New GH5 Galleries - Spring in the SW (6 images)

Cheers All.

I have really been enjoying my new GH5 these past two months and have finally uploaded a few Galleries of my recent outings to my SmugMug site.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I have been pleased with my recent Panasonic G85 & GX8 cameras - yet am even happier with the stills evolution of the new GH5 - especially using it on nature outings with my P/L 100-400!

I am particularly pleased with its updated sensor, processor, customization, 6K and continuous AF Tracking. I find M43 is getting much closer to my Canon 7D in performance, with a much elevated UI enjoyment factor! So much so that I am almost always choosing the Panasonic when I head out. Although acquisition of fast moving subjects is not always as consistent as my Canon, once locked on, the GH5 does an excellent job holding focus & tracking. I have had a noticeable rise in keeper rate from my earlier cameras. Most often using the GH5 with BIF I would get 80-100% focused keepers on long tracking bursts - including Hummingbirds, Terns & Raptors.

I have also seen some wonderful examples from the Oly EM1 ii here on DPR, so it appears M43rds Cameras are showing some excellent results all around, particularly the top end!

Here is a link to a few Galleries from my recent GH5 outings (I have included [way too] many continuous images so you can see how the tracking has been working for me :

http://www.vgbphotos.com/Spring-2017-in-the-Southwest

(many more pending Galleries in the making...













Best, LH

Really great shots, as usual! Thx for sharing

Lovely images.

I'm guessing this isn't Cornwall, though!

William

Lovely shots. Particularly like the first two and last one

stunning shots! Thanks for sharing!

Well done and a nice variety of birds.

Great looking photos

Very good photos.

Wonderful shots, I particularly liked the first and last - beautiful.

I recently got the GH5 and PL100-400 lens, so seeing your results is inspiring (and motivates me to learn this gear better).

Just curious...what focus settings are you using for BIF?

Thanks for sharing!

saywell said:

Lovely images.

I'm guessing this isn't Cornwall, though!

William

Click to expand...

LOL! Too funny. That was SO North American-Centric of me, wasn't it?!!!

Yes indeed, I was referring to the States I visited in the US Southwest - Nevada, Arizona & California. It was so nice to be there for a few weeks with delightful weather and much sunshine for a change!

Thank you (and all) for your generous comments!

Cheers, LH

lowflyerguy said:

Wonderful shots, I particularly liked the first and last - beautiful.

I recently got the GH5 and PL100-400 lens, so seeing your results is inspiring (and motivates me to learn this gear better).

Just curious...what focus settings are you using for BIF?

Thanks for sharing!

Click to expand...

Thank YOU!

As per my settings , I believe that my GH5 was set to;

AFC / High Burst / Shutter Priority (1/1600-1/2500 sec) / Auto iso / Evaluative metering.

On SmugMug you can check any image EXIF data by clicking on an image and then clicking on the little "i" in a circle (for info, I guess) that you can see in the lower right of the image.

I am still playing with the AF Custom settings, yet I *believe* that I was using a modified AF Custom Set with AF Sensitivity -2, AF Area Switching Sensitivity -2 & Moving object prediction +2. I’ll have to do a more focused (ha!) trial on these AF Set settings to see what is working best! (next I am going to try +2, +2 & +2) We'll see!

Sorry to say I have been changing my focus points/box/boxes as an experiment...although I expect many of the shots were with a medium center-box. I've also used the center pattern boxes for birds in sky & even the full AF points for groups of flying birds/formations.

Hope this helps. Truly appreciate your comments!

Best, LH

http://www.vgbphotos.com

I too am experimenting with BIF settings, practising with a rather recalcitrant barn owl.

Do you find that the loss of realtime viewfinder in High Rate is a problem? It shows the last acquired image rather than live view, resulting in some lag. Medium rate gives true live view.

I've been working around this blog post [not GH5-specific], though haven't yet settled on the 'best' settings.

William

saywell said:

Do you find that the loss of realtime viewfinder in High Rate is a problem? It shows the last acquired image rather than live view, resulting in some lag. Medium rate gives true live view.

William

Click to expand...

Hi William.

No, I do not experience a loss of real-time viewing in the EVF using High Burst with my new GH5. It has been such a BIG improvement for me to get around 9 AFC bursts without any visual tracking issues.

With my earlier Panasonic Cameras, I needed to stick with Medium Burst to get a true real-time viewing - yet one of the big upgrades the GH5 offered (imho) was this 'real-time' viewing on High Burst.

(As before, it is important to make sure you have the Auto Review set to off)

In your experience, do you still find the GH5 has an issue with real-time in High Bursts when Auto Review is set to off?

Keep me/us posted as to your findings & experiments!

Best, LH

Are you folks using newish memory cards with super-fast write speeds? I ask because the last time I went out shooting birds in burst mode, I (eventually) found I had to wait to continue shooting, as the backlog of images captured were written from buffer to my older, not-so-terribly-high-speed memory card. I'm now eyeing a couple of 128GB cards with 300MB/sec write speeds, but yowza, those things are spendy! Before resigning myself to memory cards that cost US$250 a pop, I figured I'd check to see if that would actually solve the "buffer seems full, so stop shooting for a minute" issue.

lowflyerguy said:

Are you folks using newish memory cards with super-fast write speeds? I ask because the last time I went out shooting birds in burst mode, I (eventually) found I had to wait to continue shooting, as the backlog of images captured were written from buffer to my older, not-so-terribly-high-speed memory card. I'm now eyeing a couple of 128GB cards with 300MB/sec write speeds, but yowza, those things are spendy! Before resigning myself to memory cards that cost US$250 a pop, I figured I'd check to see if that would actually solve the "buffer seems full, so stop shooting for a minute" issue.

Click to expand...

Hi lowflyerguy (are you a pilot?) -

Good question about SD cards!

Yes, I have been using mostly the new SanDisk 300MB/s since I received my GH5.

And YES, they are much faster at writing with very little issues of 'backlog' hang-ups. I noticed a difference when I put in my other SD cards (95MB/s) as they showed a slight bit of 'hanging' on long bursts.

I have been using 2 32GB Extreme PRO UHS-II SDXC Memory Card for my stills. They are pricey...but 'only' $59:


(Probably video-togs use the 64 & 128MBs, of course

I'd recommend trying one of the 32GBMB listed above - I think it will make a difference.

Good Shooting to you! LH

IorekB said:

(As before, it is important to make sure you have the Auto Review set to off)

In your experience, do you still find the GH5 has an issue with real-time in High Bursts when Auto Review is set to off?

Click to expand...

I have mine set to Auto Review - off. But that only stops a review image being displayed.

Even with this off, in High burst, the last image is shown instead of a realtime image [as in Med and Low] so there is a lag. It's certainly possible to track like this, but there is a bit of delay, and it's easier to tack in M or S.

Perhaps a bit of technique like keeping the subject close to the trailing edge of the frame would help, so that if it's actually a bit ahead of where it's displayed, it'll still be in the frame, albeit more centrally/closer to leading edge. It will also depend on how fast the bird is traversing your fov.

I'm using 150MB/s cards, which I haven't had any problems with [yet].

William

saywell said:

saywell said:

(As before, it is important to make sure you have the Auto Review set to off)

In your experience, do you still find the GH5 has an issue with real-time in High Bursts when Auto Review is set to off?

Click to expand...

I have mine set to Auto Review - off. But that only stops a review image being displayed.

Even with this off, in High burst, the last image is shown instead of a realtime image [as in Med and Low] so there is a lag. It's certainly possible to track like this, but there is a bit of delay, and it's easier to tack in M or S.

Perhaps a bit of technique like keeping the subject close to the trailing edge of the frame would help, so that if it's actually a bit ahead of where it's displayed, it'll still be in the frame, albeit more centrally/closer to leading edge. It will also depend on how fast the bird is traversing your fov.

I'm using 150MB/s cards, which I haven't had any problems with [yet].

William

Click to expand...

Yes there is a lag - however the faster the burst is - the less lag it has. 9fps max 1/10s at 12fps even less. 7fps and 6K(30fps) are lagless

Beautiful shots. That Tern with the fish is excellent, just love that shot. The GH5 is working well and is in good hands for sure.

All the best and great work as well.

Danny.