Personal View site logo
Panasonic G6 Issues
  • Starting this topic to gather issues that could lead to firmware update for the G6 :)

  • 83 Replies sorted by
  • Hi, I own both pal europe and ntsc americas version of the G6. My issues are as follows: 1. I cannot update the firmware of the pal version to 1.2. And 2. both cameras, sometimes get stuck when attached a external rode microphon or a tascam recorder or the metabones adapter. The display simply gets off, only giving me the chance to look at the viewfinder. Only by "reset" in the setup menu I am able to reprogramming all my settings, but it is boring. How can I send this info to panasonic in order to have a newer firmware to addres these issues?

  • Thanks @yskunto replied me quickly. That's poor me as others who had Japanese version cameras at this time, but still hope @Vitaliy will release hack for that model soon. About return item is not big problem and I can get Asian PAL version, but it is still quite expensive right now that's why I got Japanese with cheaper price. I don't use video function so I don't mind about it.

  • Sorry @LongJiang! I am afraid that you run off your luck. There will be no way to turn your G6 Japanese version to speak English until Vitaliy releases a hack to do so in "not" near future. The only way to have access English menu is from Panasonic Remote Application that could be installed in your smartphone. If you could return the G6, then please do so and find yourself Asian PAL version without video recording time limit.

  • Sorry that I might late to be here, but I just got a G6 Japanese version and there does not have English language to switch. I also spent some hours to search around G! this problem, but did not get any lucks. At the end of searching, I found this place and would like to know do I have chance to hack Japanese to English language for my G6 at this time?

  • After switching to FCP-X for editing G6 shots I am wondering about the settings of the videostream. My mode is AVCHD/25p but FCP-X identifies 50i, bottom field first (after transcoding to ProRes422). If I inspect the mts file with the Videospec tool I see frame rate 25, interlaced, top field first! I remember from the discussions about the GH1 that Panasonic distributes the image from the sensor in two interlaced fields while still establishing one full frame every 25th of a second (I am in a PAL region), a kind of fake interlaced mode. I know this is really a subject for an FCP-X forum, but first I would like a confirmation about the 25p mode being progressive.

  • @dishe thanks for putting the answers in 1 place!

  • @dishe As I mentioned in the other G6 thread, this occurs outside, in natural lighting, even when trying different exposures. When I compared two different clips of the same subject, the one that looked underexposed had this issue, but the other didn't have this issue, which had a brighter exposure.

  • Not sure if any of these questions got answered elsewhere on the forum, but I'd like to chime in with some of the answers that I've discovered myself:

    1) Those of you complaining about the lack of constant preview on this camera (especially when working with manual glass), there is actually a "preview" function which can be mapped to a fn button. Antonglamb mentioned it above, but the responses that came afterwards appear to have missed that nugget of wisdom. I mapped my AE/AF lock button to that (because it is conveniently placed, another good option is to map the Wifi button), and now when I'm shooting stills I just hit that button for a live preview of the actual exposure I'm going to get. Its funny how it works, the live view sort of slows down to like 5fps when preview is on- I'm guessing that's a feature to illustrate how your motion blur will look since there is a noticeable gap between displayed live frames for you to judge any kind of blurring. Almost like it is constantly taking a picture. I'd actually rather it didn't do that because I just want to check my exposure and the slow refresh rate is annoying, but totally works perfectly if you want to adjust your exposure and see the results in real time.

    2) The 720x480 videos coming off the G6 are some sort of Windows 7 bug. It reports that 1080 24p files are only 720x480, and therefore WMP only plays them at that size. But you'll notice a lot of aliasing because the screen is being forced to play at the wrong size... if you full-screen the video, you can see the resolution is all there. Any other app you throw it into (Sony Vegas, Premiere, VLC, etc) all recognize the 1080p resolution, so this isn't a G6 fault, its something wonky in Windows 7. Windows 8, for the record, reports the proper resolution. And a 1080 60p file is correctly reported, so it is just a bug between 1080/24 and Windows 7 that has absolutely no real derogatory effect on anything, other than scaring the pants of a new user who thinks they ruined their shot in low res!

    3) Battery thing that Chungda mentioned is not a real thing. I'm guessing the contacts on one of the batteries got dirty (I've had that happen on my Canon bodies as well). So putting the old one back in seemed to work, but the new one did not, because the new one probably wasn't making contact. I have 4-5 batteries between this and my GH2s, and I swaps them freely all the time, some after market, some genuine. It doesn't care. In fact, the G6 has an advantage over the GH2 in that it reports battery life on aftermarket batteries. The GH2 wouldn't tell me how much juice is left unless it was an official battery, which was a major risk on a paying gig. The G6 happily tells me, and warns me when it is getting low, and shuts down when depleted just like an OEM battery. Nice!

    4) Starsailor, that sounds like frequency collision between the lights and your shutter speed. That can happen on any camera. The lights are flickering at a refresh rate your eyes can't notice, but the camera's shutter is capturing it in the middle of a refresh phase. This is the same reason we used to see the scan lines moving up or down on a TV or old computer monitor in a video recording- the refresh rate between the display and recording are colliding. To fix this you need to either change your shutter speed or the light source. It has nothing to do with ISO.

    Again, I apologize if these are well known and already answered elsewhere in the forum. I just noticed that no one was coming back to answer these questions here so I figured we should tie up the loose ends for future readers!

  • When shooting in EXT crop mode, patterns of colored noise appear and fluctuates between different positions of the frame in wave patterns. What is causing this? Is it higher ISO (I only went as high as 640) or is it something else? It's not always present at that ISO though. Does it have to do with overexposing? It has ruined many good shots and I am wondering if there's a way to avoid this nuisance.

  • @dishe the same thing happens to me with WMP. The files are recognized fine in PP tho.

  • As Mckinise mentioned earlier, "24p is reading as 720 x 480 on my windows 7 computer. It has the correct bit rate and looks right, but for some reason it is displaying as a different resolution in the text description and in properties. It is being read as 1920 x 1080p everywhere else, windows 8, etc.

    Every other mode reads correctly."

    I just picked up a G6 to experiment with, coming from a GH2. My heart almost skipped a beat when my 1920x1080 24p recorded shots were reported by windows to be 720 x 480! When I double click to play back the file, sure enough they play in a small 480p sized window. Dragging into VLC or an editor seems to report a full 1080p image, but I'm wondering why this behavior exists within Windows' file system and player? Why does Windows think this is a standard def file, and why is Windows Media Player not seeing the additional HD data? Is it down sampling, or only seeing that much resolution? Its made me a little paranoid about whether or not this data is actually 1080p at all, but rather an up-scaled lower resolution? My GH2 and GH1 files always correctly reported 1920x1080 and played in a full sized media player window. Why is the G6 different?

  • Hey! It's fixed!! What happened was the sensor overheated because I was shooting during the mid-day of a super sunny day at 1.7 aperture! But after 4 days my burst rate is at the higest speed again!! So be careful guys when the sun is on the top of the sky and there is high luminosity, because at 1.7 aperture and in manual mode the sensor could become overheated.

  • It is matter of settings, happened to me too. Display the screen (not the menu) with the burst rate settings and select the rate you want.

  • Did you check your settings? There's different rates to choose from.

  • Hello guys, I have a problem with the burst rate of my Lumix G6... Simply doesn't work at all! Please, is there anybody who could help me to fix the problem? Camera: Lumix G6 MemoryCard: Sandisk 32Gb, 96mb/sec. class 10. Lens: 1.7 panasonic and kit lens (burst rate doesn't work on both). I've tried formating the memory card and reseting the camera settings. I cannot undestarnd what's happening.

  • Don't know why but am using original batteries so, its not like 3rd party battery fault. Plus it should be something inside the camera so you can only replace it at certain point so battery can have longer life span. But for what I was shooting totally was annoying as I had to shoot a short theatre play and wanted to replace battery before it to have enough power but now made that I had to change battery in the middle instead.

  • I don't have that battery issue. you should be able to change them anytime.

  • @chungdha mine doesn't do this, sounds like a fault with battery

  • There is another Issue which I found out about during live event, when I try to replace the battery when it was still half empty it did not wanted to start with the new full battery. Tried everything but it didn't want to turn on, until i place back the half empty battery. But when the battery meter finally blinked red, I placed the other battery in it and it then started up. I wonder why they have made this cause its quite annoying,

  • The live exposure in M mode is quite annoying when taking photos often get totally different thing then what you see on the monitor or evf. Have to switch to Mvideo move which does have live exposure and then go back to M mode to take a photo. Cause M alway does auto exposure and give you a false images.

    Timelapse is really cool to have it in camera but annoyingly its multi button menu to stop it as you need to hit fn4 and then choose stop and if you have allot of fast exposure like half a second its impossible to stop it with that method and just need to force stop it by shutting down the camera.

    Also notice when I did a sunset time-lapse the time-lapse flickers and see it not gradually get dark but jumps around while having it on full manual not sure if anyone else notice that.

  • when turning on or turning off the g6, do you all hear a slight noise? i hear one on mine when i start it up

  • @Rivo_Kikkul in M mode with the kit lens is the only time that you cannot get live view. In A, S, and Video modes, using either the kit lens or a legacy lens, you get live view if you change the settings with the toggle lever. If your camera is not doing this then may be get it checked. And by the way - I also own a GH2.

  • This manual legacy lens aperture thing has nothing to do with functions on G6, we speak about shutter speed live view. Still there is only one answer - there is no live exposure view on G6 like it is on GH series.

  • OK, I stand half corrected about the exposure in M mode. I originally answered thinking about video mode - using the toggle changes exposure live (my bad). In A mode and S mode again you can get exposure changes live using the toggle to change exposure settings. Now in M mode it can work 2 ways - if you have the kit lens on then it does not give you real exposure levels, however, if you put an old manual lens on and start changing the aperture manually you will see the LCD brightening and darkening in real-time. I use an old nifty 50mm lens on mine a lot of the time.

  • I too do not have "constant preview" at all under any settings related to M mode. I've gone through all the settings and there is nothing that seems to affect this. It was always a pain on the GH2 to have to "reset" the constant preview after every shot via the "delete+display" keys but it made it usable. Seriously, the "constant preview" and the "live view" while recording would both be much appreciated if Panny could produce these in another firmware release.