Unfortunately, it appears that my new Panasonic GH7 has a fatal flaw that I never even considered.

I am Cozumel now, setting my gear up, and discovered that the GH7 doesn't do HDMI out while recording. In fact, I can't seem to get it to give an HDMI feed to my SmallHD-502 monitor at all. Perhaps there is a setting that I have missed, but all I can get is a "No HDMI Signal" error message on the monitor. If I can't use an external monitor with this camera, it will really cripple my macro shooting (not that I expect to get much macro shooting done here, with the current).

Has anyone else run into this, and possibly have a solution that I am missing? Thanks

No GH7 here but a long time Pana user.

Did you enable the HDMI output downscaling?

By default my GH5 output on HDMI the same resolution and framerate I'm recording to but not all monitors accept UHD or 4K signal. And most of them accept max 4K@30p.

My GH5 HDMI is set to 1080p regardless of my recording resolution.

If you have a normal desktop pc monitor or a TV, just try your camera on them, possibly with another normal HDMI cable.

HI @Davide DB Yes, I did check to see that the HDMI out was enabled. I tried playing around with the output resolution from 1080p to 1080i to 4K, and also "auto" with no change.

The monitor worked great with my GH5 for many years, but now that I have upgraded to the GH7, it doesn't seem to recognize it. From some of the google searches that I have done, Panasonic may have removed that ability starting with the GH6

Nope.

I can 100% confirm you that the external monitor via HDMi works flawlessly with GH6 and GH7.

There is something else at play there.

If you find a pc monitor or a laptop, you can test your GH7 HDMI out and your SmallHD monitor alone

I'll add some other thoughts:

• Set HDMI Output Res to 1080p (instead of Auto). You tried this already.

• Disable HDMI Rec Control in the HDMI connection menu. The GH7 sends a digital "trigger" signal through the HDMI cable to tell an external recorder to start. A simple SmallHD doesn't know what to do with this command and often glitches or loses the sync.

• ensure HDMI Info Display (Rec) is set to ON.

• Try a different cable.

Thanks @Davide DB that is basically the same information that I just received from Reef Photo as well. I am strongly suspicious that I may have received a defective HDMI cable or bulkhead. Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of resources to test these until I get back home again. Thanks again for all your help.

Edited January 26Jan 26 by SwiftFF5

Well, I went back through every setting again, and changed the HDMI output from Auto to 1080p as well as removing and re-inserting the cable - and now the monitor is working. I am not sure which change made the difference, but for now, I don't really care. I just hope that it turns on again in the morning for my next dive. Thanks again for all your help.

How was the trip? Did the camera perform well?

Welllll, it was probably the worst dive trip that I have been on. We were originally promised three dives per day (I prefer 4 or 5 dives a day, but OK), but when we got there, we were told that in fact, we were only going to get two dives per day. Then, we got high winds out of the north, which caused small craft warnings and the harbor was closed, so we lost three of the five days of diving. We were able to convince them to dive on Friday, since our plane left late on Saturday. So, we eventually got a total of six dives. Cozumel, for me, is not terribly interesting diving since I love macro shooting and with the currents and drift dives, macro is hard. Then, coming back we had to re-route our flights due to the snow storms in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they managed to lose all of our luggage in the process. It has finally arrived, though, and everything was intact.

That said, I mostly upgraded from the GH5 to the GH7 for the improved autofocus, and so far I must say that I am impressed. It really does appear to be significantly improved. I will be going to Roatan in March, where I will be able to test it on macro subjects and really give it a work out, but for now I am impressed.

Thanks for asking!

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by SwiftFF5