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It turns out I am a bit wrong. ... That Micro Four Thirds was dead. Well near me, the G9 II came down to a much more sensible 1299 so I thought I'd give it a try. This thing... oh my gawd. Feel like putting the rest of my gear in the bin! This little box of joy is pure art in the handheld 4K/120p mode (and also in 5K open gate). The colour science, slow mo and IBIS are so, so good. The new GH7 sensor is quite something. Beautiful filmic quality to it. And I thought IBIS was good on the full frame Panasonic cameras or Olympus OM-1 but this is taking the biscuit now. You can just stand there and get a completely static frame especially in 120fps. I keep putting shutter at 1 second for long expose stills, pin sharp...The first camera that can really lay claim to being a tripod killer, in my view. Then there's the image processing... It totally defies the price. The new sensor just looks so clean in low light and dynamic range is fantastic. The real-time LUTs look stunning here. No other Micro Four Thirds camera has nearly as good colour processing (except the more expensive GH7), so in this sense I prefer it even to the Olympus OM-1 with the lovely Olympus skin tones. In some ways it is better than a flagship $4k full frame cam... I am not joking. Not missing a full frame sensor that much to be honest. It has the dynamic range, the low light, the resolution, and with a fast enough lens... the full frame look as well. The Metabones Speed Booster 0.64x fits without scraping the sensor-box. Also, the EVF is enormous and totally defies the price. Criticisms? Autofocus is very lens dependant - it's still a bit rubbish with the older stuff and adapters. Also no ProRes LT like the X-H2... With two SD card slots, it limits you only to 1080p in ProRes mode which is a bit silly... but the high-res stuff is available if you plug in an SSD via USB. GH7 has an advantage there for sure. But in plain old 10bit H.265 the image is superb. I think this body design suits the smaller lenses too... You know I'm not the greatest fan of the S5 II body design, well it is growing on me here... Micro Four Thirds and small stuff seems to go well with the G9 II / S5 II body design. It starts to make more sense. The sharp angles cut in less, camera as a whole is lighter, the grip is sufficient for everything and it's got that "GH2 feel" when you put the tiny 20mm F1.7 pancake on there whereas the S5 II with the larger lenses doesn't have that same charm to it. I am inclined to say Micro Four Thirds LOOK is back too... It's an antidote to predominance of a super shallow depth of field in commercial work and Netflix. It really makes me want to fully commit again to the system as it just does SO MUCH, far more than any full frame camera remotely affordable. It does more than a Sony a1 II FFS!

As many of you will have guessed, I’m not a rich teenage kawaii girl so take my opinion on this camera with a grain of matcha. What I am though is a member the unspoken demographic for it which is the jaded old photographer with a bad back. So I’m not her, I’m not you and you aren’t either of us so I’m predicting your mileage will vary wildly. Which is a good thing. I enjoy it for what it is, a genuinely pocketable holiday camera that makes me take silly snaps with far more frequency than I would do with a “real” camera because I’ve long since understood that holiday doesn’t mean assignment. Anyway, some silly soft, noisy snaps I took with it. Could I have taken these with my phone and at likely better quality ? Of course but the question is would I? No, because getting my phone out of my pocket and wrestling with it like a wet fish when I see something interesting is not my idea of using a camera.

Welcome back! Can you tell me your name? Where are we? What year is it? Good, good... You've been in a DOF-induced coma for the last 7 years. We'll contact your families and let them know you've woken up - they'll be very happy to see you!

OK, we open a DJI drone shop in one of the Canadian border towns and Americans come across, buy one but only take the controller back with them. As soon as they are over the border they message us and we switch their drone on, put it on the roof of the shop and then they fly the fucker over the border themselves.

I have this camera since its release in late 2023. The G9II is lightweight, has better IBIS and video details rendering (in 5,7K/Open Gate only) than the S5II, S1II and S1RII (with non raw modes) and lenses like the small 20mm f1.7 II are really fun to use with this camera. I'm not tempted by the GH7 because the 5,7K/Open Gate mode of the G9II has very nice detail rendering, so I don't need the Prores Raw of the GH7. But to be honest, I think the best image out of the box comes from the GH6, colors are the best I've seen on a Panasonic camera. The GH6 with the 25-50mm is something else, even my S1RII doesn't look as good. For now the cameras I use the most are : The GH6 with the 25-50mm (insane rendering) and the 25mm f1.2 (pretty nice and soft look at f1.2 even if the colors are a bit muted). The G9II with the 20mm f1.7, the PL 12-60mm and 100-400mm. The S1II with the 35mm f1.2 DG II (only in Prores Raw). The S1RII with the 50mm and 24-70mm S Pro. The Z6III with the 50mm f1.2S/35mm f1.2S and sometimes the Batis 135mm f2.8 and 35mm GM (only in N-Raw).

Incidentally, FujiFilm have announced a new instax camera today that is already boiling the piss of many people in the same way as the X-Half does. It’s basically a video focused version of the Instax Evo but retains the printer and is based on their Fujica cine cameras of the past. The dial on the side let’s you choose the era of look that you want to emulate. So it shoots video which transfers to the app and then it prints a key frame still from it complete with a QR code on it that people can then scan to download the video from the cloud. It looks beautiful and based on my experience with the X-Half, if they made this with that larger format sensor (sans printer obviously) then I would be all over it for all the same reasons as I love the X-Half.

Ok, first 2 week trip behind with the ZR, 35mm F1.4, 50mm F1.2 and 135mm F1.8 Plena and here are some thoughts about the ZR. First the good sides. The ZR screen worked well enough for nailing focus and exposure, even when shooting into shadows in bright daylight, but you may want to max the screen brightness. Zooming into the image with the zoom lever was handier than with Z6iii plus and minus buttons. Even with screen brightness maxed occasionally battery lasted about as well as Z6iii with it’s EVF on normal brightness. Had to use 2nd battery only a few times during 4-5 hour shooting days in cold, 0 to 10C conditions. Brought also the Smallgrip L cage with me, but did not use it, as it makes the ZR body taller than Z6iii and about similar weight. Even with 1kg lenses ZR felt quite comfortable to use and hold, but as a climber my fingers are not the weakest. I missed the Z6iii EVF a bit, but used now also different shooting angles and heights more due to the bigger screen being handier than EVF for that. 32bit float saved the few clipped audios I had pretty well, even though I don’t know if it is true 32bit pipeline from Rode wireless go mic to the ZR. Still, the audio sounded a bit better than what I have gotten with Z6iii and Rode. Exposing clips with R3D NE took at first a bit more time than with NRaw, but by using high zebras set to 245, waveform, and Cinematools false color and Rec.709 clipping LUTs it was quite easy to avoid crushed blacks and clipped highlights. R3D NE has manual WB, so I took always a picture first and set the WB by using the picture as preset. It worked pretty well, but not perfectly every time. Shot also NRaw in between to compare, but used auto A1 WB for it. It seems the auto WB did not always work perfectly either, but it was relatively easy to get R3D NE and NRaw to match WB wise in post. In highlights R3D NE clips earlier than NRaw and it was clearly seen in the zebras and waveform. Still with R3D NE there was not much need to over expose and even with under exposing I needed to use NR only in a couple of clips, where I under exposed too much. On last year’s trip with Z6iii, when it didn’t have the 1.10 FW yet, that improved the shadow noise pattern, I needed to use NR in many clips, until I realised I could raise high zebras from 245 to 255 without clipping. With R3D NE and NRaw 4 camera buttons and one lens button was enough. I had 3D LUT and WB added to My menu and that mapped to a button, so it was quite fast to change display LUTs or WB. WB mapped directly to a button or added in i menu won’t let you set the WB by taken picture as preset. WB se to i menu let’s you measure the white point and set that though. In post I preferred the R3D NE colors over NRaw in almost all of the clips I took, except in few clips where NRaw had more information in the highlights. Changing NRaw to R3D with NEV to R3D hack brought NRaw grading closer to R3D NE, but they were still not exactly the same. NRaw as NRaw seemed to have more blueish image in some of the clips due to the blue oversaturation issue it has, but the NEV to R3D hack fixes that. Then the bad sides. After coming home I picked the Z6iii, looked through it’s EVF, felt all of it’s buttons and thought, this is still the better camera, a proper one. Z6iii has also focus limiter and mech sutter which both I missed during the trip. The worst part became pretty clear after every shooting day. Not the R3D NE file sizes itself, but the lack of software support to be able to save only the trimmed parts of R3D NE clips. Currently Davinci Resolve saves the whole clips without trims, even though NRaw works just fine, and Red Cine x pro gives an error during R3D trim export. If you happen to fill 2TB card a day with R3D NE, you need to save now everything. I saved like 6TB of footage from this trip when it could have been only 600GB. If this does not get fixed I could as well shoot NRaw with Z6iii and get rid of the damn ZR. Changing trimmed NEV files to R3D does not work either, as Resolve does not import the files. ZR is fun to shoot, no doubt about it, but it’s R3D NE workflow is almost unusable at the moment, at least for my use.

I don't really know what to say.... The post I was replying to said they hadn't seen 9:16 displays in public so I shared some images. The fact you haven't experienced the need to deliver 4K 9:16 videos doesn't mean other people haven't. Why is everyone so interested in being an expert about what people they've never met are required to deliver for companies they've never heard of in other countries they've never visited?

They're everywhere, and are often just normal TVs rotated 90 degrees In shopping malls Some are pretty big Some are pretty tall too, presumably for narrower spaces Outdoors Bus stops In shop windows etc.

Don't forget that there is a silent army of people who are making work for clients. I am in a number of private groups with professionals (shooting corporate, advertising/PR, etc) and things like open gate are absolutely critical for those amongst them doing commercial work. I thought that Cams video on open gate was actually really good and explained it well. Basically every camera argument is people saying "I definitely need the things I use, and no-one needs the things I don't use".

I saw this film in the cinema few days ago and I wanted to share a few short thoughts on this work, which I found extremely interesting for the balance between neorealist aesthetics and the use of natural light in complex urban environments like the markets of Taipei. The composition of the image and the dynamism of the camera manage to give a rare sense of immersion, keeping a consistent style for the whole film. It is a remarkable example of how cinematic language can work without huge technical equipment: in fact, the film was shot entirely with an iPhone. The choice of the iPhone 13 Pro Max was mainly due to the need to move with extreme agility and discretion inside the night markets of Taipei, contexts where a traditional crew with bulky cameras would have inevitably attracted attention and compromised the spontaneity of the scenes. By working with such a common and non-invasive tool, the director managed to adopt an almost documentary-like approach. Reading several articles and listening some interviews, the director gave several details: The film's aesthetics were built around the use of four iPhone 13 Pro Max cameras, integrated into a workflow that used the Beastgrip Pro system as the base for the rig. To achieve the characteristic anamorphic look and typical horizontal flares, the production used a prototype anamorphic lens from Beastgrip, paired with Black Forest diffusion filters to reduce the excessive digital sharpness of the sensor and give a more organic feel to the highlights of the night markets. On the software side, the shooting was managed entirely through the FiLMiC Pro app using the 4K Lux mode, a choice that allowed for a file with a wider dynamic range, which was later processed in post-production through advanced color correction in DaVinci Resolve. Seeing some BTS shots, this was really a run&gun configuration. An iPhone and a Gimbal et voila! https://thefilmstage.com/left-handed-girl-director-shih-ching-tsou-on-collaborating-with-sean-baker-and-seeing-the-world-through-a-childs-eyes/

I shoot in uncontrolled conditions, using only available light, and shoot what is happening with no directing and no do-overs. This means I'm frequently pointing the camera in the wrong direction, shooting people backlit against the sunset, or shooting urban stuff in midday-sun with deep shadows in the shade in the same frame as direct sun hitting pure-white objects. This was a regular headache on the GH5 with its 9.7/10.8 stops. The OG BMPCC with 11.2/12.5 stops was MUCH better but still not perfect, and while I haven't used my GH7 in every possible scenario, so far its 11.9/13.2 stops are more than enough. The only reason you need DR is if you want to heavily manipulate the shot in post by pulling the highlights down for some reason, or lifting the shadows up for some reason. Beyond the DR of the GH7 I can't think of many uses other than bragging rights. When the Alexa 35 came out and DPs were talking about its extended DR, it was only in very specific situations that it really mattered. Rec709 only has about 6 stops of DR, so unless you're mastering for HDR (and if you are, umm - why?) so adding more DR into the scene only gives you more headaches in post when you have to compress and throw away the majority of the DR in the image.

It would take more than a Ronin to stabilise that government at the moment.

Truth bomb spat out right there and unique to you, to me, to others as our situations and needs are all different but unless you actually get out there and shoot shoot shoot, you’ll never truly know what works. And what does not. Probably always will be other than perhaps AI etc might/probably will fill in the blanks.

All paid for by Pathé and everyone on the trip etched postcards home saying “Game Changer”.

I still wish them the best with their Eterna sales to anybody other than a few rental houses. Other than 4:3 recording and more professional I/O, the much less expensive GFX 100 II has the same output. Also, the autofocus in video is a bit ass on it and unlikely to be much better on Eterna. 😅 But you know, if you have some 1.8x anamorphics that cover a 44mm wide sensor that you've been champing at the bit to use or if you really wanna go overkill on your social media presence, that 4:3 mode is probably killer. 🤣

I just read a report that in retaliation to Greenland threats, European leaders are planning to introduce trade blocks with America, and part of that is a potential voiding of American patents. What could this mean for the camera industry? Suddenly everyone can put compressed raw into their cameras without having to argue with RED? https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0119/c90000-20415649.html "The mechanism would allow immediate retaliation, including punitive tariffs, market bans, financial sanctions, and the suspension of U.S. patents and licences, without recourse to the United Nations or the World Trade Organization."

Nice! The other thing to consider when testing ISO and noise in the final image is the delivery part of the pipeline. If I shot in two different modes and then processed them differently in my NLE, I might be able to tell the difference between them in my NLE. But no-one except you is watching your footage in your NLE, so you'll be exporting it, probably to h264 or h265, and you might not be able to tell the difference between them at this point. If you're going to be uploading them to a streaming service, then that service will decompress, process (NR, sharpening, who knows what else) and then brutally re-compress it. Lots of things are visible in the NLE and are completely gone or mangled beyond recognition in the final export or stream.

Just a note to say that it would probably be worth doing some tests ahead of the event. Situations like this involve many variables and most often people don't consider all of them because they don't do any methodical tests. You are assuming that the AF will work differently between different picture profiles, but I would suggest the AF would be operating on the image before the picture profile is applied, so it shouldn't matter... but, once again, you should test this to confirm. Another thing to consider is if you can push the shutter angle to 270 degrees or even 360 degrees. If it's a worship setting then making the footage seem a bit more surreal might be appropriate, and you can get another half or full-stop of exposure this way. You should also test NR in post - it's not ideal but it might give a better result overall considering none of your scenarios are operating in the cameras ideal operating range. I've done a lot of shooting with cameras at/beyond their capabilities and when you're pushing things you're trading off the drawbacks of each strategy.

Would it be worth quoting Genesis 1:3 as this would solve the high ISO need… (with apologies)

Digital zoom is definitely an underrated feature of these higher resolution cameras. On my GH5 I used the 2x punch-in on my 17.5mm F0.95 to get 35mm and 70mm FOVs, and on my GX85 I used it with the 14mm F2.5 pancake lens to get 31mm and 62mm FOVs in a pocketable form-factor. The crop function on the GH7 is different and a bit more restrictive. You get continuous zooming, but only to the point where the resolution you've chosen is at/near 1:1 crop into the sensor. So, if you've got the 14mm lens on there and you're shooting in C4K, you enable the feature and it pops up a box on the screen saying "14mm" and you can zoom in more and more by pushing or holding a button and it goes from 14 - 15 -16 - 17mm, but it won't let you go further. If you're in 1080p mode then it goes from 14mm to 38mm. Conveniently, if you disable the mode then it goes back to 14mm but if you re-enable it then it goes back to whatever zoom you were at previously, so it's easy to set a zoom level you like and then jump in and out of that FOV. My testing didn't indicate any IQ issues with it, in 24p mode anyway, so I think it's probably downscaling from a full sensor read-out. Not only is it really good for getting more FOVs from primes, but it's also great in extending the long end of your zooms too.

I don't regret jumping to full frame. The S5 and S5II X have treated me well and both are really good values. It was the right choice at the time, for a multitude of reasons. BUT if I'd known that the G9 II and GH7 were in the pipeline I probably would've stayed with M43. The main benefit for me has been the better low light, but these newer M43 cameras are pretty darn good at that. FF still has an edge, but it's not a huge one. I also don't typically do a lot of work where I need really shallow depth of field. Often times I'm closing the lense down to get similar results to what I got when filming on M43, except these lenses are much heavier and more expensive than the ones I used on my GH5, G85, and GX85 bodies. I could fit all my lenses in a bag and it didn't weigh much at all. The same definitely cannot be said for my FF lenses! The stabilization, to my eye, also looks a lot better on the G9II and GH7 than my S5 and S5II X. I hope Lumix keeps M43 alive and even gets back to innovating with the system. A return to smaller bodies, and possibly even smaller lenses, would definitely pique my interest. I don't know that I'd ever jump back into the system completely, but I could see myself buying a couple lenses and a body if it was compelling enough.

Ditto and it has been an absolute game changer for me with my workflow, especially as 100% of my clients what a result in ‘my style’, so effectively carte blanche. As long as I don’t do anything radically different…

Excellent insight, Thank you for the write up!

My advice is to forget about "accuracy". I've been down the rabbit-hole of calibration and discovered it's actually a mine-field not a rabbit hole, and there's a reason that there are professionals who do this full-time - the tools are structured in a way that deliberately prevents people from being able to do it themselves. But, even more importantly, it doesn't matter. You might get a perfect calibration, but as soon as your image is on any other display in the entire world then it will be wrong, and wrong by far more than you'd think was acceptable. Colourists typically make their clients view the image in the colour studio and refuse to accept colour notes when viewed on any other device, and the ones that do remote work will setup and courier an iPad Pro to the client and then only accept notes from the client when viewed on the device the colourist shipped them. It's not even that the devices out there aren't calibrated, or even that manufacturers now ship things with motion smoothing and other hijinx on by default, it's that even the streaming architecture doesn't all have proper colour management built in so the images transmitted through the wires aren't even tagged and interpreted correctly. Here's an experiment for you. Take your LOG camera and shoot a low-DR scene and a high-DR scene in both LOG and a 709 profile. Use the default 709 colour profile without any modifications. Then in post take the LOG shot and try and match both shots to their respective 709 images manually using only normal grading tools (not plugins or LUTs). Then try and just grade each of the LOG shots to just look nice, using only normal tools. If your high-DR scene involves actually having the sun in-frame, try a bunch of different methods to convert to 709. Manufacturers LUT, film emulation plugins, LUTs in Resolve, CST into other camera spaces and use their manufacturers LUTs etc. Gotcha. I guess the only improvement is to go with more light sources but have them dimmer, or to turn up the light sources and have them further away. The inverse-square law is what is giving you the DR issues. That's like comparing two cars, but one is stuck in first gear. Compare N-RAW with Prores RAW (or at least Prores HQ) on the GH7. I'm not saying it'll be as good, but at least it'll be a logical comparison, and your pipeline will be similar so your grading techniques will be applicable to both and be less of a variable in the equation. People interested in technology are not interested in human perception. Almost everyone interested in "accuracy" will either avoid such a book out of principle, or will die of shock while reading it. The impression that I was left with after I read it was that it's amazing that we can see at all, and that the way we think about the technology (megapixels, sharpness, brightness, saturation, etc) is so far away from how we see that asking "how many megapixels is the human eye" is sort-of like asking "What does loud purple smell like?". Did you get to the chapter about HDR? I thought it was more towards the end, but could be wrong. Yes - the HDR videos on social media look like rubbish and feel like you're staring into the headlights of a car. This is all for completely predictable and explainable reasons.. which are all in the colour book. I mentioned before that the colour pipelines are all broken and don't preserve and interpret the colour space tags on videos properly, but if you think that's bad (which it is) then you'd have a heart attack if you knew how dodgy/patchy/broken it is for HDR colour spaces. I don't know how much you know about the Apple Gamma Shift issue (you spoke about it before but I don't know if you actually understand it deeply enough) but I watched a great ~1hr walk-through of the issue and in the end the conclusion is that because the device doesn't know enough about the viewing conditions under which the video is being watched, the idea of displaying an image with any degree of fidelity is impossible, and the gamma shift issue is a product of that problem. Happy to dig up that video if you're curious. Every other video I've seen on the subject covered less than half of the information involved.

I agree with this 100%. More DR is great but it will be at the extremes of the image but all the magic happens in the middle.

Definitely; that's where the 12-35 2.8 and DJi 15mm 1.7 will show their strengths for me. The lenses haven't arrived yet, but the camera came with the 12-60mm 3.5-5.6 kit lens, so definitely in the ball park with size and weight. The thing is so darn light; it actually feels extremely comfortable and balanced attached to the larger body style. I could be fine with a sigma 18-35; funny thing is even that feels somewhat light to me, as I am used to having to carry around my Atomos Ninja V for anything 10 bit. Yes, yes, yes. The only reason I have a great idea now of what matters to me, is because at this point I've shot a lot of projects, and have done so on multiple different camera systems. So along the way, I've learned what matters to me. I'm not going to notice a 1/2 stop DR difference; some grainy footage (as long as the grain isnt ugly) doesn't bother me terrible. Sometimes I like it. But I do value great stabilization, as the way I shoot I end up spending a good chunk of my time finessing post-stablization to achieve the type of camera movement I want while keeping things completely handheld. I have a solid handheld technique down, but on most cameras it is still not perfect. I always hold the camera losely, usually shoot wide, and do a great heel-toe walk or body sway. But I always need to post-stabilize. I end up trying the stabilization options in Davinci Resolve. If that doesn't work, I render that clip out to Prores and import it to After Effects just to apply Adobe Warp Stabilizer, as it is a bit better in my experience. Once I get the result I like, I export. The beauty of the G9II is that when you combine the fantastic IBIS with e-stabilization high, I get quite close to the result I get after all of that post stabilization process...but this is just the footage out of the camera. It saves me a lot of time. And I can even add a drop of warp stabilizer on top to make it perfectly smooth. Another big advantage for me, its effectively doing what Gyroflow does but all internally and paired with the best IBIS ever. I've tried Gyroflow. I've used it on some FX3 footage I shot for my buddy's wedding film company. I've also rigged an iPhone to my Nikon Z6 as well as used the Senseflow A1. Its a nice solution. I figured I'd love it; its the same concept of what normal post-stabilization does (which I always use ALL THE TIME). Big difference is it is using true camera motion data; so the results should be perfect right? Well yes, but you need to shoot on a high shutter speed. And I found that even on the Sony FX3, where Gyroflow can work with IBIS on, the crop was often still fairly large. And the workflow is lengthy. With the G9II, I have a minimal 1.255x crop with e-stab on high, and because its working fully in tandem with the phenominal physical IBIS system, its very stable AND I can zoom the lens mid-shot and it works fine (can't do this with gyroflow on most setups). AND I can keep my shutter at 1/50 because the physical IBIS system is doing 80% of the work here. But yeah. Moral of the story is shooting lots and lots of stuff has made me realize what matters most to me. The G9II seems to really hit that. Again, I used the Nikon Z6 for 4 years. I've also filmed weddings on a Sony FX3 with nice Sony G master glass. I filmed very extensively for one organization with a Canon R5 and EF glass. This past summer I bought a Canon R7, then a Panasonic S9, then sold both. So I've tried enough cameras and shot enough to know what works well for me. I'd fully agree that a lot of what camera youtuber's claim are the big time differences are not always as important as they seem; for me, the wonderful IBIS of the G9II and the minor crop in e-stabilization is way more useful than a full stop of DR improvement when you already had great DR in the first place. Etc etc. This is a concert I filmed and edited this summer on the Panasonic S9. I haven't had a chance to film anything substantial on my G9II...but this is close. It's a super weird setup I sort of wound up with over the summer...The Lumix S9 with the Sigma 18-35...in the Super 35 crop mode WITH E-stab on high. So basically a 2x crop MFT level at that point. But I still found the image to be very nice. More importantly, with some careful walking, I got the images to be this stable and a lot of these shots have NO post-stab applied. Colors were very rich. G9II is even better because again the crop is lessened in E-stab high and the physical IBIS is better. And build quality smokes the S9; that was something I did not appreciate about that camera. A short clip from a concert I filmed, with the aforementioned Lumix S9 setup. Again, no post-stabilization. It is just so smooth. Makes all the difference with how I like to film. More handheld with the Lumix S9 setup. This has a bit less "gimbal-push-in" shots and a bit more regular handheld shots. With e-stabilization high, it has a perfect balance struck, where you can walk and move the camera such that it looks like a steadicam, or you can just handhold it for regular stuff and it looks as stable as a cine-cam weighted down. This wedding trailer was with my old Nikon Z6 setup. Combo of Davinci post-stab and Warp Stabilizer. Outside, I cranked my shutter speed very high to help. I used RSMB to add motion blur in post. While this worked, I had to spend extra time stabilizing in post and tweaking things if it was not perfect. This is all but eliminated now with the G9II. Also, half of this video was shot on a Nikon F-mount 24-85mm 3.5-4.5, entirely at f/4.5. I reckon that looks pretty close to what the Panasonic12-35 2.8 will look like; @kyelet me know if I am wrong since you've used that very lens I think? But anyways, its enough DOF for me. That being said, if you like more, totally get it. Nothing wrong with that. End ramble haha.

This is the first smartphone video I've seen that didn't shout (or whisper) that it was shot on a smartphone. I do get flavours of it being shot on something small and mirrorless because of the movement of the camera (if it was a heavy rig it would have moved differently). I'm pretty stoked actually, and can't wait to get a vND solution for my iPhone 17 Pro. I suspect that I might end up shooting a lot of street stuff on it just because the form-factor is so small and people are far less curious/suspicious of smartphones than real cameras.

A GH7 (or G9 II if it has unlimited recording and doesn't overheat) really would be my ideal camera. Even though I use the excellent kit lenses a lot on my two S5 bodies and my S5II X, it's still not as light weight as I wish it were. I don't really care about shallow dof and low light isn't nearly as big of an issue when it comes to the GH7 and G9 II based on what I've seen or for what it was on my GH5 cams. But it's hard to justify going back to M43 because I just don't have faith that Lumix is invested in it for the long haul. Everyone i know loves these two cameras, but they don't get the firmware updates that the full frame cameras get. For Lumix that's a red flag because they've always released firmware that gave new features and improved their cameras. I mean, look how long they supported the GH5!

Yep. As I’ve shot more and more I’ve determined what is importantly to me: A comfortable, balanced, somewhat lightweight body but that is built well and has a good grip Great stabilization. I shoot heavily handheld and often will use warp stabilizer a lot. I’ve got a workflow down to get good results out of a lot of different cameras with varying IBIS strengths, but the G9II with its superb stabilization will make my life easier Decent lowlight. That includes having a somewhat noisy image as long as the grain looks good. Decent autofocus. Benefits my very run and gun content like weddings. Good internal image. My Nikon Z6 setup taught me I don’t love rigging out my kit. I have learned to work around any camera that is weak in one of these areas. I’ve figured out how to make very different equipment work for me and work around limitations. It’s just the G9II seems to really fit the bill with what is most important to me. That’s where I really feel camera decisions matter. Not in the IQ. But in the usability. How does it feel to use. Does it have those practical features that matter to you.

Good choice. I think that film-making is about compromises and the more you understand what you're trying to achieve then the more specific you can be with your equipment selection. The "I'll being everything just in case" shooter does so because they don't know what they want and therefore can't make any decisions. The more I shoot the more I understand what I want, how I work, what challenges I face, and what is available, and the clearer I get on what equipment I should use and why. It's sort of incredible that even with todays offerings of 8K video and 240p slow-motion and 14+ stops of DR and RAW and all the lenses available, even if you had infinite money, infinite strength to carry and operate heavy equipment, there are still serious compromises that have to be made. The does-everything camera is still a wild fantasy, even for gym bros in the billionaire class.

Good call. I have spent years and years going back and forth between primes and zooms and in the end came to what should have been a very obvious conclusion and that is I need both. Depending on the circumstances. In an ideal world, I could do it all with fast zooms but fast zooms (faster than f2.8) are a rarity and come with the penalty of size & weight. I was debating (yet again) at the end of my most recent season the case for continuing with just primes (needs +1 body) or going back to zooms (needs -1 body) but there are compromises to both scenarios. Instead, I decided to go with the -1 body, but keep the primes and though it means a couple of extra lenses in my bag, that (and having to do a lens swap every now and again) is my only compromise. I took a very hard look at the G9II and I think if my needs were different, I might have gone for it (over the OM-1) but in the end decided I wished to stick with full-frame stills but would go back to shooting S35 for video. Which is what I am doing.

Settled on getting a combo of the Panasonic 12-35 2.8 II and the Panasonic/DJI 15mm 1.7! I figured 12-35 2.8 would be enough for a lot, and for the few times I know I need more shallow DOF, that 15mm 1.7 would give me a 30mm equiv which is a SUPER versatile focal length, while having very decent DOF.

It's sad to hear this - the S9 seems to suffer with the same cost-cutting mechanisms of all smaller cameras. It's funny how consumer electronics mostly tend to charge a premium for smaller devices and yet when it comes to cameras the industry seems to regard small as being cheap and large as being professional.

I’ve been thinking about camera needs lately, and I feel like, at the most basic level, everything can be broken down into three main cameras. First is the do-it-all, high-spec work camera. This is the one you use when clients ask for serious specs like 4K/120p or even 8K, or when you just want the best possible image quality. Cameras like the EOS R5 II, Nikon Z8, Sony a1, or Panasonic S1R II fit here. They’re expensive, but they can handle almost anything. Second is what I’d call an “art camera.” This is for personal use, travel, street photography, and just having fun. Ergonomics, size, and character matter more here, but it still needs to shoot good 4K video and work well in low light. Think Fuji X-Pro3, X100 VI, Sigma fp or fp-L, or even the Sony RX1R if video isn’t important. These are the cameras you actually want to carry around. Third is the high-end smartphone camera. Like it or not, this one is essential now and fills a lot of gaps. Of course, three cameras don’t really cover everything for professional work, and budget changes things a lot. You can get very capable work cameras for well under $3k, like the Fuji X-H2S. And if I added a fourth “serious” category, it would be medium format, like the Fuji GFX line or Hasselblad. But in reality… things get out of control fast. I somehow end up with way more “categories,” like high-spec all-rounders, art cameras, retro digicams, CCD cameras, Foveon cameras, IR-modded cameras, impulse buys, cameras I bought twice, cameras bought to flip, broken cameras I’m fixing, run-and-gun small sensor bodies, weird stuff like Mavicas with CD drives, and compact CCD cameras with flash for that Polaroid look. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. What camera “category” am I missing?

I think it might actually be Cam Maquis, who later became a leading part of the French Resistance movement. In the middle row I think I can see Hugo Knows Foto with his undershirt on which his wife has embroidered “I Shoot Daguerreotype“

The bottom right dude, is that the notoriously dageurreotype-shy, Louis 'Rolling' Shutter?

I’d prefer the OM-1 for stills and the S9 for video but the OM-1 is a vastly better built bit of kit.

Bring back the 80’s, the single best decade to have lived, even though those of us who lived through it (age 9-19 for me) did not realise or appreciate it at the time. I think we reached peak civilisation around Friday October 3rd 1986. I’ll take the 70’s (rose-tinted nostalgia maybe) next followed by the 90’s (weren’t so bad) and then if I had to, 2000-2010, but since then, it’s been part living, part existing, part having to work out how the fuck to constantly adapt, but more recently, working on how to exit from it all. Not in a terminal way, - just get out of the system and all it’s BS as much as possible! I don’t hate on the World. I just can’t be bothered with it…

I don’t know about when you’re in Reality only needing three cameras but here in Delusionville it’s eight minimum.

Seeing this a lot in the wedding industry; a few shaky clips of Super 8 digitised and people go nuts for it. Same as for a handful of blurred OOF images. I have couples asking for it but there are lines I won’t cross for the sake of my artistic soul. Unless they want to pay me a lot more money and then the devil can have it…but sadly they won’t pony up for that so go elsewhere. People have ever-increasingly short attention spans and values. For instance, just 2 years ago, I had 100% take up from clients offered a free book from their wedding. Only 5 acknowledged receipt, never mind thanked me for it. I was selling these books just a few years prior for €500 and after stopping that due to massively dwindling sales to the point where it was a PITA, to do so, brought them back as a relatively low cost (to me) marketing exercise. Last year, approx 95% take up of the offer (all they have to do is confirm current address which I already have and contact number in case the courier needs to contact them) and even less acknowledgement of receipt. End of this year, just 12 months later, just 4 of this years clients ‘accepted’ a free ‘€500’ professionally printed book from their wedding and not a single one acknowledged receipt, never mind any kind of gratitude. It’s a shit show; attention spans, attitudes, just basic manners and going back to ‘The Game’ (but the bigger one as in the entire industry and what you have to do to simply survive) I’m happy I’m on a countdown to get out of it because whilst it’s not exactly ‘soul-destroying’, the joy of any of it is being sucked out of it year on year. I’m not a doom & gloom kind of guy, but the whole World is a bit of a shit show and getting worse so I am actively pursuing avenues to be an increasingly lesser part of it. And I just found out, Santa Claus is not a real person!

I think the goal is to record once and have a frame that can be cropped to work with both landscape and portrait edits.

An increasing trend in marketing today, is not necessarily being the best or the most reliable or the most anything except being the most popular. The cult of ‘vote for me’ is taking over. The ‘game’ is knowing that but whether any of us choose to play, is up to us, but without question, we are missing out on a share of the pie if we don’t make an attempt to at least sit at the table. This more a situation for the small to medium sized business. Larger corps operate under different rules and for the private individual, it is irrelevant if you use social media or not. Social Media, visually anyway, is vertical. Personally, I despise social media whether it be Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or Whatever, but if as a small business operator, I actively chose to not participate, it would be completely fair for anyone to point their finger at me and state, “your business skills are lacking”. Current status = working on it. Can we get back to talking about cameras again now?

If you're trying to market yourself in 2026 and beyond you need to create content for social media otherwise you're nowhere near maximizing your potential, both in promoting yourself AND generating revenue. Here's an example that's very specific to me: I run a professional wrestling company. We release video of full matches and generate revenue from that. Individual matches can range anywhere from 5 minutes to over 30. These videos might get a couple thousand views in the first two weeks and generate $2-5 in revenue. However, in those same two weeks, we can release a 15 second vertical clip from the same match and get 50,000-200,000 views and generate $20-100 dollars for that short/reel. So we're generating substantially more from those shorts than we are for the full matches. Aside from the direct monetary benefits, every clip we post promotes the company and our upcoming events, which also drives ticket sales. It has also gotten the attention of local sponsors who help pay our expenses in running events and event planners and organizers who hire us to run events at breweries, festivals, fairs, and other community events. We were hired by almost a dozen people this year to run matches at events, generating tens of thousands in revenue for us. Social media and vertical video made that possible. We're a pretty hot local brand because of it. It's a totally different game when you leverage social media. Vertical video, and having a camera that can film in a way that allows you to re-frame your footage for whatever destination you're creating content for, is a huge deal and a game changer. If you're producing long form content and shorts/reels and aren't using a camera with open gate, you're making your life harder than it needs to be AND putting out content that is visually less pleasing for the people watching it vertically.

A timely piece as I’m looking to upgrade from my Fuji x-s20 in terms of bigger body, and I need better IBIS. Love the image but again hate the form factor and IBIS. Also have a 2019 6-core intel MBP so don’t need huge files or raw at the moment. Would the OG S5 offer me better ibis than my current kit? The thought of trying a GH5 is tempting as well as I would then probably have 500 I could spend on a couple nice primes, maybe more vintage glass.

Open gate for professional work is a real time saver. I had to film a series of interviews with football players for a bank here in Spain with was released in vertical and horizontal formats. 6K open gate gives so much flexibility. I vote for my Lumix S1ii as new camera of the year, for me at least. I think the Lumix S5 and S5ii are incredible bargains on the secondhand market.

@stephen Thanks for the heads-up on the iPhone raw Cinema DNG app. Is it by the same people (or associated) with Motion Cam? Phones are not meant to replace mirrorless cams for video, and the file sizes in the raw video apps are of course enormous. But you have to admit the image is rather lovely and it's fun to play with. I like that it is open gate with optional 18fps mode, you can get very close to a vintage super 8 look with that. Interested to compare it to Blackmagic Video app LOG in terms of the unprocessed look though.

Absolutely. I am a huge proponent of doing tests. Pick a lens and go out and shoot with it for a day, edit, grade, and export it, then watch it over and over again for a week or so and see how it makes you feel. Do it again. Do it with a different camera. Do it with a different technique. Pick a sequence of 5 shots and then shoot that sequence with several lenses, edit the sequences together and then compare them. Shoot a latitude test (the same shot but with each at a different exposure) and then work out how to grade them in post to match the shots. This will check if you have your colour management setup correctly, and will also show you the limits of your camera. Take a series of shots and lower the saturation on all of them, and duplicate the shots many times in a timeline. Then test every method you can find to raise the saturation again, label and export them. Over a week or so look at them, compare them, see how each makes the footage feel, makes you feel. Take the same series of shots as above, but try every LUT, try every method to add contrast, every way to apply a tint, every way to change WB, every way to add a split tone, every way to sharpen, every way to soften, every way to grade. Test every look.. film emulation, VHS emulation, etc. Test every resolution. Every way to add grain. Every way to reduce noise. Every aspect ratio. The goal is to learn how to see.

Yep. Modern Panasonic full frame bodies make amazing super35 cams. I’d be interested in re-trying the S9 with the Sigma 18-35; found an EF lens adapter that does NOT force APSC mode….which means you can use e-stabilization high as a super 35 crop and get steady cam caliber stabilization while retaining the full Super35mm FOV…when I had the S9 I used a Viltrox adapter that forced the APSC crop with the sigma 18-35…so to use it on top of the e-stabilization high made the crop almost 2x MFT level…what’s crazy is the image was still very clean and detailed and lowlight was still good; noise was very organic and pleasing at high ISO even when cropped in so far. I only really disliked the build quality. That darn rear dial felt so flimsy. And hearing that they failed all the time…no thanks. I’ve pretty much settled at giving the Olympus EM1X a shot though; I believe the Metabones 0.71x does work with PDAF in video. I’ll be trying that first. EM1X + Sigma 18-35. If I hate it, maybe will get an S9 again. I’ll make a new thread with my thoughts when I get the camera. Gonna extensively test the 8 bit OMLOG400 as well as ProRes RAW to my Atomos Ninja v. So stoked to try this camera. Might be perfect for my needs. And seems build quality is apparently legendary top-tier on the EM1X. But yes, my Nikon Z6 OG as well as all of my F mount lenses and FTZ adapter were boxed and shipped to MPB the other day. Onto EM1X land.

I have my S1RII’s set up with: [4.7K] 4736x3552 (4:3) 50.00p, 300Mbps (4:2:0 10-bit LongGOP) (H.265/HEVC, LPCM) Why APSC when it’s a full-frame camera? INTERNAL zoom Sigma 17-40mm f1.8 which with the crop factor for APSC and for standard EIS, makes it a 28-66mm FF equivalent lens and all factors considered, this body with this lens, is a sweet spot for me; cost, size, weight, ergos, file sizes, quality, workflow/bake in my LUT, 1:2.4 pano crop for my films and 9:16 for my socials… The image out of the S1RII is superior to that of my S9 side by side when I shot them 6k. Every frame on a timeline, I can see which is which immediately. For me it’s camera of the year, no question.