Panasonic GH5s Low Light Test

I wanted to test out the auto focus and face tracking feature in my new Panasonic GH5s, so i took it for a spin last night. I called up an actor buddy of mine and just gave him some basic direction. I had him pretend that this was the prequel to an old character he played in one of my experimental short films back in the day.

For the sake of this test I did not do any color grading, just some basic color correction so the image was clear.

Autofocus & Face Tracking

Overall I thought the results were okay. I found that sometimes the face tracking would pick up other objects in the background if I was too close to the subject and shooting at a shallow depth of field. The autofocus still seemed to “hunt” for focus while I was walking alongside of the actor or even when I was standing still sometimes.

Things got better the more I played around with settings and sensitivity, but I’m still not 100% confident in it. I think I’ll just have to keep messing around with it until I find that sweet spot for any given situation.

Filming In Low Light With The GH5s

I’m late to the party on this by about a year, but it’s definitely as advertised. I didn’t have any doubts about the low light recording ability in general, but I did want to see how well auto focus on a gimbal would perform.

I chose this location in Marietta because I knew the lighting changed from dim, to high and to dark in certain areas. The color temperature was also all over the place too so that was perfect for me to see how my footage would turn out.