diff --git a/Documentation/diff-options.txt b/Documentation/diff-options.txt
index 0378cd574e..b94d332f71 100644
--- a/Documentation/diff-options.txt
+++ b/Documentation/diff-options.txt
@@ -524,6 +524,8 @@ struct), and want to know the history of that block since it first
 came into being: use the feature iteratively to feed the interesting
 block in the preimage back into `-S`, and keep going until you get the
 very first version of the block.
++
+Binary files are searched as well.
 
 -G<regex>::
 	Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed
@@ -543,6 +545,9 @@ While `git log -G"regexec\(regexp"` will show this commit, `git log
 -S"regexec\(regexp" --pickaxe-regex` will not (because the number of
 occurrences of that string did not change).
 +
+Unless `--text` is supplied patches of binary files without a textconv
+filter will be ignored.
++
 See the 'pickaxe' entry in linkgit:gitdiffcore[7] for more
 information.
 
diff --git a/Documentation/gitdiffcore.txt b/Documentation/gitdiffcore.txt
index c0a60f3158..c970d9fe43 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitdiffcore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitdiffcore.txt
@@ -242,7 +242,8 @@ textual diff has an added or a deleted line that matches the given
 regular expression.  This means that it will detect in-file (or what
 rename-detection considers the same file) moves, which is noise.  The
 implementation runs diff twice and greps, and this can be quite
-expensive.
+expensive.  To speed things up binary files without textconv filters
+will be ignored.
 
 When `-S` or `-G` are used without `--pickaxe-all`, only filepairs
 that match their respective criterion are kept in the output.  When
diff --git a/diffcore-pickaxe.c b/diffcore-pickaxe.c
index ad939d2861..a9c6d60df2 100644
--- a/diffcore-pickaxe.c
+++ b/diffcore-pickaxe.c
@@ -154,6 +154,12 @@ static int pickaxe_match(struct diff_filepair *p, struct diff_options *o,
 	if (textconv_one == textconv_two && diff_unmodified_pair(p))
 		return 0;
 
+	if ((o->pickaxe_opts & DIFF_PICKAXE_KIND_G) &&
+	    !o->flags.text &&
+	    ((!textconv_one && diff_filespec_is_binary(o->repo, p->one)) ||
+	     (!textconv_two && diff_filespec_is_binary(o->repo, p->two))))
+		return 0;
+
 	mf1.size = fill_textconv(o->repo, textconv_one, p->one, &mf1.ptr);
 	mf2.size = fill_textconv(o->repo, textconv_two, p->two, &mf2.ptr);
 
diff --git a/t/t4209-log-pickaxe.sh b/t/t4209-log-pickaxe.sh
index 844df760f7..5d06f5f45e 100755
--- a/t/t4209-log-pickaxe.sh
+++ b/t/t4209-log-pickaxe.sh
@@ -106,4 +106,39 @@ test_expect_success 'log -S --no-textconv (missing textconv tool)' '
 	rm .gitattributes
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'setup log -[GS] binary & --text' '
+	git checkout --orphan GS-binary-and-text &&
+	git read-tree --empty &&
+	printf "a\na\0a\n" >data.bin &&
+	git add data.bin &&
+	git commit -m "create binary file" data.bin &&
+	printf "a\na\0a\n" >>data.bin &&
+	git commit -m "modify binary file" data.bin &&
+	git rm data.bin &&
+	git commit -m "delete binary file" data.bin &&
+	git log >full-log
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'log -G ignores binary files' '
+	git log -Ga >log &&
+	test_must_be_empty log
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'log -G looks into binary files with -a' '
+	git log -a -Ga >log &&
+	test_cmp log full-log
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'log -G looks into binary files with textconv filter' '
+	test_when_finished "rm .gitattributes" &&
+	echo "* diff=bin" >.gitattributes &&
+	git -c diff.bin.textconv=cat log -Ga >log &&
+	test_cmp log full-log
+'
+
+test_expect_success 'log -S looks into binary files' '
+	git log -Sa >log &&
+	test_cmp log full-log
+'
+
 test_done