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The comparison was great. I was thinking you focused on the leave behind the first one. Anyway, 2x crop in 4K mode looks like a great, even downsampled FHD image. I have the Fuji 12.5 F1.4. Your Cosmicar looks like it's outresolving my lens quiet a bit. The Fuji is still a nice lens though with a very solid build and delivering a beautiful image.

I love this

Right, but this one has 2 r's at the end for a double dose of their review-ing? It's like "creator," but without the creation/creativity?

I think GX85 design is great and I would shock you with a bigger grip if I was a Panny engineer. Stay strong! 🙂 @eatstoomuchjam

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Their banter is still good/fun, but there doesn't seem to be even the slightest spark in the reviews anymore. That's probably also a symptom of PetaPixel demanding a higher volume of reviews and with a number of them being for things that are inherently uninteresting. And I get it - to some extent, how much is there to say about a 21mm lens? And in that review in particular, they didn't even seem to be doing any basic research before the videos - talking about Thypoch coming out with one (the Simera-C has had a 21/1.4 lens for months already, though with a different design) - and 21mm has been a Leica staple for many years with the 21/1.4 Summilux having been released in like 2008 (which makes sense since Thypoch, to some extent, is emulating Leica with the Simera series). But yet, Chris acted like a 21mm lens was something he'd not heard of before... presumably because he just doesn't care about what he's reviewing anymore. It's a job. Lens comes in, take some photos around Calgary, do some LoCa tests, shoot a test chart or two, lens go out. Ready for the next lens to come in... But they've also become a channel that won't publish a negative review at all. I had high hopes for the new person - Sarah? But then she did a review of some shitty wearable camera that seemed way more like an advertisement and any criticism mixed in with tons of praise, despite that the footage looked like pure garbage. Then the next week in the Podcast, they acted like people were crazy for suggesting it, given that some small criticism had been slipped in to a 14 minute mostly positive review where the footage is described as "good enough" and since the gross oversaturated colors are "so vibrant there's not much you have to do to them." To me the footage (the link should go right to the sample clips) could be much better described as "a gross, shaky jello-filled nightmare." Later, in the conclusion, the presenter concludes that the camera is definitely worth the $200 price tag, despite that it's redundant with a smartphone and records with quality much worse than a smartphone. If that shit is sponsored, it's not disclosed and they actively denied it - so that's gross. If it's not sponsored, then PetaPixel's standards on cameras are incredibly different from mine. It was already a thin ice - and posting videos heaping glowing praise on AI slop and deleting critical comments is just the last push that I needed.

The elephant in the room is Resolve. As I have discussed and demonstrated in my "New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age" thread, over the last decade Resolve has gotten more feature-rich, but more importantly, it's made it HUGELY easier to use and get good images. People now have a lot more knowledge about colour grading tools and techniques, that's for sure, but things like the Film Look Creator enable you to use a single node, you set your input and output colour spaces, and then you can adjust exposure / WB / saturation / contrast and all sorts of other things in the same tool. You don't even need to apply a film look at all... just select the "Blank Slate" preset, which sets it to have no look at all, and you can still use all the tools to adjust the image without having to worry about colour management at all. Any improvement in your post-processes is a retroactive upgrade to your camera, your lenses, and all the footage you have already shot. Colour grading is such a deep art that I think the average GH5 user back in the day was probably extracting a third of the potential of the images they'd shot, if that, simply because they didn't know how to colour grade properly. I'm not being nostalgic about the GH5 either, the same applies for any camera you can think of. There are reasons to upgrade your camera, for sure, but most of the reasons people use aren't the right reasons, and they'd be better spent taking the several thousand dollars it would take for a camera upgrade and taking unpaid leave from their job and improving their colour grading skills instead.

Yes…it destroys our contentment with the gear we already have haha

Isn’t a crater an impact site of destruction?

Probably bored. I would be too if I was doing those reviews for that long lol. Still tho.

I always liked Chris and Jordan. I know they have their critics, chief among them Andrew, and I agree with a lot of the criticism, but I always enjoyed watching them. Their banter was always enjoyable, and even when they were with the Camera Store, things like their review of the GH5 matched the same thoughts I had when using the camera and I watched it after I'd purchased it as I tried to consume every video I could to learn how to get the most out of it. Since going to PetaPixel though, they do seemed checked out in most of their videos. Even when Chris doesn't seem to care about what they are reviewing, he seems to try to make the best of it and have fun. Jordan though went from an active participant to often just filming himself at his computer talking lifelessly for a minute or two before throwing back to Chris. Sometimes he doesn't even do that and Chris will talk about video features. Never listened to the podcast, admittedly, so can't comment on how they come off on it.

Absolutely, I agree and would say its a draw between Lumix and Nikon for the best value and innovation right now imo. I feel super secure a a Nikon Z6 shooter knowing that my current camera has aged really well and continues to fit my needs, and when I need (or want) to upgrade I can easily get a Z6III (or heck even a Z5II is fantastic), use all my current f-mount lenses, use my Z6 OG as a bcam and have a camera that's super competitive. And I'm so impressed at all of Lumix's stuff; the freaking S9 for $1k used is killer, the S5II is cheap and darn near perfect, and the S1 II basically flawless. LUMIX and Nikon really are the top dogs right now. But back to the main topic...it seems there are so many aspects of the brand deals that are not disclosed well. Like this entire Craterr thing. When was that ever made clear in a video ever?!?! "Yo this camera manufacturer sent me this camera for free but dont worry this is my unbiased opinion" just does not cut it anymore. When I watch the 'popular' camera youtube, i start to feel the lie that my current gear is inadequate...but its funny because then when I'm actually shooting and editing i totally forget about that and end up feeling really comfortable shooting on a camera I have been using for 4 years...and as my skills improve so do the results I'm able to get out of the camera. I am getting better results out of the Z6 8 bit flat than I used to out of the 10 bit NLOG Prores from the Ninja V...and I literally had a post on this forum from 3 years ago deeming the 8 bit flat "unusable" with "terrible highlight rolloff". Well a few small tricks in Resolve and I was able to just roll off the highlights more in post which really mitigates that problem haha, and I can get the color/image to a really nice point in the internal 8 bit...

Yeah, as a Lumix user I am biased towards them and I strongly believe that they are a better tool than what Sony and Canon are offering, but if this newfound praise is because of marketing then that's a real disappointment. I want authenticity when watching, reading, and conversing with people about these cameras, not marketing hidden as opinion. It's one thing when you go into something knowing it's marketing, and we should all probably assume that everyone is just trying to sell us something at this point, but it sucks that we have it. It'd be really nice to have some authenticity. Like even Justin is clearly enjoying this attention. I suppose he's at least honest about it, but I really just wanna geek out about cameras and equipment, even if this is kinda entertaining watching them fight.

Thanks! and yes, I also like those particular shots too. Some time ago I invested in a M42-MFT speed booster and since then looked almost exclusively for M42 lenses, except for telephoto lenses where a speed booster isn't required. Vintage FF lenses don't normally get wider than 28mm, at least the ones that don't cost much, and at 28mm the difference between an M42 lens with my SB and an FD lens (for example) without one is a 40mm FOV vs a 56mm FOV. I know I shot the above images without a SB, but mine really steers my buying habits towards that system. I have now fully converted my setup to native AF MFT lenses (14-140mm, 12-35mm, 9mm, 14mm) so I now need to work out what I will use my MF and vintage lenses for. When I shot those images the IBIS stabilised the image but not the flares, so the video files aren't really usable. This means that if I want to shoot with very vintage lenses I need to shoot without IBIS and physically stabilise the camera, either going for a shaky image and embracing the aesthetic, or going for a more stable image and using a heavier setup / tripod / both. Thinking about turning off IBIS and going for a more vintage look, my thoughts turned back to my GF3. So I compared the softness of the image from my GF3 to the softness and grain of film, and depending on the amount of movement and detail in the image it's somewhere between being a Super-8 camera and a Super-16 camera. I am still pondering this information, as I'm not really sure what I would shoot with a S16-like camera and vintage lenses, but I definitely feel some attraction to this concept. Also, there is something super-cool looking about this setup! GF3 + SB + Tokina RMC 28-70mm F3.5-4.5 + vND... giving a FF equivalent of 40-100mm F5-6.4. This is quite similar to lots of S16 zooms back in the day too. For example the S16 Meteor 5-1 17-69mm F1.9 lens is equivalent to 49-198mm F5.5, etc. Part of my is very interested in finding a larger bulkier zoom and really leaning into the form-factor, but I couldn't find any around, and even if I did I'm not sure what they'd cost and if they'd be worth it to me (considering I don't even know what I'd use this for!) This is just wonderful... the trees have a painterly look that sort of makes them feel a bit hyper-real and a bit dream-like at the same time. Great stuff!

Honestly you are so right. I too have noticed how rapidly people are hyping up Panasonic as they once did Sony. And all at once. And 1/3 of these YouTubers are brand ambassadors for LUMIX. Don’t get me wrong the current crop of lumix cams are amazing and they in a sense do deserve the praise they are getting…literally that good. But still…

Virtually any camera released in the last 10 years, if used with care and consideration, will look good. And ten years from now the GH5 will still be able to generate lovely images, assuming there are some still out there that work! The pace in which people upgrade cameras is crazy to me, it just seems pointless and wasteful. --- I forgot to add, the Craterr video information makes me think that it might be related to several "creators" switching to Lumix recently. Armando and Cam are two of them who've switched and become VERY PRO Lumix, so it certainly makes me go "hmm." As much as I love Lumix and believe they are absolute powerhouses, it was and is very suspicious how many people were suddenly making the switch.

Facts. Still some gems out there. I still love Nigel Barros’ content and he has a second channel now haha (side-note, pretty funny how good the gh5 looks given many YouTubers dismiss it now lol. I’m realizing that a good 60% of the reason modern cameras seem to look so much better than cameras from 2014-2018 is because the skills of those reviewing cameras has gotten so much better. Nigel’s footage looks amazing. Obviously, there are absolutely valid reasons to upgrade still. But I’m realizing image quality is not as bad as I’m tempted to think on older cameras)

I normally like Justin, and agree with most of what he said in his video, but reading those comments from both of them, I feel embarrassed for both. Justin should have stuck to the higher ground instead of resorting to homophobia.

Meanwhile, I'm over here starting my own personal beef with PetaPixel. They posted some breathy review of how great it was to make a music video in only one night using Midjourney and I basically said they should stick to photo/video stuff for humans instead of posting about shitty AI slop. The author wrote back saying it was a "complicated" subject. And now they deleted both of my responses to that - the first, OK, maybe because I wasn't very nice. But in the second, I got more polite and pointed out that with current AI models, 5 seconds of video uses as much power as running a microwave for an hour - so his nearly 4 minute video was like running a microwave for nearly 2 straight days - and that's enough electricity to power an average household in the US for about 2 1/2 days, especially since it's unlikely that he used 100% of the clips that he generated, adding to the amount of wasted power. Deleted again. I guess, though, it's a good thing since it was the final straw in pulling their feed from my news reader (only so many clearly-sponsored (but not disclosed) positive reviews of shitty plastic film cameras that I can watch) and unsubscribing from the YouTube which has become an increasingly formulaic slog of Chris and Jordan reviewing products that they clearly don't give a shit about - and the weekly podcast where they act like smug celebrities, even though 99.9999% of people neither care who they are nor care about anything they've said. Good encouragement also to fill out my YouTube subscriptions with some smaller creators who actually seem interested in what they do.

I'm not sure about the start, but those two videos seem to be a response to this pissing match on another one of Justin's videos. It is really funny to see Cam spazzing and claiming he wasn't paid for videos when he got thousands of dollars in free gear as well as the views/revenue that come from day 1 launch as well as the associated affiliate marketing revenue. I also hadn't heard of Craterr before. Sounds like a real 💩 of a platform, designed to make YouTube reviews even more insufferable.

Auto focus adapters stacking - now you can use Sony and Minolta A mount lenses on Nikon Z bodies with auto focus https://nikonrumors.com/2025/06/16/megadap-to-release-a-new-etz21-pro-lens-adapter.aspx/ This Boryoza adapter claims compatibility with Sony LA-EA5 and TECHART LM-EA9 https://www.ebay.com/itm/286366368166?_skw=BORYOZA&itmmeta=01JYT46VRXBY4FAGD5NCK30AG9&hash=item42acc401a6:g:KDEAAOSwhPxnwDMQ&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAAwFkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1dFj0mM6EhbKtm2lYZj5jubCkvL5au4XyCXT1PLIS%2FzhkgvvlkkxknBA%2FAZxa%2Fos4mvQSNLijTgKGBUPQ%2FVLodAnXLzlRTI2NyMDwEvsQfnatF1MapHjnn2UmaTU6beK4uTVHEKe5mWm3R2p%2BQ3%2BuEAMx0Tbe9TkLihPa3aLELvcn556rDTHU%2F6NuyQGV1Xxwz1XbjxvHGpqruu1RViXDGi5otoYXZO5BB%2Beeg2Bqm8TA%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR868m8T2ZQ Those adapters fit perfectly my strategy to have both a Sony and a Nikon camera but use mostly Sony lenses. Now this can be extended to some vintage auto focus lenses too. Cool. Sony LA-EA5 is mostly for photos One negative about Nikon Z cameras is lack of 3rd wheel in the back. According to a review I watched recently you can't reassign some of the other 2 wheels for ISO change. Changing ISO manually is not that easy compared to cameras that have a 3rd wheel.

Yeppp. I love Justin Philip BTW. But yeah these youtubers deserve it lol. The YT camera community is so toxic.

I'd argue that this kind of testing is actually necessary to understand how things behave. Over the years I have tested a lot of things and it's amazing how many things that "everyone knows" do not stand up in even the most basic tests, but continue to be myths because no-one bothers to even look. Aristotle claimed that women have fewer teeth than men, which is not true, but he obviously never actually looked to see if he was right - despite being married multiple times where he could easily have tested his claim at any time. No, not mixed up, but the 12-35mm has a shallower DOF and so you have to know where in the image to look to compare sharp details in the focal plane. This is the unsharpened cropped image: This is the 12-35mm image: This is the sharpened cropped image: The sharpening is perhaps a little over-correcting, but the thin edges are still slightly blurred in comparison to the proper image from the 12-35mm. This is where it is important to know how to read the results of a test. This comparison of the zoom to the crop matched FOV but not DOF, and while I probably could have zoomed in using the 12-35mm and also stopped down at the same time to keep DOF the same, the lens sharpness would have been reduced so it wouldn't have been a fair test. To get around that I should have tested using a flat surface like a resolution chart or a brick wall. The problem with going that route is that now we're no longer testing anything close to real-life, and no longer answering questions about what will and won't work in real shooting. The test wasn't "what percentage of resolving power is lost using the CrZ function?"... it was "is the CrZ function usable for shooting with cropped lenses?". Realistically I shouldn't have included the 12-35mm optical zooms at all, I should have just cropped in using the CrZ function and left the images to be judged on their own merits in isolation, the same way that any project shot using the CrZ function would be. This is the danger of pixel-peeing - it distracts from the only thing that actually matters - the image. The cosmicar really is a gem! There's a reason that cinematographers have relentlessly driven up the price of vintage lenses over the last decades, and why modern lens manufacturers are designing and releasing brand new lenses with vintage looks, and manufacturers are even creating new mechanisms to control the amount and type of vintage looks with custom de-tuning functions.

Look at that monster! 😉 I don't have one handy to check it, but I suspect it wouldn't fill the "see skin around every edge when in my hand" test. If Panny wants to just shove those guts into the smaller body, I'm in.

I don't know what this was all in response to, but it's entertaining (and interesting) none the less

GX line supports its elegent GM silbings, so both to be continued in 10bit alterations of their predecessors.:) @eatstoomuchjam