GH5 Low Light Video Tips // How to get the best LOW LIGHT Video with your Panasonic GH5 

Very useful tips, Caleb! This will definitely help me shoot my short horror film.

wedding videographer here, thanks for the video! Very useful tips, especially one unsing NAT instead of CineD ! I use the 12-35mm lens / 2.8 and can recommend it. It saved me many times in low light situations.

I was impressed with how well it actually did in the low light

Great video! One thing I've been doing on my GH5 when I'm doing static shots of night cityscapes or whatever is to use VFR but use lower frame rates, either 12fps or even down as low as 2fps, with similar shutter speeds. You can get a great well exposed shot even in very dark conditions, as long as there is minimal movement. Works as a good timelapse technique too, with blurry movement and light trails if you like that sort of thing

Low-light tip: Add a light! I know that goes against the term "low light", but most LED lights have a dimmer, so you can tweak the light to just augment the available light with a little bit of fill.

Your a good teacher. Learning lots about GH5. Relying more on wave form now.

Regards from Stockholm! I'm a novice with the GH5, picked up a used one for 850 usd. I got a used Metabones 0.64 and connected an old Nikon F 1.4 50mm with it. I believe the lens is from the '80's and got great results with it! I was stunned to see how much light it pulled in! Someone who knows what they're doing would get fabulous results! There are no electronics with the Nikon Metabones, you have to do it all yourself. I got the idea from a Finnish guy. Joo Works is the name if his channel. I used CineV. Love your work!

Still shocks me that you only have 1.8k subs!!! Your quality and content is amazing! You are very dedicated! I've been watching a while now and always it is the 1st thing that I check before the content. Kinda annoying and besides your beard deserve a million subs alone!!! I mean c'mon people can we please comment on that beard ? It's SOOOOOOOOOOO good like it deserves a an upload on it's own, just really needed to say that! Well fucking done on the beard! Anyway great tips and also I will say that 16mm f1.4 is amazing and like someone else mentioned about the autofocus it really changes alot for me about the GH5 I feels like it never had a problem with autofocus now, Really clean lens and good feel and weight to it! Caleb it is so nice to see you dedicated to helping the GH5 users out there in 2020 it is gaining so much popularity and many are buying this amazing camera in 2020. Have a nice day thanks for video, soon the subs shall come! Idk why so low maybe coz you a naturalist ? 😂😂😂🤔

Thnks for the input on the vLog! Great videos! Love watching your stuff!🤓👍

Cheers bro, lifesaver. I was struggling with a VLog low light studio shoot until I watched this

Thank you for this! Very useful tips I’ve been looking forward to hearing!

First: great Video and good Tips man. Especially with the use of natural profile. I personally often finding myself using cinev Profile and get good results with that. Second: there is one more kinda like more untypical tip i can give that Make. Art. Now tought me: Play around with the shutter angle. If your shot is kinda steady u could easily pass the 180 degree rule and get up to 240 or more and still get great looking Images. U should watch his Video of the low light testing of bmcpc4k where He was able to shoot with only moonlight in the night. Incredible work. And even the gh5 is not able to go above 3200 ISO without looking like garbage, u should definitely test IT out.

Caleb, thanks so much for all your tips dude! Very much appreciated! Cheerz from Switzerland

Neat Video has saved me time and time again in post when I have to shoot in low light with the GH5. It adds a lot of rendering time but it entirely removes the grain you'll find when using higher ISO. Thanks for the tips. I always shoot in V-Log so I'm going to give the Natural Profile a shot when shooting in low light.

I just stumbled upon your channel. Very informative but without the annoying fidgety attitute most youtubers have. Subscribed! :)

Very interesting observations re Natural picture profile. I shoot that all the time on my GX80 and also think it's the best picture profile

Great video! I did watch another video all about treating low light videography in a more staged capacity, rather just expecting to be able capture things as they are.

Also, never, never, NEVER use 8 bit, 4:2:0 modes if you can help it and instead use 10 bit, 4:2:2 and All-I compression codec modes (yes, this requires bigger and faster storage devices - SD cards or SSD drives if using an external recorder - as a necessity, but they are absolutely worth it). You need every nth degree of video data to work with in post to get the cleanest and best image you can if you want to deliver your cinematography efforts at semi or pro levels. There isn't a heck of a lot of latitude with these cheaper, small sensor cameras, so keep that in mind.

I pony’d up the $300 for Davinci Resolve Studio and use the noise reduction tool. It has changed my life. But I know not to depend on it entirely, so great video!

The Sigma 16mm f1.4 is another great lens (not only for low light scenes) with a usable autofocus. I use it mainly at f1.7 for more sharpness and if exposed to the brightness like reality (not trying to make from the camera a night vision gadget) I never need to go above ISO 1600 (usually ISO400-800). Further, I made opposing experience with Cinelike D. I find it the best color profile for low light scenes. And if you light up the scene a little bit, you’ll get a great result without any noise (for example my garden at night here: s. from 02:23: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-g9jQvQO3NKQ.html )

O just buy a GH5 for my B Cam off my other Canon R6, your videos just convinced me to buy a GH5, I am impressed with this camera.

low light natural color profile leave the contrast at 0 and not -5, if you reduce the contrast you will introduce a hell of noise. edit : and obviously if not many mouvement in the shoot you can lower the shutterspeed at 1/25 for 25p for exemple.

Great video! idynamic low and Natural Profile this is the best setting for low light

yes, the struggle is there with the low light situation, i had the problem as well when i first using this gh5, i feel, why this is happening ??? why in the low light situation, the gh5 quite bad? (SORRY), but, same as you do Caleb, there have a trick and compesation when we must shoot in low light, not as much flexible as sony, but its There and possible with GH5 for shooting low light. Quite bit struggle at first because i'm using Sony a7s before GH5. Now, i always bought a small portable LED light (Pocket size) everywhere, for help me, make a better video result when i must shoot in ISO 1250 or more. GH5 need little bit "injection" light. ahahaha. Nice Share Caleb, thank you...

For fast EF lens owners, the metabones or Viltrox speed booster is the way to go. If going native the Olympus pro 1.2 lenses are a winners but maybe too pricey for some!🙏🏾

Great video Caleb! Nothing like good and motivational content for gives us courage to survive in pandemic days.

As someone about to buy the gh5mk2 your videos are invaluable (subbed by the way). As all the footage will ultimately be put through a video editor, do you have tips regarding rendering or does the camera do a lot of the work internally? Great videos and thank you.

Standard PP @ ISO 1600. That king of grain you really want to see, you never hope for it and it's there. Sharpen -5 / NR -5 no other tweek.

I don’t get my iso in my GH5 above 400 because it’s the native. And i try to use my 1.8 vintage lens and use more TUBE RGB 30cm lights. And i use Cine-D. And i like the image that gives. Like the dark night rises. Lot of shadows and a good soft lighting without noises. ❤

Caleb! Great vid! Painting with light is supppper important. I’m finding HLG to be great(not so much in low light) but as far as retaining highlights and shadows, just as good as log in SOME cases. Very informative video, just curious if you’d ever make a vid on how you got started/ got more clients and your approach

Would be nice to see a video comparation between GH5 and G9 after the firmware update they received. Mostly on video specs. Any chance?

Nice video bro. Keep on slaying them.

I’ve shot at iso 5.000 with the 25mm f/1.7 and with Neat video I actually got surprisingly good results...the image wasn’t soft and the noise was not much distracting ...

VERY BAD ADVICE regarding V-Log! Using V-Log in conjunction with noise reduction in post (especially with NEAT Video) yields the cleanest results, specifically because the noise is more consistently visible across the image, which helps the noise reduction algorithm function more accurately, preventing the typical noise-reduction artifacts. My normal image pipeline with the GH5 is: Shoot V-Log at 10bit 4:2:2 400mbps, apply noise reduction on the log image, make whatever additional adjustments, then convert from log to rec.709, either with a technical LUT or as part of the final step, which is retexture with FilmConvert. *(The retexturing is important in order to avoid the introduction of banding during an H.264 export). When shooting in V-Log, the noise reduction algorithm can remove the noise with very minimal loss of detail, even from footage shot in the camera's highest ISO of 10,800. If you shoot in any other picture profile, the noise-reduction algorithm isn't able to function as well and will introduce artifacts. Fast lenses are not always a good solution, especially when you need to keep in focus a deeper area (for example, keeping two actors in focus, when they are in two different distances from the camera, like in the front and back seats of a car). Lighting, which is often the best remedy, is not always the best solution, especially when you want to expose for an existing city-scape for example. In these cases, you are going to need to bump up the ISO to around 1600 - 2500 iso (depending on lens aperture, frame rate, and lighting conditions), and if you do it using V-Log, you will be able to clean the noise that gets introduced in-camera, with little to no loss in detail. If you shoot the way you suggest here (under-expose in lower ISO, using a lossy higher contrast picture profile), you lose those details forever, no matter what you do in post. Your advice is fine for someone who is not willing to do any post-processing, but then, such a person would not be interested in log workflow anyway. If you titled you video "How to get the best low-light video in-camera with no post-processing", then fine, but as is, your video is WRONG, misguided, and MISLEADING! I appreciate you taking the time to guide people and provide information, but as a professional, using the GH5 for years on many productions, I must tell you that the information in this particular video is absolute nonsense, and instead of providing guidance, it is spreading misinformation.

ciao Amico mio! secondo me,ancora oggi è la miglior camera x video! thank for video

tHANKS FOR THE tIPS!

I have filmed in cinema-d without any problem, the same with HLG ... and of course, with a suitable color correction. if you have a correct white balance, the job is much easier to do. y por supuesto el sigma 18-35

Thanks for the tips!

Low Light is certainly not a GH5 forte that's for sure. I am a big fan of the dark and grungy look so the times I have done low light work I usually end up making everything grainy and grungy looking. There are a ton of abandoned building in Buffalo that I love to explore so low light come up a lot for me. Thanks for the tips Caleb.

Hi caleb thank you for this new video! Can you tell me if the sigma 18-35 still the best combo on gh5 with speebooster? For day and low light? Thank for your work! You make us better with your vid! 😎

Take a shot for every time he says "low light situations"

Hi watched again!! we need low light killer for gh6 xD

When it comes to vfr, I just rather keep the shutter speed at 1/50ss instead of using the shutter angle. So I can just manipulate when I want in normal speed vs slow mo when I'm editing.

Nice one Caleb, as I said before here in the comments your footage in 800 ISO or more looks great! I’m not confident in using over 500 ISO because I see some noise already, do you know why? Am I doing something wrong? Ah, what about the idynamic range function of the GH5? Are you planning to make a video on it? (Or maybe you already did, I’m new to the channel)

i think part about shutter angle at 5:51 is wrong.. increasing shutter angle makes my video brighter, not darker. increasing fps in VFR makes it darker, ur correct about that part and the fact that slow mo is bad in low light. so all things considered it seem that in low light 24 fps with 360 shutter angle seems to be a way to go for a least noisy video. if im wrong please correct me, im trying to figure it out.

Better prime fast lens , zoom lenses no good in low light.

Bro talk about the in lut Into camera . Many ppl don't even know that u can put your lut into the camera and see how it will look when u grade

Great Video! Did you film that Video in natural with your settings from your video about the natural profile? And which lut did you use?

I want to buy a GH5. Am I wasting my money since it's an old camera? However, I don't believe in age. If it performs really well, I'll buy it. Or do you have other camera recommendations? Also aside from the nice video quality of GH5, I wan t to get GH5 in Marketplaces to save in cost.

Awesome video

Perhaps a silly question but what if you want the speedboost but without having to change the lens adapter type? So for example if I have an Olympus MFT lens for my GH5 but want the speed boost, which one would I get? I am brand new to the GH5 so trying to figure all this stuff out. I know which one to get if I want to use my Canon lenses, but no idea what to use if my lens is already MFT. Never used these Metabones products, first time I heard of them was when I started researching the GH5. Thanks!

The wave form still works in low light. You just have to adjust how you judge it. You're looking for graphic representation where you want to see something. It's just not going to be 70%. Also slow your shutter.

Great videos! is that mosaic wall at 2:14 in Sioux Falls South Dakota? If not, I’m crazy. Edit: DUDE! Do you live in Sioux Falls? I stopped the video immediately after I saw the mosaic wall because I thought for sure that was in Sioux Falls and then after I posted my comment I realized that a ton of this is filmed in Sioux Falls LOL, I kind of jumped the gun. I live in Sioux Falls and I also shoot with the amazing GH5.

Great video!!! I am wondering what does the noise reduction function do in the picture profile setting?

Great tips! Why do you prefer the natural profile over standard on the Gh5?

Random question my camera seems to be stuck at 3x and I can't get out of zoom mode or switch back to 1x or regular zooming in and out doesn't work any thing you can help out ?

This look is great! What lens did you use? Thx- love your channel

Good stuff. I guess it's not too applicable to me because I have the gh5s. But I can always use these tricks anyway to get better results, no matter the camera. My first Panasonic camera was a Ag 15p shoulder mout miniDV, and it sucked in lowlight. That was 2001 though...

Hey Caleb, I was looking into buying a GH5+Atomos Ninja for when I’m a two-three man crew, but I’m concerned about the autofocus system. My style is very run and gun, almost always with zoom lenses & vintage glass. Was wondering if you had any tips regarding focus, or if there’s a similar camera that could meet my needs. Thank you!

I Need So Much Help... Picking Up Photography and trying not to give up!!

I was thinking of getting a GH5, or a GH5s. I plan to use the camera more for video than for photography, and I will be out in the field shooting tourism style video, so often I will be using it handheld. I know the GH5 has stabilization, but the GH5s does not. The GH5s works better in low light, comes with V-log, and some better specs on video. If I get a lens that has stabilization, will it make the GH5s good enough in regard to stabilization? If so, what lens do you recommend for that purpose? Someday I may get a Ronin gimbal... but not in the near future. Or... Should I get the GH5 and then a sigma lens with a viltrox speed booster? Will that handle the low light issues of the GH5 and thus make it the better choice? Based on what you have been saying in this video, a lot of the video features and profiles cannot be used on the GH5, when shooting in low light. Seems to me that sort of negates the camera as an all-around useful video camera... UNLESS - you tell me that the sigma lens with speedbooster will make it possible to use all those features... Will it? P.s If I get a GH5s, and a stabilizing lens, will it still benefit me somehow to have a speedbooster, or will I no longer need that item? Sorry for all the questions. Thank you for the help. I am new to all this and want to get the best tool that will support my needs, a few years into the future, before I grow enough to need (and can afford) another camera (like maybe the GH6 that's overdue to be released).

I'm using a GH5S I shot it at 400 ISO in 10bit 180 degrees with F.5.6 with really bright LED lights, but I still got noise on my shots, especially in shadows or certain colors. someone suggested ditching the 180-degree shutter and adjusted as I need to remove digital noise artifacts. they say the GH5S is great for low light but my experience has been the opposite. can you suggest a setting that works with less amount of noise?

The Gh5s is also a king of low light

I recently shot a live music gig in a low light bar with 2x GH5S. I brought 3 LED panel lights, but as I roamed with a gimbal I passed over bight areas like the shiny cymbals, and dark areas like the African pianist. The auto exposure metering jumped in quite heavy steps as I panned around, as quick as 2 PAL frames - and it needs a lot of repair with Lumetri key frames. I know I can lock the exposure, but when I've got a black piano player in a black jacket and a reflective drum kit just 6ft apart, I need the exposure to change. But how do I get the level change to slow down to a 1sec fade rather than a 2 frame snap? (like the way you can customise the AF to be slower or less responsive to avoid focus hunting with every tiny movement)

hey I know it is offtopic, but would you recommend me purchasing v-log for my GH5 ?

Surely in low light, the native ISO of 400 is better than 800? Interesting that when talking about using a wide open lens, you just skip the massive expense of the speed booster?

What if i put frames to 24fps and apply optical flow for those smooth slomo shots? Will that work?

What editing software do you use? I get good results with Davinci's denoiser even with iso3200. And I might get also Neat Video. I heard some good things about that plug in

Hey bro do you have video and camera setting to download pls.. Thanks in advance

Hello, I'm French so sorry for my English. I own a gh5 with a 12-35 f2.8 but I am forced to climb very high in the iso to have a good brightness at night which brings grain. So with this lens what are the best settings to do not to exceed 800 iso and what image profile thank you

I’ve only ever used V-Log on my GH5. Will try Natural Profile & Cine-V for night shoot tests. A question: do I still need to add Rec709 to footage in post when shooting with Natural Profile & Cine-V?

I don't get how you shoot at f1.3 with a f1.8 lens lol ,what am I missing?

Which one is better for video Gh5 or Gh5s ?

Whats up y'all. I just tested something because I really wondered that you shoot in Standard profile. I compared it with the HLG, wich got reccomended for obvious reasons in another video. I did the same shot with HLG and STD, though STD looks brighter at first, HLG is much much more forgiving with noise. Bumped the HLG up to the level of STD and scaled both up to 1000%. As I guessed, HLG has some noise, yes, but STD does so too. And it is really really nasty and greenish, although the scene was grey. So yeah - do not use STD, use HLG.

I own a canon 50mm 1.2 on a ghs and I don’t even know why in watched this video

Is GH5ii better for low light?

I literally only use my gh5 as a webcam now haha

First!! Boom!

I came to watch this video again..just to give it slither view

You can't get "good" low light results with these cameras, relatively speaking. Other options are just inherently so much better.

Great tutorial! Been using the GH5 in Asia (HongKong, Vietnam & Singapore) with VLOG in Low Light and was - coming from a GH4 - pretty amazed by it. Sure its a bit noisy but i think that noise give a good flair. I mostly exposed using my eye and tried to get the exposure assists as best as possible. Shot in 1080p60 in 10bit mode. You can check it out if you want. :)

1000 iso is ok

I think you hold the record of saying "GH5" in any video.

HLG ETTR

Great upload! I think you'd enjoy my content too. Keep up with your great work!

Dude are u high ? There is no 1.3 Sigma wtf , the lens u are using is 1.8 , I said ok is a problem with the description he just did it wrong and didnt realize, but in one point in the video u even say "1.3" , pls wake up

Why oh why do you want bright images in a dark environment? Completely useless video sorry