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Nice! What formats and focal lengths is it compatible with? and what camera and taking lens combos are you planning to use with it?

My take on the situation is that I'm super-happy with the GH7. It basically does everything I want, and apart from having ultra-sharp ultra-shallow DOF, pretty much does most things that FF does. It does low-light very well, and is only behind the low-light from FF cameras because they have gotten crazy good.

I went with the GH7 as I'm video-first and need the heat management etc. The G9ii is an incredible camera though. There's a whole thread about it here: https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/90374-panasonic-g9-mark-ii-i-was-wrong/ Do you have either one?

It was released in mid-2024 🙂 Definitely a strong camera though. I expect mine to be useful for many years, and TBH, I haven't felt jealous over a new camera release since buying it.

For anyone interested in understanding a bit more about the relationship between technical measurements and aesthetic experiences, this video is very interesting. Perhaps the challenge is that many people believe there's a golden zone of sharpness where it's softer than clinical glass, but sharper than poor performance vintage glass, but as there's very little qualitative data it's hard to know how a lens performs. The video gives a non-technical primer on MTF charts, and discusses what potential uses there are for different levels of performance, culminating in this chart. I particularly like this approach because the thinking is well beyond "good vs bad" lenses and takes the much more mature approach of "the right tool for the job". This is an example of this kind of thinking from the video: Recommended viewing if you want to go beyond "I like this lens" and "I don't like that lens"!

I find it incredible that people talk about switching bodies / systems all the time without really considering the wider ecosystem of lenses and accessories. Hell, I've stayed within the MFT system and whenever I get a new MFT body there are still all these extras that I end up being surprised about and inflate the price by 10-15%. If I was re-buying lenses then it would double/triple/quadruple the cost. I have no idea what the economics of lenses are, but I wouldn't be surprised if the camera body is now a loss-leader and the lenses where all the profit is.

Well, we've gotten drastically better pixels, but because everyone has been screaming incoherently about wanting sharper images the manufacturers took the higher performance and kept the same overall image performance but made the pixels smaller so there's more of them. Everyone said they wanted a camera that could match the 2.5K Alexa, but because there were more people screaming for resolution than screaming for quality the industry took it's improvements and gave us mediocre 4K cameras, then more improvements and we got good but not great 5K downsampling cameras, then more improvements and we got quite good 6K cameras, and since then the flagship bodies have given us 8K / 12K / 17K cameras with pixels that are close to rivalling the 2.5K Alexa. So ARRI released the Alexa 35, and now there's a 4K ARRI camera that absolutely smashes the 8K / 12K / 17K flagship cameras. It's a complete myth that cameras aren't getting better. They're getting better by leaps and bounds, but almost all those gains have been "spent" on smaller pixels / higher resolution. If that hadn't been the case, you'd probably have had every other feature you've ever wanted by now.

Good points. The way I see it is there's a toxic feedback loop of consumerism, hype, marketing, and release cycles. The skepticism and criticisms around this is justified, but the forgotten ingredient in this whole picture is us - the people paying attention. Without us, the whole thing falls flat. I would suggest the uncomfortable truth is that the people caught up in the drama of it are either making money from it (manufacturers, dealers, influencers, etc) or are desperately trying to buy their way into making nicer images. I will be the first to admit I did this. I tried to buy gorgeous images by swallowing the myth that Canon colour science was the answer, then that 4K was the answer, then that shallow DOF was the answer. The truth was that even if someone handed me an Alexa LF I'd still have made awful looking images. Sure, there are people making great work and want to upgrade their equipment from time to time and dip into the chaos briefly, but once they've made their decision and bought something that works for them, they tune out again. These people are spending their time on lighting tutorials, getting better at pre-production and planning, learning how to improve their edits, etc. They're not watching reviews and talking online about the colour subsampling of the 120p modes of the latest 12 cameras that are rumoured to come out in the next 17 minutes. My advice to you is this - if you feel like this then take a break from the industry and try and remember why you got into this in the first place. I'll bet it wasn't because you found a deep love for reading spec sheets!

"my mood tanks and it bleeds into the set" is a great way to express what I was thinking. I might have to steal your wording! I've had cameras I've loved to use and ones I always felt like I was struggling against, and it's definitely something that can be difficult to quantify. I suspect it's that we each have a range of priorities and preferences, and after getting used to the equipment and learning how it impacts the whole pipeline from planning through delivery and perhaps even into repeat business, the feeling we get is perhaps representative of how well it aligns with our individual preferences. It's easy to compare specs and pixel pee images, but there are lots of things that can be a complete PITA that don't show up on the brochures or technical tests. When reading your original post it felt like you want to go with the C50 and are trying to talk yourself into it / justify it. One thing that I think is underrated is the idea of the quiet workhorse. A camera that is a professional tool, does what you need without fuss, and doesn't have a lot of fanfare. For me that was the GH5 (although the colour science and AF weren't great) and now the GH7. These sorts of cameras don't grab headlines, but the fact that they're quiet workhorses rather than outlandish divas means you're able to move past the tech and concentrate on what you're shooting and the quality of the work. Canon have a very solid reputation in this regard - there's a reason they ruled the doc space for decades. One other thought.. if you don't have one already, consider buying a nice matte box. It'll help to stabilise the rig and will also make you look more impressive to clients!

I think you've been looking at the camera industry too long. We operate in a marketplace where people offer goods and services and if people want to purchase them they do, and if not, they don't. There are reasons why Governments might incentivise or subsidise various industries or products or behaviours, but I don't think any of these apply to cameras. The only other situation that is an exception is if something starts to become a necessity, like clean water or reliable electricity supply, and more recently now internet access is getting into this territory. When this happens then efforts might need to be made to ensure that these things are accessible. I very much doubt anyone is arguing that high-end mirrorless cameras are a human right, in which case they should just be traded like all goods, where they're subject to the laws of demand and supply. You can't get your house painted for $50 because paint and labour costs more than that. You can't buy a car for $9 because no-one has worked out how to make them for anything remotely like that price. You can't buy a super-car for $10000 because the market has valued them significantly above that.

Two thoughts from me. If you close your eyes and imagine each scenario, how do each of them make you feel? What is never really talked about is that if you feel like you're having to argue or strong-arm your equipment then you'll be in a bad mood, which isn't conducive to a happy set, getting good creative outputs, or just enjoying your life. I think people dismiss this, but if you're directing the talent then this can really matter - people can tell if you're in a good mood or distracted or frustrated etc and people tend to take things personally so your frustrations with the rig can just as easily be interpreted by others that you're not happy with their efforts. The odd little image technical niggle here or there won't make nearly as much difference as enjoying what you do vs not. When it comes to IBIS vs Giroflow vs EIS etc, it's worth questioning if more stabilisation is better. For the "very dynamic handheld shots" having a bit more camera motion might even be a good thing if it is the right kind of motion. Big budget productions have chosen to run with shoulder-mounted large camera rigs and the camera shake was pleasing and added to the energy of the scene. Small amounts of camera shake can be aesthetically awful if they're the artefacts from inadequate OIS + IBIS + EIS stabilisation, whereas much more significant amounts of camera shake can be aesthetically benign if coming from a heavier rig without IBIS or OIS. If more stabilisation is better, maybe it would be better overall to have a physical solution that can be used for those shots? Even if there aren't good options for those things, maybe the results would be better if those shots were just avoided somehow? In todays age of social media and shorts etc, having large camera moves that are completely stable is basically a special effect, and maybe there are other special effects that can be done in post that are just as effective but are much easier to shoot?

Good to hear you got a solution that works for your (very challenging) shooting requirements - that's what truly matters! Low-light is now the current limitation for the high-end MFT line-up. The GH7 sacrifices having a dual-base-ISO in favour of having the dual-readouts and the DR boost that architecture gives. I shoot uncontrolled external locations in available light, which means low-light performance is a consideration for me too, but the GH7s performance is enough for my needs. I suspect the low-light capabilities of MFT would be described as "Very Good to Excellent", but the latest FF cameras now have low-light capabilities that would be described as "Absolutely Incredible" and so MFT lags by comparison. You can't cheat the laws of physics! It wasn't that long ago that cameras weren't really usable above ISO 1600 or 3200, so things have advanced very quickly. Suggesting that you "need" to shooting weddings at ISO 25,600 would have been considered a joke and saying you were serious would have started arguments and gotten you banned as a troll! Personally I think the "if todays cameras can't do it then you don't need it" is a silly perspective, because it implies that there aren't any new situations or circumstances that are worth recording, and obviously that's just plain ridiculous. I wonder how the GH7 compares to the original A7S. The difference might be smaller than you'd think.

I remember a quote from around the time that Facebook started having issues with people passing away - "in 80 years there will be 800 million dead people on Facebook". People don't really think about social media channels having an end, and so when they do people are often confused. It would be great if there was specific functionality for such things, like automatically turning off comments to all videos etc, but we haven't really worked through the related issues as a society yet so there isn't really a common understanding of what we even want to have happen when people move on.

MFT has been dead for decades now - everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last 10 years knows this. What people don't know is that due to a quirk in quantum physics and the way that time works, MFT was actually dead before it was invented. This means that my GH7 and GX85 and OG BMPCC and BMMCC never existed, don't exist, and when MFT finally "dies" somehow will disappear from my house. I bet you even think the earth is round... some people are just too much!

Nice! The other thing to consider when testing ISO and noise in the final image is the delivery part of the pipeline. If I shot in two different modes and then processed them differently in my NLE, I might be able to tell the difference between them in my NLE. But no-one except you is watching your footage in your NLE, so you'll be exporting it, probably to h264 or h265, and you might not be able to tell the difference between them at this point. If you're going to be uploading them to a streaming service, then that service will decompress, process (NR, sharpening, who knows what else) and then brutally re-compress it. Lots of things are visible in the NLE and are completely gone or mangled beyond recognition in the final export or stream.