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Its amazing that this situation doesn't change a bit with every new product announcement.

Once I got myself past the lack of pro features including; the build, the lack of any proper weather sealing, the single card slot (couldn't care less personally about the lack of an EVF as I never use one), as a super-light and compact full frame 6k 30p Open Gate camera, it made great sense. Especially on my super-lightweight freestanding monopod. If only I had not left that at a venue 700km away last weekend... I can't remember the exact weight but it's under 1.5kg total, - that is: body, half cage, lens, Rode Micro, super stable freestanding monopod. I can use it statically within seconds, walk away from it quite confidently (unless in a crowd) and use it in gimbal mode at a turn of a pre-programmed dial. For fast paced run & gun work, it's superb and has multiple frame markers for my 'films' and for my socials. The 'pro' features aside, I can't really fault it. And if they are now under 1k, like so much Lumix stuff, I think that is where and when they make most sense. Used S1H's are now ridiculously cheap and I WOULD still shoot with that as my main if they'd just update the firmware to allow me to burn in a LUT.

https://www.eoshd.com/news/full-panasonic-s1-ii-and-s1-iie-specs-leak-as-usual-all-18-pages-of-it/ Mediocre is the word... So it's just an S5 II with a faster sensor then... A mediocre slightly unergonomic mid-range body that feels and looks like it should cost £1500. A high-end price £3500 Also very high-end lens pricing No eND. No ND of any description. I also think that the lack of proprietary raw format aka Canon Raw, N-RAW, Redcode, BRAW is holding Panasonic back. Get in there with your own codec my dear. Oh, wait, they didn't buy RED so have lost that game already. I do have a soft spot for the overall feature-set though... The wide-aspect ratios in both video (2.4:1) and for stills. The dual dynamic range modes and anamorphic. Open gate and stuff. Real-time LUTs. But it's in such a badly marketed uninspired package, which is a real shame as I am passionate about Panasonic and their remaining unique features.

It’s all just a bit, well to be blunt, a bit fucking odd, what is going on on Planet Lumix right now.

I think I fell asleep reading that. It'll be interesting to see if having the first native ISO at 100 juices the tested DR numbers a bit, but as MrSMW said, having the second native ISO as low as 800 is both weird and not what a lot of people are going to want. That seems to be dooming the camera to shitty low-light performance, either because of a ton of noise or because the camera eats the noise internally and there's no detail (and that's coming from the owner of at least one camera with a single native ISO of 800!). (Edit: Just saw MurtlandPhoto's response and 640/5000 would be a lot more appropriate/useful!) Otherwise, not a single one of those specs really stands out from a bunch of cameras that are already on the market. The fact that the 4kp120 options are only in APS-C mode or 2.4:1 is even a bit sad, given that the Z8 and R5 II can do it in 16:9 and even the ZV-E1 can do it with only a small (10%? Something like that) crop. This seems to be another entry in the "if you already have a big investment in L-mount lenses, maybe you don't have to sell them, but it's not going to bring you into the system" category.

I'm seeing folks on other forums say in VLOG it's 640/5000

That is all well and good but if they don’t offer a better OLPF than the z6iii and still have the gall to charge 1000 euros more then they can burn. And we still don’t know the readout speeds in open gate or with their dynamic range enhancement enabled. I’m getting more and more convinced that the C80 is the one for me, ticks all the boxes, ugly behemoth of a body with a consumer hating RF-mount nothwitstanding. 6k, decent OLPF, internal raw and a proven 9,5ms readout in all oversampled modes.

The leaked price (if correct) might reflect tariffs and that uncertainty, in which case other manufacturers might raise prices on both new announcements and existing products. Value comparisons this year might not be as useful as usual.

This is exactly the camera Panasonic should be producing.

Panasonic older bodies are good value. New bodies are not. S1R II sells for exactly the same price as Nikon Z8 which has faster and fully stacked sensor. If rumors are true S1 IIE with same sensor as S5 II will be 2800 Euro. Same sensor with very similar specs in the form of Nikon Z5 II sells for 1700 Euro. S1 II supposedly will have the same semi stacked 24Mpx sensor as Nikon Z6 III and will cost 3500 Euro. Nikon Z6 III current price at a local shop is 2000 Euro. I don't think Panasonic will be able to keep these prices. Andrew is right, don't see how new cameras from Panasonic can attract or entice Nikon and Sony users to switch. Maybe with some unique features like open gate or anamorphic ? For me Nikon becomes more tempting not only because prices are significantly lower for the same sensor and similar specs but because NRaw can be edited directly in Resolve, while ProRes RAW can't. Avoiding transcoding is a significant time saver for me if I want to shoot RAW internally. There are no bad cameras and it's good Lumix cameras have their fans and users.

Yep, same as the old R5 from 2020 with the pixel binned 4K/120p, and the quality is quite decent. The Sony a1 from 2021 has this mode too, and no crop. The Z8 also. A used EOS R5 is now around the 2k mark if you want 4K/120p (and quite a bit else) on a camera that used to have a "fake overheating problem" which Canon "fixed" in inverted commas with panicky face-saving firmware updates. In 2025 uncropped binned 4K/120p at $3500-$3800 is a pretty standard feature. Yeah the R5 II is lovely but the RF mount is an issue for me, I don't have any of the native lenses, they are too big anyway, I sold a lot of my EF stuff as it's also massively heavy, with noisy AF, and in terms of adapters it doesn't have the Leica M mount autofocus adapter I use nearly all the time for stills and some video on the Sony cameras, which is a big pity and there's no way to adapt E-mount lenses to Canon RF unlike with Nikon Z mount. The lack of Sigma full frame ART lenses in RF mount is another hammer blow. Yes the S9 I have a soft spot for, but Panasonic have always been quite good at value for money cameras. That's one of the best bang for your buck which makes the £3500 even more difficult to stomach for the S1 II. It's just a pity how the S9 was marketed and launched, with a bottle cap for a lens in front of a load of people expecting the GH7. It's also a shame how it is selling. The used price is now down to just £950 which indicates very low demand and low sales... It does however mean I may pick one up used again and have some fun with it. Yeah it's no GM1 size wise and build quality feels very cheapo. When you put a lens on it the size makes no sense unless you're using Leica M mount stuff, or one of Panasonic's tiny zooms. Unfortunately their cheap 50mm F1.8 is pretty big... They need a 40mm F2 pancake or something no larger than Nikon's. Somebody at Panasonic needs to explain the logic to me... Of small camera, large lenses. It seems like there's no point having an S9 without small fast prime lenses to go with it.

$5000 if you want the kit lens don't forget 🙂 $3800 and they are not even including ARRI-LOG, it's a separate purchase AFAIK One of the rumours said 4K/120p without a crop, but pixel binned. That would be a neat feature but not a deal-saver. The S5 II body is just such a pudding. You put one next to an a7r V and it feels like a child's camera. I get the S9 too but they still missed a trick there by not making it better. I.e. The one with the EVF and mechanical shutter and new sensor, like everyone else has. The cherry on top of all this failing I bet will be an S1H that costs 5 grand and has no EVF. They'll reposition it as an FX3 competitor, in a new boxy form factor with all the stills features cripple-hammered. So as far as a hybrid camera goes the S1 II might be a better deal. Even though it is really just an S5 III and not a flagship in any way.

Is this your hot take. LOL. The GH2 hacking community has nought to do with this topic and the latest cameras, and as far as I know Mr Kiselev the Bolshevik Leninist did not launch the GH3. I wish you'd go off and do some editing

Specs etc only tell us so much. Let’s see them at work. The thing I don’t really understand is whether they’ll have FF 4k 50p. If they don’t that would be a fatal mistake.

I'm really looking forward to trying this lens. Come to think of it, I've only have camcorders with superzooms. On the G7, I won't have any options of 1:1 except in 1080p, but I'm going to try it. As a companion lens, I'm getting the 42.5 f/1.7. The whole setup will be completely new for me. Last summer cured me from not having an EVF as I went down to the beach on sunny days and it was absolutely impossible to see the screen on the GX800 or on my VX980 camcorder. I ended up buying, then selling, a E-M5 iii to finish the holiday. I actually liked NOT having to decide between the EVF and the screen, but when you can't see it, the camera is rather useless.

So the rumoured pricing: S1 II: 3500 euros. Similar or same sensor as Z6 III (partially stacked) and similar spec? S1 IIe: 2800 euros for the OLD sensor, same spec as S5 II but updated processor 2800 euros for a 2017 sensor that debuted in the a7 III. The kit lens is 1000 euros. 24-60 F2.8 Panasonic have taken leave of their senses.

Agreed. I don't know the overall health of the Lumix line. Maybe it's even as bad as people are saying. There have been some big whiffs for sure, like the LX100, the G100, and the G95, but I feel like a big part of people's criticism is that Lumix is "late to the party" on certain things and when they finally do release a camera that matches the competition, it's "too late" even though they enter a market at an extremely competitive price. I get that it is an adjustment, given that Lumix for so long lead the way when it came to progressing what mirrorless cameras are capable of, so it can be a disappointment in that regard, but I think overall we've hit a wall when it comes to advances. No one is really progressing much, outside of higher resolution. But Lumix is adding little quality of life improvements that the larger companies still haven't added, but they don't really get credit for them. I don't think it's unfair to say that 7 years is a long time to release a successor, but at the same time, would people be giving them the same grief if they were releasing a new model every two years for what is essentially a big firmware update like Sony does? Should they do that instead of supporting their cameras for years with new features via free firmware updates like they have? Would they have been better off if they flooded the market with so many different models? There needs to be some middle ground, and it'd be nice if Lumix found it. I agree with this, but also think it was inevitable. I don't know that they are regressing backwards creatively, as much as they hit the same wall most everyone else has. I do think the design criticism is the most valid, but I also think that too was inevitable. It makes sense that they'd try to unify the camera body designs like Sony has, as I'm sure it's much more profitable for them, especially as they try to enter the market at a more competitive price point. I've never had a problem with the S5ii X's body; I don't necessarily love it it, but I'm pretty indifferent. Where it matters most to me I find it to be pretty good; the buttons are where I'd naturally want them, and I have quick access to pretty much every setting I'd want to have quick access to. It really boils down to personal preference, so if you don't like it then I can see why it'd bother you that they are using it for most of their cameras now. That was a big reason why I didn't like Sony cameras, so I understand it.

Maybe try and understand the negativity, after all we're just doing as you just described... buying and using the cameras and giving our opinion. I have bought every major Panasonic release for 15 years. I stopped at the S1R II and gave my opinion. There's no creative or practical and financial reason to buy another L-mount camera from Panasonic. My next will be the Sigma BF and I'll probably get the Sony a1 again at some point, as I regret selling it. There's no room in the bag for a £2500 Sony a7 replica with L-mount. Had Panasonic used the same strategy in the M43 days, they'd have been bringing out 2x crop DSLRs with moire.

I will. Yes, the low-light issue can't be denied. I already have a bunch of lighting, so I'm not too worried about that. These new 1 inchers do seem quite nice and just as in photography the ISO and noise algorithms have advanced in the videocamera world. There are workarounds for bokeh, as you say. When I used those old Mini DV cams we managed to produce some nice images by playing with length of the zoom and judicious placement of our subjects. I 100% agree with you that the video cam world has advanced at a snail's pace compared to the photo world. Advancements have been few and far between. Curiously enough, Panasonic really did innovate with the DVX200 but the competition from the DSLR world and the new MILC challengers proved too fierce. Heck, even their own internal competition was brutal with the GF7, GX80, G9, FZ-2000, GH5, GH5 and GH5s coming around near the launch of the DVX200. Those guys in Japan were on a roll back then. As Andrew has said, their photo demise in near. IMO their fatal flaw was launching their own L mount and trying to compete with much more well established players but with 1/100 of their marketing resources and distribution channels. They should have stuck with videocameras and, from time to time, integrate their innovations to the M43 line. Bleh. Right now they much interested selling batteries to Tesla and Toyota.

Who needs an S1H II when you have an S1 Mark ?E?E?E?E?E E for electronic shutter, to save costs. E for Exactly the same body as the cheapo camera from 2022 to save costs. E for enamoured with accountancy. E for enormous lack of creativity. E for eeee dear. E for End, as in the brand, and soon the entire system as well. E for E-mount which has a 3 year old model that's twice as good. E for erm, do I want to sign an NDA and go to some fancy Knightsbridge business lunch to see it. N for no fucking thanks!

100% tariffs on American films which aren't all shot in the US. 100% tariffs on all foreign imports and Netflix production. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz01kx3yrmvo https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-announces-100-tariff-on-non-us-movies-as-film-industry-dying-13362069 Proper details sketchy but looks bad. But all par for the course when your public votes for a thuggish fascist dictator.

Is that such a bad thing? OK, maybe…

Does this mean that those specialist art films his wife made back in the old country will now have a 100% tariff ?

or wait untill tomorrow, when its the official release.