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Well, my little black X-M5 finally arrived from Japan and wow, it’s tiny. Had some fun rigging it up as a tiny little micro cinema cam today LOL. USB C dummy battery arrives tomorrow and a couple little accessories to mount the Ninja V+ in a way that doesn’t look too ridiculous. Only complaint so far is the smallrig cage for it is a little overpriced and doesn’t come in all black. Just the strange steampunk looking retro vibes.

Is about the real world sum of it. I would MUCH rather have one of these over the S5II, but financially, back in my real world... Agreed, highly unlikely or LUMIX will be up a creek because it's just S5II spec internally which you can get for around €1k.

Being realistic, any S1H successor has to at least match and preferably exceed the basic video specs of the Z6 iii e.g. full-frame UHD/6k video up to 60p with sub-10ms rolling shutter, otherwise there's no point (and even fewer sales)... This means a new (to Panasonic) sensor - the old 24MP sensor just won't cut it in that market any more.

I think you misunderstood my post. I was saying that whatever the SL3-S ends up being at this weeks announcement could give us a clue of what to possibly expect out of the S1H2. Of course Leica isn’t going to mention LUMIX. Ever.. But the normal flow of product releases has been all messed up between the two companies so at this point, who knows…

This guy has talent... This is shot on the Sony a1 and an RX100, and it's very nice. But then a funny thing happened... I discovered his Super 16mm stuff and liked it even better, although you have to appreciate it on a big screen for the texture, and not a phone. Film, being film has an imperfect nature. So more emotive. Now in the current digital camera landscape, full frame is king. And for a good reason. But what if you could have both Kodak Vision3 Super 16mm and full frame in one camera... Now, I considered the OM-1 as a Super 16mm 4K camera, because I very much liked the E-M1 Mark II since forever. The OM-1's OM-LOG however has a bit of a thin tonality, and is it a bit tricky to get looking right. Lovely ergonomics and EVF though. Now the Sony a1, has the resolution to do a 4K Super 16mm crop (close to, it's actually Micro Four Thirds at 2x-ish which is good enough for most c-mount lenses longer than 25mm like the Kern Switar 26mm F1.1, work of art that it is). The a1 I had but ended up selling to somebody far richer, because I feared it would depreciate from 5 grand to something like £1. This hasn't happened yet, as the new one is 7 grand. Anyway, sod Sony and their pricing... Doesn't shoot internal RAW anyway. Now N-RAW, BRAW, Canon RAW, I have tried them all, and to my eye at least they all look like H.265. There is just something so smooth and perfect about the modern faux RAW that it kinda defies the point, RAW should be raw and not processed. Those codecs are heavily processed and the file sizes are ridiculous. There's only one RAW format that has come close to FILM to me and that has always been Cinema DNG. Starting way back with the original BMCC and Ikonoskop, uncompressed 2K Cinema DNG. Following on from that the miracle of Magic Lantern RAW video, with the 5D II going from some very dodgy 1080p H264 to the best ever looking 1080p Cinema DNG RAW which still stands up today for tonality, grain, texture, micro contrast, motion cadence and colour... you know, all that stuff which gets chucked away in N-RAW! Then the 5D Mark III upped the ante to 3.5K RAW eventually, at 24fps in 10bit. The drop to 10bit didn't hurt it much. A little noisier in the shadows, but worth it for the huge resolution bump from a 1:1 sensor readout, which did away with the moire or aliasing without the need for a Mosaic Engineering AA filter. Then the Sigma Fp came along, but the first model has two drawbacks. The first is that it doesn't have the resolution for Super 16mm crop in 4K. The second is that the 4K RAW appears to be binned. It's a bit funky looking. Now the Sigma Fp-L has a 9K sensor instead... a whopping 60 megapixel. But I have not used it much... the reason being, I haven't quite found a lens that really suits it... Then I thought, well it has the best crop modes of any camera, and stays in those modes when you cycle the power or switch between stills and cine... Perfect for C-mount, Super 16mm stuff? It has a nice oversampling in these modes, from 1.3x crop to 2x... Sampling upwards of 7K down to 4.8K, which makes for some very finely textured UHD Cinema DNG footage, superior indeed to that of the first model. (It also adds into the mix phase-detect AF but it doesn't work very well) Now the Fp-L I thought could work well with my C-mount stuff and indeed, it fucking does. But I also think of adding a Panasonic OIS lens to the mix, for handheld run and gun Cinema DNG. So the 28-200mm looks attractive and yes, slow aperture but it's absolutely tiny. This tiny-ness is very important for the Fp-L, as it feels naff with big heavy lenses. And the Fp-L is very good in low light, because the sensor is enormous - the high megapixel count doesn't really hurt it, same with the Sony a1. The 28-200mm also adds OIS... the all-important missing stabilisation on a non-IBIS camera. So I think I have found the best full frame proper RAW camera that is best able to emulate the look of proper Super 16mm film and work with c-mount lenses, and offers you a full-frame walk-round zoom camera as well... And that means best of both worlds in one small affordable tool. Pop a 28mm F1.4 on there and it will also do a very good Leica Q3 impression. We may moan about the lack of IBIS and LOG, but then a Bolex doesn't have these either. And just think about the absolute massive pain it is to shoot with a Bolex and the expense you save going with a trusty Fp-L! Food for thought. .... The 8bit Cinema DNG to SD card is actually really good BTW

I just watched the PetaPixel preview for it which was, ironically, fairly photo-focused and didn't include the Jordan section. But my jaw dropped a bit when Chris mentioned that the ES readout time is 25ms. 25ms! On a 6K $5,000+ video-focused body released in 2025! Also, the H.26whatever 6K that it records internally is only 4:2:0! What's a guy gotta' do to get some chroma subsampling around here? (Shoot ProRes, I guess, I think that's also internal). Since the Z6 III has come up a few times in this discussion already, its rolling shutter is <10ms. And sure, rolling shutter isn't the most important or only spec for a camera, but... heck, the R5 II has something like 13ms in 8K! Even knowing that Leica's luxury brand pricing is detached from reality, it seems just brazen to release a camera with specs that were pretty good 3 years ago (when the S5 II was released) at this price point! Guess they need to get some YouTubers to release a video that looks just like all their other videos and then insist that there's some special magic to the Leica image. Someone call Pooter McCubbins or Cam Mackackackacky STAT!

I think this one any one of us could have written the script for this release any time within the last year. And so it came to pass... Now where is my S1R mk II??!!

Well, The best news from today? I can now scoop up an SL2 for just under $2,000 finally. And I can add a s5iix as my second body and not feel bad about what I’m missing out on LOL. I was really hoping for a preview of what LUMIX will bring in 2025 but instead we get to see more recycled tech

Well, SL3-S has recording to SSD and is pretty helpful so really the S5iiX specs, but yeah. Same same mostly.

SL3-s has arrived - https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/leica-sl3-s-initial-review Spec comparison table from the article - it's seems basically an S5iix in a Leica body (at 2.5x the price).

Ah gotcha. They have had a few collabs and I really thought they were moving closer with the ‘LS3’, but if that isn’t still a thing, then it appears to have at least fizzled, another example of LUMIX’s shite marketing. But yes, maybe this imminent announcement will reveal some hints as to what possibly could be, but until LUMIX start blowing their own trumpet…

Keep in mind that you're comparing an outlier low price on a used camera (at least in the US, going rate for a used GFX 100 in good condition is closer to $3k) to MSRP on a brand new camera that many people purchase as much as a lifestyle/fashion item as they do for any other reason. Most of the people who buy an X100 VI would be better off just spending the money on the latest iPhone Pro if they don't already have it. It'll look just as good for most of their use case, give them an integrated wide angle and telephoto option, and it can use apps to post directly to their social media platforms of choice. 😅 I can also say that after years of travel and trying to fit the GFX 100 into various smaller camera bags, the size of the GFX 100 II was a major selling point for me.

Cool topic! I look forward to seeing what you come up with. As you probably know, I have both the 5D Mark iii and the FP. In a lot of ways, they're redundant. I even use the same process and settings to render the 4K cDNG files to ProRes for editing/color in FCPX. The 4K helps with the FP. Some vintage lenses, most of what I own, are just too soft on the 5D. But I agree that there's some kind of funkiness with the FP's image. I think it's processed a little in camera with NR and/or sharpness. No way to know that for sure, though. I tried using the 800 ISO trick, but I really didn't notice that much of a difference... I guess a stop or so in the highlights. I think the main benefit of the FP over the 5D3, for me, are the two ISOs for night/indoor shoots and due to the 4K it's sharper, so it has a more "modern cinematic" video look compared to the 5D3 which has more of a filmic look. I heard the s35 crop is actually better on the FP, but I didn't really notice much of a difference there either. I've been tempted to pick up a Canon 24mm 2.8 IS and the Sigma adapter and put it in s35 for a better handheld solution, but I haven't gotten around to it. I completely agree about the 8bit 4K in camera raw!!! There's actually something so unique about the image. Anyway, I look forward to some of your tests with the FP-L and c-mounts. I just sold my BMMCC, so I need to find a new camera for my c-mount lenses. I don't have anything too fancy like you do, but I do like them very much.