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Oh I agree, I was thinking more about the photography world. Also depends on the scene, here in the EU Leica is pretty well known, especially in the art/music scene. That's where I mainly see Fujis & Leicas. Art galleries, concert halls, red carpet events etc. It's why I said its niche! But beyond the prestige/hype I really do like Leica products and color science. I only shot video on a Q2 and it was pretty great to be honest. The real time punch in crop modes especially. That's another premium camera that is slowly becoming accessible as it goes under the 3K bar. For pure video work, the FX line is everywhere around me. Will probably upgrade my FS7 soon to an FX something just because it gets you work. It's rather annoying because Sony is my least favourite brand and I find them trailing behind as a result of being number one (a bit like Canon back in the day) but so it is. Would love a RED and the Komodo is pretty cheap as well but would have to get into more high-end commercial stuff to really justify it. I'm more into events and run & gun situations.

Marketing and communication are both weaknesses of Lumix. They get held to a different standard, and that's unfair, but they need overcome that. I mentioned it in the other thread, but I'd still be shooting m43 if it didn't feel like they were abandoning it three years ago. From the lack of info on a successor to the GH5, the "WTF" releases (G100?!), and the focus on full frame, it just seemed like we were being forgotten. Even now, we really don't have much info on what Lumix is working on. That announcement later this month could be for literally anything. Could it be an update for the S1 line? A G200? Could it be a lens? Or a major firmware update? We have no real road map to give us an idea.

We clearly have a difference of opinion 🙂 Olympus did the same in 2012 with the body-cap lens (15mm F8) https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympus-bcl-15mm-f8 And the internet did not hang them for - nor did anyone claim that the E-M5 was useless as a result. Too much importance in my opinion attached to a pancake. The image in the S9 competes with an FX3. Everyone with an FX3 seem to be attaching large lenses to it. Why is it that in Sony land this isn't even a discussion about flash guns and pancake lenses... Because it's a cinema camera first, that happens to also be a full frame stills camera. Rather than Konica 40mm f1.8 which has a long flange back and is no longer a pancake on an adapter to L-mount, you'd be better off with a Jupiter 12 35mm F2.8 or something LTM screw mount which will go on a Leica M-L adapter. That will keep the overall appendage shorter than Trump's piddle widdle. And if you really want to be brave, use it in 2x crop mode with a c-mount lens. This way you get best of both worlds... a very portable pocket cinema camera with top of the league IBIS... which just so happens to be a full frame camera at the change of a lens and a press of a button. I definitely think that a lot of the hate comes down to the branding and marketing. If Sony brought out an FX3 at £1500... call it FX300, and it was exactly the same spec as the S1H but with phase-detect AF and Sony e-mount, people would be falling over themselves to buy one. If Leica had brought out a Q with L-mount, for photography and cinema, for £1500... the same. Because it is a LUMIX nobody gives a toss.

Vega 22 UC 103mm enlarging lens

The thing with Fuji is they are not so much consciously targeting hipsters and the camera designs are not a fake clone of a prior era. They are designing photography tool classics in good taste, for the modern era. Would be great it Canon could do the same and not a separate niche line, but an EOS R5 Mark II which FEELS more like a camera and less like an inkjet fucking printer.

I think part of it is that there's just too much choice and competition, and people one just one body that does it ALL. The camera market is a bit odd at the moment, because of such high prices. If I were a new customer, wanting to upgrade from a smartphone - let's forget the used market, and the dumbed down cameras that treat smartphone users like idiots... I would go on Amazon and see a bunch of $1000+ stuff and spend that money on a new iPhone instead. Things have got ridiculously expensive and it surely doesn't cost a manufacturer so much to ship a sensor in a box with a screen, and some glass on the front. I think it's all a bit of a Japanese cartel really.

Less people give a toss rather than nobody and I think this keeps coming back to the same old chestnut and that is Lumix just are not in it in the marketing department. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do if your marketing sucks. The raw tech/capability does not sell. Cool people doing cool shit sells.

Haa that's hilarious. Just the way it should be - Creativity always wins over prejudice and appearances. I've been thinking that actually the vanity of Leica holds them back as a business. It prevents a more modern evolution of the M series with autofocus, for example. It prevents them utilising the brand in a broader price bracket... i.e. competing with Sony, Panasonic, Canon and the rest of them at all sub $3000 for brand new mirrorless cameras and lenses. And that is a huge market they are missing out on... all under the pretence of 'protecting the brand'

Some of the smaller L-mount lenses off the top of my head. There are loads Yes Panasonic made a stupid mistake with the F8 pancake, they wanted something maximally small and cheap. Whereas something like the Sigma 35mm F2 is a much more exciting choice, or a Panasonic pancake with equally fast aperture. Panasonic are messing up on the lenses side, although the recent zoom is an interesting choice it's still very slow. That said I don't get the obsession with rigging up these small bodies. We had it with the Blackmagic Pocket OG when that came out... People adding huge amounts of gear to it. I can only assume it is only there to look more impressive at work. Rather than for any genuine creative purpose. The S9 is in my opinion a really creative tool... How about it gets used bare bones like that?

Yeah, as you mention it varies by market. I’m not talking about narrative or doc work where clients have a say or are on set and I’m hoping to impress someone. I’m talking about lifestyle stuff where I’m shooting for brands or maybe short docs again, for a brand or artist or music label company etc… Those people all know and appreciate Leica and Hasselblad and it’s a cultural vibe. Also, these days everything is so heavy on the cross promotion and social media content that sometime the BTS videos get even more views than the original produced piece. What you’re shooting on and how you’re shooting it can be as interesting to people as much or more than the ad or commercial. It’s a strange world. So in those cases, yes it very much matters and is something people take note of and appreciate. Back when I was shooting 5k anamorphic on the GH4 people would flip out on the footage and say how amazing it looked and think it was an Alexa. But on set everyone thought I didn’t know what I was doing with my strange little LUMIX rig. Meanwhile the director is using my C - Cam footage over the A - cam so much that the DP/camera op started to get pissed.

What about the S9 as a video cam? Nobody complains that you can't add a flash to a Blackmagic Pocket Camera

The product strategy has been a mess as well, for a long time. They diluted the brand with too many cheapo compacts and low-end mirrorless cameras, a bit like how Samsung did. The GH line was their saving grace, a lot of pros took the GH4 seriously as a small 4K camera. It also came along at a time when video was becoming a serious deal on stills cameras, a must-have feature. Panasonic was leading in hybrid video/stills, until Sony brought out the a7s. There was more competition not long afterwards from Blackmagic, and even Nikon with the D750 and D850 DSLRs. Before Z mount even existed. Then before long, everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Even Fujifilm, who had been staunchly pro-stills and anti-video for the longest time. Then the X-T2 and X-T3 were introduced, along with F-LOG and they have only grown in specs since then, and eaten Panasonic's lunch. In this time, Panasonic continued to persist with Micro Four Thirds... We had the GH5 3 times over with different variants rather than a proper follow-up, and when that follow-up arrived it was without the one thing everyone asked for - phase-detect AF and the GH6 has been a total flop, as one look at the current second hand used prices will tell you. The S series came too late to save them. Full frame is a commodity now, you can take your pick from all the manufacturers at less than $1500. People will tend to go with what they have lenses for... Which is Canon, Nikon, Sony. That's why Fuji stayed out the market. They decided to own the medium format market, and skim off some of the high-end full frame customers as well who were enticed by the larger sensor and higher resolution. Panasonic should have come out all guns blazing with a full frame S1H just after the launch of the GH4, then they might not have bled out to the Sony a7s and A7s II quite so badly. They should have repositioned Micro Four Thirds as a Fuji X100 / Lumix LX100 style product - as small as possible, super small prime lenses, or fixed, and stylish as fuck to appeal to a younger audience. But where Micro Four Thirds did at least generate a sizeable ecosystem for lenses that didn't exist before... In full frame, the decision to use L-mount with Leica and Sigma is not a good solution. Too much cannibalisation and not a coordinated approach. The Sigma 50mm F1.4 has to compete against the Panasonic 50mm F1.4 and visa versa... especially on price. So they have been idiots and not done as Sony has done, which was to focus on a single mount for both crop sensor and full frame cameras from as earlier a date as possible and bring onboard not just Sigma third party lenses but Tamron and more. You don't need an alliance for this. They were never going to achieve Canon levels of dominance and lock-in with lenses... But they would have at least have a chance and could have competed with lower prices and a better range when Zf and Rf launched. Instead from 2018 onwards Panasonic has been practically starting afresh with a mount that isn't even under their control. In terms of the marketing... Clearly there's been a desire to go for vloggers with shit like the G100, a complete waste of plastic, a desire to claim that the S9, much better camera, is for social media twats when it actually should have been a higher-end camera for street photography and cinema (just compare to Sigma's much better marketing of the Fp and Fp-L), and there's been some really public blunders too like inviting people to see the GH7 in Japan and then showing them an F8 lens cap lens instead. And why the fuck did the GH1 not evolve into a LUMIX CINEMA line?? They had the perfect chance to do a Cinema EOS business and chose to give us a GF5 instead.