These sections are written as requests to Panasonic. The individual items are not in any particular order, only the order in which I decided to write them down.

Here is an index of various topics:

• Very High
• Quite High
• High
• Medium-high
• Medium
• Medium-low
• Low
• Very Low

The two items of Very High priority are so important that I absolutely need them to be in the next firmware update, and the two items of Quite High priority are also extremely important.

In general, items of lower priority can be done earlier than those of higher priority as reasonableness dictates – i.e., things that would be easy to handle quickly can be done before items of higher priority that would be more difficult/time-consuming to handle, as long as doing so doesn’t significantly delay the handling of higher priority items.

Problem #1 - Stabilization auto-shutoff threshold (Priority: Very High)

The in-body stabilization is so good at high telephoto that I turn off the in-lens stabilization on my Canon 100-400mm (which was 2 stops at best) and use the GH5’s in-body stabilization instead, which is much, much better. However, the GH5’s stabilization shuts itself off automatically if there have been no large movements for about 1 second. (Occasionally it takes more than 1 second, but it’s never more than a few.) This is very, very bad, especially when using a tripod. I get to see and record a beautifully stabilized image for about a second, and then it just goes jittery (when the stabilization automatically shuts off).

The only workaround is to move the camera in a large (sufficiently fast) panning motion, which makes the stabilization kick in again. But the moment panning stops or slows down too far, it auto shuts off again. So, I know that the GH5 is capable of effectively perfect stabilization, because in the 1 second before it shuts off, I see a gorgeously stabilized image; the only thing stopping this from being incredibly useful is the automatic shut-off. I would be able to shoot amazing footage with my existing tripod equipment if not for this flaw.

There is a workaround which is even more bizarre. If you shake the camera intentionally, in just the right way, you can make the resultant footage more steady than if you were not shaking it, because you are forcing the IBIS to stay active. It’s hard to do this by hand.

Please fix this in the next firmware release. It should be easy; the stabilization just needs to stay active full-time, regardless of how much or how little movement the accelerometers detect. It’s probably a one-line change in the source code. The only downside I can imagine is that it might use a little more battery power than it otherwise would when on a tripod, but this will be well worth it.

The new “I.S. Lock (video)” mode added in Firmware v2.0 does not fix this problem (and in fact does not modify the behavior of the problem in any way). The problem is still present in Firmware v2.1.

Please make sure that when a future firmware version fixes this problem, the fix applies to both 4K/6K Photo and Creative Video Mode, and if possible, still photo mode as well.

Problem #3 - Constant Preview (Priority: High)

I prefer to almost always shoot in Full Manual mode. I’ve done this on all the cameras I’ve owned since 2005 or so. On the GH5, I had to enable “Constant Preview” to be able to do this effectively. The problem is, “Constant Preview” previews all aspects of the exposure: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. (I’m guessing it takes actual electronic-shutter photos with the exact currently set exposure to provide the live view.) As a result, when using slow shutter speeds, the viewfinder updates way too slowly.

The way I actually want Constant Preview to work: preview only the effective exposure brightness, at the current lens’s maximum aperture (unless this would exceed the fastest shutter speed, in which case start shrinking the aperture). Prefer 1/60 second or faster shutter speed, so that the live view can update smoothly, unless that would cause the ISO to go too high (which should be very high, even the maximum, because I much prefer 60fps Live View rather than low-noise but jerky Live View).

• If I am currently set to f/11, 1/3 second, ISO 100, and am using a 100mm f/2.8 lens, it should internally take electronic-shutter photos at f/2.8, 1/60 second, ISO 125, to provide a live view.
• If I am currently set to f/10, 4 seconds, ISO 200, and am using a lens with f/5.6 maximum aperture, it should internally take electronic-shutter photos at f/5.6, 1/60 second, ISO 12800, to provide a live view at 60 fps.
• If I am currently set to f/10, 8 seconds, ISO 200, and am using a lens with f/5.6 maximum aperture, it should internally take electronic-shutter photos at f/5.6, 1/60 second, ISO 25600, to provide a live view at 60 fps.
• If I am currently set to f/10, 10 seconds, ISO 200, and am using a lens with f/5.6 maximum aperture, it should internally take electronic-shutter photos at f/5.6, 1/50 second, ISO 25600, to provide a live view at 30 fps.
• If I am currently set to f/8, 10 seconds, ISO 200, and am using a lens with f/5.6 maximum aperture, it should internally take electronic-shutter photos at f/5.6, 1/60 second, ISO 25600, to provide a live view at 60 fps.
• If I am currently set to f/4, 10 seconds, ISO 200, and am using a lens with f/5.6 maximum aperture, it should internally take electronic-shutter photos at f/5.6, 1/60 second, ISO 12800, to provide a live view at 60 fps.

Of course, it should still be possible to do Depth of Field Preview, but only as a toggle, not as something that is forced to be constantly on. The Preview button should do this, but in the current implementation, during Constant Preview, the Preview button does nothing.

If you think the current implementation of Constant Preview has some usefulness, then please provide a setup option to switch between the behavior described above and the current behavior. Otherwise, I see no reason not to just switch over the the behavior described above with no option to enable the old behavior.

A related problem is that with Constant Preview turned Off, the Preview button is not a simple toggle, but rather goes No Preview -> Aperture Preview -> Aperture + Shutter Speed Preview -> No Preview, i.e. a “three-way toggle”. This is cumbersome if the user only wants to toggle one type of previewing. The best solution would be to allow Fn buttons to be bound to two new operations: an independent Depth of Field Preview, and an independent Shutter Speed Preview. These would be useful both with Constant Preview turned off and with it turned on. Also, these Preview toggles should persist through MF Assist, taking a photo, and recording a video; currently, the current Preview is cancelled by almost any action. (It should persist through focusing as well; this would require the camera to change to max aperture, focus, then change back to the previewed aperture.) If the temporariness of Preview is considered to be useful, then please add it as a setup option.

Problem #4 - MF Assist + Constant Preview (Priority: Medium-high)

The MF Assist view is shown using automatic exposure, and ignores Constant Preview. It should respect Constant Preview. Currently, the only way to change the brightness of MF Assist is the adjust the EV Compensation while in an P, A, or S mode, and there is no way to do this in M mode.

Problem #5 - MF Assist + Depth of Field Preview (Priority: Medium-high)

1. A magnified view provides a much more effective way of evaluating the effects of aperture changes
2. It would provide a very effective way of seeing the effect aperture has on sharpness and how it interacts with focus. Currently the only way to do this would be to take photos and view them in PLAY mode.

So, the current “three-way toggle” Preview, and two independent Preview toggles proposed in #3 above, should persist when switching into and out of MF Assist, and be toggleable while in MF Assist as well.

Problem #6 - Dial unresponsiveness when moved too fast (Priority: Medium)

The rear dial and front dial are very unresponsive when moved at faster than a moderate speed. (The control dial does not seem to suffer from this problem.) For example, a quick swipe that moves the dial 10 clicks can move the controlled value by only 2 steps if done fast enough. This is a big problem when trying to change the current exposure to a very different exposure quickly.

Unlike most of the other problems I’ve presented, I’m not sure if it’s possible to fix this in a firmware update. I hope it is possible, because it’s a big problem. None of the other cameras I’ve ever used have had this problem.

Problem #7 - Inability to move joystick or control dial diagonally (Priority: Medium)

I was disappointed to find out that diagonal movement is not possible. This makes a diagonal movement take twice as long as it would, due to having to break it up into a horizontal and a vertical movement.

Unlike most of the other problems I’ve presented, I’m not sure if it’s possible to fix this in a firmware update. But if it is, then please do so.

Problem #8 - Zebra Stripe update rate (Priority: Very Low)

When the live view is 60 fps, the zebra stripes still update at 30 fps, which can trick my eye into thinking the live view is updating at 30 fps especially when there is little movement in the frame. This is also troublesome when recording video, since it makes it look like I might be recording only at 30 fps when I’m actually recording at 60 fps.

I would propose making the Zebra Stripes move at 60 fps when live view is updating at 60 fps, and move at 30 fps otherwise.

Problem #9 - Zebra Stripes not shown while adjusting ISO or EV Compensation (Priority: Medium)

While adjusting ISO, EV Compensation, or White Balance, the Zebra Stripes are not shown. This is quite annoying, because in M mode with Constant Preview, I am very often adjusting ISO to do ETTR, i.e. to go as bright as I can just short of zebra stripes appearing in undesired areas.

Problem #10 - Low bitrate of audio in videos recorded in 4K/6K Photo mode (Priority: Medium)

I was very relieved and glad to learn that 4K/6K Photo videos do have audio. However, I was disappointed that it’s only 128 kbps AAC audio, and not 1536 kbps PCM like the videos recorded in Movie mode with MP4 (LPCM) or MOV selected as the recording format. Please provide an option to control whether 4K/6K Photo audio is AAC or LPCM.

Problem #11 - Level indicator needs to be better implemented (Priority: Medium-high)

The level indicator does not take advantage of the hardware capabilities of the camera. It is apparent by looking in the EXIF data that the camera measures Roll Angle every time a photo is taken, and does so in units of 0.1 degree. I tested the sensor by taking photos of a distant ocean horizon, and it is indeed quite accurate, to within 0.1 degree or better. However, the live view level indicator displays a flat line if the sensor is anywhere from -0.9 to 0.9 degrees. This makes it far less useful than it should be. The levelness of photos is very important to me; I’m very sensitive to lack of levelness in photos, and fixing it in post (by digitally rotating the image) slightly degrades image quality and is a time consuming extra step (even more so for video than stills). It should be pretty easy to tweak the implementation of the level indicator so that it takes full advantage of the hardware sensor, displaying a 0.1 or -0.1 degree line if the roll angle sensor detects those angles, and only displaying a completely flat line if it detects 0.0 degrees.

The level indicator is also less useful because it adds a lot of visual clutter. Please reduce the Roll Angle indicator to just the broken yellow line, with no grey semicircles or any other visual elements, so that it minimally blocks my view of the subject, allowing me to keep it turned on more often with minimal distraction and blocking of subject matter. If possible please also reduce the thickness of the yellow line segments from 2 pixels to 1 pixel.

Problem #12 - Lens focus distance metadata is not saved in all files (Priority: High)

In the past, on my Canon DSLRs, I have found distance data in still photos to be very useful. My tests have shown it to be very repeatable and accurate, and I have used it scientifically, to measure the size of birds and insects. Of course it must be treated in accordance with its limits; distance is reported by lenses as a lower and upper range, as most lenses only report 32 different distances at most. (In the Canon EF protocol both the lower and upper end of the range are reported. I don’t know if that’s in the Micro Four Thirds protocol or if it just reports one distance number.) When focusing at the closest distance of a lens, it can be treated much more precisely, as long as this is combined with the photographer’s memory in knowing that distances close to closest-focusing-distance were never used, only the closest focusing distance – then the magnification ratio can be known to four significant figures.

On the GH5, the lens focus distance is, thankfully, stored as metadata in raw still photos (.RW2). However it is not included in JPEG files or MP4/MOV video files in any way. Please add it in such a way that it will be stored in these file types as well. And if the Micro Four Thirds protocol reports a distance range (lower and upper) instead of just a single number, please include both the FocusDistanceLower and FocusDistanceUpper in the metadata instead of only storing the geometric mean of the lower and upper ends of the range as is currently being done.

Please also add focus distance to the per-frame metadata stored in 4K/6K Photo videos (see Problem #13). Focus distance would be exponentially more useful in every frame of a video, compared to its usefulness in still photos – because when smoothly changing focus to follow a subject, there will always be frames where the reported focus distance changes from one value to another; on those frames, the exact distance can be known, rather than just a range.

Problem #13 - 4K/6K Photo per-frame metadata does not include some important data (Priority: Medium-high)

Photo metadata includes Roll Angle and Pitch Angle (to 0.1 degree precision) and XYZ Accelerometer readings. Videos have this metadata for their first frame, but the metadata recorded in each frame in 4K/6K Photo videos does not include it. It would be very useful to have these, especially Pitch Angle, which could be used to level videos in postprocessing, or even just to level individual still frames extracted from a video. I have verified that the Pitch Angle recorded in the GH5’s metadata is very accurate, which only increases the usefulness it would have if recorded in per-frame metadata. Please add it.

Also, as described in Problem #12, please add focus distance data.

Problem #14 - Focus distance isn’t shown numerically, and focal length isn’t shown at all (Priority: Medium)

The GH5 shows a focus scale when the focus of the current lens has been / is being adjusted. But this scale is of very limited usefulness, because it doesn’t show any numbers. Lenses do report focus distances in known units (centimeters or half-centimeters), so the GH5’s focus scale should show the numbers with units. Please show them in meters or centimeters with full precision.

Current focal length is not shown at all, except when viewing an already-taken photo or video. Seeing the focal length in real time would be quite useful, especially if the user wants to set a zoom lens to a precise focal length instead of merely eyeballing it.

On supported Canon DSLRs such as my 7D, MagicLantern adds this functionality (display of lens focus distance and focal length) and I have found it to be extremely useful. Please add it to the GH5.

Problem #15 - Video recording indicator is not sufficiently obvious to the eye (Priority: Quite High)

The red solid circle that flashes in the upper-right corner when recording video, flashes too slowly, making it too easy to accidentally think it’s not recording when it is. This causes me to often invert in my head whether the GH5 is recording video or not, such that I stop recording when I mean to start it, and start it when I mean to stop it – which results in long videos recording where I’m just walking around, and the actual clips I meant to record being nonexistent.

The problem is so severe that even after owning the GH5 for a four months, I still make this mistake sometimes, even though I was well aware of the problem on the fourth day I had it.

1. Make the red circle solid while recording, without flashing at all.
2. Make the circle flash between red and another color, instead of between red and invisible.
3. Make the red circle flash at least four times as fast. (Could be combined with #2.)
4. Make the circle slightly larger. (Could be combined with #1, #2, and/or #3).

There is another problem as well. When pressing the button to stop video recording, the red circle stays solid for a while before disappearing (presumably while the camera flushes the remainder of the video to card). This results in my sometimes pressing the button, thinking I stopped video recording, but the camera didn’t respond to that button press and continued recording. A good way to solve this would be to change the solid red circle to a “saving to card” icon or “wait” icon during this, thus giving instant feedback to the video being told to stop recording. (The current behavior, in which a red circle stops flashing, is not instant feedback, because you have to watch it for more than 1 full second to see whether it’s flashing or not.)

See also Problem #48, which makes the effects of Problem #15 even worse.

Problem #16 - Using mirrored Touch Pad AF and EVF simultaneously (Priority: Medium-low)

By far I primarily use the GH5’s EVF instead of its LCD monitor, for many reasons. The EVF is much higher in resolution, works with my glasses on (to read the LCD monitor with sufficient detail I need to take my glasses off – if I weren’t nearsighted I’d need to put reading glasses on), makes it easy to point the camera quickly at desired the subject (by using my right eye to look through the EVF and my left eye to see where the subject is), and is always very much sufficiently bright regardless of the outside brightness.

So, one of the few uses the LCD monitor would have for me, is for Touch Pad AF. I would look through the EVF while using my left hand to touch the LCD monitor at the spot I want focused. And the most ergonomic way for me to do this is to have the LCD monitor facing away from me for this, i.e. swiveled out and facing away. This has the added advantage that my nose will be incapable of making a smudge on the LCD.

However, there is a problem. In this setup, my touches to the LCD should be mirrored, such that pressing it on my left focuses on the left, however, what it currently does when I press it on my left, is focus on the right. It’s mirrored in the wrong way. This is the correct thing to do when I am not looking through the EVF, but when I am looking through it, touches should be mirrored (and currently they’re not).

Problem #17 - Touch Pad AF has significant lag/delay (Priority: Medium-low)

For Touch Pad AF to be useful to me, it would have to be much more responsive. Currently, there is a pretty long delay from the moment I touch the LCD monitor, and when it starts focusing on the area I touched. It should be as instant as possible. I understand, however, why it is not implemented as being instant upon the moment of touch; it would be too easy to accidentally focus on the wrong area that way.

The perfect solution for this, I think, is to make Touch Pad AF instantly focus upon the chosen area upon release of touch. That way, the user can move their finger if necessary, before letting go to finalize where focus shall take place.

Problem #18 - Touch pad panning and zooming should work in Playback mode (Priority: Medium-low)

The touch pad can be used to pan around and zoom a picture being viewed in Playback mode, but only if the picture is being viewed on the LCD monitor. If the picture is being viewed on the EVF, attempting to pan/zoom on the touch pad does nothing. It should work, just like Touch Pad AF works while looking through the EVF.

See also Problem #44 and Request #6.

Problem #19 - Switching between EVF and LCD monitor in Playback resets the view (Priority: Medium-high)

I use the automatic EVF eye detection to save power, so that the EVF doesn’t stay on while I’m not looking at it. But as a result of this, I can’t show zoomed photos to people by having them look into the EVF. I set the zoom and pan to what I want, but then the moment I take my eye away, the zoom and pan is forgotten; the next person to look in the EVF then sees the photo with no zoom.

Whenever possible, I want to show photos to people in the EVF instead of the monitor, because of the higher resolution, better brightness and contrast independent of ambient light conditions, and because it’s better for people who have any amount of presbyopia. This problem prevents me from being able to do this in most cases, because usually I need to zoom in to show them the photo properly.

Temporarily changing the eye detection mode would solve this for me, but I’ve already bound all the available buttons to things I need more than that, and navigating to eye detection in the menus every time I want to do this would be too time-consuming. Currently the only feasible workaround for me is to only show photos to people on the LCD monitor, and that is what I’ve been forced to do.

I understand that the exact zoom and pan can’t be copied from EVF to LCD monitor and vice versa because of the difference in aspect ratio, but this shouldn’t be a problem. Just use an algorithm that results in a similar zoom and pan when switching screens, and design it such that switching from one screen to the other screen and back always retains the exact same zoom and pan as the screen on which the zoom and/or pan were last changed.

When this is fixed, the fix should of course apply both to automatic eye detection mode, so that taking the eye away from the EVF and putting it back retains zoom and pan instead of forgetting them, and also to manually switching between EVF and monitor, so that using a bound key to do the switch also retains zoom and pan.

Problem #20 - Variable Frame Rate videos have no audio (Priority: Medium)

Variable Frame Rate videos have an audio track, but it is zeroed out, with total silence. This is a problem, because I can think of many circumstances in which I would want audio in my slow-motion videos. The only workaround for this would be to use an external recorder for the audio – but then synchronizing it to the video would be a problem, because there’s no reference audio to match it up with for syncing. With normal videos, syncing audio from an external recorder is an easy matter of matching up some audio event that can be heard in both tracks, but with no audio in the slow motion video, this would be impossible.

It should not be hard to include true audio in VFR videos. Just resample the audio to match the framerate ratio of the video, such that both its pitch and speed are decreased (and no fancy pitch-preservation algorithm is needed). For example, in a 180fps slow-mo video encoded in a 60fps MP4 container, the audio would be slowed down by a factor of 3. The easiest way to implement this on the camera end would be to simply encode the audio sample rate as 16 kHz, with no resampling at all; but if the audio needs to be 48 kHz for compatibility reasons, then just resample the recorded 48 kHz audio to 144 kHz, then encode it as 48 kHz (this would match the fact that the video is recorded at 180fps, but encoded at 60fps).

For VFR in which the framerate is decreased rather than increased, it is less important to me to have audio, as I don’t plan on using that functionality. The problem with keeping audio in this mode would of course be that the higher frequencies would be lost, if it was encoded at 48 kHz instead of a higher sample rate.

One other way of solving this problem would be record the audio track of VFR videos as a separate .WAV file with the same base filename, but only if it can be deterministically done such that the first sample of the audio synchronizes perfectly with the first presentation frame of the video.

Personally I’d like it very much if VFR videos were encoded at the framerate at which they were recorded; then audio wouldn’t be a problem, and could always just be 48 kHz. But I assume the reason this wasn’t done in the first place was for compatibility.

Problem #21 - Control Dial is not very useful in Rec mode (Priority: Medium)

In Rec mode, if headphones are not plugged in, and MF Assist is not in use, the Control Dial currently does nothing; it should adjust ISO in this case. That would be extremely useful, and would make operation of the camera during video recording much quieter for me when I change ISO (which I do often). (Or even better, allow the function of the Control Dial when headphones are not plugged in to be configured. I would set it to adjust ISO, but other people might choose other functions.)

Problem #23 - Electronic image stabilization can only be used in Creative Video Mode (Priority: Medium-low)

Please allow electronic image stabilization to be used in 4K/6K Photo mode.

Problem #24 - Electronic image stabilization doesn’t take advantage of Ex. Tele Conv. (Priority: Medium)

Part of the whole point of Ex. Tele Conv. mode is that it allows recording video at the 1:1 pixel scale. It is quite understandable that when Ex. Tele Conv. is turned off, Electronic IS needs to zoom in a bit, so that it can use the space around for stabilization. However, in Ex. Tele Conv. mode, there should be no need for this extra zoom; Electronic IS should be able to use the space around the zooming already done by Ex. Tele Conv.

See also Problem #46.

Problem #25 - White Balance can’t be adjusted while recording video (Priority: Medium)

If possible, please allow setting White Balance while recording video. Unlike changing it at other times, the actual change should be delayed until pressing Set, so that the user can scroll between adjacent white balances without instantly changing to them. However, pressing Down or Up (to access Adjust / Select White Set / WB K Set) and subsequent adjustments should be instant-effect, if modifying the setting that is currently in use.

Problem #26 - Ex. Tele Conv. can’t be toggled while recording video (Priority: Very High)

Please allow toggling Ex. Tele Conv. while recording video; this would make it much more useful, especially when using a zoom lens. My Sony HDR-FX7 allows toggling “Digital Extender” while recording, which is a 1.5x multiplier; I used this very, very often, and it looked great in my footage. It would look even better (by far) in 4K footage.

The current implementation of Ex. Tele Conv. is very limited in usefulness to me. I have to stop recording to turn it off or on, during which in most cases I lose footage that I really don’t want to lose. Zooming out to wide looks much better with Ex. Tele Conv. off. And if I need to stop recording anyway to toggle it, I might as well just use optical teleconverters instead, which result in better quality than Ex. Tele Conv.

While recording, a single press to a button bound to “Ex. Tele Conv.” should instantly toggle the mode, unlike how it behaves when not recording (popping up a small menu, in which turning the dials or pressing the button again changes the mode, and hitting SET closes the menu). Alternatively, a second “Ex. Tele Conv.” option could be provided in the menu of bindable functions, which acts as an instant toggle (whether or not currently recording), toggling the Photo or Video version of Ex. Tele Conv. depending upon the current mode of the camera.

Problem #27 - EVF Live View is reduced in resolution when not recording (Priority: Medium)

In all Photo modes, including 4K/6K Photo, a 3:2 vertical subsampling of the sensor is used for the image presented in Live View (out of every 3 sensel rows, only 2 sensel rows are sampled and the other one is skipped). This causes the display to be vertically aliased, significantly blockier/jaggier and lower in perceived resolution, less enjoyable to look through, and harder to manually focus and judge detail. The problem becomes much worse, perceptually, when Ex. Tele Conv. is enabled.

When recording video in 4K/6K Photo mode, and/or when an HDMI cable is plugged in, the subsampling turns off, and a full sampling is done for Live View. At all other times, the subsampled Live View is shown.

Perhaps the subsampled Live View provides some advantage. It may result in lower battery usage when not recording, and perhaps allows the camera to dedicate more processing towards non-Live-View purposes when taking photos in Still Photo mode. However, it is a big nuisance, and in 4K/6K Photo mode especially, I would judge it to be not worth whatever power-saving properties it may have.

1. Original behavior (use lower-quality sampling when not recording and HDMI output is not plugged in)
2. Use higher-quality sampling when in 4K/6K Photo mode (regardless of whether recording or not)
3. Use higher-quality sampling at all times

See also Problem #52. If a setup option is added to enable/disable this behavior, the same option should apply to both.

Problem #28 - RAW+JPEG is the only way to save RAW but get high-res Playback (Priority: Medium)

When in pure RAW mode instead of RAW+JPEG, the zoomed view presented in Playback mode is much lower in resolution. Fine detail cannot be reviewed.

Please allow high-res Playback of RAW photos without having to be in RAW+JPEG mode. I’ve had to deal with this problem on previous cameras, such as the Canon Rebel XSi and 40D, and I never understood it; it shouldn’t be hard to have the camera demosaic/fully-process zoomed views of RAW photos on-the-fly, without a JPEG being saved on-card. (This same problem was present in the Canon 450D and 40D; the Canon 7D “solved” this problem, but only by saving a full-res but high-compression JPEG in all RAW photos always, which really seems like a cop-out to me. I don’t want the GH5 to solve it that way.)

Problem #29 - 1:1 pixel magnified view can usually not be obtained (Priority: Medium-low)

I really like how in Rec mode, the magnified view of MF Assist is adjustable in very fine steps. However, I am displeased with the fact that there is no way to get a 1:1 pixel magnified view. On the EVF, you can get 4.0x or 4.1x, but you can’t get 4.05x which would provide a 1:1 pixel view (when Ex. Tele Conv. is off), because 5184 / 1280 = 4.05.

Please implement 1:1 pixel magnified views. I would suggest implementing it like this: When the 1:1 pixel view magnification level, when rounded down, is equal to the current chosen magnification, use 1:1 instead of the exact current magnification. So for example, with Ex. Tele Conv. off, when using the EVF, 4.0x magnification would actually activate a 4.05x magnified view. With Ex. Tele Conv. at 3:2 aspect ratio, 2.7x magnification would actually activate a 2.7375x magnified view, because 3504 / 1280 = 2.7375. (With Ex. Tele Conv. at 16:9 or 1:1 aspect ratio, 3.0x magnification would still act as 3.0x magnification, and at 4:3 ratio, 2.6x would still act as 2.6x.) When using the LCD monitor at 3:2, 16:9, or 1:1, with Ex. Tele Conv. off, 5.7x would act as 5.76x, because 5184 / 900 = 5.76; at 4:3, 6.4x would act as 6.48x, because 3888 / 600 = 6.48; with Ex. Tele Conv. on, at 4:3, 4.1x would act as 4.16x; at 3:2, 3.8x would act as 3.893333x; at 16:9, 4.2x would act as 4.266667x; at 1:1, 4.8x would still act as 4.8x.

An alternative way of implementing it (perhaps better) would be allow direct selection of these in-between magnification ratios, if you are currently in a view in which one would result in 1:1 pixel view. For example, turning the dial that adjusts magnification in 0.1 steps would go 3.9 - 4.0 - 4.05 - 4.1 if you are using the EVF with Ex. Tele Conv. off, but otherwise, it would just go 3.9 - 4.0 - 4.1 - 4.2. This would require showing at least one extra digit in the magnification ratio when an in-between magnification ratio is currently selected.

An analogous change should be applied to Playback mode, so that it is always possible to obtain a 1:1 pixel view. This should take into account the resolution of the photo or video being viewed, so for example when viewing a 5184×3888 photo the 1:1 zoom would be 4.05x, when viewing a 3840×2160 video the 1:1 zoom would be 3.0x, and when viewing a 3:2 aspect ratio 4K Photo video the 1:1 zoom would be 2.7375x.

Problem #30 - Difficulty of navigating in video playback (Priority: Medium-high)

In Playback mode (in the EVF with 4K/6K Photo videos, or either EVF or LCD monitor with Creative Video Mode videos), it is very hard to navigate to a desired spot in the video with the controls as currently implemented. While playback is paused, you can only either move on 1-frame steps, or to the beginning or end of the video. The only way to gain access to a large stepping size is to start playback, at which point holding Left or Right moves in that direction with a large stepping size – but the movement is continuous, jumping in that stepping size as a fast speed, making it quite hard to move just once by that stepping size.

Once you’ve reached the end of the video, it’s even harder to navigate, because you can’t start playback, and thus have no access at all to the large stepping size. You have to either go backwards several frames (which must be done one frame at a time), then start playback, then quickly press Left to do a rewind – or go to the very beginning of the video, and fast-forward to your desired position (which is most likely near the end, meaning it’ll take a while to get there again).

Please provide a way of jumping by the large stepping size, one discrete step at a time, while the video is paused. This would make it much, much, much easier to navigate to desired positions in a video while watching using the viewfinder.

Navigating 4K/6K Photo video playback while watching on the LCD monitor is much easier, since you can drag along the timeline using touch to go to any point instantly. It would be really nice to offer this functionality to EVF video playback, analogous to how Touch Pad AF works while looking through the EVF; blindly touching the touch pad while looking through the EVF could jump to the horizontal position in the timeline. This would be extremely useful. (Currently touch does nothing during video playback on the EVF.)

Please also add the dragable timeline to Creative Video Mode video playback. It’s puzzling that this feature is only available for 4K/6K Photo video playback.

Problem #31 - Most controls on the camera are quite noisy (Priority: High)

For a camera designed with an emphasis on video, virtually all of the controls on the GH5 make loud clicking sounds when operated. This of course can’t be solved for the GH5 with a firmware update, but it’s worth considering when designing the GH6. I for one would also pay to send my GH5 to Panasonic for a modification in which all buttons (except the full-shutter-press) and all three dials are made quiet.

• It is possible to move the three dials quietly (though not silently), but that requires moving them very slowly. When moved at normal or fast speeds, the front and rear dials not only make loud clicks but can also cause significant camera shake at long focal lengths. Rotation of the control dial is much quieter than that of the front and rear dials, but is also not currently assignable to any functions that would be useful during video recording.
• The joystick is silent when pressed left/right/up/down, but a center-press is noisy.
• A shutter half-press is silent. (A shutter full-press is noisy, but that is not a problem because this stops or starts video recording; the click will not be heard during a recording.)
• The motion picture button is much quieter than the rest, though not completely silent. Pressing it as quietly as possible requires pressing it slowly.
• It is possible to press the DISPLAY button quietly, though this must be done somewhat slowly, and with a part of the thumb that moves the thumb away from other commonly used controls.
• All of the other controls are unavoidably noisy when pressed.

• Allow the Motion Picture button to be bound if its primary function is disabled (see Problem #37 below).
• Allow shutter half-press to be bound (see Problem #36 below).
• Allow the touch pad to be used for gestures instead of autofocus, while looking through the EVF (see Request #4).

Problem #32 - Peaking should be a toggle, not a three-way (Priority: High)

I want to use Peaking as a toggle, as in all situations I have been in so far, I either only want to use “LOW” mode or “OFF”, or I only want to use “HIGH” mode or “OFF”; but the GH5 forces using it as a three-way. Please allow it to be used as a toggle.

One way to address this issue would be to add a setup menu option for whether it goes OFF->LOW->OFF, OFF->HIGH->OFF, or OFF->LOW->HIGH->OFF (the current behavior).

1. Peaking OFF->LOW, LOW->HIGH, HIGH->OFF – same behavior as the current key-bindable Peaking function
2. Peaking OFF->LOW, LOW->OFF, HIGH->LOW – the one I would expect to most commonly use
3. Peaking OFF->HIGH, HIGH->OFF, LOW->HIGH

• Bind option #1 to a key (if you only have room for binding one key to Peaking-related functions, but always need access to all three modes)
• Bind option #2 to a key
• Bind option #3 to a key
• Bind option #2 to one key and option #3 to another key

Problem #33 - Peaking modes are misleadingly named (Priority: Low)

The two Peaking modes are misleadingly named. “LOW” mode has a high sensitivity to contrasts and highlights them with thicker blobs, and “HIGH” mode has a low sensitivity to contrasts and highlights them with thinner blobs; the only way in which their names make sense is that “LOW” mode uses a color which is “low” in brightness to highlight the contrasts it finds, whereas “HIGH” mode uses a color which is “high” in brightness. But in the five color pairs selectable in setup, some of the pairs use a high saturation for “LOW” and low saturation for “HIGH” (i.e. Blue/Light-blue and Red/Pink), and some vice versa (i.e. Orange/Yellow and Green/Yellow-green).

Problem #34 - Peaking couples blob color to contrast sensitivity / blob thickness (Priority: Medium-high)

For no apparent reason, setting the color for Peaking in setup actually selects a color pair. One member of the pair is used for “LOW” mode and the other is used for “HIGH” mode. This makes no sense at all. In all the situations I would want to switch between the two modes, I would want to use the same color for the actual highlighting, and only have the sensitivity and blob thickness change.

In all five color pairs, one of the colors tends to be highly visible against most scenes, and the other tends to be really hard to see against most scenes. For example, in the pair Blue/Light-blue, the Blue is of much higher saturation (even though it’s darker) and is very visible against virtually all scenes, whereas the Light-blue is very hard to see against most scenes; but to use the high-saturation deep Blue, I need to be in “LOW” mode, which is less useful in most situations than “HIGH” mode. So to use “HIGH” mode effectively, I have to select Orange/Yellow or Green/Yellow-green as my color pair in setup, because of the available choices, the Yellow and Yellow-green are the most visible against typical scenes than the other choices – but they are still inferior to the Blue, because yellows of high saturation are much more common in nature than high-saturation deep blues.

Please decouple blob color from sensitivity/thickness, and add an additional key-bindable function to select the current color to use out of the 10 possible colors.

It might even be beneficial even to decouple sensitivity from blob thickness. But decoupling blob color from both of them is of higher importance.

As a matter of lower importance: In the manual where Peaking settings are documented (page 228), the colors don’t match what the GH5 actually uses. The is entirely understandable in the printed manual, but in the PDF electronic manual there’s no reason it shouldn’t use the exact colors.

Problem #35 - Peaking only highlights horizontal contrast (Priority: High)

Peaking only highlights horizontal contrast. Vertical contrast is completely ignored. I have found this to be a big problem in some circumstances, where most of the details are in the “wrong” direction and Peaking highlights almost nothing, making it hard to achieve optimal focus.

Problem #36 - Toggling Peaking is very noisy (Priority: Quite High)

I use Peaking very often, and am frustrated by how noisy the button is; it always makes it into a video’s audio track no matter how lightly I try to press it. I don’t want to keep it on all the time, because I want to actually enjoy watching what I’m recording while I’m recording it. A great solution for this would be to allow half-shutter press to be bound to either toggle Peaking, or to temporarily toggle Peaking during the half-press and restore it to its previous state when released. A shutter half-press is completely quiet. This would also solve another problem I’ve been having, which is that I have Peaking bound to Fn1, but contorting my index finger to press that button causes me to shake the camera a little more when hand-holding it.

Note that in the way I have my GH5 set up, a shutter half-press does nothing at all, because I have mapped autofocus to a separate button. In the current GH5 firmware, there is nothing I can bind it to that would be useful to me.

Problem #37 - Motion Picture button can’t be bound (Priority: High)

The Motion picture button can’t be bound; it can only be enabled or disabled. It would be extremely useful as a bindable button, as there is currently only one bindable button on the top of the camera. Also, the Motion picture button is quieter than most other buttons, an virtue that is wasted in its current function. Please allow it to be bound when in “disabled” mode, and when in “enabled” mode, simply ignore any binding it may have and make it function as a Motion picture button.

Problem #38 - Burst mode unnecessarily slows down at non-wide-open apertures (Priority: High)

Burst photo mode slows quite significantly down from 12 fps when the aperture is not wide open. In full Manual mode, with manual focus and Constant Preview enabled, this is completely unnecessary. The camera should detect this and keep the aperture stopped down, instead of switching it between wide open and stopped down for every shot taken in a burst. This would also have the benefit of making Electronic Shutter mode completely silent, whereas currently it makes a sound when the aperture is not wide open, unnecessarily switching between wide open and stopped down when a shot is taken (which not only makes a slight noise, but could potentially cause a slight camera shake and motion blur).

Problem #39 - Live View blackout/freeze (Priority: Medium-high)

Sometimes the GH5 suddenly presents complete blackness instead of a correct Live View. The info overlay is still displayed, but nothing can be seen through the lens. The only workarounds I’ve found to regain proper camera function when this happens, are either to turn the camera off and on (with a wait time in-between, or removal and reinsertion of the battery, as sometimes a simple off-on doesn’t get rid of the problem), or to partially unmount (unscrew) the mounted lens and then remount it (which always gets rid of the blackout).

A closely related problem is that sometimes the live view freezes, showing a “snapshot” of whatever the camera was aimed at when the freeze occurred, and the camera becomes unresponsive. The solution is the same; disconnecting and reconnecting the lens from/to the camera immediately restores proper functioning.

Both of these problems, when they occur, have no timeout, and will persist until the solution is manually applied. If the camera isn't turning off when the power switch is flipped to the OFF position, it won't turn off even after a long wait. This can be a big problem, because the camera can stay on and use up battery power indefinitely even when switched off.

I don’t know if this can happen with a native M4/3 lens because I don’t have one, but when using my Metabones Canon EF-Micro Four Thirds T Smart Adapter, it has happened many times with my Canon 100-400mm Mk1 (which I use the most), and has also happened with my Canon 17-55mm f/2.8. It may have the potential of happening with all lenses.

My hypothesis is that this problem happens when the connected lens stops responding to certain command(s) from the camera. Even if this only happens when a genuine problem is occurring with the camera/lens connection, it should be ameliorated on the camera side, by timing out after 10-20 seconds, and then displaying an error message (if the power switch is ON) or allowing the camera to turn off (if the power switch is OFF).

Problem #40 - MF Assist cannot be used during video recording (Priority: High)

• It is the only way to reliably focus in some situations, either because Peaking is not sufficiently highlighting the desired detail (if the detail is in the wrong direction (see Problem #35) or insufficiently constrasty), or because Peaking is detecting too much sharpness (which often happens at wide zoom with my 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6) thus being overloaded and showing too-heavy highlighting over too large a range of focus.
• Spending time to manually focus using MF Assist before starting recording results in lost footage opportunities. As a result I often start video recording immediately, and then focus. Being limited to either eyeballing the sharpness or using Peaking sometimes results in my recording an entire video clip with suboptimal focus.
• Often I want to scrutinize a scene in detail while I am recording it, to see things as they are happening instead of only being able to learn of them later when watching the video. For me, this is often to observe bird behaviors (especially when I’m with other people, so I can talk about them while they’re happening) and to count bird species.

I realize there might be technical reasons for not being able to do this, but if it is at all possible, please allow it. For example, if it’s the scaling of the sensor crop to the EVF or LCD monitor resolution that can’t be done during video recording, then force the magnified view to be an unscaled 1:1 pixel crop, 1280×960 if using the EVF or 900×600 if using the LCD monitor (during recording only; the rest of the time, the magnification ratio would still be adjustable). If Peaking and/or other effects or overlays can’t be done on a magnified view during recording, then disable them when magnified view is active during recording.

Problem #41 - MF Assist is restricted from magnifying the edges and corners (Priority: High)

• To carefully focus to get good sharpness on the edges/corners with a lens that has significant focal plane tilt/curvature
• In my lens-alignment test setup, in which I have a camera connected to a partially-disassembled lens on a tripod aimed at an artificial star 50 feet away, and I turn eccentric collars inside the lens to optically align it. Magnified Live View of the extreme edges is important for this, as it allows me to perfectly balance the left and right sharpness of the lens.

On the GH5, MF Assist is severely restricted from reaching the edges and corners. Due to this, I must still use my Canon EOS 7D to do optical alignment – whereas I would much prefer to use the GH5 for it, since it provides a higher resolution Live View and higher magnification. (See also Problem #4, which would also need to be fixed to enable doing optical alignment, and Problem #22, which if fixed would also help a lot.)

It seems unlikely there is any technical reason for this restriction, because in AF-S and AF-C modes it is possible to move the focus square all the way to the edges and corners. Please allow this in MF mode as well.

Problem #42 - “Save/Restore Camera Setting” omits some settings (Priority: Medium-low)

1. Assign dial (F/SS) (as described on page 47 of the manual) – I had this set to front-SS rear-F before Saving, but after Loading (on a new GH5) it was still set to front-F rear-SS (the default).
2. Registering of settings to CUST1-CUST4 Picture Styles (as described on page 210 of the manual) - for example, I based CUST1 (Custom1) on NAT (Natural) before Saving, and Loading (on a new GH5) restored that my current Picture Style was CUST1, but did not restore that CUST1 was based on NAT; it was still based on STD (Standard) (the default for CUST1-CUST4) after loading.

Problem #43 - Frame-stepping while zoomed in video playback is very slow (Priority: Medium)

Frame-stepping forward in video playback is instant when there is no zoom, but while zoomed, it is very slow. This a bug and not a technical limitation. This is evidenced by the fact that zooming immediately after stepping one frame forward is instant. It is proven by the fact that zooming out, stepping one frame forward, then zooming back in is faster than stepping one frame forward while zoomed.

Please fix this bug and make frame-stepping while zoomed as fast as it can be. And if there is no technical reason stopping it, please allow playback at normal speed while zoomed (along with panning during zoomed playback).

Problem #44 - Touch Pad pinch-zoom is incorrectly scaled (Priority: Medium)

Zooming in and out in Playback using a pinch-zoom gesture on the Touch Pad doesn’t quite work as it should. Each of the two fingers used in this gesture should point to the same part of the picture before and after the zoom, assuming their relative angle is the same, but instead, zooming in and out happens much more slowly, requiring multiple pinch-zoom gestures to be done for typically desired zooming actions.

See also Problem #18 and Request #6.

Problem #45 - LCD Monitor auto-dimming can’t be disabled (Priority: Medium)

When “Monitor Luminance” is set to manual (MODE1, MODE2, or MODE3) it automatically dims after 30 seconds without button, touch, or eye sensor input (even while recording video), as documented in page 238 of the manual. This is a nuisance because many types of camera use involve no button or touch input, but require being able to clearly see the image on-screen. Please add a setup option to disable automatic dimming of the LCD Monitor.

Problem #46 - Video that is supposed to be 1:1 pixel is actually scaled (Priority: High)

Video (both Creative Video Mode and 4K/6K Photo) recorded in Ex. Tele Conv. mode, and 6K Photo 3:2 video, are supposed to have 1:1 scaling (i.e. no scaling) relative to the sensor pixels, but in fact they do not. All of them in fact record a slight crop of their target resolution, upscaled to that resolution. This results in Nyquist aliasing artifacts and means that the quality across the frame is variable, and scientific measurements taken using GH5 video will be skewed. The effect is subtle, and in many situations not visible to the human eye under normal conditions, but it is there, and there are situations where it can become quite visible. On-camera JPEGs do not have the same problem; they have exact 1:1 scaling relative to the sensor (and a half-pixel shift horizontally and vertically).

Please fix this, and make video modes that are meant to be 1:1 actually be 1:1. If there is a technical reason that the GH5 cannot entirely sample the exact areas of these video modes, and must crop them slightly, then please replace the scaling with either a tiny black border around the video, or a repeating of the pixels at the edges, or, if possible, simply record the videos at that slightly smaller crop resolution.

Video which is supposed to cover the full horizontal and/or vertical area of the sensor is also slightly cropped from the full sensor. However, since these types of video would be scaled either way, whether taken from 100.00% of the sensor width and/or height or not, this matter is of lesser importance; nevertheless, it would nice to have it fixed as well. One disadvantage of using the strange scaling ratios that are currently used is that the algorithm and coefficients for interpolation will differ across the entire frame, whereas with perfect scaling ratios applied to the entire 5184×3888 sensor frame, reducible ratios would come into play, allowing the same coefficients of resampling to be reused for 32, 48, 108, or 144 sections of the frame horizontally and vertically.

Problem #47 - Panning in zoomed playback has an initially slow repeat rate (Priority: Medium-high)

When the joystick or a cursor button is used for panning in zoomed playback, holding it to move an extended distance is currently very inefficient. After an initial delay (of a sensible duration), a repeat rate is engaged, but it is far too slow to be at all useful. After a longer delay (which is way too long) the repeat rate becomes sufficiently fast to be useful.

Please get rid of the slow repeat rate, and make holding the joystick or a cursor button go straight to the fast repeat (after the same duration of delay that currently goes to slow repeat). This will make viewing photos and video frames on the EVF much more efficient and pleasant.

Problem #48 - In 4K/6K Photo mode, IBIS is active even when neither half-pressing nor recording (Priority: Medium-high)

In Firmware v1.1, the GH5, in this regard, worked in a way I liked. In Still Photo and 4K/6K Photo modes, IBIS was only active while half-pressing the shutter button, taking photos, or recording video. One of the reasons I like this is because it makes precisely framing a shot easier, especially on a tripod.

But in Firmware v2.0, this was changed. In 4K/6K Photo mode, IBIS is now active at all times, regardless of what you're doing. The only way to deactivate it is to turn it off, and then it's not active for recording video, either. This creates an additional problem for me due to its interaction with Problem #15. It was already hard to tell the difference between recording and not recording in Firmware v1.1, but the absence of IBIS when not recording was one of the cues I used to be able to see that I wasn't recording. Now, that cue is gone, and I have found myself accidentally flipping the states of recording and not-recording much more often than I used to with Firmware v1.1. I have completely lost some valuable footage opportunities due to this, ending up with long clips of me walking around with the cameera pointing down, which stop at the moment I meant to start recording.

Please restore this to the way it worked in Firmware v1.1.

Note that for consistency, it might be worth considering making Creative Video Mode work this way as well (with IBIS active only while half-pressing or recording), although that is not important to me, as I almost always use 4K/6K Photo mode for recording video. If making this decision and/or implementing it would delay fixing it for 4K/6K Photo, then please just delay the decision for Creative Video Mode, and restore the way it worked in Firmware v1.1 with 4K/6K Photo mode.

Problem #49 - “I.S. Lock (video)” mode does not work in 4K/6K Photo mode (Priority: Medium)

Please make the “I.S. Lock (video)” option, added in Firmware v2.0, work in 4K/6K Photo mode. There is no reason it should apply only to Creative Video Mode and not 4K/6K Photo mode.

Problem #50 - Turning on Anamorphic mode automatically turns on an undesired setting (Priority: Medium)

Starting in Firmware v2.0, when turning on “Anamorphic(4:3)” mode (using the same menu system to turn it on as was done in Firmware v1.1), “Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer” is automatically set to “A2.0”. This is a bad thing to do automatically, since “Anamorphic(4:3)” mode is useful for recording isomorphic (non-anamorphic) 4:3 video. When using it for that purpose, one always must go into the Stabilizer settings to disable “Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer” after entering “Anamorphic(4:3)” mode, every time.

On the other hand, it would make very good sense to automatically turn on “Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer” when “Anamorphic Desqueeze Display” is enabled, but this is currently not done.

Problem #51 - “Anamorphic Desqueeze Display” is needlessly inflexible (Priority: Low)

This feature, added in Firmware v2.0, doesn't operate in the way that it intuitively should. It determines what squeeze ratio to apply by whether you're in “Anamorphic(4:3)” mode or not. If you're in that mode, it uses a 2.0x vertical squeeze to yield a 2.667:1 aspect ratio. If you're not in that mode, it uses a 1.33x vertical squeeze to yield a 2.37:1 aspect ratio.

• With Anamorphic(4:3) mode enabled and Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer set to A2.0 or OFF, it should use a 2.0x vertical squeeze, yielding a 2.667:1 aspect ratio.
• With Anamorphic(4:3) mode enabled and Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer set to A1.33, it should use a 1.33x vertical squeeze, yielding a 16:9 aspect ratio. This would be useful for recording 16:9 video while using the full resolution of the sensor.
• With Anamorphic(4:3) mode disabled and Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer set to A1.33 or OFF, it should use a 1.33x vertical squeeze, yielding a 2.37:1 aspect ratio.
• With Anamorphic(4:3) mode disabled and Anamorphic (Video) Stabilizer set to A2.0, it should use a 2.0x vertical squeeze, yielding a 3.556:1 aspect ratio. (Even though this would be of limited usefulness, it would be consistent with the other options.)

Problem #52 - 4K Photo + Digital Zoom – Live View is reduced in resolution when not recording (Priority: Medium)

In 4K Photo mode with 2x or 4x Digital Zoom enabled, full detail is only shown in Live View only while recording. When not recording, a low-detail magnified view is shown, having no more detail than would be seen in Live View with Digital Zoom disabled.

Even if this was implemented to save battery power, it's usually not worth it, because seeing detail while not recording is very important. If the behavior is important enough to be deemed worth preserving, then please add a setup option to toggle between full detail at all times, and the current behavior.

See also Problem #27. If a setup option is added to enable/disable this behavior, the same option should apply to both.

Request #1 - Overriding lens focal length (Priority: Medium)

I love that the GH5 allows manually entering the focal length if lens electronics are not attached. No camera I’ve used in the past has allowed this degree of control. (The closest is how my Sony HDR-HC1 allowed signalling that a VCL-HG0737X 0.7x multiplier or VCL-HG2037X 2.0x multiplier was connected, which modified its image stabilization ratio. However, it did not allow entering a custom multiplier, and my Sony HDR-FX7 doesn’t allow doing this at all, which was quite unfortunate given that I often used it with a Raynox DCR-2020PRO, which offered quite good image quality but made it shaky even on a tripod because the camera’s image stabilization was working at the wrong ratio.)

However, it’s not quite enough. It would be useful to me to be able to override the focal length of a connected lens that has electronics. This could be used for non-reporting teleconverters (although the urgency of adding this feature for that reason is decreased by the fact that this feature has been added in Metabones EF-M43 firmware v2.90, for multipliers of 1.4x and 2.0x). It could also be used with lenses whose physical focal length changes significantly across their focusing range. My Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro is an example of this; when focused at its closest distance (yielding 1.04:1 macro), is deshaken very poorly by the GH5’s IBIS – but when I disconnect the lens’s electronics and specify a focal length of 300 mm, it is deshaken much, much better. Having to disconnect the lens’s electronics to achieve this is very problematic; the GH5 should provide a way to override a lens’s focal length while still having it electronically connected.

The simplest way to implement this, user-interface-wise, would be to specifying a multiplier for the focal length (with three decimal places, e.g. 1.393, 1.400, 1.993, 2.000, or 3.000), with the ability to save user presets and quickly select them instead of needing to edit it every time.

The new "Anamorphic (video)" Stabilizer mode as shown in the Firmware v2.0 preview is so similar to this request that is tantalizing. The problem is that it only offers two pre-programmed ratios, and they are anamorphic-only. If you added the ability for the user to edit the menu of ratios, it would satisfy the above-described request. Please allow entries to be added to that menu, in which the user can specify the horizontal and vertical ratios individually, with three decimal points of precision (similarly to how the focal length can be edited when a lens with no electronics is attached). Also, please, please make this option work in both Creative Video Mode and 4K/6K Photo (see also Problem #1).

If you’re feeling especially generous, another feature I’d really like is to be able to override the reported focal lengths of a lens using a lookup table. The GH5 would allow editing this on a per-lens basis (going by the reported lens name), where the list of 32 focal lengths would be shown, and the user could edit each one. On my Canon 100-400mm for example, I would edit the 100.0mm to be 103.7mm and the 400.0mm to be 388.2mm, because this is what I’ve measured them to actually be. This would make IBIS 3% more accurate at full tele and full wide. (I’ve also measured what the 30 focal lengths in-between actually are, and would edit those too, but for the average user, editing the full wide and full tele values would offer the greatest benefit.) And to round out this feature even better, an option should be added to create a focal length multiplier lookup table keyed to the focus distance; on my 100mm Macro, for example, I would set the closest distance as a 3x multiplier (or whatever value I research to be more precisely correct – somewhere between 2.5x and 3.5x), the farthest distance as a 1x multipler, and research what to put in-between.

Request #2 - Additional Aspect Ratios (Priority: Medium-low)

Please add some additional aspect ratios in the 4K and 6K Photo modes, which will allow 1:1 pixel recording to be achieved without using Ex. Tele Conv.:

At 4K, to use the full horizontal width of the sensor, please add 81:25, to record at 5184×1600 resolution.

At 4K, to use the full vertical height of the sensor, please add 133:243, to record at 2128×3888 resolution. (If “133:243” is too long-winded, then 44:81 can be provided instead, to record at 2112×3888.) This would be useful, because there are situations in which turning the camera 90 degrees is not practical or possible.

At 6K, to use more of the sensor than 3:2, please add 36:25, to record at 5184×3600 resolution.

At 6K, to use the full vertical height of the sensor, please add 100:81, to record at 4800×3888 resolution. (If “100:81” is too long-winded, then 11:9 can be provided instead, to record at 4752×3888.)

See also Problem #46.

Request #3 - Light-Level exposure mode (Priority: Medium)

As far as I’m aware, no other camera has implemented this, but I have dreamed of having it for about 16 years (i.e. most of the time I’ve been doing photography). The crux of the matter is that the exposure metering of basically all cameras, both digital and analog, is done wrong. ETTR (Exposure To The Right) is the correct way to expose – exposing such that the brightest highlights whose detail you’re interested in preserving are not blown out. However, what cameras actually implement are various kinds of averages, some of them weighted. Because of this, I have spurned Program mode, Aperture-priority mode, and Shutter-priority mode for about 15 years, preferring to almost exclusively use only Manual mode.

Manual mode has some pretty serious problems though. Much of the time I’m changing the exposure, I want to keep the exposure brightness constant but change the aperture, shutter speed, or ISO; to do this I must change two things by the same number of steps, in the appropriate pair of directions. For still photos this is bad enough, but for video it’s really bad. Furthermore, zoom lenses usually have a maximum aperture that changes along with focal length, so in Manual mode I have to either confine myself to using the tele end’s narrow aperture for everything, or fly by the seat of my pants and adjust shutter speed or ISO every time I zoom.

I have some ideas on implementing automatic ETTR exposure metering, but getting them just right would require being able to modify the firmware of a camera directly myself. In absence of that, I have another idea which would be as good or better: Light Level mode.

• If I am in S mode, with Light Level mode enabled, and I increase the Light Level, it will widen the aperture while keeping the shutter speed and ISO constant. If ISO is Auto, it will stay at lowest ISO unless it needs to increase due to being at the widest aperture.
• If I am in A mode, with Light Level mode enabled, and I decrease the Light Level, it will make the shutter speed faster while keeping the aperture and ISO constant. If ISO is Auto, it will use some configurable rules to balance ISO with shutter speed to achieve the desired Light Level at the desired aperture.
• If I am in M mode, with Light Level mode enabled, then this only makes sense with ISO at Auto. If I increase the Light Level, it will increase the ISO if possible. If I make the aperture narrower, it will increase the ISO if possible. If I made the shutter speed slower, it will decrease the ISO if possible.

Ideally I would want to control Light Level in steps much finer than 1/3 stop, but the GH5 has no controls that would allow that – and that is acceptable; implementing this Light Level mode even with 1/3 stop adjustment steps would be much, much better than the options I’m currently limited to.

Request #4 - Touch Pad Gestures for Exposure Control (Priority: Medium)

The dials used to control shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and Exposure Compensation make loud clicks when operated quickly or at normal speed. Even when moved very slowly, they still make some sound.

It would be possible to provide a powerful fix for this issue in a firmware update. Allow the touch pad to be used for exposure-adjustment gestures when looking through the EVF. Of course, the user would need to choose between Touch Pad AF and Touch Pad Gestures, as there is no sensible way both could be used at once.

• Press and drag Left anywhere, then drag Up/Down to adjust.
• Press and drag Right anywhere, then drag Up/Down to adjust.
• Press and drag Up anywhere, then drag Left/Right to adjust.
• Press and drag Down anywhere, then drag Left/Right to adjust.

Three of these could be assigned to adjusting Shutter Speed, Aperture, and ISO (in Manual mode), or Shutter Speed/Aperture, Exposure Compensation, and ISO (in other modes). The fourth one could be used for a user-defined function, such as adjusting the Kelvin temperature of the White Balance, zooming (power zoom on lenses supporting it, and/or smooth Ex. Tele Conv. adjustment), adjusting focus, or – if Request #3 is implemented – adjusting the Light Level.

This could even be game-changing, if smooth control (in steps much finer than 1/3 stop) is allowed – of Shutter Speed, Aperture (on lenses that support smooth iris control), and ISO. Even without this, it would be game changing for me if combined with Request #3; I would be able to make manual adjustments to exposure in such a way that is completely unintrusive to the video being recorded (sharp 1/3 stop changes in exposure can be smoothed in postprocessing).

Note: If smooth control is implemented, then on lenses without smooth iris control, smooth control of Aperture could still be simulated. This would require first teaching the camera the exact real T-stop corresponding to each aperture setting on each lens the user owns (and perhaps the rate of change between adjacent aperture settings, too); the camera could have a calibration/learning mode for this, during which it would need to be aimed at an unchanging target. Once calibrated, smooth aperture control could be simulated by varying the ISO smoothly within 1/3 stop of range, stair-stepping it back as the real aperture is actually changed. (At minimum ISO with simulated aperture narrowing, or maximum ISO with simulated aperture widening, shutter speed variation could be substituted for ISO variation.)

Additional gestures could be defined as well, to do other things besides adjusting exposure. A good way for all of these gestures to begin would be with opposite movements, for example a Right drag followed by a significant Left drag, or and Up drag followed by a significant Down drag. These gestures should be user-assignable just like Fn keys.

An additional bindable function could perhaps be added for toggling between Touch Pad AF mode and Touch Pad Gestures mode. Of course, it wouldn’t make much sense for a user to bind a gesture itself to toggling this (since gestures couldn’t be used in Touch Pad AF mode to get back to Touch Pad Gestures mode); the sensible way would be to either bind a key to it, bind one of Fn7-Fn11 to it (which would require taking the eye off the EVF), or to rely on entering setup to toggle it. But this choice should be left to the user’s discretion.

Request #5 - Changing aspect ratio during 4K/6K Photo recording (Priority: Medium)

Please make it possible to change the aspect ratio while recording 4K/6K Photo videos. Unlike changing it at other times, the actual change should be delayed until pressing Set, so that the user can scroll between adjacent aspect ratios without instantly changing to them. Since a single file can’t contain multiple resolutions, once changed, the video recording should be handed off to the next file, so that there are no missing video frames or audio (similiarly to how Relay Rec hands off recording to a file on the next card once the current one is full).

Request #6 - Touch Pad simultaneous pan and zoom (Priority: Medium-low)

Currently, a Touch Pad pinch-zoom gesture in Playback is constrained to only zooming in or out, and panning can only be done with a single finger. Please allow simultaneous panning and zooming, so that the result of the zoom can be framed nicely inside the screen in an efficient manner.

See also Problem #18 and Problem #44.

Request #7 - Remote control features (Priority: Medium)

The new tethered remote control app, Lumix Tether, is a very nice addition. It is in need of improvement however.

On Canon DSLRs, the remote control app allows setting focus in steps of 1, 20, or 400. Lumix Tether currently only has two steps sizes for MF Adjust, 1 and 10. At the largest step size of 10, it takes 110 presses to cross the full focus range of my 100-400mm lens. Please add a third step size for MF Adjust; 100 would be perfect.

Currently, as far as I can tell, Lumix Tether has no keyboard shortcuts whatsoever. Please add keyboard shortcuts for everything, or almost everything. They are especially needed for MF Adjust focus adjustment; please add dedicated single-key shortcuts for moving in both directions at all available step sizes. EOS Camera Movie Record is a good example of this having been done well; it has six keys dedicated to adjusting focus ([1] [2] [3] for going in the NEAR direction in step sizes of 400, 20, and 1, and [4] [5] [6] for going in the FAR direction in step sizes of 1, 20, and 400), and [Z] toggles zoom (which in the GH5's case would be MF Assist, toggled by clicking "Zoom In Scale" in Lumix Tether).

Please make it possible to access the GH5’s menu system remotely. For example, currently there is no way to toggle Anamorphic video mode using Lumix Tether; it is necessary to touch the camera to adjust that setting.

Request #8 - Customizable scope of custom settings (Priority: Medium)

Please implement a function whereby the user can register a custom settings set (to C1, C2, C3-1, C3-2, or C3-3), then change some settings (such as shutter speed, aperture, and ISO), and then re-register the same custom settings set as "Ignore Differences". The camera would compare the already-registered settings in that set with the current camera settings, and subtract the change settings from the scope of that set. Subsequently switching to that custom settings set would leave the "Ignored Differences" unchanged, and only load the rest of the settings registered under that set.

This would allow users to shrink the scope of a custom settings set, so that it only loads a certain subset of the full set of camera settings – one that is appropriate to how the user wants to use that custom settings set. (And doing it the way described would be much easier and more efficient than navigating through a full list of the camera settings that are saved under custom settings sets, to enable and disable them individually.)