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It'll be interesting to see what happens with Hasselblad, as at the moment they are a phone badge and a DJI subsidiary more than they are a medium format camera maker. Yes the occasional hit, but never more than about 5% market share which considering the hits is quite bad. - First mirrorless lens mount in the digital era (non-rangefinder) - First mirrorless camera (if you don't count rangefinders) - First hybrid camera - First affordable 4K mirrorless camera (GH4) - First to Mini DV - First with 10bit on a mainstream mirrorless camera (outside of Blackmagic niche) - With Leica and the original SL, only the second full frame mirrorless camera system after Sony a7 - Generally very good value for money So add it all up and you get jack shit thanks to Mr Marketing Geniuses with their MBAs. Too big, too fugly, too heavy, wrong AF system, and too long left on the shelf with no evolution in sight. They better have something proper special coming in 2025 or it's game over. I agree wholeheartedly. It will be a very sad day if Panasonic call it quits but the way it is going, they may be forced into it. Panasonic are a good company. The overall bosses have given the camera division a lot of leeway and time, the engineers themselves have been superb... marvellous... especially firmware and featureset... the problem lies purely in the product planning and marketing.

Panasonic S1R + leather body case / grip + Leica badge & red dot from Aliexpress/eBay + glue = "Leica camera"? 😉 True. Those CN-E lens simply "look professional" with their cine design. Even though CN-E are kinda "budget" cine lens. A person could even be shooting on even cheaper DZOFilm VESPID lenses and you'll get that better reaction (with non-gear nerds) than if you're shooting on far more expensive Leica M glass / Canon L Series / Nikkor Gold Ring / Sony G Master / etc lens. Average people don't recognize brands but they do recognize "that's not a normal still photography lens". Bingo, and just like they won't be able to tell apart Sony cameras, they can't tell apart generations of ARRI or RED either. Having a RED Scarlet X will impress a normie just as much as a RED Komodo X or even a RED V-RAPTOR XL. True, a normie in the arts scenes will be far more likely to recoginize the Leica brand name even though the rest of their photographic knowledge will be quite similar to the average normie (i.e. won't even know what an f-stop is). So true, when it comes to the commercial aspects of filmmaking, then it's pretty hard to choose anything else than a Sony FS7 / FX6 / FX9 from a purely business perspective. They're the in demand swiss army knife of video productions. And only if you're much higher end and/or more niche, then does anything else become easily much more compelling. I think the true screw up was the lack of cooperation/coordination (worse than that... they were enemies!) between the consumer and the professional sides of the business. After the smash hit of the GH4 that was the perfect timing to release the "Panasonic AF200" (an updated AF100, but with the guts of a GH4 inside it, rather than a GH1 inside it like the Af100 was, which by the time the GH4 launched then the AF100 was very old) Imagine how good an EVA1 MFT or DVX200 MFT could have been! Would've made the loooong wait for a GH6 much less traumatic. (especially if there were even updates from the pro division, such as an EVA2 MFT or DVX300 MFT or AF300) Or even if they were simply speedier/better in the release of their box style cameras, what if the Panasonic BGH1 got released immediately when the GH4 was (or say only six months after?), and imagine if it had a zero delay SDI output and 10bit internal. Sure it would at such a point have had the GH4 sensor, not the GH5 sensor, but it would have served as a very appealing upgrade option for the GH4 owners, while they wait for a GH5. Then "the Panasonic BGH2" (with the GH5 sensor), could have / should have given us built in NDs.

Currently the camera market is stable and overall slowly growing. The amateur/enthusiast/professional market has been stable in size over a long time. What happened is regular consumers (to whom photography is not their spiritual or financial lifeline) stopped buying decated cameras. This caused some trouble to the traditional camera makers but they weathered this disruption. Nikon and Canon haven't stopped making DSLRs and they will produce what the people buy. I happen to prefer the optical viewfinder but because of the need to be able to photograph silently in some situations, I also needed a mirrorless camera system. But I have great regret about the absence of the OVF which I prefer when timing shots one by one (which for me results in superior keeper rate over what I can get with high frame rate continuous and much less time spent on editing). However, for shorter focal length wide-aperture lenses, mirorrless produces usually better in-focus rates so the overall result is that I am divided. For the manufacturers selling entirely new lens lineups must be profitable. For the Earth's environment, it may be a disaster.

You are correct, they blew it with the marketing... And sort of with the product design, because had it looked a bit more serious with an EVF as well, it would have done very well. Only Panasonic can take something as powerful as an S1H, with an image that good, give it to us for $1500 and make a big fuck up of it. That you can soon get it for under $1k used is indeed a steal. The advertising is trying to capture a market that is perfectly happy with a high-end smartphone or a Sony ZV

I would happily go back to shooting film for weddings...except I worked out I would lose money on every job and my accountant says this would be a bad thing? 🤔 But seriously, tech has to progress or sales tank. That is just how shit works. 1080 becomes 4k becomes 8k becomes one day not so far away, 12k etc because it has to. It does not stop individuals buying a €50 off eBay and buying a roll of 36, but they are a tiny minority of consumers. Personally, I don't much care about the future of Camera Land as I am already at peak camera for my needs. Yes, I would like it all within one brand/system and am hoping that happens sometime soon, but do need it and am not chasing it as such. The biggest shame for me with tech is that it can overshadow craft. And that is pretty sad.

Panasonic are big in the world of telephones: https://shop.panasonic.com/pages/telephones And they used to make lots of smartphones, but haven't in quite a while: https://www.gsmarena.com/panasonic-phones-6.php Anyway, I just gave Samsung as another example because they're a company like Panasonic who have a massive range of consumer electronics (such as TVs, or toasters, or microwaves, or whatever) and have (or used to have) mirrorless cameras as well. Makes it harder to get new blood in. If you don't see "your heros" (be it the sports photographers at F1 or the Olympics, or the BTS from your favorite indie fimmaker, or the lifesystle photographer on social media, or whoever) using a particular brand at all, then it's harder to see yourself buying that "unknown" brand yourself. Yes, during the analog days then camera body releases were not released as furiously fast and frantic as we experienced it during the late 1990's and 2000's and early/mid 2010's.

Because the Olympus 17mm 1:2.8 pancake had already came out 3yrs earlier? (and that wasn't even the only other pancake for the system either) With the magical benefit of hindsight I think Panasonic should have done or more of these three things: 1) released that f8 pancake several weeks/months after the S9, that way if it flops it doesn't drag them both down 2) released a more genuinely useful/appealing pancake (that's AF, and at least f4 or faster) before the 26mm f8 (or at the latest, no later than simultaneously with the 26mm f8 lens) 3) released the f8 at the same time as the S9 but make it very very clear in all the marketing material that this is a FREE lens for everyone who pre-orders the S9 (it's so much hard to complain against what is free??) True, perhaps if they'd only marketed it towards Gen Z / Gen Alpha social media influencers and had hidden it away from every photographer/filmmaker on the planet, then the launch would have gone fine? But it's 2024, it's nearly impossible for the photographer/filmmaker influencers to not also notice the Panaosnic S9 launch (heck, many of them even got invited to the launch!!) and to be commenting on the S9 from the photographer/filmmaker perspective as well. I'm kinda doing this. I've got a NZD$199 phone. (about US$115) And have put together bare bones very cheap and compact Fujfilm camera package. But it's still a total setup that's more expensive than your typical flagship smartphone. (and I've only got it so "cheap" thanks to my nerdy knowledge of what options exist + my relentless bargain hunting) And it's much more bulky. (even though Fujifilm allows you to go quite compact, more so than if I was going FF) Using the fujifilm app (or waiting until I get home, then using the PC) is also far less convenient than simply shooting with the smartphone's camera. And in 2024 it's all about convenience for people. So unless you're a camera nerd like us, it's hard to go for the compact / affordable camera package + cheap phone vs flagship smartphone. (plus a flagship smartphone gives you non-photography benefits, for instance all of your mobile apps will be snappier) Unless you're meaning a combo such as say a cheap phone with a Panasonic LUMIX LX10 or RX100 III / IV or similar-ish? That is much more portable, and thus arguably a more attractive option. However I'd say 95%+ of casual users don't see the difference between a LX10/RX100 photo and a flagship smartphone's photo. The gap between the "large sensor" P&S cameras and flagship smartphones has gotten a lot smaller. So then you're left with the next step up to at least MFT / APS-C sized cameras and a set of lenses, which means a big leap in size, and a drop in portability / convenience. Still, the LX10/RX100 option does have some appeal, and I might get this as well before I move overseas.

Coke is profitable, that's just sugar in water. Leica are a very small fish compared to bottled sugar. It's a vulnerable position, one change in the wind and it's dead. 80% of their customers are fickle. The other 20% are hardcore photographers who understand that the product isn't just a fashion symbol.

props to Rode

It's been years since I created a professional DVD. Recently though, we are seeing a resurgence in desire to own physical DVDs for content consumption. (a lot of people are getting sick of the streaming networks)That being said we decided to take the plunge and release a new documentary on both digital download and DVD on our online store. After some research, I realized the only legitimate way to create a DVD menu and such today are the old professional (but discontinued) software giants with either Adobe Encore, or Apple's DVD Studio Pro. Apparently the professional DVD companies still keep a fleet of old computers running the old software as there are no modern alternatives. So I thought I'd detail my process here in case anyone else in interested in doing this too, I might be able to help out with any questions if I've run up against the same issue. This is my process so far: - Bought a Mac Mini on Ebay from 2008 for $50, it works surprisingly well. (unfortunately it was updated to OS Yosemite - Bought a copy of Snow Leopard on Ebay for $25, installed it on a partition with no issues - Bought a copy of Final Cut Studio 2 on Ebay for $30 that was supposed to include the serial number - Upon install I realized the serial number was hand written, and couldn't decipher it exactly even though I tried dozens of different combinations - I bought a second copy of Final Cut Studio 2 on Ebay for $50. Upon install I realized that it was an upgrade copy, not an original as advertised. Therefore I couldn't install it since an upgrade requires you to have an original serial number. (I returned this copy and got a refund) - With the printed serial number on the upgrade copy though, I was able to decipher the pattern of what a final cut serial number is supposed to look like. I was able to compare this to the hand written number from the original purchase and try a few more variations, it finally worked! - After a lengthy install process, DVD Studio pro and Final Cut Pro run no problem on the old Mac Mini, very snappy performance - I took my final video files and encoded them to MPEG 2 with Handbrake, Studio pro threw an error code on import, it said it couldn't recognize the file format - I tried a bunch of combinations with hand brake, no luck. I also tried a bunch of combinations with Shutter Encoder, also no luck. - I tried encoding with Apple's old compressor software that was included with the Studio 2. That worked fine, just really long encoding time due to the old mac, and the quality wasn't nearly as good as Handbrake or Shutter. - I finally got gave Adobe Media Encoder 2025 a try, and that worked! The quality wasn't quite as good as Handbrake, but a lot better than Compressor. I was able to play around with encoding settings and sharpening to find a happy medium for a final output that looks pretty good, even for SD - After that it was just a matter of building menu graphics in photoshop, importing and linking everything in DVD Studio Pro. It's surprisingly intuitive software to use, but very powerful at the same time. I'm about to burn my final DVD to send off to the duplicator, so fingers crossed everything continues to work.

Leica exist in their own bubble. They are an odd one in that along with Hasselblad, they are priced above most ordinary folks means. Or you have to be otherwise extremely keen. But they also put their name to cheap rebranded lower end stuff. I think they are one of those companies like Porsche that are better off not trying to compete at the mid or lower levels and instead, remain in their niche. Lumix I am adamant though has mostly been a case of poor marketing. They seem to be one of those companies who score hits from time to time and then never capitalise on it. When the GH4 came out, my brother was the video side of my business and we were all over that marvel, but then years until the GH5 and it’s minor updates. S5 came out and other than the lack of PDAF, a great bit of kit, but no real fanfare. The S1 trilogy were and still are, great bits of kit, but to most, they went a bit too large on the bodies, but to have zero official sign from them of any follow up is IMO, just insane. If something is coming. If not, probably understandable and their goose is cooked. This next announcement really is the final straw for me with them… If there is no official announcement of something relatively substantial such as a new S camera, then they are not a company I can have any further faith or investment in. I run a business. I have business needs. I have zero interest in partnering with lame ducks. The bottom line for me is other than the S5ii, they do not have the tools I want and need for 2025 and going forward. Loved my S1H and for its time, it was great, but was always a compromise for my needs. Even more so now to the point where I would deliberately be making a conscious choice of compromise if I chose to work with it today. S1R delivered great results for stills and is borderline arguable something I could still make work. And they are stupidly cheap now. But I would like a system that can do it all and the reality is no one quite does for my specific needs. It’s between Sony, Nikon and Lumix for different reasons but not a single one of them meets my needs. Very happy with the tools I have, but those tools are 1x Sony, 1x Nikon and 1x Lumix and whoever gets their first with the system that does it all within one brand, will get my loyalty and therefore, my $£€.

Should Leica have done anything at all? https://petapixel.com/2022/07/08/2021-was-leicas-best-financial-year-ever/ Last year, they had almost a half billion dollars in revenue and increased their profits by 16% over the year before. Seems like they're going the opposite direction from Olympus. Operating a high-profit luxury brand seems to be working about as well for Leica as it has for the last 70+ years. If inflation gets too bad or the economy crashes, though, so that people have less money to spend on high-end gear, my guess is that's what would inspire a fire sale for the brand.

Many got that F8 joke of a lens for free. Guess what? MBP won't even take it today because that's how undesirable it is. It's more like a wannabe lens cap. The only lens that does the S9 justice (like I want) is the 45mm Sigma. Why? It's a L-mount, full-frame, relatively fast lens (and rather small). The fact is this: Sony, Canon, and Nikon have all come out with pancakes that are relatively fast (F2.8). Panasonic needs a 28mm f2.8 or a 40mm f/2.8 before I'd consider it at its current price. Remember, this is company that gave us the 14mm f/2.5 and 20mm f/1.7; both were decent lenses. These pancakes would actually make the S9 is a serious alternative and would convince others to buy it, even with its shortcomings. If it is a video camera, why is there a PASM dial? If it is a video camera, why all the recording limitations? Many people see it as a photo camera without essential features of a photo camera and a video camera without the essential features of a video camera. Don't get me wrong, I actually will buy it at the right price. If Panasonic or sigma don't come out with a pancake, I might pair it with the Konica 40mm f/1.8 as I think it'll do fine on it.

Putting a cheap, well-designed Sony sensor in a small body with f/2 pancake lenses would be amazing. I would forgive the lack of mechanical shutter and hotshoe in that case. Still, I’d like version 2 of this camera to have a flip-up, brighter screen and at least 1/500 capable shutter.

I don't think it was stupid to have a recording limitation. If anything it was being honest: this isn't a camera that should be doing long takes and if you do so, you do it at your own risk as it can damage the camera.

I was interested on the S9 but the initial launch was so lackster with stupid recording limitation and f8 manual pancake that really extinguished my desire But now with the 18-40 and recording limit removed it is on the table again.. and they have some special which is not bad, but then the used S5II is still tempting too, except no pdaf in 1080p50/60 which is dumb as I do still use that sometimes.

Excellent write-up! Been experimenting with Runway a lot lately since production company has the unlimited license. But past the initial impressiveness, these prompt based AI generation tools do show quite quickly their limits imo. Never been a fan of stock footage and to me this is really still just customisable stock footage. Great potential if indeed they added log, sensor size, lens choice etc.. Generating from stills can help get you that precise look but its still way too quirky and uncanny valley for pro use. Prompt base also leads to too much free interpretation with odd quirks. At least with Sora and the remix function you can potentially get more accurate results via subsequent prompts a bit like how Chat GPT works. Love the storyboard feature with 4 variations. Very eager to try it.. but I can already see the limits of its actual use. No 4K being a big one as you point out. For story boards and pre-production its fantastic though.

My two arguments for the SL2 are LOG and yes, the badge. I’m a very practical person and pretty cheap when it comes to gear so the “Leica tax” has always kept me away. But with the SL2 I’m at a place in my life/career where the extra money feels well spent. The S1R is trending at $1,300 USD and the SL2 is at $2,300 or so give or take. For that extra $1000 I feel like I could splurge and get the Leica and be ok with it. Considering the huge savings from new and the added LOG profile it would make sense for part of that extra money to me. Secondly, if you made it “a thing” and clients notice the Leica badge you could actually give your business a slight edge in prestige and use that to your advantage. I know it’s a Panasonic with some slight tweaks but most people simply know the brand name. At the same time the Sony A7CR is the same price right now on the used market and that’s a hell of a lot of camera for $2,300. @Andrew Reid is correct in that we are spoiled in 2025 with a lot of options sub $2k.

I'm definitely in the minority on this site, but I think the rush to mirrorless by the entire industry was a mistake and I wouldn't be surprised if Canon and maybe Nikon bring back a DSLR line.