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I’m not chasing specs here. The FX2 isn’t even a hype-driven release; in fact, it’s been met with a lot of skepticism online. What genuinely interests me is how it fits into the Sony pipeline I’m already working in. The tiltable EVF is actually what I’m most excited about, ergonomics and UI refinements make a big difference when you shoot solo. For me it’s less about spec sheets, more about practical workflow and how the camera feels in real-world use. In the end pricing and ecosystem is what’s going to guide you, and not every camera fits every workflow, and that’s okay.. but dismissing others’ needs as just gear-chasing isn’t very helpful.

That's awesome in regards to the 9mm, the GH7 and your testing! @kye Thank you very much! The 9mm you tested is the Leica 9mm F1.4? Thank you for the offer, as stills would be nice as always, though your findings are already impressive enough, as always.:) The GH7 is looking very tempting indeed. Is an exact 1.4 4K crop possible, giving S16 width? I am asking because I figured it would be more, around 1.5, due to the 25MP sensor vs 20MP on the GH5. Is the 2x crop as nice as you found it to be on the GH5? One last question, is Punch-In during recording high resolving enough and a sufficient aid for manual focussing during recording? Thank you very much for your insights and awesome work! @John Matthews I dearly remember that thread. It's one of my abolute favourite ones! Legendary! Yesterday I went taking pictures again with my GX85, coupled with a 40mm S16 lens. One pretty looking outfit, itself worth of getting a picture taken. Panny better brings out a 10bit successor in a very similar or same body. Tilt screen is perfect on this one. And so would be 749EU!:)

Sorry bro, I wasn’t trying to accuse you of doing that! I know you and others do totally have legit reasons to buy this. I just think a lot of the YouTube hype is overblown. Your reasons are justified. Sorry if it came across that way.

Everybody has a different style and opinion on gear and on what we're outputting. Blowing out some skies/windows and lack of shadow detail (though I'm not sure how much of that is in the grade vs as-captured) in that wedding video is OK, it looks fine for the presentation - and I'm guessing the bride and groom were happy with what you gave them. For me, I wouldn't want that in my own footage. It's not to say it's bad, but it isn't my style. People were shooting nice-looking videos with a T3i back in 2011. If they came out with the same videos today, they'd still look good - I wouldn't want to give up my current gear for one, though. I wouldn't say that the FX2 is a "cash grab" - to me, it seems a lot more like complacence. It's the same thing that had Canon releasing like 6 models of T*i camera with almost exactly the same specs and only one or two tiny changes. It'll have its fans - and if the camera appeals to you, you're not wrong to get it. It's not like it's a piece of shit - the A7 IV is quite a nice camera and this one is... basically that, but in a more cinema-er body. It's not for me, but that's not to say it's not for anybody.

I am still shooting on a 7 year old Nikon Z6 and have found that I have not yet even reached the full potential of its 8-bit flat profile, and I've been doing video for 6 years...I am so bored with new camera releases. Yet another cash grab by Sony. Here's a trailer for a wedding I shot recently. Clearly, this video is useless, as it's only 8 bit, not shot in LOG and it's not filmed on Sony's cinema line. I can't be a professional filmmaker unless I get one of Sony's cinema bodies. Same goes for you all. Join me as we all purchase Sony FX2s using my affiliate link below. And don't worry; this review isn't sponsored.

Sharpness seems very natural to me, although I am not at the level of pixel peeing as others around! What I can say is that the Prores feels like Prores from a cinema camera. So the files edit like butter, the grain is well captured and not removed / crunched, etc. I've done quite a lot of low light high-ISO testing in the last few weeks and even up to ISO 12,800 the footage cleans up in post using temporal NR, which wouldn't work if the compression killed all the noise. Punch-in focussing is available during recording, and pops up automatically if you touch the focus ring on a native lens, and has a custom amount of zoom. I'd assume it's the same as previous cameras where you have an option to give you a punch-in box in the middle of the monitor, or for the whole monitor to show the punched-in part. The focus peaking was also active within and outside the punched-in part of the screen. The in-camera digital zoom is changed from previous models, and significantly improved at that. It's quite different now. Let's say I have my 9mm lens fitted. I hit the button I have mapped it to (it's called Crop Zoom "CrZ") and it activates the feature, showing me the current focal length (9mm) and there are a bunch of ways to get it to smoothly zoom in and out, displaying the current equivalent focal length as it goes (10mm, then 11mm, etc). The function is integrated into the zoom controls for the powered zoom lenses too, so I think you can zoom in and it will zoom the lens in as much as it can and then (if enabled) it will keep zooming in with the digital zoom. I thought the idea was it will keep zooming in until it gets to a 1:1 sensor read-out and then won't go any further, but the manual just lists some rather arbitrary zoom amounts. With my 9mm lens, if I shoot with the C4K mode it will go to 11mm, but on the 1080p mode it will zoom in to 24mm. In my tests I've found that the in-camera cropped images are free from artefacts, and I'd even zoom in/out during recording using it if I felt the need to. I'd happily use it for S16 cropping, or any other cropping you wanted. Perhaps the only caveat is that if you wanted to crop more than the 1.3x it will do in C4K, or 1.4x in UHD, then you have to use the 1080p mode, and that mode seems to have a slightly different look to the images, a bit more like the OG BM cameras in that it looks like a lower-resolution sensor readout. It's got a bit of that lower-resolution more sharpening look to it, rather than a higher-res-downscaled look to it. It's subtle, but it's there. It's still high-quality, but just compared to the 4K modes it's noticeable. I've been doing lots of tests for my next ballooning trip, and these include low-light testing. I figured I'd take my 14-140mm zoom for when the light is sufficient, and I'll take my new 9mm F1.7 as my ultra-wide, but was wondering if the 9mm could be my low-light non-wide lens as well. I did two tests. The first test was an ultra-low-light test. I tested: - GX85 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F1.4 - GX85 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F2 - GH7 with 9mm F1.7 at F1.7 (shot in C4K and cropped to be 17mm FOV in-post) - GH7 with 9mm F1.7 at F1.7 (shot in 1080p and cropped in-camera to be 17mm FOV) - GH7 with 12-35mm F2.8 at F2.8 and 17mm - GH7 with 14-140mm at 17mm - GH7 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F1.4 - GH7 with TTartisans 17mm F1.4 manual prime at F2.0 - GH7 with Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 manual prime at F0.95 - GH7 with Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 manual prime at F1.4 - GH7 with Voigtlander 17.5mm F0.95 manual prime at F2.0 I reviewed all of them with just a 709 conversion, with NR/sharpening, and with tonnes of NR/sharpening. This is a test of lots of things being traded-off against each other, as the slower lenses all needed a higher ISO, and the 9mm was sharp wide-open and brighter but also pulling from a smaller sensor area, but I didn't upload to YT so it's not a full pipeline test. The result was that the Voigtlander won, the TTartisans at F2.0 was good, the 12-35 was good, but the 9mm was still acceptable and waaaaaay better than the GX85 + TTartisans wide open (which was what I shot the previous outing with and I found to be disappointing - the combo of the TTartisans at F1.4 combined with the GX85 ISO6400 was just a killer combo). I also tested the 9mm F1.7 wide-open vs the 12-35mm F2.8 stopped down to F4.0 against each other in good lighting and native ISO and using the 1080p in-camera zoom to match focal lengths. I reviewed all of them with just a 709 conversion, with NR/sharpening, and with NR/sharpening put through my FLC pipeline (which includes softening the image slightly and adding grain). I didn't upload it to YT either, so it's not a full-pipeline test but was a good indicator of it. I found that the 9mm zoomed to 12mm was equivalent to the 12-35mm, at 18m it was noticeably softer, and at 24mm it was really noticeable and getting into vintage territory. I can post some stills if you're really curious.

I have so much great footage I've taken with the gx80- the one that was used in that gx85 thread started way back when (and briefly became the most popular thread on EOSHD ever). Every camera I've used since (there have been many of all shapes and sizes) was either bigger, lacking features, or didn't have add significant improvements over it. In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with it and I would have saved a bundle and paid off my house that much quicker. Just last night, I was live streaming via HDMI with my S9 (not recording) and the camera over-heated mid-session (about a hour in), something my M43 cameras NEVER did. Granted, I don't think the S9 is made for what I was doing with it in a VERY hot attic (~35C), but still I wasn't even recording and I had a dummy battery. I guess the S5ii will now need to be doing that job and I'll set up my GH2 as a backup (just in case it happens again).