Gear
My equipment
For the past four years I've been shooting on the Panasonic GH-5. In its day (2017) it was a pretty revolutionary camera. The Micro-Four Thirds sensor means it is smaller than a full-frame camera. The alloy body is rugged and key for the places we go, weather-sealed. I've used it in sandy deserts in the Middle East and freezing conditions in Antarctica, and it's never let me down.
Often a bigger camera can be intimidating for the people we're shooting, which is why these DSLR size cameras are so brilliant.
It was designed as a stills camera, but it soon became clear that it's real stand-out feature was video.
I'm not a time-served cameraman with an in-depth knowledge of codecs and techy camera stuff, I'm a reporter turned video journalist, but with a bit of time and experimentation you can make this camera sing.
The footage it can record straight out of the box is incredible for a camera this size. In 8-bit it can record 4K 60p internally, which at the time was revolutionary. For me the other stand out feature is the in-body stabilisation. Teamed up with a Panasonic lens that also has stabilisation, it's almost as good as having a the camera on a gimbal. For the type of run-and-gun filming I do with the military it's a real asset. Other great things are the battery life, which is outstanding, and the ability to customise function buttons so you can switch into slow-mo for instance quickly. The auto-focus isn't the best, but it is now much better thanks to firmware updates. It does have limitations - the ability to zoom in on action some way away - but we have other cameras for that, and it's not how I like to shoot anyway. Overall it's a great little camera, and one of the biggest bonuses is the fact it doesn't generally arouse the great kerfuffle at airport security that bigger cameras tend to do, particularly in some of the more 'interesting' places we tend to go.
