Finally, a reason to use the second memory card slot in the GH5s.

I'm photographing a three day show in downtown Austin and here's the technical ask from the client:


"We want really nice, big, juicy raw files of our speakers, the panels, the breakouts and all the rest of our corporate event stuff for the three days of the conference but we also want to be able to upload ample selections of images in almost real time in order to share them on our varied social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.). So, we want you to also be able to deliver small (1,000 pixel) jpegs from each session to our social media guy ---- who is in another city. The best possible scenario would be to shoot a session until you know you have good stuff and then to head to the media room to upload the images while the session is still.....in session."

I read the manual for the GH5 and found that I could customize how I use the card slots. I have identical 128GB V60 cards in every SD card slot. The #1 card is set to receive raw files while the #2 card slot is set up to receive much smaller Jpegs and video files.

I pull the #2 card out of the camera once I feel a session is well covered, stick it in my laptop and upload all the new Jpeg files to a Smugmug Gallery dedicated to my client's event.

The social media guy checks the gallery for new stuff and incorporates the images into the social feed.

Finally, a rational, real world reason for the existence of dual SD card slots on modern, reliable cameras!

Redundant back up? Naw, this is not rocket surgery...

Rating the relative effectiveness of various cameras' image stabilization.

A handheld, image stabilized still shot from "Singing in the Rain." 

It's hard to make definitive statements about the effectiveness of  image stabilization across brands, models and different sizes of image sensors but...someone asked and I thought I'd give it a try. I haven't shot with all that many cameras so I'll focus on the ones I know of from experience. 

The current top dog of image stabilization, with utterly miraculous performance, is the latest Olympus EM-1 mark 2. Nothing else can touch it. Unless you are a ten cup per day coffee drinker you can pretty much ditch your tripod. This should not surprise anyone who had previously shot the EM-5 mark 2. I owned several of them and they were steady enough to use hand held when shooting video (see the Cantine video for end to end Olympus EM-5 mark 2 samples --- in motion).

The one addition that makes the EM-1.2 the best of the best is the ability of that camera system to use both the lens I.S. and the in body I.S. together. At best the system delivers 6.5 stops of stabilization. If not for the god awful menu system I might have bought that camera instead of the GH5.

The GH5 also has a dual I.S. feature and it works very, very well with a limited number of lenses from Panasonic. Using just the in body stabilization is very, very good as well. I've been using it with several Olympus zooms and several current Panasonic primes and find it to be in the same class, overall, as the Olympus EM-5.2.

The stabilization in both the RX10ii + iii, as well as the Panasonic FZ2500, is equally good. It's the latest five axis variety and since the lenses are built specifically for the body/sensor system I believe they are able to optimize their I.S. to good effect. 

As we move up the format size in cameras that use in-body image stabilization we get less and less overall effectiveness from their systems. The Sony a6500 is at least a stop or a stop and a half behind the m4:3rds cameras and the Sony A7ii and A7Rii are at least a stop worse off than the a6500. And most of the bigger cameras have yet to incorporate competitive dual body+lens I.S. systems. 

All bets are off when it comes to comparing systems that only use lens stabilization. For one thing not every lens you want to use is stabilized. But when done well the lens stabilization can be quite good. 

When I worked with Nikon I bit the bullet and bought an 18-200mm lens even though I knew it was not a spectacular performer optically. I bought it because there were situations when I really needed stabilization and would not have time to use lights or a tripod. That lens delivered a stable shooting platform and was an eye opener. Rock steady shots but humdrum optical performance. A trade off. 

Not so with the newest Panasonic and Olympus flagship systems. You get rock solid stability and great optical performance from their Pro series lenses. My least satisfying image stabilization experiences have been with cameras like the Sony a850 and a900 full frame cameras. They gave, at most two stops of stabilization (which is nothing to sneeze at compared to ancient times) but with some lenses they seemed to perform with less enthusiasm, delivering maybe a stop different at longer focal lengths. 

My (unproven) assumption is that it's all about overall sensor size, acceleration and physics. The smaller the mass you have to move and the smaller the distance you have to move it the higher the performance is going to be and the more accurate the corrections will be. 

All things being equal (but they never are) logic would suggest that one inch sensors should be the easiest to imbue with the highest stability performance followed by the m4:3rds and then the APS-C sensors and finally, in next to last place, the full frame sensor cameras. In last place would certainly be the medium format cameras whose only advantage is sensor size and, when dealing with camera motion whose biggest disadvantage is.... sensor size. 

1200+ images shot handheld with the GH5 and some Olympus Pro lenses last night show me that the system is highly competent and workable for me. If I wanted the best offered anywhere I'd be putting those Olympus lenses on the front of an EM-1.2 camera body and never look back. But I.S. is only one factor among many in the pursuit of good photography. Compromises abound. That's what makes it all so interesting. 

(For Ed). 

An evening at the theatre, watching the tech rehearsal for "Singing in the Rain" and learning just what the GH5 is capable of...

Last night I had the opportunity to document the technical rehearsal for "Singing in the Rain" at Zach Theatre. I really like using new cameras in the theater environment as I bring them into the fold in order to understand how they work in what I think is a challenging situation. The lighting on stage sometimes changes minute by minute, and those changes include shifts in color as well as intensity. In addition to lighting changes the actors are constantly moving and I have no control or ability to really anticipate changing expressions and gestures. It's a situation wherein you have to capture stuff you like, in the moment, and then edit toward the best stuff in post. 

In order to make it even more rigorous a test I sometimes deny myself the "crutch" of using the raw file format so I can get a sense of how well the cameras make Jpeg files. It's a bit idiosyncratic but then I never held myself out as a paragon of logic or consistency....

Our rehearsal started at 7pm. I got to the theater a half hour earlier so I could say "hello" to the many people on the technical staff that I've worked with for years. I also wanted to sit quietly and set up my two cameras at, potentially, the optimum settings.

I used two Panasonic GH5 camera bodies and two Olympus lenses. It seems counterintuitive but I think the two Olympus Pro lenses that I ended up buying are a perfect match for the GH5s. When I owned the GH4 cameras I chose (among other ancillary lenses) the two f2.8 zooms from that system; the 12-35mm and the 35-100mm. They were both good as well as smaller and lighter than my current  choices. I think the Olympus Pro 12-100mm is a better choice for all around photography than the 12-35 by dint of the much greater coverage on the long end. I also think it is a sharper and contrastier lens system than either of the Panasonic lenses I owned. Being able to cover most of the focal lengths I use in day to day practice is a time saver and means that most of the time I am wearing only one camera over my shoulder rather than two.

I bought the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro mostly to use as an adjunct to the 12-100mm in theater and corporate event photography where I might need both the one stop of extra speed and the extra 50mm of reach. While I found myself using the 12-100mm a lot last night I am happiest with the images I shot with the longer zoom. It's not that the files are "better" or sharper it's that they seem a touch cleaner and more detailed. I'd be perfectly happy with the shorter lens but there were a few shots, taken at the longer focal lengths, that just made me smile.

So, that was the gear inventory. The "kit." Two bodies and two lenses. Both set up nearly identically. 

I selected the finest Jpeg setting at the largest file size of 20 megapixels. I chose the standard profile for each camera and left all the parameter settings at their presets. zero, zero, zero. 

I set the camera with the 40-150mm on it to ISO 800 and the camera with the 12-100mm on it to ISO 1600 to compensate for the one stop slower maximum aperture. After consulting with the lighting designer I settled on 4200K as the color setting for the general illumination. The follow spot is cooler and some of the side spots are warmer. There's nothing much you can do about a wash of light that's homogeneously red, blue or magenta. With Herculean efforts you might be able to render a neutral color but it would be a fool's errand to try. After all, they are called accent lights for a reason. 

I tried not to use the shutter under 1/125th or above a 1/500th. If I had enough light to reach for 1/500th the logical thing to do would be to turn down the ISO. 

I shot both of the lenses wide open for the entire evening. On a wide stage shot I was hanging out near the 12-20mm range and figured that depth of field would cover any small disparity between camera and subject distance. At the longer focal lengths I was trying to grab tighter, one person shots and would depend on focusing accuracy of the system for best results. 

In earlier tests I found that the screens were brighter than the calibration on my studio monitor or my Atomos Ninja Flame monitor and knew that setting the brightness one or two notches below zero would help me push up the exposures in a good way. I also enable the histogram and put it in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, consulting it often.

While I had trepidation that the GH5 would stumble in lower light situations I found that anything I shot at ISO 800 or less was as perfect as anything I would expect to see out of any previous camera I had used to shoot this kind of work. At ISO 1600 I started to see (when viewing at 100%) the wavering hand of noise reduction impinge on overall image quality. It manifested itself in overly plastic skin tones and some harsher sharpening of bigger detail. After seeing this I tested setting the camera profile differently. I decreased sharpness by one notch under the default and brought down the noise reduction as well. With noise reduction I experimented with one and two notches under the default and I found that one notch under was enough to make the files perfectly acceptable to me while not requiring me to do anything in post production while a two notch correction required a bit of noise reduction fine tuning in post. 

I tried several different focusing options with the two cameras. I started with my usual: A custom configured AF pattern consisting of four smaller squares in the center of the frame, driven by S-AF. This method nailed every single shot I pointed the camera and lens at, and without any hesitation. It was much quicker and more certain than my Sony A7Rii or A7ii. 

Emboldened I thought I'd try out the methodology that seems to be the preference of many other photographers: To choose all the focusing squares across the frame (wide) and to set the focus to C-AF. Amazingly the camera locked on to the closest thing in the frame and worked predictably. I didn't notice any time lag at all and anytime the camera made an (infrequent) mistake it was because I started out pointing it at the wrong object. Following one actor as they walked across the stage was remarkably consistent and well locked in. 

Since these cameras are both highly competent video cameras I strayed from still imaging from time to time to shoot video snippets that I'll use in the video I am editing of conversations with the director of this play and the choreographer. I thought it would be really nice to have good b-roll of the lead actor actually tap dancing in the rain. When the stage hands turned on the rain device and we got a downpour on stage I switched to 4K video at 30 fps and followed the action. Again, the camera and the 40-150mm were able to follow the dancer (or his feet ) as he tapped his way across the stage under a convincing shower of rain. It's really beautiful footage and you'll get to see it sometime soon. 

We photographers are often given to hyperbole. Smaller format shooters would have us believe that their particular choice of camera is so special that it can transform the laws of physics and deliver performance equal to full frame (35mm) sensors across all performance parameters. Conversely full frame shooters would have you believe that anything smaller than their (35) frame size destines a user to end up with files that are nothing but mush and crap. The truth lies somewhere else. The scale isn't a linear one with full frame to 100%, APS-C at 75% and micro four thirds at 50%. The band of technical behavior and results is much tighter than that. All the cameras are in the 90%s. And there are always many compromises in each direction. As science and industry get better at solving imaging problems the ability to apply computational processing is aggressively flattening the field and reducing the differences we used to see between formats. 

I'm sure I will not be able to blow up these images to sizes as large as I would if using full res files from an A7rii but I'm equally sure that I can get close; and the reality is that either camera will make prints that are large enough so that the optimum viewing distance veils any substantive differences in overall quality. Fast lenses on small formats can equal the look of slower lenses on bigger formats. If f1.4 equals f2.8 (m4:3 versus FF) and we have f1.4 available then we gain two stops of shutter speed or two steps of ISO. Stuff works out. 

After carefully examining about 1200 photographs and six minutes of 4K video I'm happy to say that I feel comfortable using the new cameras in just about any situation. The secret is to understand how they can be set to ensure optimum operation. Used well just about any modern camera can excel. But few can match the GH5 for it's versatility (vis-a-vis the combination of video and stills).