Panasonic Lumix GH5S review – in pictures

Panasonic Lumix GH5S review – in pictures

The Lumix GH5S is a mirrorless compact system camera designed with movie making in mind, delivering not only 4K video at a silky smooth 60fps, but HDR and more. In fact, unlike the vanilla Lumix GH5, stills shooting coming a very distant second in the list of priorities. The asking price for all that? A hefty £2,200 (US$2,500), plus whatever you shell out on lenses – which sounds like a heck of a lot for a camera with a 10 megapixel sensor. So has Panasonic created a worthy tool, or a pricey bauble?

Design: pocket battleship

Shaped like a classic DSLR that’s had an encounter with a shrink ray, the GH5S is something of a pocket battleship – although it won’t actually fit in your pocket. Despite making room for a decent-sized OLED electronic viewfinder, a 3in flip-and-swivel touchscreen, pleasingly chunky right-hand grip and a bounty of buttons and dials, it’s small and light enough to carry around all day without giving your a sore neck – at least when paired with the 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.

Design: control on tap

The physical controls give the user’s hands fast and easy access to almost any mode and setting they could want, with dedicated dials for drive and shooting modes (the latter being lockable with a button, to prevent it getting accidentally twisted in the middle of an important recording session), three adjustment wheels, a thumb stick and five customisable function buttons. The OLED viewfinder, meanwhile, is brilliantly bright and detailed – a real joy to use.

Features: video star

The GH5S takes the basis laid out by the excellent GH5 but halves the number of megapixels in the Micro Four-Thirds sensor, while increasing its sensitivity for improved low light video capture. The new setup gives the GH5S juicier video skills than its cousin: it can record 4096 x 2160 4K footage at 50/60fps and puts no limit on the recording time. Want to make that 90-minute, one-take movie? Here’s your camera.

Features: still good for stills

It’s a setup crafted to attract serious filmmakers who might otherwise opt for a Canon or Sony camera, but some thought has been spared for stills shooters. There’s the usual crop of 4K stills shooting modes (which includes a 60fps burst mode), as well as full-size continuous shooting at up to 11fps. But overall, it’s clear that the main innovation focus here has been on video, not stills.

Image quality: 10-bit stunner

Stills photos demonstrate good colour reproduction but little in the way of impressive detail or dynamic range. Video, though, is an absolute revelation: watching its fresh-from-the-camera 10-bit C4K footage and Hybrid Log Gamma HDR material on a TV, its clear how far the movie capabilities of consumer cameras have come in less than a decade. The 10-bit footage leaps out with clean tonal shifts and realistic detail, with no signs of compression anywhere – and that’s before it’s even been colour graded.

Panasonic Lumix GH5S verdict

The GH5S delivers so much for filmmakers to get excited about. It’s a combination that can’t be found anywhere else, crammed into a compact body that’s weatherproof and easy to use. It’s not a great stills camera but, looking at the alternatives, there’s no better small camera out there for videographers right now.