Today, we're going to be testing out version 2.3 firmware
for the GH5 to see if the 179 degree shutter angle hack
is still necessary.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and today, I've got a couple tests for you
to check and see if now that the new firmware is out
for the GH5, if we still need that 179 degree
shutter angle hack or if it was kind of built in
to the new firmware and if it's fixed if you run it stock.
So, to do that, I've got two tests for you
and the first one is already taking place.
Right now, I'm running autofocus continuous,
which you guys know I barely run. I usually run manual focus,
but I'm on autofocus continuous right now.
I've got 180 degrees on it
and I'm using the face detection,
which I also don't really ever use.
I usually ever use that one spot,
but apparently all these things
are supposed to be good these days,
so we'll see how they go. I don't know yet.
You're seeing it as I'm seeing it,
so we'll see how the focus goes throughout this video.
Take a look at me, if there's any jittering going on
with me and obviously I've got the Edison bulbs
back here and usually, what happens with this type
of depth-to-focus kind of system,
that the contrast detection that's on this camera
is that you'll see the bulbs get bigger and smaller as it pulses.
I don't think they're gonna be able
to release any kind of update that's going to change that
because I think that's the way
the autofocus system works, but maybe we can get it
where it steadies itself and pulses a little bit less,
but it's not going to change how the autofocus system
works in the first place. Keep an eye on that.
Keep an eye on my face, my eyes, that kind of thing
while this video goes on.
The second test is I did a little point-to-point test
for responsiveness and accuracy on autofocus
using three different settings, and we'll go over that
right now. I'm gonna play them back for you
and then at the end, you can do a side-by-side
that I've slowed down. I'm trying through this quickly
because I've done enough talking about autofocus
and I'm sure you guys have seen enough.
I'm not gonna do that human body walking out
the camera stuff because there are already
some other videos that are covering that.
This is solely just to see what kind of difference there is
in 180 to 179 thing. Alright, so the first one
we've got here is the settings that I recommended
in that previous video I made.
It's 179 degree shutter angle with synchro scan on
and I just have the autofocus setting set at 0 & 0
just to try to even it out across the board
when we do it for tests. So, this is kind of
what the baseline was going into the test.
I'm just moving back and forth between the two objects
at different distances so we can see how quickly
it starts to focus and completes focus
and how good the focus looks when it does it.
The second test is we still have synchro scan on,
but we put the shutter angle to 180 degrees
and see if there's a difference. Before this firmware,
if you had it at 180 degrees and dropped it down to 179,
there was a big difference in autofocusing speed
and responsiveness, so we'll see if that's been fixed
in this firmware. The last test is 180 degrees,
but with synchro scan off. So, this is sort of like
the classic 180 degree setting. Before anybody thought
to put synchro scan on to try
and trick the system into focusing faster.
This is basically vanilla-style autofocus to see
if it now works with 2.3 the same way
that the 179 degree hack worked on 2.2.
Alright, for the last one, I'm gonna put all three together
in a single shot and I'm gonna slow it down to 50% speed,
that way we can actually see it
because at full speed, it's hard to keep track
of all three objects and we'll see if they come in focus
at different times and if the focus accuracy responsiveness
is different between the three. Let's check that test out now.
[funky instrumental]
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Alright, so here's some observations that I made.
I think that there actually seems
like there is a significant improvement now
just running it on 180 degrees.
I ran these tests a few times. I didn't want to bore you
with 15 minutes of tests, but I found
when watching them over and over again
that despite slight variances where sometimes
one would come ahead of the other one,
which is probably just human error,
like moving the camera, moving the thing,
lighting changes, that the variances seemed to be
basic anomalies and that focusing to be
about even. There might be a slight case
where 179 is still a little bit more responsive
or maybe a little bit faster. I kind of feel like now,
the GH5 with version 2.3 is getting sort of,
optimal autofocus stuff just out of the firmware
because I ran the autofocus settings on 0 & 0
for speed and responsiveness. I just put on autofocus,
just put on a center box, just kind of moved it around
and I was getting pretty similar results
to my super optimized one with specific responsive
and speed settings and 179 degree shutter angle,
synchro scan on and putting the focus point
on a specific-- now, I'm noticing maybe like 5%
or less difference between the two,
which makes me think the margins have been
really narrowed down. Now, if you find
that 179 degrees works better for you,
then keep using it because I don't really think
there's much in the way of cons.
Not really messing up your shutter speed at all.
But, if you don't want to mess around with that,
I think there's some good news here.
You just put on version 2.3 and it seems to be working,
at least to my eyes, pretty similarly.
I think the variance is really, really small, so that's good.
That's great work from Panasonic,
another great firmware release.
They also added a little battery bar now
where you get four bars instead of three,
so you have a little bit more accuracy
with how much battery life you have left, so that's cool.
So, I don't see why anybody shouldn't put
version 2.3 on and as far as the face detection
and all that goes, I mean, we'll see this after
I edit the video, but you can let me know
in the comments what you guys thought.
Do you think the tests seemed about even?
And the firmware seems to have fixed
most the stuff that people noticed along the way?
And how's the face detection and everything working
in this video? Let me know in the comments.
Other than that, I'm pretty excited.
I think this firmware is great. I think everybody should get it.
So, as always, thank you guys so much for watching.
Hope you found this video informative or entertaining.
If you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up,
but if you did not find it informative or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright...I'm done.
[electronic music]
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