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Aside from those very odd Pentax users I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a happy new year resolution of buying more cameras. What is on your wish list and how are you spending the Christmas holidays? 👍

The holidays haven't been the same since my Mom passed in 2016, but I am trying to make the most of them after beating cancer last year! As far as cameras, I think I am set for 2025. I MIGHT swap out my two S5s for S5IIs, depending on how the year goes. Not that I am unhappy with my S5s, it would just make matching them with my S5II X in post easier. I also might snag a S9... we'll see! But overall I am pretty settled until I see how things look next year or in 2026, as far as Lumix goes. What I have (two S5s and a S5II X) are honestly cameras I could use until the wheels fall off and I'd be happy with them, I'm more just looking at the long term big picture as far as where I end up. Happy holidays to all of you!

Going either the prime route or the variable focal length route, everything is covered out to 200mm. The lenses are modern, sharp, with appropriately consistent coatings. All the Lumix lenses are weather resistant, fairly light with bright options available. They also have breathing correction, unlike MANY more popular brands. Don't like the Lumix lenses, get the Sigma ones and they're native mount too being part of the L mount alliance. You want anamorphic? There's that too. By the way, Lumix can also stabalize those very lenses too along with appropriate desqueezing. If you think the problem is L-mount, it's not- it's you.

Last night this thread got me thinking about the GFX100 again after liking the look of it a few years ago. Today WEX alerted me to their sale and I managed to buy a grade 9 example for £1600 (25% discount code). Couldn't resist that!

I don’t understand why they haven’t already. It’s not as if they are a small company and I think are actually even slightly bigger than Sony? Surely with the boffins that they have, it’s a case of reverse engineer someone else’s internal ND and one of Sony’s sensors and then make your own version? Isn’t that formula exactly how Japanese companies got their start after WW2 by making knock off copies of Western manufactured items and in more recent times, China has taken over that role? Of course Japan has moved on to now make exceptional quality items and China is not far behind, but they started out a lot of their bigger manufacturing companies by copying. Or is it a case with Panasonic that their camera division, LUMIX, is too small and does not have the R&D budget for this? And if that is the case, sometimes you have to speculate to move ahead, ie, gain more market share and momentum. I have a theory about business that I have applied to my own for over quarter of a century and that is there are 3 types. Those that don’t do enough. They were and are fucked from the moment they started up. Those that give it 100%. They will never go beyond a certain point and sometimes even backwards because… The third type gives more than 100% simply in order to stand still and maintain market position and it’s only those that go well beyond 100% that actually truly succeed. Other than by chance (such as they are a bit shit but get a lucky hype break anyway). But what do I know…

Google VEO 2 look to have excellent physics... here's a You Tube Video comparing AI video models at starting at 15:39. Kling just release 1.6 on December 19th, the day this video was released so this is most likely the Kling 1.5... 1.6 of course supposed to be better. One thing to note - film makers need consistent characters and the are ways to train the image generator for generating a starting video image frame. Kling allows you to train it to generate consistent characters. I think 2025 will be when AI video comes into it own.

Actually, it would be worth me crossing the channel on the Eurostar to pick one up! What/where is that 25% off deal?!

Yes please. My 3 current zoom trio is their f2.8; 20-40, 28-75 and 70-180 and that was partly what sent me to Sony for my stills needs because they are just as real world good as their 24-70 and 70-200 counterparts, but much smaller and lighter. I really like the latest Sigma 70-200, but it's facking huge and heavy compared with the Tamron 70-180 and as above, real world, there's nothing in it image-wise. Samyang of course make their 35-150 equivalent in L Mount but it's too big for my tastes. If it was internal zoom, I could possibly make a case for it but anything over 1kg as a lens these days, is a hard no for me. I was always put off the f1.8's from Lumix though because they just look so dull and for the few primes I have had in L Mount, went with the f2's from Sigma with their metal build and aperture rings.

I think L-Mount's weakness, re: lenses, is in a more affordable/consumer sense. Sony and Canon have a lot of options, for all price brackets, that L-Mount doesn't hit. I think Lumix has a bigger issue than not having affordable lenses that average users can get (namely getting their cameras into the hands of average users to begin with) BUT it probably doesn't help. Average users, and heck, even some enthusiasts, don't always need f1.8 or f1.4 lenses. A bargain set of compact f2.8 primes wouldn't hurt the system, I don't think. With that said, their current lenses are excellent and are among my favorite I've ever used, as far as new lenses go. I also think they are excellent value for what they are, though I know some people can't get over how much more expensive they are vs. their Sony and Canon counterparts, particularly the f1.8 primes. But the build quality and optical performance of the f1.8 primes blow both Sony and Canon's out of the water. Still, price often is what dictates people's spending habits. I do wish Tamron would enter the L-mount, but I have a feeling that they don't because Sony owns a piece of them. They've rolled out lenses for pretty much every other mount at this point, even RF, so there has to be some reason for that. I suppose you could argue it's because there isn't a big enough customer base, but Fujifilm might have an even smaller one and they've released lenses for them.

£1600 for a GFX 100 is absolutely bonkers. Congrats on the great deal! If you can get a good deal on the GF 100/2, you should strongly consider it. It's one of my two favorite portrait lenses of all time for any system (the other being the Summicron-M 90mm f/2 asph (which also covers pretty well on GF, just without autofocus)).

For that money, if I lived in the UK and could also get that 25% discount, I think I'd jump on one! But they do not ship to France and I'd be stung for customs duty. Fcuk Brexit 👺

Agreed. L Mount is pretty good now especially this year with the Sigma 28-45mm f1.8 and Sigma 28-105mm f2.8 becoming available and probable purchases for me in 2025. Pretty sure I am going to go for the 28-45 as I need something faster than f2.8 for low light work and though not as fast as the 50mm f1.2, has more practical real world use for me. The 28-105 I am still on the fence over and depends on whether an S2R appears. If it does, as a LUMIX version of the Leica SL3, then it’s a done deal and I will trade my Sony A7RV and 3x zoom lenses for that combo as it will cover 95% of my needs as a ‘one and done’ and that last 5%, at the extreme ends, will be my compromise. But if there is no S2R, then there will also be no 28-105 for me either because although it is available in Sony E Mount, I would rather have my smaller trio of Tamron zoom lenses for that compact Sony body. All pieces of the greater puzzle.

I don't get "there aren't any lenses" talk. There are less lenses available than to a Sony shooter but there are plenty of lenses and more are appearing all the time. What lenses do most people really have? A 24-70 f2.8, maybe a wide or tele zoom depending on their work and 2 or 3 primes. You can easily have a decent L mount kit that covers most needs.

And.... Hang on, you are him aren't you ?

Happy Chrimbo to you too Andrew! Top of my wishlist would be for it to be summer, instead of currently being too cold and grey to go out and shoot anything!

Some of those closed eBay auctions are coming with a kit lens. But if not, just pick up a nifty fifty from a dead mount for less than twenty bucks.

It's not line-skipped. Pixel binning is the modern way of subsampling high res sensors. As for the video rolling shutter and AF tracking, I look at it like this... There are a gazillion options for good AF and good rolling shutter, sometimes you can't get everything perfect in one camera. The GFX 100's image however is unique - there are not a gazillion options with this image or sensor size. It's a pleasure to use for certain kinds of video shooting. You also have the faster rolling shutter of 15ms in 24p 4K on the GFX 100 II if you turn dynamic range priority off. So they have addressed the need for a faster readout on the second model. I don't consider 26ms too ruinous, the a6500 and NX1 were still usable at 30ms, just not for certain things. At 38ms in 8K on the a7r V, that's when it really starts to be more noticeable for all sorts of stuff. 26ms is closer to the 1080p line skipped 5D Mark II which a lot of nice stuff has been made with in the past. Z8 is a great hybrid, no doubt about it, but it isn't the same sort of tool. A 50mm F1.8 looks very normal on full frame, whereas on the GFX 100 it takes on an other worldly quality like a Leica Noctilux. It's that big a difference. I would choose the GFX over Z8 for photography any day unless I wanted a sports & wildlife camera with big telephotos. The video specs are fine, if you can't create something incredible looking with 4K, 10bit, F-LOG, IBIS, and a sensor the size of an ALEXA 65 then god help u all.

The price drop for the BMPCC 4K could definitely hint at Blackmagic clearing out stock, but it might also be part of a strategic push to reignite interest in the MFT ecosystem. If they’re planning a newer version with Pyxis inspired specs while retaining the MFT mount, which I doubt, it would not only keep current users invested but also attract new filmmakers looking for affordability without sacrificing quality. Interestingly, a lower price tag on the BMPCC 4K could spur a resurgence in MFT lens purchases, which would help keep the standard alive and thriving. MFT has been quietly losing ground to larger sensor formats, so moves like this could strengthen the system overall by drawing attention back to its flexibility and affordability. I recently wrote a blog post briefly mentioning this very topic, how price cuts like this can reshape the market and reinvigorate interest in lens standards like MFT.

It was in their used clear out but it looks like they have all sold.

Mine too, and in that video Sean says there's a proper camera coming but of course nobody has any idea when. He is against the regular 2 year release cycles and things like that. Here is the big problem for Panasonic though... Even if they do come out all guns blazing with an S1H Mark II, it's doubtful they'll fit an ND filter behind L-mount, and most customers will be even more locked into a rival lens mount like RF or Sony E than they were 6 years ago. So the S1H Mark II could be really really good... It could be a stacked sensor 8K camera and nobody will really care as they won't have any lenses for it. If it is to be truly radical, new sensor technology, groundbreaking specs, under $3500 and cutting edge fundamentals like autofocus, then Panasonic's margin will be thin and people still won't buy it due to the lens mount, although this way it might get some of the faithful to upgrade from their Lumix S1H OG. And it's the same problem with the S1, S1R successors. I think Panasonic's problems run deeper than we care to admit on this forum. I think they're fucked.