Jay: Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan.
Kenneth: And this is Kenneth Merrill.
And today, we have with us the beautiful Paloma Fivi [SP].
Paloma: Hi.
Jay: She's going to help us take a look at the GH5S...
Kenneth: And the GH5 OG.
Jay: Which, we have to say thank you to BorrowLenses, who have sent us the cameras and the lenses
so we can compare them.
It's a great place to get equipment, to test it out, to get a second camera, a second lens,
or a lens you want to use for a particular occasion or something that's going on...
Kenneth: And they...
Jay: Great place to go.
Kenneth: They ship anywhere.
So, if you don't live...
Jay: Anywhere.
Kenneth: In Los Angeles, like we do, and you don't have any rental houses around, hit up
BorrowLenses.
They have tons of gear on there, I've used them several times.
Jay: So, thanks to BorrowLenses.
So, let's take a look at these two cameras.
What do you think?
Kenneth: I liked the GH5S, because it's kind of like a cinema camera packed into a little
GH5 body.
I mean, not only does it have the 400mbps codec, but it comes with Speedlogix [SP] already,
you don't have to pay extra for it.
It also has incredible low light, I hear.
And it has a 10-megapixel sensor, which means, theoretically, it should have better dynamic
range and be more sharp.
Jay: Any time you put the S on the end of anything, somebody has kind of trained us
that that means it's a low-light camera.
You know?
And that's exactly what this is.
A 10-megapixel sensor means that it's going to be really good in low light.
It is stripped down, it doesn't have image stabilization, which is interesting, you know?
So, we'll look at that.
We definitely want to look at the slow-motion, and we want to look at just the other features
as far as dynamic range, as far as how that sensor handles that, and go from there.
Kenneth: So, let's do it.
Jay: All right.
So, we're about to do our slow-motion shots.
So, Emerald's idea was that we take our little portable hair-blower here, and we just blow
slow motion with her hair flying in the wind.
It'll look epic.
So, right now, Kenneth's shooting the stabilization test with the GH5S.
So, it doesn't have stabilization, so we're going to look at how that looks compared to
the GH5, which has stabilization.
Now, stabilization on a GH5 is pretty nice.
You can feel it, it just kind of flows.
So, we'll look at those two.
We know that the GH5S is not going to have the same, but we'll see what it looks like.
So, we just got back in from testing the GH5 and the GH5S.
I mean, we just walked in...
Kenneth: Just...
Jay: This very second...
Kenneth: Barely.
Jay: And here we sit.
Kenneth: And threw the footage on, hit "review filter," and whoosh, voilà.
Jay: And whoosh, it's all there.
No, actually Kenneth took all kinds of time to process everything, and to grade everything,
and..
Kenneth: Yeah.
Jay: And, so, here we are.
Kenneth: Not enough time, I don't think, but...
Jay: Could have used a little more time.
Kenneth: Obviously.
Jay: Obvi...
Kenneth: Anyways, let's jump into it.
So, let's talk about dynamic range first.
Jay: Okay.
Kenneth: How did we set this up?
Jay: Well, we set it up in an alley.
We've got a really bright wall on the side, just kind of direct sunlight.
Direct heavy sunlight, deep shadow on the right-hand side, and then we're looking at
the white clouds in the background.
Kenneth: And we exposed for her face.
Jay: Mm-hm.
Kenneth: So the idea here is, if you're shooting outside, can you find some shade, shoot in
the shade, and still retain some of the sunny highlights in the background?
Jay: Which it's doing a great job of, actually...
Kenneth: Yeah.
Jay: I mean, if you look at that car driving by right there, was super bright, you know?
I mean...
Kenneth: I mean, they look okay.
Jay: They do.
Kenneth: Yeah.
Jay: They do.
Kenneth: The brick and everything looks awesome, even when you kind of bump the exposure.
So, we started to ramp up, just to see, where does each camera break, you know?
As you bump the exposure one stop, it's not too bad, but then you get to, like, two stops
and they both just start breaking immediately.
Jay: Yeah.
Kenneth: She still looks fine, because she's only a couple stops over, but everything else...
Jay: The background's pretty much gone...
Kenneth: Falls apart really fast.
Jay: By three stops, background's gone.
Kenneth: It's kind of what you would expect, given the situation, but the fact that they're
doing it at the same time is interesting.
Because it's telling me that the dynamic range on both these cameras is kind of similar in
the highlights, at least.
Jay: Very similar in the highlights.
Yeah.
So, it's interesting to me, the GH5 is cropping way more than the GH5S.
So, same lens, 25mm, so equivalent of a 50mm, and the GH5 is a much tighter crop than the
GH5S.
And, so, it's noticeably different.
Kenneth: Yeah.
I like the GH5S better, for that reason.
It's...
Jay: Gives you a little broader.
Kenneth: Yeah.
A little bit more space.
So, we go down in the underexposure range.
And this is where, I think, you start to see the real differences between them, because
the GH5 starts to get green a lot more.
The GH5S seems to hold to the more natural colors.
But if you look at the brick, like on the right side, here at -3, the brick is...
Jay: Very green.
Kenneth: Super green.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Very green.
Kenneth: And, then, it's hard to see, but the noise is, like, a lot more gritty in the
GH5, which is what you would expect.
But, at the same time, they both kind of get really noisy at the same point.
So, I would say, in terms of dynamic range, they probably have roughly the same, but maybe
the GH5S does hold the color a little bit better and the grain is a little finer.
So, what everyone's talking about with this GH5S is the lowlight.
You know, we started at 400ISO, which is the native for both of these cameras, and the
GH5 is a little off-focus.
I think I catch that here at 1600, where I refocus it.
They both look really good at these ISO values.
I would say, the GH5 you start to see the noise at 1600.
Jay: The GH5 starts to show it, yeah, at 1600.
Kenneth: Yeah.
Jay: I mean, it's good up to 1600...
Kenneth: Yeah...
Jay: It's usable up to 1600.
Kenneth: I'd use it.
Yeah, I'd be okay with it.
Jay: Yeah.
Kenneth: But at 3200, though, it starts to get really noticeable.
Kind of reminds me of my, like, Canon days.
Jay: Yeah, it starts to dance in the blacks there, pretty good.
But the GH5S, it still looks pretty good.
Kenneth: Yeah, it's really good.
If you do start to see it, it's almost like a stop behind the GH5...
Jay: It feels like it's a stop behind.
Kenneth: Yeah, which is kind of what I'd been hearing, I guess that's to be expected
Jay: So, you feel like, on the GH5, we could go up to 1600, but you could go up to 3200
on the GH5S.
Kenneth: Yeah, exactly.
Jay: But when you get to 6400, I just, my sense about these kinds of things is, okay,
yeah, you can get to 6400.
But...
Kenneth: The thing that kind of bugs me about this one, though, is that the image starts
to get really soft because it's trying to de-noise it.
And I feel like this is a lot softer than I've seen in other cameras, when I've pushed
them to similar levels.
I mean...
Jay: At 12800, she looks like she has a soft-focus filter on her face.
Kenneth: Granted, it's cleaner than a lot of 12800s I've seen, but the trade-off is
that it's really soft.
So, I don't know that...
Jay: It's kind of pretty looking, in its own way.
Kenneth: If you're shooting Hollywood, you know, Old Hollywood look...I don't know.
I just, does it perform better than GH5?
Absolutely, I'd say by at least a stop, maybe stop and a half.
So, if you're considering between the two, and you really shoot a lot of low-light stuff,
the GS might be the thing to go to.
But compared to some of the other low-light beasts we've used, like the A7S2, I don't
know that it's a ton better than that.
Jay: I don't know that it's better.
No.
Kenneth: So...
Jay: I mean, we'd have to compare that to really say, you know?
Kenneth: Yeah, it's hard because...
Jay: We didn't do that.
Kenneth: We didn't have it side by side.
Jay: Yeah.
Kenneth: All right.
So, the other thing.
Image stabilization.
I mean, it's...
Jay: I mean, I can look at this.
I don't have to look at it.
It's so obvious that's a GH5...
Kenneth: It...yeah.
Jay: There's just a softness to it, you know?
And...
Kenneth: It's almost like you're a bad steadicam operator.
Jay: Yes.
Kenneth: That's what it looks like.
Like, it's pretty smooth...
Jay: Pretty smooth...
Kenneth: With a few little jarring things...I mean, I'm walking backwards here.
You can kind of feel the center pushing around a little bit, that's the downside of the stabilization,
is sometimes it'll almost like reframe for you a little.
Jay: Oh, my...
Kenneth: But you compare it to the S, and it's, like...
Jay: GH5S...
Kenneth: You feel everything.
Jay: We're on a horse.
Kenneth: On a horse.
Jay: At a gallop.
On a horse.
Kenneth: This looks a lot more like you would expect with a DSLR.
It, yeah...
Jay: That image stabilization is really..
Kenneth: It's a big deal.
Jay: It is a big deal, because you are getting a much smoother...if you were running the
gunning, and you were using this thing handheld at all, the GH5S is probably not your choice.
Kenneth: Yeah, I got to say that.
You were saying before, like, DS is kind of geared more toward the cinema crowd...
Jay: It is.
Kenneth: And the cinema crowd doesn't have image sensor stabilization.
You know...
Jay: They're on gimbals...
Kenneth: They're on gimbals...
Jay: They're on sliders...
Kenneth: They're going to have real rigging and stuff, so, I get that.
But in terms of just using this tiny little body by itself, without any extra things,
that GH5 still has the advantage with this.
Jay: Yeah.
So, now, let's look at our now-famous slow-motion test, which is the leaf blower fan on our
model's face...
Kenneth: Yeah, I love how you can see the leaf blower in the bottom side of the frame.
Jay: Sliding in.
Kenneth: So, this is 60 frames in 1080 bit.
We were just comparing the motion, so, like, 60 to 100 is a pretty big jump.
And most cameras these days seem to be shooting 120 frames...
Jay: In 1080p, yeah.
Kenneth: In 1080p.
Jay: That's the new norm.
Kenneth: I will say, this 120 doesn't look amazing.
It kind of looks like the 120 I've seen from others.
Jay: Well, but, you know, when you get to 240, her hair up on the upper left end side,
it's just...
Kenneth: It's like stairs, yeah.
Jay: Yeah, it's just breaking up.
It's really...
Kenneth: Having said that, the motion is amazing...
Jay: The motion is amazing...
Kenneth: It's so glamorous.
Jay: But can you use that, at 240?
Kenneth: Yeah.
Jay: It's too slow for most of the applications, anyway, 120 is almost too slow for some, but
looks great...
Kenneth: Right, it...
Jay: It really depends on the application.
Kenneth: It depends on what you're doing.
Jay: Yeah, it really does.
So, I guess, you can't make that kind of a statement.
Kenneth: I will say, most of the things that I've shot at 120 or 240 are, like, product-related
things, and for those you need higher resolution than this.
So, this 240 frames isn't going to, like, kill your Phantom, you know?
Jay: It's not going to put the Phantom out of business?
Kenneth: But, in terms of just shooting casual things, when you want to get that fun...You
know, I guess, it's okay.
Jay: Yeah.
This starts to feel, to me, like it goes to 11.
It goes to 11.
Jay: Yeah, it's like, okay, you can do 240 frames, but is it really an application that
is practical or really usable in a professional situation?
No, probably not.
Kenneth: You know, I'm going to say, now that you've said that, that's almost kind of how
I feel about the camera in general.
Jay: It goes to 11.
Kenneth: It goes to 11, you know?
Like, it does 240 frames, and it does the high ISO, you know, low-light and stuff, but
does it knock it out of the park?
Not totally, for me at least.
It seems like a really decent camera, all-around, for video, but then it doesn't have the IBIS.
It doesn't have the...
Jay: That's...
Kenneth: Or the sensor stabilization.
Jay: That's a tough thing.
So, you really, what you have is a high-end, more of a cinema-type camera.
It's very close to a cinema camera, because of the vlog comes with it.
You really have the high frame rates, you've got a really low-light, you know?
Whereas when you get down to the GH5, that's more of your crossover camera.
I do video, and I take stills, you know?
Which does both of those.
I wouldn't chose this as a still camera, although it's interesting.
When you put this on a screen, when we had it on the screen inside, and blow these up
side by side, it's pretty tough to tell the 10.
Kenneth: The 10-megapixel, yeah.
Jay: The 10 megapixel versus the 20.
Kenneth: They look very similar.
Jay: They do, you know?
Which, sometimes, I wonder if we get so hung up on megapixels and bigger, and bigger, and
bigger, that there's a point where you just don't see it.
At least, you don't see it in this world, when you're looking at it on our monitor.
I'm not saying on the internet, I'm saying on our monitor.
In the internet, you're definitely not going to see it.
Kenneth: That's for sure.
So, the pros and cons of these two cameras.
Kenneth: I would say the pros of a GH5S is that it has one to one and a half stops better
low-light, and it comes with a vlog without having to pay for it.
It can do this high frame-rate stuff, like, 240 frames per second, 1080p, it can?
I don't think it's super usable for almost anything, so I'm not going to really count
that.
But the low light is pretty great.
Well, the pros for the GH5, for me, is, the image stabilization is huge.
Kenneth: That's huge for me.
Yes.
And it's a bigger megapixel sensor, so you're going to have a better still image, which
is a better crossover camera for doing stills and video...
Kenneth: Which...
And, also, you can shoot 60 frames a second at 1080p on this camera.
Kenneth: Yeah, actually...
No, you can shoot 120...
Kenneth: You can shoot 60 in 4k...
Oh, it's 60 in 4k?
Kenneth: Both cameras.
So you can do 120 in...
Kenneth: In 1080.
Yeah.
So, you can do 120 in 1080p, 120 frames in 1080p here, which, I'm not so thrilled with
240...
Kenneth: Yeah, it's kind of like, does that kind of nullify it?
Jay: It kind of does.
Kenneth: It does this good enough?
Yeah.
Jay: It kind of does, to me.
Kenneth: So, what it really comes down to, and like a lot of other people have been saying,
is, do you need the one stop extra low-light performance, or do you need the image stabilization?
I don't think that either cameras are really stellar at shooting photos.
They're both pretty close, the GH5 probably has an edge, but what it really comes down
to, for me, is low light versus image stabilization.
Jay: Well, if you were to take the still camera thing off the table, just say, okay, is this
a great still camera?
Probably not my first choice, there's other cameras out there that I would choose.
So, now, I'm going to get my best video camera from these two.
If I'm doing run and gun, I would choose this camera, because of the image stabilization.
If I'm really controlling things, maybe I'm on a gimbal, on a helicopter, maybe I'm, you
know, on a gimbals and sliders?
I would go with the better low light and just some of the features...
Kenneth: That's true.
Jay: On the GH5S.
So, there's kind of the world.
If you're run and gun, versus really controlled kind of situations, there's how I would make
my decision.
Kenneth: Yeah.
Though, I guess, the uncontrolled aspect of this is the light, you know?
You buy it for the low light, because you can't control the light, so...
Jay: Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Kenneth: Just depends on your needs, as always.
Jay: As always.
As all these cameras do.
So, there you have it.
A look at the GH5 and the GH5S.
A shout-out to BorrowLenses who gave us the cameras and lenses so we could test them for
you today.
A great company if you want to get some equipment, extra equipment to rent or try, or just kind
of fill out what you're doing.
So, check out BorrowLenses.
And, you know, check out all our social medias: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram.
Like us, love us, follow us, and we'll all be happy.
So keep those cameras rolling.
Kenneth: And keep on clicking.
Jay: You'll want to check out our new stop motion download.
Two and a half ours of tips and techniques from Tricia Zemp.
You'll love the things she talks about, a tasty video, the B&H logo.
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