell you
exactly what the numbers are,
and they’re slightly different for 24p over 30p.
So, let’s say you shoot 30p, okay? Two scenarios.
You're trying to sit in a chair and talk to the camera
like I’m doing now, and maybe every once in a while,
you want to grab something and hold it up?
I got a pack of gum here.
So, you hold that up in front
of the camera like this
and you want it to switch focus to the pack of gum,
and then you take it away, you want it to go back
to your face, you’ll notice that this one
is somewhat slow when I do that.
So it does change there, and then it comes back.
It takes about two to three seconds for it to switch,
and you see how it’s not switching very well at all?
So when I go here and I come back...
There. See how it's not that great?
That is what the sensitivity change is, basically.
The autofocus speed is almost irrelevant.
This camera autofocuses very, very quickly
when focus is initiated.
So, if anything, you don’t really want that much speed
because it gives that kind of, like, “plok!”
Like, you know,
super weird, pulse-y kind of thing?
You don't want that. So, in this shot,
you know, I’ve got a lamp over here.
I’ve got some small things like my sunglasses
on the shelf and they make a little
bokeh effect and then, like, the posters behind me.
If I have the sensitivity turned up, and by turned up,
I mean, say +2, cause the responsiveness
goes from -3 to +3, check your menu.
If you have it up at like +2 or +3,
every time I, kind of, move my head around,
those objects are going to...
...like, pulse a little bit, and sometimes it can be distracting.
If you turn the responsiveness down,
they don't pulse as much, but you don’t get as quick
a response when doing stuff like that, uh, because this is not...
See how it’s not really, like, messing with my focus too much?
Those are what I mean when I say usage scenarios.
You need to decide, “Am I sitting in a chair?
Or is my subject sitting in a chair, not moving too much?
I want it to kind of lock focus on them,
and if I do need to switch focus to something,
I’m okay with it being a nice transition,
and I don’t really want things to easily interrupt the focus.”
We’ll call that Scenario One.
Here’s your settings for Scenario One.
Turn your speed, your continuous autofocus speed down to -2.
It goes all the way down to -5, set it to -2,
and turn your sensitivity down to -2 when shooting on 30p.
When shooting on 24p, speed stays the same: -2.
But you can change the sensitivity to -1.
I have found in almost all scenarios that 24p
is one sensitivity worse
than 30p, so if you can get the job done
at +1 sensitivity, you need +2 sensitivity
to get the job done on 24p.
Makes sense? That’s all it is,
add one more number, but the speed stays the same.
Now, do not, in almost any scenarios,
set those dials all the way left or all the way right.
To give you an idea, if you set the sensitivity
all the way to the left, which is -3 responsiveness,
it locks on to where you can hold something
in front of the camera for
20 seconds and it might not even change focus.
Uh, and if you set it all the way
to +3, you can hold something in front
of the camera, and it’s like, in-out-in-out.
It’s glitchy, you don’t want that.
But the -2 to +2, most of those settings work.
It's the same thing with speed.
If you set the autofocus speed to +5 thinking that,
“Oh, it’s gonna snap in focus”, yeah, it does,
and then it comes out and in and out and in.
It’s like focus, fa-fa-fa!
It freaks out, and same with -5.
It tries to and then it goes blurry and stays.
So, again, -4 to +4 is your range on that.
Ignore the extreme numbers except for
one scenario where I’m going to tell you not to do that.
Case two is you’re trying to track something.
And I’m not talking about this junk. All the tests
are always this junk. Somebody holds stuff in front
of the camera and holds it back. Any focus mode will do that,
you just decide how fast you want it to respond.
I’m talking about if I hold it here in front
of the camera and then I pull it away slowly,
will it continue focusing the entire time?
Or maybe something is panning across the screen
from here to forward and to the right,
and you need to, like, keep the focus with that.
That's what I'm talking about.
In that kind of scenario,
on 30p, you want to set your speed to +3,
cause again, if you go +4, +5, it starts to get pretty wonky,
and you want to set your sensitivity to +2,
from -2, where it was before.
Basically, that's it. -2 and +2 on sensitivity.
Don’t worry about the settings in between, and then, for 24p,
like I said, the only variance is usually just increase
the sensitivity by one, so you leave
the speed at +3, just like it was for 30p,
but you can turn the sensitivity to +3.
Again, you've got to add one, and that is the only case
in which you’ll actually use a dial
all the way to the right extreme.
I don’t love putting the sensitivity on +3,
but on 24p, it’s not so bad.
On 30p and 60p, it jitters like a maniac.
So, I’ve been waving my hands around a lot
in this shot, and this shot right now, I have it set to
-2 speed and -1 sensitivity, because it’s 24p.
If it was 30p, I’d have it at -2 sensitivity.
And hopefully, what we’re going to notice is that the stuff
in the background isn’t pulsing
too much because I’m obviously sacrificing
responsiveness to lower the pulsing.
And this is kind of the sweet spot I found.
If I lower the responsiveness even more,
then it doesn’t even acquire things if I hold something
in front of the camera, but in this mode it does acquire it,
sort of slowly, and surely, and then it comes back to me,
and it’s a bit of a smooth transition, which I like.
So those are your two case scenarios, okay?
Let’s talk about the autofocus modes,
like, what kind of spots and stuff we’re using.
I am using... Single Spot...
uh, it’s called One Spot. I think, One Area?
It’s called One Area. It's the first one.
If you press your, like, shortcut menus to get your focus
modes, it’s the one on the far right, it’s the One Area.
Well, when you’re on manual focus,
there’s another one, but for autofocus
it’s the rightmost one. Uh it’s... this is the mode
to use in almost all scenarios, okay?
And what you can change is the box size, basically.
Now, just to give you a quick little heads up
on this, the box size...
It’s weird. You want the biggest box
that you can get away with, but realize
that the bigger the box, the more problems you have.
Because this is contrast detection, if,
say, I made an autofocus box hat was like this big, okay?
It’s going to be, you know, like, checking--
doing stuff all over the place here, and when I turn
and do stuff with my head, you’re gonna have more chances
for hunting and pulsing, but if I put just the smallest
box right here on my forehead,
uh, there’s going to be a lot less
pulsing that goes on, but also a lot less
chance to really, sort of, sample the scene
if you’re trying to, like, track or something.
There’s a good chance that it may not really
notice that much difference if I lean in or lean back out.
You want the biggest box you can get away with,
without going outside.
Aim for, like, 80% of your subject, so,
you know, like, a good box could be like,
a box like this maybe. Then, I’m likely going
to be in the box at all times but I can still
get a few different samples from my face.
That’s kind of what you want to do with the box.
Smaller the box, the less pulsing you’ll have.
The bigger the box, the more information you’ll have.
Try to find, like, a good little
balance for whatever your subject is.
Try not to go outside of the subject,
or weird things will happen.
But One Area performs the best, easily.
The next one is Custom Multi.
it’s where you can, like, pick points and make shapes so
there’s, like, straight lines and stuff and diamond shapes.
It’s junk, don’t use it.
It’s terrible. Moving on.
Just never set it to that, there's no reason to.
It doesn't work at all, really.
It’s just like a worse version of everything.
Then you've got 225.
I used to think that 225 point was decent,
but the problem is it just does whatever
it wants and it's completely unreliable.
It’s center-weighted, it likes the center of the frame
more than anything else,
which means you lose control, you know,
and sometimes, you’re like in the center and you hold
something up and then it values something else over here.
You can’t rely on it, so don’t use it,
because unreliable autofocus is pointless autofocus.
You may as well just manual focus and save
yourself some time to make sure you get the shot right.
225, don't use it. Next one is tracking.
There are some instances where the tracking thing worked well,
I was like, “That’s pretty cool.”
But just like I was just saying about the 225,
it is mostly unreliable.
You would have way better results
using the One Area and getting
a good sense for predictive movement and,
like, move with the subject you want to track.
Your results will be way, way better than relying on tracking.
You're going to get so many missed shots with tracking that,
again, it's a write-off. So, use One Area.
The next three modes are junk, don't worry about them.
And then, face detection.
Face detection actually works somewhat now
with this 179° Synchro Scan shutter angle fix.
It works as well as One Area does now if One Area was,
like, set to your eye, let’s say.
So, depending on what case setting you’re using,
like, if I want to move all around the room while looking at
the camera and getting the face detection to track quickly
and stuff, I need to use case two where I set the sensitivity
responsiveness to +2, and I set the speed to +3.
But, if I want to have, sort of a more interview
situation where I sit here and the face
detection keeps going and it doesn’t jitter
too much and it just, kind of, holds the focus,
then it will still work as well as One Area would
on my eye, but then I’d need to set it to -2
sensitivity and -2 speed for 30p.
For 24p, it's -1 sensitivity.
Same, same exact principles as One Area,
same principles throughout all the modes.
Anyway, in those situations, the face detection
actually works pretty well. It works as well
as you would be able to track anything else,
it’s just limited to the face,
so you do have, uh, less possibility.
If you have face detection on, and you do this kind of thing,
even if you block your face, it doesn’t perform
like the Canon where it sort of says,
“Oh, forget about face detection for a second
and find something else.” It just says,
“I’ll do nothing until I see a face again.”
So, doesn’t matter where you move this thing, it’s not
going to do anything. You know, the face detection has
one purpose, basically, and if you know,
like, maybe vlogging where it’s only a face
that you’re going to be worrying about, that might be fine.
Interview situations, stuff like that, anything else
where you want to move focus to objects
that aren’t faces, the One Area is king.
Use the One Area. Okay, that's modes.
This is at 24p because I like 24p.
If I set this to 30p, and I did that thing
where I held up the gum package, it would work
a lot better. That’s the only test I’m going to show you.
is I’m going to switch it over to case two.
I'm going to switch it to 30p.
I’m going to use the case two settings
that I told you, which is +2 sensitivity,
+3 speed, still 179° shutter angle.
I’m gonna switch it to my hypersensitive mode
and, uh, then that’s going to be the end of this video.
Okay, one sec. Okay, I’m back.
It’s in 30p and let’s do the...
the weird gum test thing I was doing.
So hold it up to the thing.
Back to me. Back to the thing...
And then back to me. So, it’s a little bit faster
and it also has the ability to track a little bit better,
so it’s not great right now, but if I bring it in,
and then bring it out...
And then come back to me,
it definitely has a lot more...
It’s more responsive than the one where it’s like,
cut in and cut out, which is what I would use when I want
to hold the shot, but there is a con to this.
If I wave my hands when I talk to you now,
look in the background, okay?
Or even look at these posters,
or look at the bokeh on my glasses
in the light and stuff in back,
and you might see that pulsing I was talking about.
This is the con of responsiveness, so if the dude’s
just sitting in the chair and you’re just recording him,
don’t use this mode, because you’re going to get this,
like, blump, blump, blinking lights and stuff.
But, if you’re following along,
then you’re going to want to use this mode,
and it definitely does work better
so this is an incorporation of all the settings
and, like I said, I know I shouldn’t use the thing
where we just put something in front of the screen, but this
is pretty darned fast autofocus like this.
So, you can set that stuff faster,
you can max them both out to the right, which I think
some of the test videos about the subject have done
and yeah, they go, like pfft! And they focus real quick.
I just don't like the look. I don't like when focus jars in.
I like a bit of a zoom, and the one I just showed you, it,
you know, eases into it, but it’s still pretty quick.
So, I think these settings work.
I think the autofocus now, with
these settings, is very usable.
It is still not Dual Pixel Autofocus
Phase Detection, all that stuff, but it’s...
it’s a pretty good. Like half... Two-thirds of the way there.
It’s much better than some other cinema cameras
that don’t really have, like... where autofocus is
an afterthought and it just does nothing.
That’s kind of where people had the GH5
when it first came out, they didn’t really know
what to do with it, and now we’ve got it to where,
like I said, it’s two-thirds of the way
to where Canon and Sony are right now.
So, that’s great, because the value of the GH5 is still,
you know, bounds ahead
of the other platforms, so, the fact that we can get
almost as good of autofocus, I mean, like a reasonable amount
of its autofocus, just makes the value great.
And now that we’ve explored these settings,
you know, thanks to YodaYeo and other commentors and everything,
there's been tweaking with the stuff, there’s a pretty good
chance now that Panasonic is going to be like, “Hm,
let’s roll it into a package,” maybe, because
Panasonic is great for firmware and stuff like that.
So, who knows, we might get like a, “Oh, nice
find, guys, pfft, better autofocus. Enjoy!”
But in the meantime, I stand by these settings
and hopefully, what I described would
happen in this video while doing it,
will prove to be a bit of a testament to me
knowing what I’m talking about because I do get a feeling
that there’s been some pulsing going on in this setting
and not much pulsing in the previous
setting and that my focus was probably locked
better in the previous setting and that I might have gone
in and out of focus a little bit in this setting.
But it was slower in the previous setting and fast
in this one, so it’s different purposes.
Anyway, that's it. I tried my best to make it as fast
and concise as possible, because I know this probably is not
the first autofocus video that you guys have seen,
you’ve probably seen lots of them and you’re probably
just like, “Give me the numbers.” These are the numbers.
I hope this video was helpful, and if it was,
make sure you give it a like. If it was not helpful,
go ahead and hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.
Oh, and to my regular subscribers,
thank you so much for watching through another boring
camera video if you're not interested in this stuff,
and the answer to how many times I said,
“Focus” in this video was
[upbeat techno music]
♪