You are the only person I´ve seen on youtube who compares the light of a camera or a lens not just with their characteristics, but what the human eye sees.
Interesting evaluations. You demonstrated some pretty amazing low light capabilities with the voitlander 10.5mm .95. the images of the children and the snow slide were beautiful. You did a good job of showing the limits and comparison with the human eye. Thanks for the knowledge.
The human eye comparison was great. And actually, I really liked that weird "noisy" grainy burnt-orange sky shot in the dark. Looks like a good artsy horror scene haha.
My exact use case: Outdoors youtuber making backpacking videos. Been trying to get useable night time camp footage and some astrophotography with a GX85. The 12-35 kit lens at f3.5 wide open isn't cutting it for this. So this is exactly what I needed to make an informed decision - thank you for making this video.
Hello, I am curious if you are familiar with the diameter of the focus ring on the Voigtländer Nokton 10.5mm f0.95 MFT lens? Thank you in advance for any knowledge and taking the time to make the video!
Awesome job .. exactly what I was wanting to see .. impressive low light capabilities .. I run a SLR magic 12mm T1.6 .. not quite as good with low light .. it gets slightly fewer UFO stars .. if you stopping down a bit they disappear
This lens actually has usable sharpness at 0.95 in the center, even if it's a bit soft compared to other lenses. It seems like the ultimate low light video lens, and probably a solid choice for night photography as well. The price is a bit ridiculous though. Nice video, love seeing real world results
Gone Far Afield Thanks, I have heard This lens dose not connect to camera, and you can change F and auto focus on lens only. I have to should between Panasonic 12 mm F1.4 and this lens. Which one you recommend for me ?
@@OhAlone it depends what you want to do with it. If you're doing video while moving around, I would recommend the Panasonic since the continuous auto focus would be very helpful. If you're using it on a tripod, or only for the night sky, or in moonlight-only situations I would recommend the voigtlander because the you can fine tune the focus wheel much better (it has a very long focus throw) and the f/0.95 gives you 50% more light.
@@OhAlone The lens won't help, but if your camera has a setting called 'focus peaking' that's what I use to help me find focus. I use a GH5 and it has that option. It highlights the areas that are in focus in your viewfinder. Most mirrorless cameras have focus peaking. It works independently of what lens you're using.
The settings were as the footnote showed: 2 second exposure, f/0.95, 3200 ISO. I set up the camera on a tripod and a 10 second delay, ran out to the fire for the shot and tried to hold still. It took several takes to get something that looked good. The fire is the tricky part and you'll have to experiment when you do it. It looks big in my shot but was actually coals with a tiny sputtering flame. If the flames were constant or too big it overexposed my silhouette, and just coals was not enough and I couldn't hold still for a longer exposure. Good luck.
Just purchased a voightlander 10.5mm f/0.95 and a GH4. Buy purchasing a GH4 instead of a GH5 it allowed me to purchase a voigtlaner and a rode video mic pro
Hey man, great video. I like your sincere manner of speaking and this video was very useful for me as I'm looking for low-light options for the GH5. Keep it up and I hope your channel grows quickly!
do you use 16-255 or 0-255? I guess in extreme darks it would make sense to use 0-255, but normally 16-255 probably frees up space during compression (less artifacts)
I'll be honest, I'm not sure what you're talking about. What I can tell you is I haven't messed around with the color settings that came with the camera. I only cycle between quality modes. I tried filming in 4k 10 bit, but there was something wrong with the (I think they're called) codec, so I only use 8 bit 4k or 1080p if I'm doing slow motion. What do you think would work better?
@@RUTired Just stumbled upon this. If my understanding is correct, this has more to do with what you edit in than anything else (Premier, Final cut, etc). Most editors handle 0-255 natively but 16-255 is more rare. For some reason Panasonic has defaulted to 16-255 on some cameras. The 16 refers to the black point. Usually this would be 0 (for pure black) and 255 (for pure white). Taking a guess here but moving the black point to 16 may have something to do with broadcast safe color profiles. Not necessary if you're releasing to online. I hear using 16-255 can cause issues with color grading - specifically noise in the shadows. 4K 8-bit is also what you want to use. 10-bit color is only necessary in a professional studio deliverable workflow. RUclips crushes the quality of everything and so 8-bit is fine.
@@WildlandExplorer I use Movie Studio 14.0 with whatever is the default setting. Check out my second video for a better idea of how dark it can get: GH5 vs GH5s extreme low light. In that video you should just barely, barely be able to make out a water spigot in the grass, so adjust your monitor settings and that was really close to what my eyes could see. Something you can also do that I never tried was to get a metabones speedbooster- full frame to micro 4/3 and use a very fast full frame lens. It amplifies the light down to a micro 4/3 sensor, although it's really tough to beat the Voigtlander f/0.95. In my opinion if you're going for low light on the trail to match even the darkest of conditions, you'll want an f/0.95 lens. Have fun out there!
People get all excited about sensor size. It's only part of it. The other pieces are the image sensor and the speed of the lens. I shoot m 4/3 professionally due to size and weight. The lens you have I believe is the fastest one available and Olympus just released a series of 1.2 lenses. I used to shoot Nikon but I am my 60s now and still want to hike a lot and don't want to carry 50 lbs of gear. I have a smaller tripod ( no need for one with a lighter smaller system) and carry a 17mm, 12-100 and have the 100-400 available if needed. still or video it's a snap.
Gone Far Afield it’s great. Rent it and get a feel for it. it looks like such a beautiful place you live. I have my scorpion setup similar but with a tailhook until summer as I am moving and don’t want to hassle with state to state SBR issues. My main reason is flash and noise. Put a can on one and it’s very quite and low flash powders in handgun Ammo makes it easier if you have to protect your family.
Yeah I'll have to rent that lens. And I hear you on the scorpion- I had to make a request when I went to Arizona last year. I took 2 months to be approved. Much better to not have the hassle.
Yes, the manual focus on this lens is perfect for finding the stars. I've used electronic fly-by-wire focusing before and it takes half an hour to get the right focus. This lens doesn't have perfect sharpness, but as far as you being able to dial it in to the limit of its capabilities- yes, it's soooo much easier.
Every lens that I've tried set to infinity (the max on that end) seems to be barely off its max sharpness. It takes a little nudging back from the max to find the golden sharpness level and it can be tricky. I usually set it to infinity, take a picture, look at it zoomed in, then turn the focus a tiny bit and do the same, comparing the two. I keep doing that until I'm satisfied it's as sharp as the lens will go.
That makes sense I'm new to Panasonic, been using a sony a6500 which is much better in low light and a £200 F2 lens gets you great results, but with the gh5 it seems much more difficult to achieve the same thing, you star time-lapse has given me great encouragement that it can be done thanks. Do you have any experience with the Panasonic 12mm f1.4? wondered what thats like in comparison
Your time lapse photos were in 4:3 format. Change the aspect ratio to 16:9 next time and you'll get rid of the black bars. I've been tempted by this lens for a long time.
I love and own both Panasonic GH5 and Sony A7 III, but I think you picked the wrong camera for your purposes. You could have completely destroyed the GH5 with the A7 III for low light performance - no comparison there. Also the Panasonic weighs more, and is larger. And the GH5+Lens combination weighs more. No way around that, no matter what lens combination you use, the Panasonic will always be heavier than the full frame and have 4-5 times worse low light performance. Try adding up the weights of the body + lens, and calculating the full frame equivalent F-Stop.
Thanks for your input. Yes, of course the full frame camera will do better in low light. The weight comparison is also interesting to note. This video was intended for those people that have a micro 4/3 system already and want to see how far they can stretch it before going to a full frame camera.
Sony A6500 (453g) + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm F0.95 Mark II (460g) FF equivalent = 52.5mm f/1.4 TOTAL = 913g Sony A6500 (453g) + Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN Contemporary (405g) FF equivalent = 24mm f/2.1 TOTAL = 858g Sony A6500 (453g) + Samyang 12mm F2.0 NCS CS (245g) FF equivalent = 18mm f/3.0 TOTAL = 698g Sony A7 III (650g) + Samyang 12mm F2.0 NCS CS (245g) FF equivalent = 18mm f/3.0 [APS-C mode] TOTAL = 895g Sony A7 III (650g) + Zeiss Batis 18mm F2.8 (330g) TOTAL = 980g Sony A7 III (650g) + Zeiss Batis 25mm F2 (335g) TOTAL = 985g Sony A7 III (650g) + Sony FE 28mm F2 (200g) TOTAL = 850g Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Voigtlander Nokton 10.5mm F0.95 (586g) FF equivalent = 21mm f/1.9 given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/3.8 on Sony A7 III TOTAL = 1,311g Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 17mm F1.2 PRO (395g) FF equivalent = 34mm f/2.4 given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/4.8 on Sony A7 III TOTAL = 1,120g Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 12mm F1.4 (335g) FF equivalent = 24mm f/2.8 given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/5.6 on Sony A7 III TOTAL = 1,060g Helpful links: www.mmcalc.com ruclips.net/video/ANu6yRagVjk/видео.html Also the Sony has fully reliable phase detection autofocus which works in low light.
Round 2, Pancake lenses: Sony A7 III (650g) + Samyang AF 24mm F2.8 FE (93g) TOTAL = 743g Sony A7 III (650g) + Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE (86g) TOTAL = 736g Sony A7 III (650g) + Sony Sonnar T* FE 35mm F2.8 ZA (120g) TOTAL = 780g Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 15mm F1.7 ASPH (115g) FF equivalent = 30mm f/3.4 given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/6.8 on Sony A7 III TOTAL = 840g Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F1.7 II ASPH (87g) FF equivalent = 40mm f/3.4 given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/6.8 on Sony A7 III TOTAL = 812g Sony's lighter, and the relative performance 2.8 vs 6.8 is a no brainer. That's 6x worse low light performance.
You are the only person I´ve seen on youtube who compares the light of a camera or a lens not just with their characteristics, but what the human eye sees.
I hope it helped. Thanks for watching
Thanks for the video, a lot of people talk a lot about quality of the lens etc but very few people actually show low light capability.
Thanks for watching. I'm glad it was helpful.
Interesting evaluations. You demonstrated some pretty amazing low light capabilities with the voitlander 10.5mm .95. the images of the children and the snow slide were beautiful. You did a good job of showing the limits and comparison with the human eye. Thanks for the knowledge.
I'm glad it was useful for you. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Oh great, now I've watched this I need to buy a new lens for my GH5s.
Thanks a bunch, man! Lol.
lol you're welcome
The human eye comparison was great. And actually, I really liked that weird "noisy" grainy burnt-orange sky shot in the dark. Looks like a good artsy horror scene haha.
Thanks for watching!
My exact use case: Outdoors youtuber making backpacking videos. Been trying to get useable night time camp footage and some astrophotography with a GX85. The 12-35 kit lens at f3.5 wide open isn't cutting it for this. So this is exactly what I needed to make an informed decision - thank you for making this video.
I'm glad I could help, man! I was using camcorders and cell phones until I figured out they're useless in the dark.
thanks for the review and those last astro-timelapses are incredible.
Thanks for watching!
Nice job. I have been going back and forth on this men’s for my GH5.
Thanks. I hope it was able to help out.
Hello, I am curious if you are familiar with the diameter of the focus ring on the Voigtländer Nokton 10.5mm f0.95 MFT lens?
Thank you in advance for any knowledge and taking the time to make the video!
And thank you for watching. Unfortunately I've since sold the lens and camera, so I couldn't tell you what diameter the focus ring is.
Awesome job .. exactly what I was wanting to see .. impressive low light capabilities ..
I run a SLR magic 12mm T1.6 .. not quite as good with low light .. it gets slightly fewer UFO stars .. if you stopping down a bit they disappear
Amazing Video! well explained and calm voice :) Keep it up
Wow! That’s pretty impressive! Can’t wait to see some footage from the back country.
I'm pretty happy with it. I should be getting some chances to use it here soon.
Excellent review, thank you!
Awesome lens review
Thanks for the video - be good to see how the Voigtlander compares in normal / everyday lighting situations - Peter
You got it. It won't be hard to make another one showing bokeh and overall performance in daylight. Anything specific you'd like to see?
Where is that ice place in the beginning?
Midway (Utah) Ice Castles
This lens actually has usable sharpness at 0.95 in the center, even if it's a bit soft compared to other lenses. It seems like the ultimate low light video lens, and probably a solid choice for night photography as well. The price is a bit ridiculous though. Nice video, love seeing real world results
Really nice video!
Glad you liked it. Thanks for watching!
Thanks, just what I wanted to see
Glad I could help out!
May I ask, when you use this lens you can still use auto white balance or not ?
Yes auto white balance will still work. It's more a function of the camera and not the lens.
Gone Far Afield Thanks, I have heard This lens dose not connect to camera, and you can change F and auto focus on lens only.
I have to should between Panasonic 12 mm F1.4 and this lens. Which one you recommend for me ?
@@OhAlone it depends what you want to do with it. If you're doing video while moving around, I would recommend the Panasonic since the continuous auto focus would be very helpful. If you're using it on a tripod, or only for the night sky, or in moonlight-only situations I would recommend the voigtlander because the you can fine tune the focus wheel much better (it has a very long focus throw) and the f/0.95 gives you 50% more light.
Gone Far Afield Last question. If use voigtlander lens, the camera can tell we are in focus by some sign or need to decide by user eye.
@@OhAlone The lens won't help, but if your camera has a setting called 'focus peaking' that's what I use to help me find focus. I use a GH5 and it has that option. It highlights the areas that are in focus in your viewfinder. Most mirrorless cameras have focus peaking. It works independently of what lens you're using.
How did you do the last shot
The settings were as the footnote showed: 2 second exposure, f/0.95, 3200 ISO. I set up the camera on a tripod and a 10 second delay, ran out to the fire for the shot and tried to hold still. It took several takes to get something that looked good. The fire is the tricky part and you'll have to experiment when you do it. It looks big in my shot but was actually coals with a tiny sputtering flame. If the flames were constant or too big it overexposed my silhouette, and just coals was not enough and I couldn't hold still for a longer exposure. Good luck.
Just purchased a voightlander 10.5mm f/0.95 and a GH4. Buy purchasing a GH4 instead of a GH5 it allowed me to purchase a voigtlaner and a rode video mic pro
that package sounds like an awesome deal. you won't be disappointed
Hey man, great video. I like your sincere manner of speaking and this video was very useful for me as I'm looking for low-light options for the GH5. Keep it up and I hope your channel grows quickly!
Thanks Jake! I'm glad I could help out.
do you use 16-255 or 0-255? I guess in extreme darks it would make sense to use 0-255, but normally 16-255 probably frees up space during compression (less artifacts)
I'll be honest, I'm not sure what you're talking about. What I can tell you is I haven't messed around with the color settings that came with the camera. I only cycle between quality modes. I tried filming in 4k 10 bit, but there was something wrong with the (I think they're called) codec, so I only use 8 bit 4k or 1080p if I'm doing slow motion. What do you think would work better?
@@RUTired Just stumbled upon this. If my understanding is correct, this has more to do with what you edit in than anything else (Premier, Final cut, etc). Most editors handle 0-255 natively but 16-255 is more rare. For some reason Panasonic has defaulted to 16-255 on some cameras. The 16 refers to the black point. Usually this would be 0 (for pure black) and 255 (for pure white). Taking a guess here but moving the black point to 16 may have something to do with broadcast safe color profiles. Not necessary if you're releasing to online. I hear using 16-255 can cause issues with color grading - specifically noise in the shadows. 4K 8-bit is also what you want to use. 10-bit color is only necessary in a professional studio deliverable workflow. RUclips crushes the quality of everything and so 8-bit is fine.
@@WildlandExplorer I use Movie Studio 14.0 with whatever is the default setting. Check out my second video for a better idea of how dark it can get: GH5 vs GH5s extreme low light. In that video you should just barely, barely be able to make out a water spigot in the grass, so adjust your monitor settings and that was really close to what my eyes could see. Something you can also do that I never tried was to get a metabones speedbooster- full frame to micro 4/3 and use a very fast full frame lens. It amplifies the light down to a micro 4/3 sensor, although it's really tough to beat the Voigtlander f/0.95. In my opinion if you're going for low light on the trail to match even the darkest of conditions, you'll want an f/0.95 lens. Have fun out there!
People get all excited about sensor size. It's only part of it. The other pieces are the image sensor and the speed of the lens. I shoot m 4/3 professionally due to size and weight. The lens you have I believe is the fastest one available and Olympus just released a series of 1.2 lenses. I used to shoot Nikon but I am my 60s now and still want to hike a lot and don't want to carry 50 lbs of gear. I have a smaller tripod ( no need for one with a lighter smaller system) and carry a 17mm, 12-100 and have the 100-400 available if needed. still or video it's a snap.
Thanks for giving your input! I'm pretty happy with choosing m 4/3. Hopefully I'll get the 100-400 one day.
Gone Far Afield it’s great. Rent it and get a feel for it. it looks like such a beautiful place you live. I have my scorpion setup similar but with a tailhook until summer as I am moving and don’t want to hassle with state to state SBR issues. My main reason is flash and noise. Put a can on one and it’s very quite and low flash powders in handgun Ammo makes it easier if you have to protect your family.
Yeah I'll have to rent that lens. And I hear you on the scorpion- I had to make a request when I went to Arizona last year. I took 2 months to be approved. Much better to not have the hassle.
Superb! so good to finally see a way of making the GH5 usable for night lapse, did you find it easy to focus on the stars?
Yes, the manual focus on this lens is perfect for finding the stars. I've used electronic fly-by-wire focusing before and it takes half an hour to get the right focus. This lens doesn't have perfect sharpness, but as far as you being able to dial it in to the limit of its capabilities- yes, it's soooo much easier.
Is it just a matter of setting the lens to infinity or do you use focus magnify on a bright star?
Every lens that I've tried set to infinity (the max on that end) seems to be barely off its max sharpness. It takes a little nudging back from the max to find the golden sharpness level and it can be tricky. I usually set it to infinity, take a picture, look at it zoomed in, then turn the focus a tiny bit and do the same, comparing the two. I keep doing that until I'm satisfied it's as sharp as the lens will go.
That makes sense I'm new to Panasonic, been using a sony a6500 which is much better in low light and a £200 F2 lens gets you great results, but with the gh5 it seems much more difficult to achieve the same thing, you star time-lapse has given me great encouragement that it can be done thanks. Do you have any experience with the Panasonic 12mm f1.4? wondered what thats like in comparison
I don't have any experience with that lens. That would be an interesting one to compare to. Thanks for watching!
Your time lapse photos were in 4:3 format. Change the aspect ratio to 16:9 next time and you'll get rid of the black bars. I've been tempted by this lens for a long time.
Thanks for the help. I'll do that.
Good video.
Thank you. It was fun to make
I love and own both Panasonic GH5 and Sony A7 III, but I think you picked the wrong camera for your purposes. You could have completely destroyed the GH5 with the A7 III for low light performance - no comparison there. Also the Panasonic weighs more, and is larger. And the GH5+Lens combination weighs more. No way around that, no matter what lens combination you use, the Panasonic will always be heavier than the full frame and have 4-5 times worse low light performance. Try adding up the weights of the body + lens, and calculating the full frame equivalent F-Stop.
Thanks for your input. Yes, of course the full frame camera will do better in low light. The weight comparison is also interesting to note. This video was intended for those people that have a micro 4/3 system already and want to see how far they can stretch it before going to a full frame camera.
I have exact numbers coming up for you on the weight comparison. I'll post them in a few minutes
Sony A6500 (453g) + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm F0.95 Mark II (460g)
FF equivalent = 52.5mm f/1.4
TOTAL = 913g
Sony A6500 (453g) + Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN Contemporary (405g)
FF equivalent = 24mm f/2.1
TOTAL = 858g
Sony A6500 (453g) + Samyang 12mm F2.0 NCS CS (245g)
FF equivalent = 18mm f/3.0
TOTAL = 698g
Sony A7 III (650g) + Samyang 12mm F2.0 NCS CS (245g)
FF equivalent = 18mm f/3.0 [APS-C mode]
TOTAL = 895g
Sony A7 III (650g) + Zeiss Batis 18mm F2.8 (330g)
TOTAL = 980g
Sony A7 III (650g) + Zeiss Batis 25mm F2 (335g)
TOTAL = 985g
Sony A7 III (650g) + Sony FE 28mm F2 (200g)
TOTAL = 850g
Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Voigtlander Nokton 10.5mm F0.95 (586g)
FF equivalent = 21mm f/1.9
given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/3.8 on Sony A7 III
TOTAL = 1,311g
Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 17mm F1.2 PRO (395g)
FF equivalent = 34mm f/2.4
given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/4.8 on Sony A7 III
TOTAL = 1,120g
Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 12mm F1.4 (335g)
FF equivalent = 24mm f/2.8
given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/5.6 on Sony A7 III
TOTAL = 1,060g
Helpful links:
www.mmcalc.com
ruclips.net/video/ANu6yRagVjk/видео.html
Also the Sony has fully reliable phase detection autofocus which works in low light.
Round 2, Pancake lenses:
Sony A7 III (650g) + Samyang AF 24mm F2.8 FE (93g)
TOTAL = 743g
Sony A7 III (650g) + Samyang AF 35mm F2.8 FE (86g)
TOTAL = 736g
Sony A7 III (650g) + Sony Sonnar T* FE 35mm F2.8 ZA (120g)
TOTAL = 780g
Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 15mm F1.7 ASPH (115g)
FF equivalent = 30mm f/3.4
given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/6.8 on Sony A7 III
TOTAL = 840g
Panasonic GH5 (725g) + Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F1.7 II ASPH (87g)
FF equivalent = 40mm f/3.4
given Sony's more than 2 stops better low light performance, this is worse than f/6.8 on Sony A7 III
TOTAL = 812g
Sony's lighter, and the relative performance 2.8 vs 6.8 is a no brainer. That's 6x worse low light performance.
Lots of good information there. Thanks for providing it and thanks for watching!