📷 Favorite GH5 filmmaking gear
The Panasonic GH5 has amazing specs, but is it the best camera for wedding filmmaking? Heads up: this link goes to the newer Panasonic GH7. And how does it compare to the Sony a7S II?
This camera is currently the darling of the wedding filmmaking world, because for the price it has features you genuinely cannot get without spending significantly more money. From a video quality standpoint it’s phenomenal. So it figures I should talk about it.
Worth being upfront: this isn’t my camera, it’s a rental. I shoot with the a7S II and I love it. A few months ago my friend Taylor, who helps run a wedding videography company out of Austin, Texas, asked if I wanted to second shoot a wedding with him on a GH5. In Portugal. I said yes to all of those things very quickly, and now I’ve spent a full wedding day with this camera and have enough to review it honestly.
One note on perspective: I’m reviewing this from a professional wedding filmmaking standpoint. If you shoot weddings, events, or anything run and gun where you only get one chance, this is aimed squarely at you. If you shoot corporate, studio work, or indie films it should still help, but that’s not the lens I’m using.
Build Quality
I really like it. It’s built like a tank, with a ton of buttons and dials, and two things in particular stand out.
First, this camera is built for an adult hand. You can hold it without a battery grip and your pinky isn’t dangling off the bottom. On the a7S II, without the grip, your little finger has nowhere to go and it gets uncomfortable. I buy the grip anyway so I don’t deal with it, but it’s a real point in the GH5’s favor that you don’t have to.
Second, the flip-out screen. Oh my gosh. It rotates all the way around so you can watch yourself while recording, which the a7S II simply cannot do. If you vlog at all, buy this camera for that feature alone.
In-Body Image Stabilization Will Make You Throw Away Your Monopod
Once you’ve shot on a camera with IBIS you will never willingly go back, because any lens you put on it becomes a stabilized lens.
- Need a tripod or monopod shot? Hold the camera still. The camera removes the shake.
- Forgot your slider? Sway the camera side to side while holding it steady and you get the parallax without the rail.
- Want a gimbal shot where you’re running after the couple through a field? I’m sorry, that’s too far. It won’t take your footfalls out.
For the record, the a7S II has had IBIS for years and I love it there too. The more cameras that ship with it, the better.
The Menus Don’t Suck
We’re never going to get a perfect menu system, because manufacturers keep adding features and features need somewhere to live. But Panasonic has done one of the best organization jobs I’ve seen. Color coding between sections, a touch screen, and, crucially, dedicated video headings, so all your video settings are in one place and you’re not digging around going “where is the frame rate, I’m missing shots.”
Even better is the custom menu, where you park your most-used settings up front so the obscure ones stop being obscure. And the camera actually explains what settings do, in plain English, or as plain as camera settings ever get.
Sixteen Custom Buttons
Sixteen. That is insane. There’s even one hidden down on the body I didn’t know existed until I went looking.
And Panasonic, in their unlimited genius, lets you start recording with the shutter button. Thank goodness. Finally. Meanwhile I’m over here on the a7S II burning a custom button on record because the shutter isn’t available in video mode, which, you know I’m in video mode, just let me press the button.
I only actually assigned four:
- Fn1: punch in while recording, to check focus, because I pull a lot of focus manually.
- Fn2: the level, so handheld shots stay straight.
- Fn3: the teleconverter, which instantly gives you a 1.4x zoom in 4K and a 2.7x zoom in 1080p. Panasonic crops the sensor to do it and claims no image deterioration. In 1080p at the back of a church, you can count the groom’s nose hairs.
- Fn4: the monitoring LUT, so V-Log doesn’t look flat on the screen and I can actually judge white balance.
Between the custom menu, the function settings, and the dedicated white balance and ISO buttons already on the body, I basically never went into the menus.
Synchro Scan: Never Fight Flickering Lights Again
This one’s buried and it’s brilliant. Normally your shutter speed steps in fixed increments: 1/50, 1/60, up to 1/125 and beyond. Turn on Synchro Scan and suddenly you’re adjusting in tiny fractions: 50.1, 50.2, 50.3.
Why does that matter? Because if you shoot weddings, at some point in your life you will walk into a room whose cheap lights are out of sync with your camera, and you’ll get flickering or rolling bands across your footage. With Synchro Scan you nudge the shutter until the banding disappears, in camera, on the spot.
My Biggest Frustration With The GH5
I like shooting off saved custom presets: C1 for 4K 24, C2 for 4K 60, and C3 hiding three more slots of its own. At a wedding, flipping between those instantly matters enormously.
Here’s the problem. Whenever you’re on a custom preset and you turn the camera off and back on, it reloads that preset, wiping any changes you made.
At the Portugal wedding the bride and groom were getting ready in adjacent rooms, so we ran back and forth all morning: her makeup, his groomsmen, her hair, him getting dressed. Different white balance, different aperture, different exposure in each room. I’d set the camera for the groom’s room, then switch it off to save battery, then switch it back on still standing in the groom’s room, and my settings had reverted to whatever was saved back in the bride’s room. So I’d be re-dialing white balance and aperture while moments happened in front of me.
Every other camera I have ever used, including the a7S II, remembers the last settings you had. This is the only one that doesn’t. To be fair, it only affects the custom memory presets: in creative video mode the camera remembers everything normally. But if you want presets, you have to remember to overwrite them every single time before powering down.
Battery Life
Good, and better than the a7S II. I’d put a GH5 battery at roughly 1.5 times a Sony one.
But not the mind-blowing figure the internet led me to expect. I’ve read posts from people who shot a whole day on two batteries. Between establishing shots, both prep rooms, and a ceremony of about thirty minutes, I’d burned through three and wasn’t even halfway. Some of that is on me: once I discovered the preset-reset problem I started leaving the camera powered on for five and ten minute stretches rather than risk it, and that has a cost. I’m giving you the context so you can weigh it yourself rather than just taking my word against everyone else’s. The battery grip smooths most of it out.
Resolution, Frame Rate, And 10-Bit Color
This is the good stuff, and it’s the reason most people want this camera. 4K up to 60fps. 1080p up to 180fps. Firmware 2.0 also added 6K, but in anamorphic, so unless you own anamorphic glass you’re capped at 4K.
We shot all the couple’s time together after the ceremony, sun going down behind them, at 4K 60. The crispness blew me away.
To put it in perspective: at the time, a Canon that shoots 4K 60 meant $6,000 for a 1D X Mark II, and a Sony that shoots 4K 60 meant $7,500 for an FS7. This camera is two grand.
And 4K at 24 and 30 looks even better than the 60, because at those frame rates the GH5 records 10-bit color. More color information means more room to push a grade before anything falls apart, and paired with V-Log it gives you a flat picture that turns genuinely gorgeous once you grade it.
Dual SD Card Slots
Two slots, which for a one-shot event is the difference between a bad day and a catastrophe. It also opens up nice workflow options, like sending time lapses to one card and everything else to the other so neither fills up at the wrong moment.
Lenses, And The 2x Crop
The micro four thirds mount takes an absurd variety of glass. Panasonic, Nikon, Canon, Leica, and with adapters, nearly anything. On this wedding I shot Taylor’s Canon lenses, mostly a 24-70 and a 70-200, adapted with a Metabones Speed Booster.
The a7S II’s E-mount is also very adaptable (I run a Sigma Art with a Nikon mount on mine), but in 4K you’re limited to lenses that cover a full frame sensor, unless you drop to 1080p and crop the sensor.
Which brings us to the controversial part. The GH5 has a 2x crop sensor. Put a 24mm on it and you have a 48mm. All your wide lenses get tighter, all your tight lenses get way tighter.
Why does everyone get worked up about this? Honestly, I think it’s culture. Most of us start on a crop body, mine was a Canon 7D at 1.6x, and everyone we look up to is shooting full frame telling us the bokeh is better and the low light is better and our camera is trash. The whole industry pushes bigger, bigger, bigger. The GH5 walks in and says buy a smaller sensor, which just sounds wrong the first time you hear it.
I don’t think it’s a big deal, because the lens makers know about the crop and build for it. You don’t go buy an 85mm and get stuck with a 170mm. Panasonic makes a 42.5mm that gives you the full frame equivalent of an 85mm. The system accounts for itself.
The Biggest Con: Low Light
Here’s where it hurts. In my unscientific testing, which amounted to shooting clips at a range of ISOs on both bodies and judging by eye what looked equivalent in noise, ISO 1600 on the GH5 looked about like ISO 32000 on the a7S II.
That is an enormous gap, and half of filming a wedding happens after the sun goes down. For a wedding filmmaker that is a big issue, not a footnote. If you buy this camera, buy lights to go with it.
So Where Does Each One Win?
Both of these are big upgrades over most of what’s on the market, and either one will shoot a wedding well.
The GH5 beats the a7S II in daylight and well-lit image quality. Prep in a room with sun coming through the windows, an outdoor ceremony, a reception you’ve brought enough lights to cover: the 10-bit image is unreal. It also wins on slow motion, 4K 60 and 1080p 180 against the Sony’s 1080p 60 and 120.
The a7S II beats the GH5 in low light, and it isn’t close.
Am I Selling My a7S II?
No.
I still believe the Sony a7S II is the ultimate camera for filming weddings. It remembers my settings when I power it off, it’s full frame, the low light performance is ridiculous, and it handles anything I throw at it, light or dark. I plan on shooting with it for the foreseeable future.
But Which Should You Buy?
Buy the GH5 if you shoot a variety of work: YouTube videos, interviews, talking heads, music videos, indie films, with weddings as a supplement rather than the core. The colors are gorgeous and it’s a fantastic camera whenever you have enough lights and a more predictable scenario than a wedding.
Buy the a7S II if the majority of your work and income is weddings. It’s the best at run and gun, and the best at handling the sheer variety of situations a wedding day throws at you.
That said, whenever the a7S III shows up, hopefully with 4K 60 and 10-bit, oh my gosh. I would absolutely love for Sony to build an answer to the GH5. Hasn’t happened yet. We can dream.
Everything Mentioned
- 📷 My favorite filmmaking gear
- 📹 How to enable APS-C / Super 35mm mode on the a7S II
- 💡 How to light your wedding receptions and film better dancing
- 🎨 What the MattFlat picture profile is
- 🌈 White In Revery’s picture profile for the GH5
- 😍 Color graded with WhoisMatt LUTs
- 🎬 My wedding film editing course
- ✌ The Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook Group
- ►► My free guide to booking more wedding clients
- 🎥 One-on-one filmmaker consulting