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🤷‍♂️ but as with the OG S1R and it’s 47mp sensor (Tower Jazz was the speculation at the time?), that was unique to the brand, the 44mp S1RII sensor is Panasonic’s own apparently and totally unique as far as I am aware? IMO, it has that mojo that the S1R had in that there is something unquantifiably special about it. I think most reviews/reviewers go mainly off the spec sheet and very very few have proper Panasonic full-frame history/experience but those that actually go and shoot the thing properly, know. I’ve shot 8 weddings spread over 24 days, stills and video with it now and can see immediately when I drop the files on a timeline, how much better they are than those of the S5II/S9. And this is no “because I have one” fanboy hallucination, because I have near zero brand loyalty and if I think something else will do a better job, I owe no company or brand anything. Plus have no YouTube channel, have ever received a free piece of kit or anything, so simply user feedback opinion. Define ‘better’. It’s one of those things that is not any single thing but the sum of several smaller things… As above somewhere or perhaps the other Lumix thread, ‘less muddy’, not that the material coming out of the S5II/S9 is muddy, but using words, it’s the best I can do. I’d throw up some sample footage myself for download except I only shoot log with the baked in Phantom conversion LUT for workflow purposes but the comparison with S5II/S9 is the same because that is what I have done with those cameras since I had them. The pricing was a bit too high straight out of the gate, but I picked mine up for £2700 which was acceptable compared with any kind of brand swap which I looked at which would have been anything from 5-10k based on my needs. So did I remain ‘brand loyal’ purely on cost then? Nope; cost + familiarity/continuity + capability, but starting afresh today, I’d go Nikon with adapter E Mount glass.

GH5 GH4 EM10iii OM-1 5Dii XPRO2 XT-5 P1100 DSC-RX10 iPhone15 iPhone12 Xiaomi12 Ultra DJI Mavic Pro GoPro Hero All those different cameras were used to make our latest indy documentary on-and-off over the last 3 years. We finally finished post-production (for real this time) last month. Not to mention all the different ridiculous vintage lenses and modern lenses employed along the way. So that happened. My advice? Yeah, don't use so many cameras...and then try to make all that cohere somehow with no legitimate color grading skills... Surprisingly, I found the EM10iii footage the most pleasant looking color-wise when exposed correctly.

I'm of a more ramshackle mentality, but even my loosey-goosey philosophies hit a limit. fyi, this particular doc was about people that are trying to help conserve raptor migration through SoCal. So, lots of bird shots. Which we don't really do, nor have done. The whole thing became kind of a production experiment. We were only answering to ourselves so we could take risks like that. The scope of the project kept changing, but the finances never did. There was very little money in our pockets, and what we did have we needed to save for travel. And being a seriously-non-affluent-filmmaker, it basically came down to a make-do-as-we-can process. Our personal finances, as well as the various situations of the shoot, were all over the place. We were borrowing/renting lenses and gear in a very haphazard way. Sometimes it worked. Mostly it did not. Meanwhile, the stuff we had in our own collection was inferior. For instance we used a POS Vintage Photax 500mm w/2x extender for an entire season to get a lot of the BIF shots. That was an insanely unfortunate thing to do, but it's what we could afford to have on hand. The biggest bitch was not having a real tripod. We truly wished we had friends/colleagues that could have let us use a pro Sacthler or Miller. More than willing to carry some sort of hefty rig into the wild if it would've allowed smooth shots when filming at a +2000mm FF equiv. That FOV reach is f'in hard to control. As a side note, it was pretty wild running around with birders carrying equipment that was so expensive and professional while us "filmmakers" were often using, basically, consumer toys to grab video. At the end of the day, the images are passable by a certain standard, but when you pixel peep you can tell it's all held together with spit, bubblegum, hopes, and prayers. "f8 and be there" was the mantra we had to talk ourselves into and accept. "The best camera is the one you got." ...That sort of thing.

That is the sum of it. Enthusiast weighing up A vs B vs C vs what they already have, yes, even 500 is a BIG difference. Business user however, turning over 50k+ PA, it's still 500, but 1% of gross turnover and 50k is a very small business. And that is based on 1 year so if you can use something for 3+ years on say a 100k turnover, it's a difference of near zero consequence. 3k camera on 3 years at 100k = 1%. The difference being if it's a tool that makes you money and if that tool can also save you time, or improve your output in some way such as maybe it's more flexible such as open gate, or any other factor that works for you, then it becomes an asset. A depreciating asset (as all this stuff is), but the cost is not that big a consideration. Maybe but maybe not because it would need to have 'more' really (as you suggested), so it would have been wrong to badge it IMO as an S2H, even though, based on current evidence at least, it may very well be the replacement for the S1H that we have got. I always thought they would go a 2 model route and said so on this forum, but I thought they were going to make the S1RII (should have been badged S2R) and an S2H, the S2R with the Leica SL3/Sony A7RV sensor and then the more video-centric S2H. Instead we got what we got and for me, the pick of them is the S2R S1RII, and though it's a good body, would rather have seen something more innovative such as the ZR style body with 4" screen but articulating like that of the S2R S1RII. If...and it's a massive if, they do come out with a replacement for the S1H, I think if they go for this body style with that kind of rear screen, it would be a monster hit for Lumix.

I'm talking about in cinema, there's no use case for it. Sports yes.

I think it CAN be the most important choice for SOME films, but for MOST films, I genuinely think it matters less now than ever before. I'm not going to say that the ARRI Alexis 35 doesn't have a place and that everything can just be shot on a GH7 or FX3, because that's not true at all either. But how many of them could have been shot on something else and not been any worse for the wear? One of my favorite films of the year is "The Long Walk." It's shot on the ARRI Alexa 35 with Panavision anamorphics (just like the much uglier "Terrifier 3" I mentioned in a previous post!) and looks very good. But if you had switched that ARRI Alexa out for something else, I don't think it'd have had any impact on the film because the acting and story was that good and was what stood out the most about the film. That's not a reason to NOT to film with an ARRI, but it's an example of how less important it is today than ever before. "28 Years Later" is one of the highest grossing films of the year and was shot on an iPhone. Can anyone honestly say that it would've been more successful, financially or artistically, if it'd been shot on an ARRI? Probably not. Conversely, you can't really say that "The Conjuring: Last Rites" would have been less successful if it had been shot on something other than an ARRI, say a PYXIS or lower end Sony.

And when he also did a test of standard Vlog vs Arri log, the standard Vlog looked a lot better to me. Someone else and I forget who now (but it was someone UK) also did a side by side between the S1II and S1RII and all though he made a case that the S1II was better, about 90% of the comments including myself, disagreed. I was playing with building a new custom non-log profile based on a download from LUMIX Lab, but heavy rain has stopped play 😒 Agree as it stays on and there is less risk of touching the glass and getting fingerprints on it or having to put it somewhere safe every time. I also had mine flip down rather than up as it looked less crap. I might go back to it now I back to primarily shooting one video designated unit as I could make a VND work better with that, but as above, was working on a non-log profile with an ISO of just 80 which in most scenarios, would remove any need for ND. But ground to a halt thanks to the crap UK weather...