Andrew Reid

Like I say I think it's curtains already, whatever they bring out this year is too late.

People have moved on.

The ones that do stick with Panasonic must be amongst the most loyal customers in the industry, in any industry.

Anyway we'll see what they bring out at CP+ in Japan at the end of this month.

If it's anything else with an old sensor in an S5 II body I'm not interested.

I like trash talking Panasonic at the moment! They deserve it.

If the S1R II has a different sensor to the SL-3 I'll eat my hat, but it would be a very interesting development if true.

I can't think of many alternative high megapixel sensors from the Sony shelf that would fit the bill other than the 50MP Sony a1 chip.

Oh yeah can't wait to put a shitty Atomos on top of an OM-3.

Amazing.

2 hours ago, Ninpo33 said:

Personally I hope they use the sensor from the A1 and give us 50mp stills and down sampled 8k with amazing IBIS and all the other LUMIX goodies for anamorphic, X-Pan crops and the like…

Yes please, that would float our boat.

(Never thought Panasonic catching up to Sony's 2021 tech would be that exciting a prospect, but at this point I'll take it)

12 minutes ago, Thpriest said:

I don't understand how you can call the S5mk2/X trash. Yes, the EVF isn't as good as the one on the S1 but it's perfectly usable (unlike the original S5's EVF which was poor).

I just think it feels cheap and looks even cheaper, it doesn't have a fun factor or a uniqueness to it. Camera design by numbers.

At least the big bulky old S1H had a glorious best in class EVF, really satisfying mechanical shutter and fantastic top panel display, as well as looking and feeling like a beast. Whereas the S5 series, Mark II included just feels like a kind of "me too, I want to be a Sony a7 as well" kind of camera, but it isn't as good as one.

12 minutes ago, Thpriest said:

The camera is a superb all rounder that does things that others can't. I have 2 and when I have events where I need to film the whole event (hours long), I just stick an S5mk2 connected to XLR sound and record 4K for hours on end. The other shoot B-roll, interviews and photos. They are pro cameras.

For events you are best off with a camcorder.

Welcome back!

1.5, to 2 stops to the right is a good exposure.

I wouldn't bother with zebra, false color, histogram, just use the exposure meter (less clutter over the shot then)

Nice shot of the lake. What ISO was this? R6 II is clean basically anywhere under 6400

19 hours ago, Robert Patts said:

I think if you use some deductive reasoning it is easty to guess the specs.

Chris Niccolls posted on Insta Stories of the camera, so it will share the same body of the S5IIX

It will be high megapixels...that is a fact...which means at least 8K shooting.

Since every single camera from Panasonic has had opengate...you can guess 8k Opengate 

If it can do 8k opengate, do the math, it can probably shoot downsampled 6k + 4k.

It is an RII series, so most likely no Internal ND's.

 

It won't share the same body as the S5 II X.

The EVF isn't big enough.

The body isn't professional enough, it's mid-range trash.

Much more likely the S1H II will come along in a coffin... aka DOA.

6 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Yes, that's right. The GH2 and LX100 sensors were worlds apart, possibly having completely different suppliers too. The GH2 had 16MP in 3:4, 2:3, and 16:9 ratios, but not the 1:1 oddly.

Why are you dragging the topic into aspect ratios when the thread is called "Panasonic drastic surgery"?

20 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Reread my post:

I'd rather pluck my eyeballs out.

20 hours ago, John Matthews said:

So many people were wrong about OM System when Olympus was sold to them. It must be hard to admit. There have been several releases; some were engineered by Olympus, for sure. However, this camera is not as it was engineered by OM System.

Just because the camera has a new body design, doesn't mean to say it is engineered by OM System.

They are still using an Olympus parts bin and reusing the same components, reusing basically the entire camera again and again.

20 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Olympus Imaging is dead. Why? Scandals, bloat, and marketing probably. OM System got rid of some that.

Marketing, who needs that? Engineers? Nah.

20 hours ago, John Matthews said:

I'd say that's successful. Also, their products are unique, even today, with quite a following. Other manufacturers somehow cannot offer the same features. That's not bad and much better than I would have expected.

Man there is a reason the OM-1 has an Olympus badge, and the E-M5 III too, which is the basis for the OM-5.

The OM-1 Mark II and OM-5 are *rebadged existing products*

I don't know why that isn't registering with you.

Therefore it is not OM-System but OLYMPUS who deserve 100% of the credit for the OM-1, OM-3 and OM-5, which are the basis for all of OM-System's current line-up = rebranded existing Olympus products.

The OM-3 does have a new cosmetic makeover and swaps a few parts out of the OM-1 with the OM-5 like the EVF.

OM System since the takeover have merely done a couple of firmware updates, a buffer memory increase and a shell reshaping.

Plus a new logo.

So I don't understand why you are giving so much credit, you're talking as if they have built a brand new system from the ground up and a brand new camera.

That is fucking stupid.

On 2/10/2025 at 1:18 PM, John Matthews said:

I wasn't aware that Fuji did Pixel shift in-camera. My understanding that others do it but it takes software after the fact, making practically unusable for critical applications and a difficult workflow. Does Fuji offer Live Composite, Live ND, or Focus Stacking in-camera too? Again, the key is "in-camera" because it's a deal-breaker for many who actually use those features.

I don't see how this matters for evaluating the product, other than evaluating the current performance of the company. Does it stand that Nikon is a crap company for implementing RED Codecs because they didn't invent it themselves; therefore, their products that have are somehow not good? I don't think so. Who cares how they got it? It's in the camera- great!

That's my point. It's a "stylish" camera. That means something different to many people. I think it looks good and has some amazing specs for what it is, not for whatever is around it in the lineup. It's great that the OM-1 costs half as much. People will have that option too. However, I do believe people are going to buy it massively, even if there's a "better", heavier, bigger camera for half as much. Why would anyone have ever purchased a GM1 over a GH4- because they're different use-cases. Oddly, the GH4 is now LESS expensive than the GM1 in the used market. I have a feeling the OM-3 will be a desirable camera for years to come, with its lack of innovation and all.

You keep banging on about "innovation" without mentioning the elephant in the room which I've pointed out time and again, that OM System have innovated jack shit and all they have done is cut & paste from Olympus.

You say it looks great, aesthetically pleasing and all that, well this is subjective but I think it looks cheap for a $2000 camera and certainly worse than the E-M5 III.

The size difference between the OM-1 and OM-3 is not equivalent to the GH4 v GM1, the OM-3 is wider at 140mm wide and 500g vs 590g for the OM-1 and 135mm, so a GM1 it ain't.

I'll leave you to get to know your cameras better but in terms of the OM-3 whatever floats your boat I guess!

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

So the OM-3 isn't bringing anything new to the table other than subjective beauty?

It just so happens there are many features that still, to this day, are not being done in other camera systems that Olympus/OM System have perfected.

Olympus perfected it and OM System inherited it, big difference.

OM system have not implemented anything big and new since 2020.

Because they are an investment bank, not a camera company and certainly not a Japanese engineering company.

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

With the exceptions of Pentax and Panasonic, no one else offers High-res Shot Mode.

Wrong, Fujifilm has this on the X-T5 and more.

Sony has a 160MP pixel shift high-res mode.

Canon has had a 400 megapixel pixel shift IBIS mode on the EOS R5 since 2020.

And now Nikon with the Z8 has a 180MP mode from 47mp.

How hard is it to do a bit of research my friend on Google...

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

With the exception of Panasonic, no one does Live Composite. What about Live ND? No one does that. How about Focus Stacking in-camera? Nope, no one does that either.

These are great features by Olympus, not OM System. They are inherited from a group of engineers who OM System effectively fired.

How do they intend to carry these features forwards and develop them without a proper engineering team?

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

"In-camera" is an essential point. Why? Because you get another chance at taking the image if you muck it up. With other brands, you might get it right, but there's no way to check.

• Is the OM-3 revolutionary? No.
• Is it expensive? Yes, for now.
• Is it unique? Yes, because it's stylish. (with a IP53 rating, a huge deal for some)

No other camera on the market offers these unique selling points in a stylish body that weighs only 496g. Actually, I think it's a bit of a marvel in that it weighs only 82g more than the E-M5iii/OM-5, you get a more advanced processor, a new sensor, a metal body, and a bigger, more advanced battery. Not bad.

Will it sell? Not great at $2000, but like with all of their previous releases, it'll go down $200-400 in the next 6 months. Also, Fuji production is late. Also, M43 users were waiting for something like this. It will sell out, I suspect.

It's by no means a bad camera.

I just don't see any reason at all to buy it over the OM-1.

The styling is subjective, I think it's fake looking and fugly.

If you want a powerful retro styled camera for $2000 you can get a full frame Nikon Zf or some of the best APS-C cameras on the market from Fujifilm.

If you want the unique Olympus features and IBIS, with a much better EVF and better ergonomics and better grip and more... you can spend as little as $1000 on a used OM-1.

So the OM-3, you'd have to really really really like the way it looks to spend double for a worse camera.

8 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

Very true. I've long said that most of us don't even have a television large enough to make the most out of 4K so the push for high resolution is kind of pointless.

Back in the 1080p days, we had line skipping and it wasn't really 1080p in a lot of cases, so a full pixel readout was needed and that's why 4K was so attractive as it would overcome the binning, downsample to whatever resolution you wanted and looked great at 1080p in most cases.

Now we have a similar situation with 8K vs 4K because a lot of 4K is pixel binned from a higher resolution sensor, and 8K is a way to get that coveted full pixel readout again.

Funny how history repeats itself.

Just like with fascism.

Anyway where was I...

The current debate around specs leaves out the creative side, and that's fine... as the two can be talked about independently and are relevant to the art of cinema.

What bothers me about the current state of play though is social media influencers passing off the grading or camera matching work as somehow relevant to what the camera is doing, when actually RAW can be any look you like.

I also see a problem with overkill.

A lot of people obsess over resolution and then go out and shoot some boring advert for Instagram.

There's a lack of critical thinking there, and maybe a bit of ego.

1 hour ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

It's also not super inspiring to say that a camera from 2022 is "latest and greatest tech."  😅

Actually it's the camera from 2021... the sony a1.

We have peaked!

Yeah, the cinematography and moody grading overcame the lack of resolution.

https://www.eoshd.com/lens/kendy-ty-t2i-one-guy-amazing-things-5-year-old-dslr/

But we still feel the need (myself included) to pixel peep.

I suppose it's a hobby if anything - whether it has any real creative use, is open to debate... In some way it is relevant, but it all depends on what serves the content and story, and the lighting and cinematography. Sometimes, that demands a Hi8 camcorder!

At the specs level, an image is just the sensor + processing.

The processing in-camera has come on a long way as the ASIC / LSI lithography has shrunk to less than 5nm.

So from the GH2 to an X-H2 there is a HUGE difference in the image processing pipeline and codec.

However, with RAW the processing is up to your workstation and your eye.

So there the camera processing becomes irrelevant to a large extent.

So what is 'image quality' with RAW? This is the sensor alone, at least 99% and the other variables like lenses, lighting, etc. all have a huge impact on a camera test.

What is the end result you see on YouTube? This is the sensor RAW + human element and the processing in post, de-bayering and compression. So the sensor becomes now around 1/5th of the mix, and the other variables like grading make up the rest which is a lot.

Now, forget the test shots and add into the mix the actual content (story, sound, characters, VFX) of a creative shoot and that makes the pixel peeping aspect of things even less noticeable, but that's not to say the technical stuff isn't still important and relevant.

By the way...

Have any of you shot MotionCam on a high-end smartphone, it really shows this...

Cinema DNG and multi-frame computational RAW photography on a smartphone has a very similar dynamic range, colour and texture as your $30,000 cinema camera.

You are exchanging sensor size for temporal processing power... aka speeeeeed.

So it compensates for the fact that less light is being captured in just one frame.

I also think that the important bits of filmmaking far outweigh the "gap" in look between a phone and an ALEXA.

If the most important thing about a scene is whether there are some details visible in a window or not, there has to be something seriously wrong with the content.

3 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Also, who remembers that one talented dude guy filming in 720p on a canon rebel?  I think his name started with a "Z"?  Beautiful stuff because he knew how to use it.  Would it have been better if it was an ARRI?  Of course, but would that really affect the narrative?

2 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

It just pops. can't explain it. I could look at it forerever, while the fX3 looks bland/boring

It's 100% in the grading.

Why would the FX3 look like anything in particular... it's LOG.

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

I mean it's not really fair to compare an Alexa to any of these more affordable cameras. It's an Alexa for a reason. When you buy one you aren't just paying for the camera itself, you're paying for the decades of research and development that went into the image processing and color science that gives it that Alexa look. That's what you're paying for when buying any of those higher end cameras.

The other part comes down to the sensor, too. Higher end cameras have sensors that are specifically developed for them. That's a huge difference. While these lower end cameras have software and processing that is tweaked to work with sensors they buy, the higher end cameras use sensors that were designed specifically for those cameras.

Finally, there is a Luca Forsyth video that compares several cameras, ranging from the FX3 all the way to Alexa 35. His results were pretty surprising.

 

There's a massive problem with all these tests.

In the old days of GH2 vs RED, obviously the gap was pretty big, but you could still light a scene for the GH2's limitations, and fool Coppola into thinking it's a cinema camera.

Now everything is 10bit LOG or RAW.

So in these sort of tests you are basically watching a grading test and a test of the editor's ability to match the cameras.

I mean the difference with the ALEXA is clearly there, but had you exposed for the window on the FX3 and lifted the shadows, it would be a lot closer.

The difference between the BURANO / FX9 and FX3 is so small as to be practically zero, yet the price difference is many thousands of dollars / pounds.

Besides, I also think that the way we watch these tests makes a further mockery of it all.

Aside from being mega compressed, YouTube has no facility to download the original files, and now the original files are so enormous in 8K RAW or whatever... It doesn't even make sense to look at the original files other than to crop really close in and pixel peep.

99% of us don't have a display technology in our home to do justice to the source material... either not big enough, or not bright enough.

So in a nutshell...

Difference between $3k (even some $1k like used S1H) cameras and $25,000 has never been smaller in terms of image quality. The ALEXA still has a dynamic range advantage, but it's only a few stops and not noticeable in every use case.

An X-H2 10 bit LOG 8K image for $1.5k is likely overkill for your display without pixel peeping or cropping.

When engrossed in a movie it's unlikely an audience will even see a difference between the BURANO or a $1k mirrorless camera, yes even on a cinema screen.

Do they actually look so much better especially when you're looking at Youtube footage?

C-AF is very good, as in as fast and sticky as a latest Sony camera.

The subject detection isn't as good though, it's not as reliable as the best in class systems.

It keeps seeing faces on my camera shelf.

Who knows maybe my lenses have become sentient?

There's a neat trick I've found for the video mode... You can make the 1/2 function switch act as a stills/video mode toggle.

So one click to go between the modes rather than rotating through the mode dial to Movie.

You can also assign the 1.4x crop-mode to a function button to quickly get a second focal length in 4K with no loss of detail. Nifty.

The one in the middle doesn't need to exist though because it has no grip, costs $2000, has a tiny EVF from 10 years ago, and the OM-1 is much better for half the price (used, mint).

Still would take a PEN-F updated with OM-1 specs but they have to stick a proper EVF in it, as the PEN-F is all about the rangefinder style handling.

Yeah it's the silence which is the problem, and the poor communication. We still have nothing to hang on, and it has sucked all the interest and appeal out of the Panasonic high-end stuff.

Many have simply moved on, myself included.

I just can't see what the appeal would be, however good the S1H II might be, of having to buy loads of L-mount lenses and a new camera when stuff like a used $3500 Sony a1 or Nikon Z8 exists and is more speed, specs and image quality than I'll ever really need.

Even if Panasonic add an internal ND to the S1H II, and do a smaller body, and price it at $3500, there's still the problem of what lenses to put on the front.

And you know what, I think they know this.

Which is why they have left the high-end camera market to Leica.

Unlike the metal jackets, I bet the Shackelton still gets made in Bangladesh by people on $1 per day.

At least with the cameras the person who chisels the block of aluminium is probably on a bit more than that.

I hate the fashion industry with a passion, they are truly dismal hypocrites.

I reckon Sony / Leica pair-up does have a nice ring to it doesn't it?

It's a Sony sensor they are using anyway so may as well cut out the middle man.

It's most likely more cost effective to do this as well?

Sony could build a very nice Leica Q, as they already have done similar cameras with the RX1 series.

Sony would not cannibalise Leica's L-mount lenses with their own range either.

It would be bad for Panasonic.

But then Panasonic are more committed to green energy like batteries and digging up all the lithium for them in epic quantities.

Truly a planet saving initiative.