This past summer my Panasonic Lumix colleague Tom Curley and fellow Lumix Luminary Griffin Hammond followed me to Alaska to produce Lumix Stories: Daniel J. Cox. We spent three days documenting brown bears, puffins, and red fox using the new Lumix GH5 camera. I wanted to share the inspiration that makes me so passionate about this new model and the system overall.
Tom and Griffin on the deck of their cabin at Silver Salmon Lodge, Alaska.
I was fortunate to be included in this first round of videos highlighting professional still photographers who are using these new cameras and the Lumix system specifically for still photography. Like the GH4 before it, the GH5 has so many revolutionary video features that its video prowess has a tendency to overshadow its stills capabilities. But that should not be the case since the GH5 is a phenomenal stills camera. Yes, its still photos are not as revolutionary as its video, but it’s certainly equal to any of the competition in the MFT world. Part of the problem is the fact still photo capture has peaked but video has not, and Panasonic continues to revolutionize video capture. That being the case, all people talk about is the video. So potential buyers walk away from the impressive, glowing YouTube videos thinking Lumix cameras are mainly for video. Nothing could be further from the truth. Don’t let the video accolades fool you into thinking this is just a video tool, and let’s all get over the idea that we have to have a “stills only” camera. Those days are long, long gone. All cameras going forward are going to shoot both still and video. That’s reality. That’s not to say there may be models that are still capture centric, but all will have some sort of video capture.
Ok so that’s my “soap box” spiel about stills versus video. Getting back to Alaska, you can follow along and see what we were up to by watching the video below—which was shot with the fabulous new GH5 as I was shooting the same camera for stills. Hope you enjoy the show, and if you have any questions just drop me a line in the questions below.