IronFilm

Exactly. You got a great deal, for sure. I'm sure you'll enjoy the content made with it. It has so many features and such a nice image. I've been using one for live streaming with a Chinon 50mm f/1.9- works great!

While waiting for new Lumix stuff I’ve decided to enjoy how cheap 2020 technology is getting…
 
My $535 original S5 arrived from The Yahoo Japan Auction this week and I’m finally getting to put my Minolta AF set of lenses to good use with a new adapter. These lenses are still under most people’s radar because of the autofocus but they are a steal for the optics. The end days of Minolta and A mount so right before Sony bought them and used a lot of their lens designs on the first Alpha bodies.
 
The set of 
20 f/2.8, 28 f/2, 35 f/1.4, 50 f/1.4, 85 f/1.4 and 100 f/2
rival the Canon FD’s for a fraction of the cost. The 35mm actually gets sold up to $1,500 these days because the rehoused FD’s had no 1.4 option. You can find it for under $500 if you are patient however. 
so $535 for the camera and $250 for a Ninja V and I’ve got 5.89k ProRes raw, 3.5k Anamorphic and the original S5 processor and nice organic sensor unlike the newer S5ii Not bad…
Now to find an S1R for under $1k that’s not a scam… 
 

S1H level of build quality as a minimum including damped shutter button.
Rear screen a la S1H.
High res rear screen, unlike the S5ii which is ‘average’.
Better AF than the S5ii which is ‘decent’ but no more than that.
Full 6k 50/60p.
60mp for stills for both detail and ability to crop.
Available March 2025 latest.
S2H and S2R or one single camera, I don’t mind but they would have my money instantly. Rather than Nikon or Sony who almost certainly otherwise will.
Bonuses, but not deal-breakers for me would be:
Internal raw
Some kind of ‘colour by Arri’ match up like Nikon/RED. That would really put LUMIX on the filmmakers map at least.
Options that aren’t just fucking black! I mean I probably would go with black when it came to it, but a series of classy colours would give the thing more appeal to a wider demographic simply by having the option. But keep the colours the same as other models such as the S9 etc so folks can match their kit.
 

https://leicarumors.com/2024/10/03/new-leica-sl3-s-camera-rumored-to-be-announced-in-a-few-months.aspx/amp/
 
New SL3-S rumored. This better not be a rebadged S5ii. Really strange that we haven’t heard about any of the Lumix equivalents. 

The extra features on the S5iiX are awesome. Recording to SSD is a breeze and ProRes without needing an external recorder is really nice. Not everyone needs that so it’s nice that it’s a slight upgrade for a nominal fee. I wouldn’t call it nickel and diming though. If anything it probably just covers the licensing fees LOL. 

They want to hit two different price points, while still using essentially the same hardware inside. 
Let's say there is a "widget" you wish to sell. You could sell this fully featured widget for say $1.2K or for $1K
Am sure you're well aware of the laws of supply vs demand? 

So as prices go up, there is less demand. 
If you sell a product at say $1K you'll get perhaps let's say 10,000 buyers. But if you increase it to $1.1K it's perhaps 7,500 buyers while at $1.2K it's perhaps 5,000 buyers and so on and on. 
Thus you might conclude $1K is the optimal price to sell at. 
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumer_surplus.asp
Now there is also a concept of consumer surplus, which is the gap between the price a consumer pays for a good vs what they would have paid for it. 
From the perspective of the company, this is a missed opportunity! Ideally they'll fully capture this consumer surplus for themselves buy charging exactly what the consumer would have paid at the maximum for a product. 
That's called "First-degree price discrimination" (perfect price discrimination). Which is when you're charging each buyer the maximum they are willing to pay.
However everyone has different price preferences, so no matter what price the company chooses, you'll end up having two groups: some who can't afford it, and others who'd have happily paid even more. 
Thus why there is also:
Second-degree price discrimination: Offering bulk discounts or different pricing tiers based on quantity or quality.
(there is also third-degree price discrimination, but I think my comment is already getting too long, and won't discuss that. There is even 4th-degree price discrimination, but we don't have universally agreed definitions of that, so it's more an informal term used, for instance for dynamic pricing) 
You'll see an example of 2nd-degree price discrimination if you ring up your local seller and ask for fifty Sanken COS-11D mics and ask them if they can give you a bulk order discount. 
While another example is when the manufacturer engages in product differentiation, so they can offer a product at multiple price points. 
Such as this example of selling a widget at both $1K and $1.2K (of course we see this product differentiation all the time, such as with microphones such as the DPA 2017 vs 4017, it's also why we saw the Lectro LMb and SMQV at two different price points, or the Sound Devices 633 vs the 688)
Thus they're hopefully still capturing all the sales for people who'd pay $1K or more, they're also capturing at least a good sized chunk of those who'd pay $1.2K or more. (of course they're missing out on the opportunity to say sell at $1.5K to those who'd pay that. And I'm sure they're missing out on some higher value buyers who then change their mind and settle for the cheaper $1K widget. But presumably, overall it's a winning move to offer it at $1K and $1.2K vs just $1K, otherwise they wouldn't do it) 
Thus the company could have run the numbers and thus designed they're always going to be offering the product at two different price points. (or more... Sound Devices for instance offers theirs at three different price points: 833, 888, and Scorpio. Even though on the inside they're essentially "the same product", with 3 FPGAs)
Another way of looking at this problem:
You're going to have the cheaper $1K option and the more expensive $1.2K option, and together you'll be selling 10,000 of them. (because your entry point here is $1K, and from the earlier on supply vs demand curve we know that means you'll be selling 10,000 in this example)
You've got various fixed costs, let's say $2M 
Thus each widget sale has $200 going towards covering that fixed cost. (plus of course various other costs such as the cut the retailer gets, or the manufacturing cost, etc... but we can assume those scale according to the number of units sold) 
If you were to drop the cheaper $1K option, and only be selling the $1.2K option (which we know  will only sell 5,000 units) that means we now need $400 per widget sale to go towards the fixed costs!
That means we'll have to increase the widget price to $1.4K to still maintain the profit margin as you had before without the extra $200/unit costs that have to be recovered. (of course increasing to $1.4K means even less sales! So in reality the optimal price to sell just one product line would be somewhere in between $1.2K and $1.4K, and thus you'll be losing out and never ever be able to fully recover the lost profits. But you hopefully have got my point already, and we don't need to go deeper into those hypothetical calculations)
So once we've determined that we need to offer two different products, the question becomes how do we make them?
It's likely a lot easier to both design and produce two products that have absolutely identical hardware on the inside, and only differentiated by software.  (as a person who has worked professionally both in the software and hardware space, that's certainly my rule of thumb preference)
Rather than having two different sets of hardware (likely forcing very different software for each as well! Due to the different hardware base)
 

Sometimes I even forget it got released. I guess the GH5 was such a strong release, but when the GH6 got released there were so many other great cameras being released that it got a bit lost. 
Agreed, they've got their flagship G9mk2 / GH7 and their lower end G97. I doubt they'll squeeze anything in between those or below the G97 (with "a DSLR-ish style body") in the next couple of years. 
Their next MFT hybrid/stills release will be either an eventual update to their flagships, or maybe finally an update to their "rangefinder style bodies" (GX / GM / GF series). 
 

I’m torn as well between both of these as a little third camera for travel, street and interviews. Found a black X-M5 on a Japanese open box model for $800 with a 10% off coupon last week but decided to wait a bit. 
 
X-M5 Rigged up with a Ninja V that 6.2k open gate prores raw would be great for music videos and short films. Once rigged up the IBIS would be less of an issue. S9 does have the better IBIS and AF but no external raw if that matters to you. 422 10 bit might be enough for you. Also few to no speedboosters for Panasonic L mount but most just deal with the 1.5x crop on 60p. There’s a couple options for the Fuji X mount for speedboosters so that could be fun. 

I'm in the same boat. Not changing. I don't see any reason to.
As I said earlier, I believe the release of the G97 basically puts a nail in the coffin of a mid-ranged M43 camera for at least 2 years. They've just spent their time coming out with a G97; they aren't going to get people to buy that only to come out immediately after with an upgrade.
I don't think it had in that they've been releasing a GH line camera every 1 to 2 years since 2009, if you count the GH5s as a "real" GH camera.
After reading all of what people are complaining about, I guess Panasonic should just focus on hardware, not firmware. Release it and forget it, right (à la Sony)? Rather, Panasonic has made meaningful efforts in firmware fixes. The S5ii when it was released is not the same camera as the current one. Not many of us are talking about that. Really, people have their ass chapped because there's no high-end production camera (something I don't care about). Still, I'd love to know exactly how you think the features will be that much better than the current models for pros. Better build? 12k, 8k? 4k 120fps? 32bit float? Internal RAW? Arri log? Which will most disappoint if it's not there? I get the feeling people just want GH7-level features in a FF body? I think we can agree that Arri-anything won't be in it.

They want to hit two different price points, while still using essentially the same hardware inside. 
Let's say there is a "widget" you wish to sell. You could sell this fully featured widget for say $1.2K or for $1K
Am sure you're well aware of the laws of supply vs demand? 

So as prices go up, there is less demand. 
If you sell a product at say $1K you'll get perhaps let's say 10,000 buyers. But if you increase it to $1.1K it's perhaps 7,500 buyers while at $1.2K it's perhaps 5,000 buyers and so on and on. 
Thus you might conclude $1K is the optimal price to sell at. 
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumer_surplus.asp
Now there is also a concept of consumer surplus, which is the gap between the price a consumer pays for a good vs what they would have paid for it. 
From the perspective of the company, this is a missed opportunity! Ideally they'll fully capture this consumer surplus for themselves buy charging exactly what the consumer would have paid at the maximum for a product. 
That's called "First-degree price discrimination" (perfect price discrimination). Which is when you're charging each buyer the maximum they are willing to pay.
However everyone has different price preferences, so no matter what price the company chooses, you'll end up having two groups: some who can't afford it, and others who'd have happily paid even more. 
Thus why there is also:
Second-degree price discrimination: Offering bulk discounts or different pricing tiers based on quantity or quality.
(there is also third-degree price discrimination, but I think my comment is already getting too long, and won't discuss that. There is even 4th-degree price discrimination, but we don't have universally agreed definitions of that, so it's more an informal term used, for instance for dynamic pricing) 
You'll see an example of 2nd-degree price discrimination if you ring up your local seller and ask for fifty Sanken COS-11D mics and ask them if they can give you a bulk order discount. 
While another example is when the manufacturer engages in product differentiation, so they can offer a product at multiple price points. 
Such as this example of selling a widget at both $1K and $1.2K (of course we see this product differentiation all the time, such as with microphones such as the DPA 2017 vs 4017, it's also why we saw the Lectro LMb and SMQV at two different price points, or the Sound Devices 633 vs the 688)
Thus they're hopefully still capturing all the sales for people who'd pay $1K or more, they're also capturing at least a good sized chunk of those who'd pay $1.2K or more. (of course they're missing out on the opportunity to say sell at $1.5K to those who'd pay that. And I'm sure they're missing out on some higher value buyers who then change their mind and settle for the cheaper $1K widget. But presumably, overall it's a winning move to offer it at $1K and $1.2K vs just $1K, otherwise they wouldn't do it) 
Thus the company could have run the numbers and thus designed they're always going to be offering the product at two different price points. (or more... Sound Devices for instance offers theirs at three different price points: 833, 888, and Scorpio. Even though on the inside they're essentially "the same product", with 3 FPGAs)
Another way of looking at this problem:
You're going to have the cheaper $1K option and the more expensive $1.2K option, and together you'll be selling 10,000 of them. (because your entry point here is $1K, and from the earlier on supply vs demand curve we know that means you'll be selling 10,000 in this example)
You've got various fixed costs, let's say $2M 
Thus each widget sale has $200 going towards covering that fixed cost. (plus of course various other costs such as the cut the retailer gets, or the manufacturing cost, etc... but we can assume those scale according to the number of units sold) 
If you were to drop the cheaper $1K option, and only be selling the $1.2K option (which we know  will only sell 5,000 units) that means we now need $400 per widget sale to go towards the fixed costs!
That means we'll have to increase the widget price to $1.4K to still maintain the profit margin as you had before without the extra $200/unit costs that have to be recovered. (of course increasing to $1.4K means even less sales! So in reality the optimal price to sell just one product line would be somewhere in between $1.2K and $1.4K, and thus you'll be losing out and never ever be able to fully recover the lost profits. But you hopefully have got my point already, and we don't need to go deeper into those hypothetical calculations)
So once we've determined that we need to offer two different products, the question becomes how do we make them?
It's likely a lot easier to both design and produce two products that have absolutely identical hardware on the inside, and only differentiated by software.  (as a person who has worked professionally both in the software and hardware space, that's certainly my rule of thumb preference)
Rather than having two different sets of hardware (likely forcing very different software for each as well! Due to the different hardware base)
 

They want to hit two different price points, while still using essentially the same hardware inside. 
Let's say there is a "widget" you wish to sell. You could sell this fully featured widget for say $1.2K or for $1K
Am sure you're well aware of the laws of supply vs demand? 

So as prices go up, there is less demand. 
If you sell a product at say $1K you'll get perhaps let's say 10,000 buyers. But if you increase it to $1.1K it's perhaps 7,500 buyers while at $1.2K it's perhaps 5,000 buyers and so on and on. 
Thus you might conclude $1K is the optimal price to sell at. 
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumer_surplus.asp
Now there is also a concept of consumer surplus, which is the gap between the price a consumer pays for a good vs what they would have paid for it. 
From the perspective of the company, this is a missed opportunity! Ideally they'll fully capture this consumer surplus for themselves buy charging exactly what the consumer would have paid at the maximum for a product. 
That's called "First-degree price discrimination" (perfect price discrimination). Which is when you're charging each buyer the maximum they are willing to pay.
However everyone has different price preferences, so no matter what price the company chooses, you'll end up having two groups: some who can't afford it, and others who'd have happily paid even more. 
Thus why there is also:
Second-degree price discrimination: Offering bulk discounts or different pricing tiers based on quantity or quality.
(there is also third-degree price discrimination, but I think my comment is already getting too long, and won't discuss that. There is even 4th-degree price discrimination, but we don't have universally agreed definitions of that, so it's more an informal term used, for instance for dynamic pricing) 
You'll see an example of 2nd-degree price discrimination if you ring up your local seller and ask for fifty Sanken COS-11D mics and ask them if they can give you a bulk order discount. 
While another example is when the manufacturer engages in product differentiation, so they can offer a product at multiple price points. 
Such as this example of selling a widget at both $1K and $1.2K (of course we see this product differentiation all the time, such as with microphones such as the DPA 2017 vs 4017, it's also why we saw the Lectro LMb and SMQV at two different price points, or the Sound Devices 633 vs the 688)
Thus they're hopefully still capturing all the sales for people who'd pay $1K or more, they're also capturing at least a good sized chunk of those who'd pay $1.2K or more. (of course they're missing out on the opportunity to say sell at $1.5K to those who'd pay that. And I'm sure they're missing out on some higher value buyers who then change their mind and settle for the cheaper $1K widget. But presumably, overall it's a winning move to offer it at $1K and $1.2K vs just $1K, otherwise they wouldn't do it) 
Thus the company could have run the numbers and thus designed they're always going to be offering the product at two different price points. (or more... Sound Devices for instance offers theirs at three different price points: 833, 888, and Scorpio. Even though on the inside they're essentially "the same product", with 3 FPGAs)
Another way of looking at this problem:
You're going to have the cheaper $1K option and the more expensive $1.2K option, and together you'll be selling 10,000 of them. (because your entry point here is $1K, and from the earlier on supply vs demand curve we know that means you'll be selling 10,000 in this example)
You've got various fixed costs, let's say $2M 
Thus each widget sale has $200 going towards covering that fixed cost. (plus of course various other costs such as the cut the retailer gets, or the manufacturing cost, etc... but we can assume those scale according to the number of units sold) 
If you were to drop the cheaper $1K option, and only be selling the $1.2K option (which we know  will only sell 5,000 units) that means we now need $400 per widget sale to go towards the fixed costs!
That means we'll have to increase the widget price to $1.4K to still maintain the profit margin as you had before without the extra $200/unit costs that have to be recovered. (of course increasing to $1.4K means even less sales! So in reality the optimal price to sell just one product line would be somewhere in between $1.2K and $1.4K, and thus you'll be losing out and never ever be able to fully recover the lost profits. But you hopefully have got my point already, and we don't need to go deeper into those hypothetical calculations)
So once we've determined that we need to offer two different products, the question becomes how do we make them?
It's likely a lot easier to both design and produce two products that have absolutely identical hardware on the inside, and only differentiated by software.  (as a person who has worked professionally both in the software and hardware space, that's certainly my rule of thumb preference)
Rather than having two different sets of hardware (likely forcing very different software for each as well! Due to the different hardware base)
 

Which is why I mentioned Z6 III. For the R5, if you're comparing used prices, then I'll revise to "I won't complain about Panasonic cameras until Sony, Nikon, and Canon all have real next-gen FF sensors in $900 used bodies"
The Nikon Z6 came out in 2018, and the S1 in 2019. Z6 III released this year, so if a Panasonic camera comes out with a similar sensor, then next year will have the same latency in terms of time-to-new-sensor.

The newly announced G97 could be understood as there will not be another sub $1000 camera for another 2 years. At least, I understand it as that. It sounds just like the G100D, a camera that won't be replaced anytime soon IMO, probably another year, if ever.

I was just thinking, about how many cameras have been released in 2024. Most companies have released just one or two, as the rate of releases in this industry have massively released. 
Only two companies have released three cameras this year in 2024:
https://sansmirror.com/newsviews-2/a-slow-year-in-mirrorless.html
Fujifilm — X-T50, GFX 100S II, X-M5
Panasonic — GH7, S9, G97
So Panasonic ranks at the top in terms of bringing out new models, I guess we should be thankful they're at least doing something. 

Maybe this was the real reason why the Panasonic G97 got released:
https://dslrbodies.com/newsviews-2/remember-this-date-december.html
"all [devices] sold in the EU will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C charging port." 
If Panasonic didn't add USB-C they could no longer sell their cameras. They could keep on selling the G9 mk2 / GH6 / GH7, as they're new enough to already include USB-C.
But the G95? It lacks USB-C. Thus Panasonic was faced with an issue: either they ditch completely the entry level models, and lack having a feeeder model to bring in new blood, or they do a minor update to include USB-C (and some other little stuff).

.. Z9 just got the new firmware bringing shutter angle and some WFM & zebra enhancements:
 
..these will surely trickle down to Z8, Z6iii. So another plus point for Z mount!

market shrinks > costs shared among users > higher prices

Anyone who buys this over a used GH5 should be diagnosed as clinically insane. 

I recieved the camera approx. 3 weeks ago, i did not have much time to test it and decided to send it back.
- The body is made of plastic but the size and the weight are fantastic. Funny how different it feels to take pictures and videos of the family with such a small camera (compared to the a74).
- On the video side it feels great, feelings of the original blackmagic pocket come up. It's really fun to use for such a small camera body.
Of course it is winter and i was only able to take pictures inside: for that use case the camera is worse to the  a74 by far. Not sure wether it is fair to compare those two though...
So overall i believe that this is a really fun camera - i will just not be able to invest the time to learn a new system right now, also @Andrew Reids praise of the S9 did not help as well.
But it's defenetly a great camera for every day carry, holidays and traveling.  Not sure wether it's the right thing for my use case of music videos, short films and family pictures though...
 

For exactly the same reason Nikon will release the updated P1000 superzoom with no change but USB port. At this point they can't add more than a penny to the BoM of this kind of cameras. 

I'm going to wait for the G97.5

I'm definitely in the minority on this site, but I think the rush to mirrorless by the entire industry was a mistake and I wouldn't be surprised if Canon and maybe Nikon bring back a DSLR line.

Would it help to know they ALSO announced the TZ99?  🤣
https://www.dpreview.com/news/8943078360/panasonic-g97-zs99-tz99-refresh-usb-c

The benefits of N-Raw won't be visible on Youtube. It's overkill for most projects but for HDR it's a must have.
I also noticed that the quality is worse than H265 in 4K modes on Z6III due to line skipping. 

Panasonic S1R + leather body case / grip +  Leica badge & red dot from Aliexpress/eBay + glue = "Leica camera"? 😉 
True. Those CN-E lens simply "look professional" with their cine design. Even though CN-E are kinda "budget" cine lens. 
A person could even be shooting on even cheaper DZOFilm VESPID lenses and you'll get that better reaction (with non-gear nerds) than if you're shooting on far more expensive Leica M glass / Canon L Series / Nikkor Gold Ring / Sony G Master / etc lens. 
Average people don't recognize brands but they do recognize "that's not a normal still photography lens". 
Bingo, and just like they won't be able to tell apart Sony cameras, they can't tell apart generations of ARRI or RED either. Having a RED Scarlet X will impress a normie just as much as a RED Komodo X or even a RED V-RAPTOR XL.
 
True, a normie in the arts scenes will be far more likely to recoginize the Leica brand name even though the rest of their photographic knowledge will be quite similar to the average normie (i.e. won't even know what an f-stop is). 
So true, when it comes to the commercial aspects of filmmaking, then it's pretty hard to choose anything else than a Sony FS7 / FX6 / FX9 from a purely business perspective. They're the in demand swiss army knife of video productions. And only if you're much higher end and/or more niche, then does anything else become  easily much more compelling. 
I think the true screw up was the lack of cooperation/coordination (worse than that... they were enemies!) between the consumer and the professional sides of the business. 
After the smash hit of the GH4 that was the perfect timing to release the "Panasonic AF200" (an updated AF100, but with the guts of a GH4 inside it, rather than a GH1 inside it like the Af100 was, which by the time the GH4 launched then the AF100 was very old)
Imagine how good an EVA1 MFT or DVX200 MFT could have been! Would've made the loooong wait for a GH6 much less traumatic. (especially if there were even updates from the pro division, such as an EVA2 MFT or DVX300 MFT or AF300)
Or even if they were simply speedier/better in the release of their box style cameras, what if the Panasonic BGH1 got released immediately when the GH4 was (or say only six months after?), and imagine if it had a zero delay SDI output and 10bit internal. Sure it would at such a point have had the GH4 sensor, not the GH5 sensor, but it would have served as a very appealing upgrade option for the GH4 owners, while they wait for a GH5. Then "the Panasonic BGH2" (with the GH5 sensor), could have / should have given us built in NDs.