Today at Photokina, Panasonic announced that it has started development on the LUMIX GH5, a followup to the DMC-GH4. While the DMC-GH4 was Panasonic’s first camera to shoot video at 4K 30p/25p resolution, the LUMIX GH5 ups that ante to 4K 60p/50p video.

6K photo stills at around 16 megapixels

Given that most 4K 60p cameras are full video camcorders that run in the multi-thousand-dollar range, the LUMIX GH5 could be a great option for bringing that level of high quality video to the masses if it can maintain a lower price point similar to the GH4's $799.99.

Similar to the DMC-GH4, which could extract 4K photo stills from recorded video to get an 8 megapixel 4K image, the LUMIX GH5 can use the same technology to slice out 6K photo stills at around 16 megapixels, resulting in a 6K picture that Panasonic claims has around nine times the pixel count of a 1080p image. While this is cool, it is probably more of a gimmick at this point than anything else, especially given the GH5's focus of HD video.

Little else is known about the LUMIX GH5, although Panasonic will be showcasing it at Photokina 2016 throughout this week, with a tentative release scheduled for sometime in "early 2017."