Photography news, before it happens

Since I broke the news about the Panasonic GH5s a few months ago I never realized that all the camera specifications I received from sources did not mention IBIS anywhere. I assumed that this was just given and there was no need to include it. When the GH5s was announced I was surprised to find out that the latest MFT camera doesn’t have IBIS – one of the most marketed feature of mirrorless cameras in the past 10 years. After our initial discussion here on the blog, I did some more Googling and found that IBIS indeed could be a problem for filmmakers (which is what the GH5 is mainly used for) – the sensor can vibrate even with IBIS turned off when the camera is attached to a car or when close to a subwoofer for example. Here is what Dpreview has to say:

The camera’s sensor-based stabilization is gone, which may on the surface sound like an odd decision, but makes a lot of sense for pro video shooters who are often working with their own stabilized rigs and gimbals. The floating sensor design used by the GH5’s stabilization system can interact with gimbals even when it’s turned off, so removing it entirely solves the problem.

We’ve seen a degree of scepticism about Panasonic’s reasoning but, if you assume there’s some heat dissipation benefit for bonding the sensor to a solid object and you recognize that the camera is already shooting out to the edges of the Micro Four Thirds image circle, there may be no way of doing what the GH5S does and providing stabilization.

Here is some video footage showing the difference between the GH5 camera with IBIS turned off and the new GH5s:

Imaging Resource did an ISO comparison between the Panasonic GH5s ($2,500) and Sony A7SII ($2,700) cameras:

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