Phil A

Found this on YouTube and while it seems to do a somewhat decent job of keeping the lady in focus, the DFD pulsing of the background is a total deal breaker to me when it comes to AF-C in in video. If it completely goes off the rails like on the GH5 where it just runs off to infinity focus, you know you gotta cut at that point or reshoot. But who wants footage where every half second the background juggles between being sharp or blurry (which you probably can't even tell on the EVF/screen)? In combination with AF-C during video still being too unreliable and manual focus being the best option, I really am even less happy with the decision to go for such a cost-cutting choice of EVF and not at least the one from GH5. We're really at this point where everyone is one step away from the perfect(enough) camera. Panasonic is missing good AF-C, Sony could kill it if they put 10bit codecs into their cameras, Canon needs to get a grip on the thermic limitations, etc. ... "Luckily" the market is still driven by photography and there basically all brands are exceeding what 99% of users need.

That's not correct. The free version can do 99% the same as the studio version for most users, you're only missing out on resolutions bigger than UHD, it doesn't have the noise reduction and film grain OFX, etc. For normal editing and grading, it's widely the same. I don't think it makes sense to invest any money into your system if you haven't actually identified a bottleneck. I would edit/grade a project and run resource monitoring to find out if you every approach a limit regarding CPU, GPU or storage. There's no benefit to increase e.g. GPU performance up to 200% of now when you maybe never reach over 60% currently.

What’s your screen setup? How many and which ones?

I really want this camera to be good. I want to move on from the GH5 , mainly because it's not meeting my demands for photography when it comes to the lens selection (I want f/2 or better equivalent DoF from wide to tele which is easy on FF but only very limited possibility on m43). So far the S5 looks impressive, I'm just not impressed with the EVF being such a step back to lowest current consumer levels (so not so great for manual focus) in combination with them staying with DFD auto focus (which in all likelihood will again be unusable for anything but AF-S on non/slow moving targets). Makes me wonder how much cost saving they realize compared to just slapping in the EVF from the GH5 / G9? 50 EUR per camera? I would definitely pay a 100€ premium to have a better EVF. The high quality EVF of the S1 line was one of the main reasons I considered it but it's just too big/heavy for my ideal do-it-all system in combination with the lackluster lens ecosystem.

I would agree that one of the main reasons that holds Panasonic back at the moment is their subpar auto focus performance. It took them so many firmware updates with the GH5 and their DfD gets an somewhat okish video AF performance some of the time with native lenses, it's absolutely unusable with adapted lenses. That's just not something I want for my next camera as I'm not shooting narrative / team based stuff. For photography the AF is actually decent, especially the AF-S is pretty good and eye detection reliable, both with native and adapted glass. But then the GH5 is not ideal for that either, if I use the Sigma 30mm 1.4 in EF mount with a focal reducer, I hit nearly 1.4kg for a setup I could realize (for photography, focus being on the aesthetic characteristics of the image) at around half the weight by going Sony with e.g. the Samyang 45mm 1.8. The native lenses are of course super light weight but I doubt anyone who is into photography will get too excited about shooting the Panasonic 25mm 1.7.

I'm using my phone (iPhone 11 Pro Max) mainly for pictures but I have to say it has really eaten into the amount of use my camera sees. I leave my GH5 behind more and more. With fake bokeh thanks to the Focos app followed by editing the colors with Adobe Lightroom Mobile, I get results pretty close to what my camera gives me... unless the phone screws up the background detection and makes everything wrong. For social media use, there is only limited advantage lugging around my camera and that kinda makes me sad because I enjoy the process of using it way more. Slowly but surely I wonder if I should just sell my camera equipment and downgrade on image quality and performance to focus on portability. If phone cameras and computational photography progress another 5+ years, I doubt I'll still need a camera for private use.

But the fp has no log profile so you record Rec709 with strong contrast and saturation baked in. It doesn’t work as you think unfortunately. You can also record Sony A7s externally into ProRes, It’s still not gonna be better than what the camera can output.

I think when you get very close to relatively small things is when you can't substitute for a slider, e.g. when doing product videos for advertising / online stores or also when doing cooking show / recipe type of stuff. You can try to replicate it with a gimbal but there's zero reproducability and because of the small scale of everything, even the little bit less stability and off-axis movement you get with a gimbal can screw up the shot. It's very different if I close in on a person with a gimbal to end with a medium close-up shot or if I have to close in on a single shoe and end up with a close up of the laces, for example. Different tools for different applications.

The company I work for has closed offices to all non-employees here in Germany. We had plans to produce some marketing videos and internal communication but there's a clear rule that no external people can enter any offices, and that includes film crews, so all that has been canceled/delayed to, at minimum, May. I see this happen at other companies too, so we're not excessively careful. I'd guess it will expand to other countries soon (in multi-national companies, these rules currently are often group wide, i.e. world wide). This is clearly a time I'm happy I'm not self-employed but a 9to5 office drone.

Guess it’s a question of patience. I received it today. Still completely happy with the purchase and tbh it’s part of the reason I’m holding onto my GH5 even though I’m doing way more photography than videos lately.

I have heard that the Panasonic S1 is supposed to be pretty good with rangefinder lenses but the camera is pretty shunned by photographers (due to the auto focus) it seems to it's hard to find many sources. The high resolution EVF would definitively be pretty good for manual focus though.

But which Sony do you have? Apparently there are big differences in results. I'm super interested in this topic too. I am lusting for the pretty compact Voigtländer lenses for their character (35 1.4, 40 1.4) but am really wondering which camera would be ideal. I'm shooting currently with a GH5 so the crop factor is a deal breaker and I'm not sure what full frame system to upgrade to. I heard good stuff about the Nikon Z6 because apparently the sensor stack thickness is supposed to be thinner than on the Sonys. It would also be a reasonably ok-ish camera for video.

That can't just be said like this. You can have the same level of quality control in any country, it's a question of cost. "Made in China" shouldn't automatically be taken as worse quality than Made in Japan, Germany or the US. If you manufacture in comparable plants to the same specification and the same quality control process, you have the same outcome. You don't even compare the same product (X-T2 vs X-T3), so you can't expect it to be identical regarding manufacturing issues anyway.

Maybe I should try again, didn't since X-T1 / X100s times, but the performance was horrible (16 megapixel X-Trans files loading way slower than files from a 5D III or D750) and the manipulations behaved very differently than with regular CMOS raw files. Besides the editing of the raw files, I really liked the cameras for stills photography (video on X-T1 was absolutely unusable obviously).

I'm so curious for the X-T4. At this point the only downside is how much I hate editing X-Trans files in Adobe Lightroom.

I find it super annoying and I see this getting people into trouble in a lot of cultures/countries. But, this is nothing new, Bruce Gilden does the same thing PLUS firing a friggin strobe into people's face. I don't think Fuji should have pulled the ad though.

I wonder if that really comes? The D750 has a new price of 949€ currently with the discounts available (used ~750€) and the D780 comes with a MSRP of 2499€. I don't think there's a big margin for the used prices to go that much down, especially seeing how expensive the new model is in comparison.

Did I miss something? How does 24p cost extra money for the manufacturer of a camera that will anyway have a video function? Wasn't the whole argument around video always that it's easy to do with minimal effort based on the live view function, while the photography purists were yelling that video functions have to be removed because they make cameras "way too expensive"? Should we remove raw pictures because the soccer moms shoot JPEG?

The best thing about this camera is that maybe it makes the used market for Mark III cameras more attractive ?

Yes, Samyang is also sold by resellers as Rokinon, Bower and Walimex.

But if you're ordering them into the EU, you'll pay VAT and the end price is more or less the same. I'm having my eyes on how the TechArt adapter story develops, especially the stacking of the Z-to-E + E-to-M mount adapters.

Because I want a camera that’s ideally smaller/lighter than my GH5 for every day carry when I commute. The S1 is the one camera that’s actually even bigger and heavier (Plus it’s currently 1000 $ more expensive than a Z6 here) ?

Seeing how y'all are shooting a lot of manual focus lenses, how do the different camera systems with 135/FF sensor compare when it comes to their EVF for manual focusing M-mount lenses? I'm considering Sony A7, A7R, A7 II, A7R II, Nikon Z6 or - very slim maybe - A7 III, looking for a camera that is as small+light (and ideally cheap, as it's not my main system) as possible to shoot M mount lenses, purely for photography (35/40/50/75mm lenses for portraits, etc., looking for feel&look, not technical perfection). I read that the A7R has some aliasing in the EVF that coincidentally actually helps see when stuff is in focus (comparable to the over-sharpening focus help in the SmallHD field monitors). EDIT: Unrelated, I can absolutely second the discussed Sigma 30mm DC HSM Art lens. With a focal reducer it's the perfect normal lens on m43 sensors and I love the rendering it gives. Pity there are so few APS-H cameras left besides the odd Sigma and some old EOS 1D.

It's a video/gif where only a very small part of the image moves and the rest is perfectly static. It's popular for social media. Here are some examples: http://cinemagraphs.com/ EDIT: Also, here's a link to the press release as PDF https://www.sigma-foto.de/fileadmin/relaunch/Pressetexte/SIGMA_fp/SIGMA_PR_EN_fp_1907.pdf

I read somewhere that powering via USB is not possible, you can only charge via USB when the FP is turned off. But it's obvious there will be dummy batteries available. I like that Sigma say they are communicating the information about the camera to 3rd parties to make accessories, etc. Recording via USB3 was mentioned too and the video shows it. Would be not too impractical to directly photograph to a Samsung T5 if the camera allows setting specific target folders, that way you can skip SD card handling. This has the potential to be the spiritual successor to the BMMCC if the price is right, might sell a lot more numbers than the Z-Cam E2.