stephen

As expected Lumix S1 II uses the same sensor as Nikon Z6 III. Panasonic apparently managed to improve on Nikon Z6 III Achilles heel - 1 stop of lower dynamic range in ISOs under 800. Lumix S1 II has DR above 12 stops at the expense of slightly slower rolling shutter. That's a good decision and achievement. We can always go to APS-C mode and have really fast 6ms rolling shutter. Price in Europe is 3500 Euro as rumors suggested. I think this is a good strategy from Panasonic. Sell to the more impatient at higher price, then as time passes prices will go down. Nikon Z6 III started at more than 2600 Euro, now can be purchased brand new for 2000 Euro. Lumix S1 II is a true hybrid but more on the video side.

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.

You can use Davinci Resolve practically with any mid range or even low specs PC or laptop and still have smooth scrubbing and editing experience by just changing a few settings. You can find which ones in Learn Color Grading youtube channel. The only difference between different PC or MAC configurations would be the export times. Faster and more powerful PC or Mac will give you shorter export times. In the comments of the following video you can find benchmark results from different generations and configurations of Apple Arm chips and PC builds as well, how their export times compare to each other. You can benchmark and compare your current configuration if you are curious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aKttjfY-Og Was in a similar position as you, considering PC upgrade. Bought second hand Mac Studio instead for several reasons good price - 1500 E for a well specked machine - Mac Studio M2 Max 12 Core CPU, 30 Cores GPU, 64 Gb RAM. Not willing to spend 4000-5000 E for a brand new MAC machine with similar specs. 64Gb RAM is a must. 1500E though is a very good price and I don't mind buying second hand. SSD test showed it is in really good shape with lots of write cycles left. get some firsthand experience with arm processors and have at least one machine running Mac OS. Always wanted to try those Apple Arm processors, they are so efficient and fast. VirtualBox which I use professionally can now run on Apple Arm CPUs. use it as a video / photo editing machine, as my PC build is relatively old - i7 9700K with Radeon 6600 8Gb. run some local AI models, do some research in this area, related to my professional work. Apple ARM CPUs have unified memory with fast access which makes them really good to run AI models. They can’t do AI training though. Mac Studio has a replaceable SSD. If at one point in time mine dies I can still buy one from Apple or from alternative source for cheaper price. It doesn't have screen, keyboard and doesn't move so in theory it should be less prone to failure. Apple ARM CPUs and Graphics have hardware decoding for x265, which is another bonus for video editing compared to my older PC It is small, dead silent and runs everything so fast and smooth that I really don't need anything better. Mac OS has it quirks and if you've been a PC user for a long time, you'll need some time to adapt. Maybe in the future I still will upgrade my PC but currently Mac Studio is my main machine for video editing.

They won't keep the same sensor. Megapixels may be the same but sensor will be faster partially or fully stacked sensor. This seems to be a common theme creeping in the rumors for most mid tier cameras that will appear this year. Nikon was the first with Z6 III, so the partially stacked sensor is available for Panasonic. According to the rumors Canon R6 III will have the same sensor as EOS R3 which is fully stacked. We'll see soon if 24Mpx fully stacked sensor from Sony will appear in a Sony or Panasonic or both cameras. At the moment it is pure speculation.

Few additional findings and notes: Tested it in bright sunlight conditions. It is great. Fully isolates the eye. Because it perfectly isolates the eye from external light, once brightness is adjusted there is no need to change it. Optics actually are better than thought initially. It has several lenses not just one loupe. Most likely metal housing was designed and used for smaller sensors - 0.5''. Current one is bigger at 0.7'' that's why far end corners aren't perfectly visible. I saw this only when was feeding it with signal from my laptop. When shooting with Sony ZV-E1 as already mentioned it displays a 3:2 crop at 1620x1080px and everything is perfectly visible and in focus. one relatively simple modification would be to cut the current cable and solder a female HDMI and probably glue it to the side of the EVF. This would allow to use better or custom HDMI cables. size is just perfect for cameras like Sony ZV-E1 and all other mirrorless cameras, especially when you don't want to use a rig and have just the camera and a lens, probably also a cage as it is in my case. Nice experience. Makes shooting with an EVF really comfortable. The more I use it, the more I like it 😀

Short answer: no. Whole mounting part can be changed but it will require skills and experience to create and make a new one

Apart of Canon there is one company only that produces sensors for hybrid mirrorless cameras - Sony. Panasonic will use a sensor that Sony semiconductors makes and sells. I doubt this sensor will be something completely new and unknown. Nikon Z6 III semi stacked sensor ? We already have it and Nikon NRaw can be imported directly in Davinci Resolve. ProRes RAW that Panasonic uses in their latest cameras can't. I wish Panasonic survives and stay as a viable player in photo / video camera industry.

Recently saw a second hand Sony ZV-E1 on a local online market place. Price was good and I bought it. Great video camera but lacks EVF. Same is true for it's pro oriented brother FX3. Typically those type of cameras are used with external monitor on professional shoots or with camera LCD display only when vlogging. If you like EVFs and want to add one, choice is not great. No external add-on EVF from Sony like the one Sigma FP has. Portkeys LEYE III modified with better loupe is the cheapest one at 450-500 E/$ but I wouldn't call it small. Then Kinefinity EVF for 1250 E/$. Great one but definitely not affordable. There is an obvious gap and need for a relatively small, high quality, affordable external EVFs for cinema / hybrid cameras. I was looking for quite some time on AliExpress for Mini OLED displays (0.39'' to 0.7'') as a building blocks for DIY External EVF. Usually they come with controller board with HDMI input too. Almost bought some components preparing to do some 3D design and printing around them. Surprisingly found an EVF ready to be used. This type of EVFs were designed to be used with industrial instruments and were on AliExpress for quite some time. They all had lower resolution and AV video inputs in the past. For the first time saw one with 1920x1080 resolution on a 0.7'' mini OLED display and HDMI input. Also for the first time this type of EVFs is targeted toward cameras. Price was good too at 230E/$ so I decided to give it a try. Received the EVF few days ago and am happy to report that it is better than expected. Here is the list of things that I like and few that I don't like: What I Like: High resolution 1920x1080 ( equivalent to 6 220 800 dot camera EVF). Cameras EVFs have 4:3 ratio to cover 3:2 frame + some black strips on top and bottom to display information like exposure and other camera settings. The sensor on this one has 16:9 aspect ratio. To get 3:2 ratio the EVF crops the image to 1620x1080. Still great resolution at the level of ~5 mln dots EVFs like the one in Panasonic S1 series. I see in the EVF exactly what I see on the LCD screen of Sony ZV-E1 minus peaking. This is a rather good thing. Solid, all metal outer shell, good, even great quality of craftsmanship. Eye cup is big, made from rubber and fits around the eye much better than traditional camera EVFs. Big and bright screen - has at least 10 levels of brightness that can be changed and controlled manually. Picture inside looks big and bright, quite easy to see. Smooth focusing / diopter correction ring. HDMI cable is integrated, ready to be plugged into a camera. HDMI cable looks to have good quality. No need of additional power or battery. It gets small amount of power (500mA) from HDMI. This is a huge plus for me. Has mounting thread, can easily be mounted on rigs or cages or even on camera hot shoe. Can be tilted and placed in any position you want. Another huge plus. I've simply put it on monitor holder for hot shoe, which is mounted on the camera cage. EVF sits higher and is slightly tilted. It also provides 3rd point of contact and add stability. I am able to hold the camera lower and closer to the chest, which makes it more stable when shooting. Optimal size for me ! Not too small and not too big. Relatively light. Another huge plus. Optics made of glass, look high quality. Great price for what it offers - 200 Euro ($) including shipping and taxes after some Aliexpress discount. Because EVF receives its power from HDMI you don't have to switch it on separately. It has its own ON/OFF switch but if you stop the camera, EVF stops too as it doesn't receive power from HDMI. This is very convenient because it semi integrates with the camera, you don't have to switch it on/off separately. What could be better: While loupe (optics) craftsmanship is high quality, optical schema is probably not the best. Seeing tower end of the frame and in the corners is kind of difficult. In photo mode EVF has to show picture with 3:2 ratio. It crops the display at 1620x1080 to achieve this ratio. Same is true for video. This is great because this way corners of the OLED display are always cropped and dark while picture in the EVF is still high quality and resolution is still great too. So you always look at a picture which is in focus from end to end and you can see the whole of it. Brightness control has many steps but goes only in one direction. Adjusting it when you want to make picture darker or go at the opposite direction is difficult. You have to cycle trough all settings value until arriving before the setting you were a moment ago. Brightness control button is too small and uncomfortable to use. Both are not huge issues because eye cup completely isolates your eye and cuts external light at almost 100%. Once you set the brightness level you rarely need to adjust it. It doesn't have the additional tools a pro external viewfinder usually has - like peaking, False color, zebras, etc. Because it takes power from camera and becomes additional consumer, battery is drained a little faster. Hard to say how much faster. I still prefer this compared to EVF that have their own battery. Picture is not as clear as in a high quality camera viewfinder. Native camera EVF receives video stream that already has noise reduced. Image on HDMI out from the camera is more like RAW video, lots of noise in the shadows at high ISO, some noise even at lower ISO. I guess the same would be with any external EVF, even expensive PRO ones. It's not EVF's fault. I also see sometimes some texture like noise, not sure because of this particular OLED display or because of the HDMI out stream. Overall picture quality is not up to what you see in a camera integrated EVF but it is close. Surprisingly noise in the shadows helps me better judge exposure and use successfully ETTR. I live in a PAL region but camera was set to NTSC to have 24fps. There was a lot of flicker in EVF image even when only natural (sun) light was available. Maybe this can be avoided with some additional camera settings. No such problem when camera is set to PAL and 25fps. Sometimes when adjusting brightness, EVF looses sync and doesn't display any image. Have to switch camera on/off one time and problem is resolved. Not a big deal but it happened once or twice. HDMI cable is integrated. A PRO EVF has just HDMI out socket and you can choose your own HDMI cable. This one can be easily modified IMHO. Size: L=~50mm; Diameter ~43mm; weight 188g with the integrated HDMI cable Overall I like it a lot. There is nothing like it on the market and especially at this price point. I am surprised it took Chinese manufactures so long to figure out that a good market for external EVFs exists. I prefer it over modified Portkey LEYE III because of the smaller size and no need to plug and charge another battery. I may buy another one. 🙂 Now my Sony ZV-E1 has an EVF and a great one too. 🙂 Here is the link: On Aliexpress You can find it on ebay too. Search for V780H EVF Here how it sits on top of Sony ZV-E1

Have the older Xiaomi 13 Ultra for almost 2 years. Same sensors and lenses except 75mm telephoto one is 62mm in reality. My idea was to use it as a pocket video / cinema camera that is all the time with me. And also as my main and only camera on some trips where I don't want to bring additional photo / video equipment. Still use it from time to time but not as much as thought would be using it. It has many limitations that make getting good footage difficult and ruin as a whole the joy to shoot. Maybe as a photo camera it would be better The good: Picture and video quality from main sensor is really good. Can be treated as BM BRAW video in Resolve. Can easily color grade it and get great results. Really impressive picture quality from a smartphone and tiny camera that is always in my pocket Main 1 inch sensor (23mm) lens is good in low light All 4 sensors/lenses are capable of shooting RAW video at 4K 24fps, 30fps and 60fps As you said, those smartphones have standard case that makes attaching ND filters really easy. I use 67mm magnetic ND filters and they work like a charm. The not so good or the shortcomings and limitations Lens optical IS should be working in MotionCam but in practice I can't get stable handled footage by just using the phone with a simple plastic case for the filters. Gimbal or special metal case with two handles are needed which totally kills the idea of pocket cinema camera for me. This was not the case with iPhone which I could use and get stable handheld footage by simply holding it and even when walking with no additional support. Main sensor is good in low light but the other (three) 1/2'' inch sensors are not. Multiple dot like flares when shooting at night. This is common problem with all smartphones including iPhone. Because of the lenses being so small at night when there are multiple light sources on some occasions you can get multiple small bright dots dancing in your frame. It can completely ruin the footage. Limited lens focal lengths. My preferred focal length for video are 35mm and 50mm. Xiaomi best sensor is on the 23mm lens. MotionCam can't crop the sensor. It can't even properly frame to 35mm or any given focal length other than native one. Can zoom in the screen which is also the viewfinder but there is no indicators to which focal length it corresponds. Video still will be shot at 23mm and I have to crop in post to get 35mm or 28mm eqv. focal length field of view Bad ergonomics. Yes I can get the shots but there is no joy in the process. While picture quality is impressive for a smartphone it can't match a Full Frame sensor or even APS-C sensor. As you said it can't bend the law of physics I need to look from time to time trough a viewfinder. Old habit and addiction that I can't overcome. 🙂 Bottom line: I still prefer a hybrid camera and a lens and I don't use much Xiaomi 13 Ultra as camera. Watched a video about street photography where the author argued that having a tilting screen and shooting from waist level is the best if we want to take stealth photos where people don't stare at the camera. We can even keep interacting and talking with the people while shooting. This would be impossible with a smartphone. Anyway this is my experience, hope it will work better for you.

Reviving the topic Most people talk about DR only as a camera parameter but you quite correctly understand it as a process Here is my answer: In short most of the time limiting part is the display (smartphone, computer, etc.) / theatrical screen or other media. Plus the color space in which we export. Camera DR is just one part of the puzzle. We have DR of: 1. The scene we are photographing or shooting in video. 2. The camera or recording device. 3. The medium that displays the recording being photographic paper or computer display or thearical screen or smartphone display. For point 1: A lot of times the scene has itself limited- dynamic range - 3-4-5 stops. For point 3: DR is related to the light intensity / brightness of the display medium. Traditional theatrical screens have only 100 nits of brightness and as result only 5-6 stops of DR. Traditional computer screens 300-400 nits which give us 6 to 7 stops of DR. Only HDR LCD screens and theatrical screens with laser projectors can show HDR video or imagery where color space allows for a wider dynamic range and medium is capable to reproduce this DR. In HDR video we can see up to 10 stops of DR. Since REC709 color space was introduced to deal with SDR TV screens it is also limited to 6-7 stops of DR. If we watch REC 709 footage on a HDR LCD screen we are still limited to those 6-7 stops. In this case limitation comes from the color space in which video has been exported. That's why a camera with limited DR - only 8 for LUMIX GH1 can look perfectly OK. In case exported footage is in REC709 it will need only 6-7 stops of DR. Where do the rest of camera DR go if we export in limited 6-7 stops of DR ? They are compressed / mapped to those 6-7 stops of the exported footage. Few more details in the shadows or highlights or both. Higher camera DR gives us more LATITUDE. You will often see latitude test go together with tests of for DR. Fuji Velvia which I used extensively in the past and was the top film emulation for landscape photography had only 6 stops of DR and 1/2 stop of latitude. If your photo was 1 stop underexposed or overexposed it was practically ruined. You have to wonder how people were able to shoot such a film and appreciate the results 🙂 When we talk about film DR we should always specify which emulsion we are have in mind. Now what happens when you have a scene with large dynamic range - 12-13 or more stops but your camera and / or export color space are limited to 7 ? Or you want to export in HDR (10 stops) but camera has only 8 stops. Some of the stops will be lost and the result will be lost details in the shadows or highlights. As one Hollywood colorist put it: "Your highlights are blown up? Who cares !!!" We don't watch a video or photograph like a scanning device from top to bottom, pixed by pixel. We look to a part of the photograph or video which is important and draws our attention. This part needs 5 stops DR to be displayed correctly and not always. 2 more stops for shadows and this is still enough for the vast majority of what we shoot and display. A limited dynamic range of the camera is not a problem as far as the important part of the scene is exposed and lighted correctly. More stops of camera DR gives us more LATITUDE and comfort in post production. Camera dynamic range becomes more important if we intend to export in HDR. That's all. In general DR and all technical aspects of picture quality fall under one philosophical category which I forgot the name: When contradicting statement about something are both true (correct): For example in this case: DR is important and DR is not important. Both are true. In practical terms ask yourself how many times you've heard somebody exiting a movies theater say: "Nice movie but I wish the DR was more " 🙂 On the other hand if we ignore those technical aspects we still will be stuck in black and white film emulsions with 5 stops of DR. Here is a great video from an Austrian photographer which goes into details about DR. It is by far the best explanation and structured answer about DR I've seen. Well worth your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYOr6t8llgc And this one too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWGIjXutyKU

Yes, 2 new cameras coming in the next 3-4 months. The video oriented one expected in April may have Nikon Z6 III stacked sensor. Plus S1R II preorders are more than expected. Good news for Panasonic / Lumix. I hope Panasonic / Lumix will have more success and market share in camera business.

You can always use optimizations and make timeline with NR and lots of color grading play in real time. For Example - Top Menu ->Timeline -> Timeline playback resolution -> Half or even Quarter. In most cases Half or 1080p from 4K would be enough.

This is logical, you are most likely right. There were rumors about possible DJI L Mount camera coming. Not sure I am willing to wait and see what this camera will bring. The risk of being disappointed again still exists. In some of the videos about Nikon Z6 III that I've watched was mentioned that you can choose Panasonic V-Log gamma for Nikon NRAM video footage in Davinci Resolve and color grade accordingly. In general I think it would be a matter of time to find a way to color grade Nikon NRAW quickly and effectively and get the picture I want. Good thing about Nikon NRaw is it could be more compressed than ProRes RAW as Andrew mentioned and it could be imported directly in Davinci Resolve. There is no need for transcoding. Panasonic S5 II X is great, have no complains. At the end I may keep this camera and use it with manual focus and canon EF lenses. Problem is how long L mount will live. This is what worries me. At this point I am still not convinced L Mount will have a long life . Of course I may be wrong. Current Panasonic announcement was not convincing and it looks future Lumix S1H will not come next month. Maybe it's time to move for me, we'll see.

Same for me. Being exclusively Panasonic (S1, S5 IIX) for cameras and heavily invested in L Mount for lenses (mostly Sigma), decided that unfortunately it is time to switch. I hate doing this but Panasonic's future and L mount's future in general looks shaky for me. IMHO Andrew's thoughts and analyze are correct and my gut feeling too. I am OK currently with S5 IIX, cameras comes and goes but I am afraid L mount lenses value will go down too as time passes. Better to act now and save some money while I can. It will be a combination of Nikon Z and Sony FE for cameras with FE lenses exclusively. Maybe one Nikon zoom. We'll see Option 1. - Nikon Z8 mostly for video and some photo + Sony A7R III or Sony A7 IV mostly for photo and some video Option 2. - Nikon Z6 III mostly for video and some photo + Sony A7R V or Sony A7 IV mostly for photo and some video. Also interested in hearing Andrew's first impressions and opinion about Nikon Z8.

If we look at S1R II as a photo camera with some advanced video features, then yes it is good. I would choose it over Sony A7R V. As a hybrid camera that can do both video and photo well it is not at Nikon Z8 and Canon R5 II level as those two have lower rolling shutter. Nikon Z8 price is the same, Canon R5 II is more expensive. S1R II rolling shutter at 6K and 4K 24p/30p is 23ms. Compared to S5 II (21ms) it is basically the same. Not interested in 8K. I am disappointed because was expecting similar to latest Canon and Nikon rolling shutter performance, sensor with faster readout times and improvement over the previous generation. Being also more at the video side I am not sure that 4K 60p and 120P are enough for upgrade. Maybe later when price goes down. I am beginning to realize that at this point in time only Canon and Sony as sensor producers are safe bet in the long run. Gerald Undone mentioned that Panasonic should consider giving as an option a line skipped version for 6K and 4K 24p/30p in order to improve rolling shutter performance. Line skipped 6K on a 4K timeline may look good. 4K 120p already does the like skipping apparently. We don't know what are the reasons for Panasonic to choose this sensor. I've heard before that Panasonic may not have access to all sensors Sony semiconductors produces. S1R II has a lot of nice features lets hope sales will be good. There is a more positive balanced review from Media Division. On at least one 8K and mostly static shots I already can see rolling shutter effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4_oyevhTc8