Sony Fx30, Pana s5 ii, Fuji xh2s

[Stefano Capasso]

Hello upgrading from xt3 and looking for a new tool. IQ, af,stabilization and htt more close to run and gun are the feature i look for. I am not going to to much color correction, si the best is out of the cam. If in that proce range would exists a camcorder with conparable.feature i would consider it.

Thanks for suggestion

[newfoundmass]

38 minutes ago, Stefano Capasso said:

Hello upgrading from xt3 and looking for a new tool. IQ, af,stabilization and htt more close to run and gun are the feature i look for. I am not going to to much color correction, si the best is out of the cam. If in that proce range would exists a camcorder with conparable.feature i would consider it.

Thanks for suggestion

The X-H2S would be a good option if you don't want to have to sell and buy all new lenses. If you don't mind changing systems then the S5ii is, in my opinion, the most compelling camera in that price range for what you're looking to do. It has good autofocus and the best stabilization of the bunch. You can't beat Sony's lens selection though. L-mount is catching up but still is a bit behind.

[MrSMW]

What he 👆said

[Stefano Capasso]

Of course i have the 18 55 and 55 200 lens from fuji..and i could sell them to buy new lens system. Normally i buy used  so the panasonic being just relased might be harder to find? Also i see fx30 that is supposed to be the only cinemacamera (i do 95% video) seems not really estimated...

[IronFilm]

1 hour ago, Stefano Capasso said:

Of course i have the 18 55 and 55 200 lens from fuji..and i could sell them to buy new lens system.

Normally I'd suggest  X-H2S as the simply straight forward upgrade to do, but you've got almost no Fuji lenses, so it wouldn't be hard at all to jump onto another system. 

I'd suggest Sony FX30, unless you're doing more amateur / indy / hobbyist stuff with no higher aspirations of working with others, then that would push the Panasonic S5mk2 to the top of the list. 

[Django]

I'd still recommend XH2S if you're on Fuji system. It has the best (stacked) sensor out of those cams.  6.2K Open Gate with very low rolling shutter and ProRes. The AF & IQ will be a major upgrade from XT3. Film simulations should take care of you since you don't wanna color grade. 

FX30 features might not be that useful to you if you're not into grading or don't need TC etc. In that case you'll probably benefit more from the XH2S sensor, resolution & codecs.

That said, you can't really go wrong with any of those 3 cameras, definitely top choices in that $2.5K budget range.

[Stefano Capasso]

they all havce the same problem though..may be sony fx30 less. Rarely can be found on the second hand market. I am not on the idea to buy this stuff new, want and need o save some..

To tell the truth it s been years i am tempted from sony gear..after having panasonic and fuji, mainly becuase of what i hear about AF. I had an action cam by sony as200 and for a while a zv1..and i have always found them great

For the mirrorless with sony i read lots of complain on iq, expecially on colours, and overheating in general. Also, of course, more expensive and give less for same price trend

[Django]

5 hours ago, Stefano Capasso said:

For the mirrorless with sony i read lots of complain on iq, expecially on colours, and overheating in general.

That's a bit of an old trope. Sony color science has made tons of progress and now with chunky 10-bit codecs you can get really nice IQ. As for overheating, not a problem on FX series which have active cooling.

AF is definitely ahead of Fuji/Panny.

[SRV1981]

17 minutes ago, Django said:

That's a bit of an old trope. Sony color science has made tons of progress and now with chunky 10-bit codecs you can get really nice IQ. As for overheating, not a problem on FX series which have active cooling.

AF is definitely ahead of Fuji/Panny.

Agreed - if your priority is focus and ISO i'd say Sony; if you want in-camera color/emulations then Fuji xh2

[newfoundmass]

The Panasonic will be better in low light than either of these. And I still find Sony colors to be meh. But you really can't go wrong with any of these.

[IronFilm]

On 4/25/2023 at 5:19 AM, Django said:

AF is definitely ahead of Fuji/Panny.

But the AF from a Panasonic S5mk2 is so close to Sony's performance, that I wouldn't let a small difference in AF performance be your dominant concern when choosing between them. 

[Django]

4 hours ago, IronFilm said:

But the AF from a Panasonic S5mk2 is so close to Sony's performance, that I wouldn't let a small difference in AF performance be your dominant concern when choosing between them. 

Nah dude. The AF on S5ii is still a gen1 PDAF. It has numerous issues and is nowhere close to Sony's. Here are a few of those issues from a guy that has had the S5ii since launch:

 

[hyalinejim]

10 minutes ago, Django said:

The AF on S5ii is still a gen1 PDAF. It has numerous issues

You pipped me to the post by minutes, was just about to mention this! It's illustrated well in the video (skip to 5.55).

Specifically, in human/face detect mode when there is more than one person in the frame there's no ability to stay locked on an individual person. The AF will hop randomly back and forth between people which makes it unusable in that situation. However, someone posted that

"You have to make sure you click on the screen again after you have chosen the person to focus on. The yellow box around the selected person will then change to have 4 crosshairs around the box. That locks in the AF to that person only."

I did not know that!

The other thing he talks about which I agree with is that there is no easy way of tapping on the screen to focus (and then track), like there used to be with the GH5. Multiple clicks are required and it's cumbersome.

A bunch of people have been grumbling about this on FB groups and someone close to Panasonic (Dan Hopkins) has hinted that they are working on a firmware update to address some of these issues.

[hyalinejim]

6 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

That locks in the AF to that person only."

I just did a quick test using a photo of people and actually I'm not sure that this works at all. So it looks like Panasonic still has a bit of work to do.

[IronFilm]

It just feels like nitpicking to me (and meh, you can find plenty of people complaining about Sony AF too! People can nitpick anything). And as people in the youtube comments point out he's mistaken with some of his points, he was just using it wrong. Heck, the YouTuber himself admits workarounds exist! But he just doesn't like them. A rather weak objection, just doing it for the clickbait and the views? As he himself says, the AF is very powerful, and he likes it and uses it all the time. 

Feels like 90% of his objection is with the UI, rather than the AF. That's certainly one of the easiest firmware fixes. (welllll... if the objections are genuine, sometimes UI "flaws" are more to do with personal preferences than objective flaws)

And Panasonic is better than most with firmware updates. Thus the key takeaway is: Panasonic's best AF is already very good, and is only going to get even better. 

[hyalinejim]

It's not nitpicking, he's 100% right.

That suggestion in the comments doesn't work.

[Django]

Doesn't sound like nitpicking to me but rather valid concerns. Every time someone brings criticism over anything on YT now people call it clickbait but this guy also praises the camera where it shines so I really don't think its that. @hyalinejim has had the S5ii for a while too and agrees with him so again seems like genuine observations.

Anyways, I don't have a horse in the race but I do think its pretty widely accepted that Sony is the new king of AF (especially now with all the crazy AI processing). I still prefer Canon UI but that's entirely personal. Panny is making breakthroughs within the Panny system and will surely improve over time, but Sony level it is most certainly not as of today. Of course YMMV depending on your overall video AF expectations..

[newfoundmass]

It might not be as good as Sony's but it's very good and will get better in firmware (it already has, according to The Hybrid Shooter.)

 

No camera's auto focus is perfect, not even Sony. In Gerald's NAB video released yesterday there were multiple times when the video was out of focus and they were using an FX30.

[j_one]

Right, some of the "criticisms" could be labeled as nitpicking, sensor-sh*tting or genuine concerns depending on your use case for the camera (and the expectations you would have from a $2k mirrorless unit). Me personally, I really wasn't expecting the first attempt at PDAF to be this great and am happy to wait on the updates or new iterations of the tech.

However issues with banding, channel clipping, chroma noise pattern and green noise signal, picture profile NR and smoothing etc are worthy of mention on the sole basis of them being a step back from previous models. These are new issues that weren't there before, much like S1H ghosting.

But regardless, I'm enjoying the S5ii for everything it CAN do and have been working around the processing quirks, there's no other swiss army knife camera like it. It's pulling its weight with strobe photography. Videos grade wonderfully with VLOG in good light. I have some great LUTs to burn in looks, very handy for turnaround. The boot time is kinda annoying, though.

Perhaps I'm most curious about how the S5IIx prores (and even HDMI raw image) will look in comparison to the current image in the S5ii with the available codecs. There's some noticeable differences in the processing of the prores image of the GH6 vs h.265 and I suspect the same will be true here!

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, j_one said:

These are new issues that weren't there before, much like S1H ghosting.

My first S1H has been perfect but my second one a right bitch so I ditched her and went back to an old flame (S1R) who doesn’t talk down to me.