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Finally, a proper test... Let's try this again @gt3rs 🙂 To be honest, the differences between the SDR (processed) and Apple Log modes is quite staggering.

I can relate to that. @MrSMW After I purchased, drooled over, set up and used my newly acquired S1H I felt connected and have been enjoying this camera so much. My S1 will have to go. I never liked to used it. The gnarly swivel screen felt so uncomfortable to use with its sharp edges and unpleasant tactility. The S1H was love at first touch and the process of purchasin felt like love and exitement at first sight. Somehow the S1 felt hollow, though a heavy beast and rock solid. It is not hollow at all but that was just the feel I associated with it despite the reality of rough and heavy bulit. The hollowness could be described as lack of soul. My plastic fantastic G6 had soul injected and so does my S1H. Feels, like the menues are much more straigth forward that the ones from the S1. I don´t even want to bother to compare. Handling is awesome. It is a joy to look at and it was so much fun to use it with a Canon 24-104 L zoom, which I choose for a little paid gig leaving the native 24-105 at home. Soul, silly thing with cameras and tools. 🙂

The little 20mm performs pretty well on this video. Much better than on the previous Panasonic cameras. However I'm concerned about the G9II focus accuracy in video, I watched and downloaded some clips and a lot of times the focus is not 100% accurate when viewing at 1:1, exactly like on my GH6 with most of my lenses when using slow frame rate in 4K/C4K/5,7K (below 48fps). It seems to affect only some lenses on the G9II, mostly the zooms. Nevertheless, I decided to preorder the camera because I'm not a fan of the GH6 ( (outside of the very nice colors). I have some great M43 lenses, so some features like the improved IBIS, DRBOOST at base ISO or even the come back of the I-Dynamic are very welcome. I just hope they will fix the AF, I also hope the IBIS in 5,7K and Open Gate are improved as well, because on the GH6, they are weakier than on 4K.

Yep. Just the other day I did a rare photo only event because they already had a video guy booked. He shot the entire day on a RED with I think Canon EF 24-70 but had a play with one of my S5ii’s and was very envious of the size, weight and AF. Interestingly (to me anyway), I could see how limiting it was, forcing him to work to the camera’s tune rather than how he otherwise might if he could work 100% faster and in a more flexible and reactive manner. Which does make me think that the right or best tool for the job is not necessarily the most expensive one… FX3 over his RED every single day! Making a movie or a doc or anything that is not an event, OK, that might allow/justify something more ‘pro’, but like the guy I know who shoots weddings purely at 28mm, I personally think there is something being lost in that choice. Using that RED highlighted that to me. If he likes it and his clients like the result and don’t know any different, fair enough, but nah, wouldn’t be for me.

🙂 @Emanuel My personal gamechanger would still be as stated a GH5II-ish LX15 with a clutch mechanism for manual focus and full HDMI. 10bit S16 pocket cinecam heaven. The comment section under Gerald Undones test gives away quiet a few details about not so pleasant processing even in log, such as noise reduction and color clipping in the highlights. Apple fans will buy it anyway. Action mode, overall impressive image quality in log and tele lens are pretty cool, of course. I don´t dig the videos of people sneaking into awesome locations and filming girls for lookin pretty and doing endless and brainless gimble like pushins- and outs, selling luts and pushing their affiliate links as well. Commenting youtube fan herds scream their amazement. I don´t like that noise and buzz and hysteria. A GH4 with its 9 year old sensor would look just as good if it had internal 10bit or via mini hdmi out. That phone is an achievement of technological developement. The fancrowd seems to develop back into infantile states of hysteric consumerism. Slashcam results and test is looking very good. One of the coolest test sites. They are the only site which hinted me to the creamy high resolving image of the GH5II and its cinematic textures without oversharpening. Thanks for posting their findings and test of the iphone 15! @kye

I hear you… I have flip flopped back and forth over it all year long… I have come to the conclusion it’s a tool, but other than that, I have limited connection with it. Is that important? To me, yes it is. Part of my enjoyment of my work is the tools doing what I need them to do whilst getting out of the way (or at least not in the way) and enjoying them. For me the S5ii just doesn’t have any soul. The size and weight is good as are the ergos and I like the video picture quality enough, but as I may have mentioned once or twice before, it doesn’t inspire me in any way and I prefer the S1H. So I have put my order back in for the second time on the Nikon Zf. Beyond that, we’ll see but my current thinking is running a 2 system set up in 2024 of Lumix for video and Nikon for stills. If I do go with that which seems the most likely option for me, I’ll see if I remain with 2 systems, something I would rather avoid, or whether I go fully back to Nikon… The current plan (Plan 348) is: Retain 1x S5ii and put it in the static video role. Keep the S1H and move it from sole stills unit back into roaming filming camera. Sell the other S5ii plus the Leica 24-90 and replace that with the Zf plus 28, 40 and 105 primes as my candid, personal and ‘less serious’ work camera. In the new year, add a used Z9 with Tamron 35-150 as my heavy duty work unit. My overall summary of the S5ii is I have tried to love it, but I just don’t. I don’t hate it, - it’s just not working for me as I had hoped. Sadly.

In a nutshell. I'd like say I respect that because I am someone who shoots what I want in the way I want with little to no client input in regard to that or the end result, but... I do so from a certain 'safety/insurance' POV in that I will ensure as much as possible, there is at least 1 other angle for elements such as ceremonies plus back up audio etc in order that yes the artistry is important, but not at the expense of maintaining a certain level of what should be as standard, due diligence. No back up angle for something such as a ceremony is not just the opposite of being a necessity, it does as you say limit the edit massively. People move, sometimes randomly, or don't stand where they were supposed to, or sit when they should be standing, or stand when they should be sitting. People hold up phones or wave parasols on hot days. The sun moves, the light changes... It's anything from 10-45 minutes of non-rehearsed random stuff from non-professionals with zero second chances. Yes you could bring even more bodies and add even more kit, but at what point do you draw the line? Simple for me, - cover 2 bases: 1: The basics/essentials. 2: Then the creative stuff. Use both, one or the other as needed in the edit. He did tell me early on that the RED was principally for his commercial stuff and weddings were a secondary thing for him and he was beginning to recognise that he perhaps didn't have the best tool for the job. And no lighting. Luckily, I did and lit the speeches for us both 😉

Yup, lots of smaller non-chain stores won't be carrying a FX6 in stock but might have a FX3 on the shelf. Sure, and I'm not saying there are just as many sales of the video cameras as stills cameras. But just simply suggesting there is a broadly similar ratio of sales going on here with prosumer cameras (which in the case of stills cameras, means the likes of say Nikon D7500 or Nikon D610. Which certainly had more sales to consumers than professionals), that more sales (or at least, a very large chunk of them) go to consumers vs professionals.

I see that in the reviews everyone uses the 12-35 or the 12-60 or telephoto lenses. I'd like to see how it performs with older lumix lenses. I use the 20 mm F1.7 and the Leica 45 mm F2.8 macro a lot. They have terrible motors and are very slow in focusing. I don't know how they will behave with PDAF and whether Lumix has released FW updates yet. If they haven't, they would be junk.

A consistent look that is the look I am looking for… It’s that combo of simple workflow plus law of diminishing returns, ie, with 50% effort, I get 90% of the result I am looking for so can I be bothered to spend another 50% of my time and effort on something nobody would notice but me? Nope. Life is too short. YouTube is full of side by side comparisons of camera looks and audio mics and they all look and sound basically the same to me or close enough it makes no difference. It’s the same with my seemingly never-ending camera/kit quest… The image quality has been there for years, stills and video. It’s more a case of how the stuff works in reality re. minimising or eliminating lens swaps, do the logistics of set up etc take too long to the detriment of coverage etc… After another full on season I will still be editing for some time, I made a checklist of what worked, what didn’t, what has to change, what I’d like to change if possible, and I will be working my way through that over my off season.

Yes, it's called "being a parent".

I knew about these, they just weren't noteworthy. My summary is still accurate. In 2012 there was my GoPro Hero 3 and the iPhone 5, which were broadly comparable. Now in 2023 there is the iPhone 15 which includes 3 cameras, one of which has an 8K sensor, it records Prores HQ to SSD, the log profile has a white paper and associated colour management profiles in ACES etc.... plus, it's a telephone, music player, video player, computer game console, portable computer, internet connection, etc etc etc. If you want to talk about being informed then it might interest you to know that Sony cinema cameras can all record RAW externally, as well as a plethora of different compression options and profiles internally, which seems like world-class control over such things, instead of the GoPro which offers very few codecs, no RAW, and the colour profiles aren't supported by industry colour management frameworks. I'm not saying that GoPro haven't done anything, I'm just saying that apart from adding their stabilisation (which was very impressive at the time) their upgrades have been incremental at best.

24p movies with this one will be very expensive. 🙂

I went with the Carl Zeiss 40-80mm f3.5 for this very purpose. I made a wedding film with it you can see here: https://firehorsephotographyfrance.com/2023-weddings/jenniedan Day 01 and Day 02 anyway, ie, up to evening stuff on the wedding day. Not the drone obviously... Quite a nice 'vintage' rendering without being 'too vintage', average contrast which gets very low if shooting into the sun/direct light sources and it flares quite a bit then also due to the lack of modern coatings. Has a bit of a glow to the result also. I used it wide open at f3.5 exclusively and with the Fotodiox VND L-E Mount adapter plus a plate adapter that converted the lens to E Mount in the first place. Tricky to stabilise handheld, even with Lumix which is regarded as one of there best so unless you wanted the more handheld look, on a gimbal, mono or tripod might work better. I've decided the more vintage look is not for me so selling it if anyone EU is interested either at 100 euros with adapter, or 200 euros with adapter and L-E Mount VND.

That looks very nice. I recently used the S5IIx with Dehancer in a tutorial video I made. Was shooting this with the Lumix 24-105mm f4, 4k log long gop. This is just a tutorial but the end of the video has some longer sample footage. I was struggling quite a bit with autofocus, but the end results were fine - couldn't get the camera to detect her face the majority of the time, it would just track the body most of the time which is ok but not ideal. I don't know if I was doing something wrong but need to test AF again

It might clear it on a Cfexpress type A card, as they are rather speedy. Unfortunately I ain't got one as they are also rather pricey. I think it can fill the buffer at such a high rate of data, 50MP 30fps RAW, due to the buffer pretty much being onboard the sensor in a 3D circuit pattern. But that does mean things slow down after so many GB of data works it way off the buffer, and through to the card. It is also rather heavy on the battery. A fun trick though and something to play with.