How does the GH5 low light compared with the C100 mk1

[Dan Burnap]

I own a c100 and am very interested in the GH5 for 4k ability. I'm wondering to what degree the GH5 will struggle in low light situations compared to the c100.

I know the Sony's will be better in low light but i want a camera that wont overheat. Smaller form factor is ideal as well so no FS5 either


Thanks

[Robert Lane]

The GH5 is not known for it's low-light capabilities. Sony, Canon and even Nikon full-frame DSLR's are better in this realm by far.

BUT, the GH5 is the *only* DSLR that shoots true DCI 4K and, now at 400 MB/s, ALL-I and in 10-bit! To get those kind of specs in any other 4K-capable camera you'd have to spend 10K more than the GH5. Not even the upcoming EVA-1 from Panny specs out like this. (At least, not yet.)

So it's like any other tool, if you know the limitations then it's a joy to work with.

I recently did a test (with firmware 2.1) for low-light outdoor with zero fill light to see for myself exactly how badly the GH5 handled extreme low light. Overall, not bad.

Here's a few screen grabs at 1080P shot in B&W mode in-camera. Some notes:

- They're not terribly sharp. For one, I didn't bring an external monitor to focus, and using the shallow DOF on my Yashica ML 50mm f1.4 (shot at f/2) it was easy to miss focus on that tiny built-in screen. Plus it didn't help that I was only using a monopod for support. AND, that damned GH5 monitor dimming issue didn't go away with the new firmware; after a few seconds it dims which makes it even MORE difficult to get critical focus. (WTF Panny, wake up on this one!!)

- The GH5 is at least 25% percent LESS sharp in 1080P modes than 4K, which makes sense since the camera is down-sampling from a much larger on-chip image size.

- I was shooting VFR (variable frame-rates to get in-camera slow-mo) which restricts you to 8-bit format only, so there's less information available on each pixel.

In images 1 and 2, ISO varied from 1200 to 2400, which I found totally acceptable. However 3 and 4 I was pushing ISO above 6400 - even to 128,000 and it got nasty. Of course!

(The in-car scenes were shot on a Nikon 28mm f/2.8 @ f/4.)

As I've said many times, there's no such thing as a "low light" camera. Every good-looking scene you see in commercials, feature films etc are ALL done with lighting support of some type. So if you understand how to light for night time scenes, the GH5 will blow you away with it's 4K imagery.