There are a couple of cages now out there on the market for the Panasonic GH5, and this one is from CAME-TV. The CAME-TV GH5 cage consists of three separate pieces – the top handle, GH5 cage and the base plate.
Toolless aluminium
Apart from one screw to attatch the camera to the cage the complete system is toolless, and both the top handle and bottom plate with built in 15mm rod support can be taken off or put back on quickly.
The GH5 cage is made out of CNC machined aluminium, and there are plenty of threaded holes for adding accessories. I found the build quality to be very good and it looks to be solidly constructed.
Ports remain protected, slots remain clear
The minimalistic design allows easy access to all the camera controls and buttons, as well as the battery compartment and the card slot.
The cage also works seamlessly with the included GH5 HDMI protector port that comes standard with the camera.
CAME-TV GH5 cage: audio a challenge
The only downside I found to the camera was that you cannot use the optional DMW-XLR1 audio adapter with the handle attached. This is because the top handle has to slide onto another raised mount that is positioned too close to the hot shoe interface on the GH5. The only way to use the DMW-XLR1 audio adapter is too remove both the top handle and the plate that it slides on to. This is far from convenient and the design defiantly needs to be improved.
The other problem I found that even if you do attach the DMW-XLR1 audio adapter to the top of the GH5 when it is in the CAME-TV cage there is no way of easily mounting both a radio mic receiver and an on-camera microphone. You can mount one of them on top of the DMW-XLR1, but the other one needs to be put on the other cold shoe adapter on the cage.
Unfortunately when you do this it is way too close to where the XLR inputs are on the DMW-XLR1 and there isn’t physically any room to attach your XLR cables. The only way around this would be to get right and left angle XLR adapters made up so you could still use the ports.
After discovering these problems I got in contact with CAME-TV and they are taking my feedback on board and are looking into possibly making a design change to overcome these problems when using the cage with the DMW-XLR1.
The CAME-TV Panasonic GH5 cage is well made and works really well if you don’t need to use Panasonic’s optional DMW-XLR1 audio adapter. If you do need to use it then this first version of the cage probably isn’t for you.
The CAME-TV GH5 cage retails for $298 US.
