j_one

It's been a while since I've been able to work on any kind of movie, but here are some recent landscapes photos. I'm not doing anything artistic, just trying to capture some of my favorite places the way they felt at the time. The only edits are very slight changes to saturation and exposure. 90% of my photos are from 10+ mile hikes so I only bring my lightweight 28mm and a CPL, but in this group is a rare photo taken from the roadside using a 24-105.

I have the S1RII and the S1II. I also still have the old S1 and S5.
The S1II is the same than the S5II about video details, even if some youtubers said the details rendering has improved, it's not true at all. Same bad rendering as the S5II.
I understand some people are not bothered or can't see the difference and it's nothing wrong about that, but the difference is clear by example if you zoom inside your videos on people faces.
Like the S5II, there is a sort of rough detail sharpening and in the same time a lack of very fine details.
As always V-log looks better than the 709 profiles but it's still not great in my opinion.
The S1RII also has the same detail rendering and I was very disappointed by the 6,4K Open Gate, it was not better than the 6K of the S5II, maybe even worse, like if this mode used a tiny bit of binning like the 5,9K 16:9.
The new 7,2K is ok and looks better than the 6,4K. 
The 8,1K Open Gate is even better but limited to 24fps. Even if the video engine is the same between the S1II, S5II and S1RII, the later has much more resolution in 8K, hence the fine details looks finer even with the bad processing.
it's only when the footage is a bit underexposed or overexposed that the S1 6K looks better.
I read somewhere something interesting about Real Time Lut, using a burned in lut with a good amount of contrast helps to recover fine details. When recording V-log without Real Time Lut and grading in post, some fine details can't be recovered. I can confirm it's true. So using Real Time Lut V-log on the S1RII in 8,1K Open Gate is the best for details rendering.
I'm glad Panasonic has fixed the colored pixels issue in Prores Raw on the S1RII and now the footage looks great, same details rendering than on the S1 or S5. But it's really crazy we must use Prores Raw to get the same good details rendering than on the S1 or S5 H264/265. And the crop is a shame, 1,45x ! When cameras like the Z8 or Z6III offer 6K or 8K 60fps raw video without crop ...
About the S1II, Prores Raw only has a minimal crop (about 1,05/1,1x I think) and it was the main reason I bought this camera. Like on the S1RII, Prores Raw is excellent and like it has much less crop, fine details looks even sharper (in a good way). Finally we have a Panasonic camera with not only excellent IBIS but also excellent detail rendering and good AF without using external recorder (even if Prores raw is a pain for the workflow).
The only issue I found is the 240fps 1080p mode, it is clearly not finalised because some horizontal lines appear randomly.
I also found the photo raw files of the S1II and S1RII to be slightly less contrasty than the S5 and S1, they have less that punchy looks and I still prefer the rendering of the S5 and S1 with my best lenses like the 50mm S or 24-70mm Pro. it can be because of ACR but the JPEGs out of the cameras also looks slightly less contrasty than on the S5 and S1.
Other than that, IBIS is stellar but sometimes more digital than on the G9II or GH7, color science is good but not as good as the GH6 to my eyes. The S1II also has better AF than the S1RII and I can feel the difference.
Compared to Nikon, Lumix has several advantages like the IBIS and Open Gate. L-mount also has great "practical" lenses but I think they lack really great lenses with very nice rendering and more pancakes.
After using most of the L-mount lenses, only a few looks really fantastic, like the 50mm S Pro (if it has not the coating issue), 24-70mm S Pro, 28-45mm Sigma and the APO Summicron SL. While absolutely great, the APO SL are really too much expensive for most people and it will be hard to attract a lot of people in the system, it is why Lumix try to attract people with smaller lenses and never released again new S Pro lenses since 2019/2020. 
Nikon has better AF most of the time but also more great lenses. The 50mm f1.8 is much better than the Lumix, the Nikon 35mm/50mm/85mm f1.2 and 135mm f1.8 are some of the best lenses you can buy. You can also adapt Sony FE lenses and there are more interesting "cheap" lenses available from third party manufacturers like Viltrox (mainly the 35mm f1.2 and 135mm f1.8).
 

The elephant in the room is Resolve.
As I have discussed and demonstrated in my "New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age" thread, over the last decade Resolve has gotten more feature-rich, but more importantly, it's made it HUGELY easier to use and get good images.
People now have a lot more knowledge about colour grading tools and techniques, that's for sure, but things like the Film Look Creator enable you to use a single node, you set your input and output colour spaces, and then you can adjust exposure / WB / saturation / contrast and all sorts of other things in the same tool.  You don't even need to apply a film look at all...  just select the "Blank Slate" preset, which sets it to have no look at all, and you can still use all the tools to adjust the image without having to worry about colour management at all.
Any improvement in your post-processes is a retroactive upgrade to your camera, your lenses, and all the footage you have already shot.
Colour grading is such a deep art that I think the average GH5 user back in the day was probably extracting a third of the potential of the images they'd shot, if that, simply because they didn't know how to colour grade properly.  I'm not being nostalgic about the GH5 either, the same applies for any camera you can think of.
There are reasons to upgrade your camera, for sure, but most of the reasons people use aren't the right reasons, and they'd be better spent taking the several thousand dollars it would take for a camera upgrade and taking unpaid leave from their job and improving their colour grading skills instead.

NX1 and GH6.
They are full of compromises like the GH6 having unusable AFC below 48fps or the NX1 having even more smoothed out details in low light than the S5II but I'm still surprised how much I often prefer the footage I get from them at low ISO over my expensive Sony FE and Lumix S cameras.

NX1
A7s mk1,
GX85, GH2, GH6, LX100mk1, S1H
Any Sigma foveon, agreed

I am more photo orientated, Why should i buy this if you can I buy a s5II for a lot less?

While nikon and sony, are showing off impressive glass like  28-70 f2, 50-150 f2 , a 200-600 telezoom, a 135mm f1.8, a 35mm f1.2  Best thing Panasonic can come up with is an 26mm pinhole, a 24-60 f2.8 zoom in the contested space with sigma zooms, a 28-200 that that nobody cares about,  at least the 18-40 was somewhat novel.
Its sigma that really keeps the L mount alive. Leica is like a venn diagramm meme with almost no overlap. it does it own thing and nobody else seems to care.
How many panny f1.4 primes do we have?  one!!
How many >300mm zooms does panny have? *cricket noises*
powerzooms: we lost the technology after our micro four thirds
Also from the makers of small and compact micro for thirds camera's, in their infinite wisdom they decided that the best way to upgrade the heavy,rugged S1, is a smaller camera with lightweight lenses!
 

But why 24-60mm? Of all the lenses they could have developed for this launch..

But why 24-60mm? Of all the lenses they could have developed for this launch..

But why 24-60mm? Of all the lenses they could have developed for this launch..

I've been hearing/reading opinions that the way the story would have been perceived by the audience wouldn't have changed all that much if it featured more traditional cuts, and that the gimmick of the oner was just that, a gimmick, to show off the marvel of technology and the immense talent/coordination of the film crew. 
(The exception to this being episode 3 with the session between the psychologist and the teen. The continuous take suited that scene the best.)

Anything is possible, but based on Grant's past remarks about subscription models as well as how things were phrased here, I'd bet the outcome will be in favor up license upgrades (which may end up being some tiered annual payment) vs monthly subscription. That might not be all that different but the key is that with subscription, they cut off your service if you don't pay. Upgrade models, you stay at what version you want and aren't punished for not paying for the service at any particular point.
Either way it may hurt the brand; A lot of what makes Resolve attractive is that is has been both freely accessible and stable for the most part. Even the more casual crowd that uses software like CapCut for social edits have found Resolve attractive after they moved to $10/mo subscription.
Yeah, perhaps it may be a la carte for the AI tools. We'll see.

I'm about 80% there with you, but if the so-called "AI" tools are also for things like making smarter masks/object tracking in Resolve, I'll gladly take it.  I have 0 interest in generating random lamp posts in my footage, but for my last short film, I spent a bunch of hours doing object tracking manually for somebody's eyes to turn them black when she gets possessed because when I tried the automatic tracking, the machine kept losing track of them.  When I looked online to see how to improve the hit rate for automatic tracking, the general advice seemed to be "adjust some parameters and try again and keep doing that until it's tolerable."
If there's some machine learning model that makes it track like super duper well, I'd even consider paying a small upcharge for it.  As it is, I'm probably going to pay more than that to have a real special effects person do it because my end results are a bit trash (though thankfully most people watching don't comment on how the blackened eyes are shifting on the face a little bit).

Anything is possible, but based on Grant's past remarks about subscription models as well as how things were phrased here, I'd bet the outcome will be in favor up license upgrades (which may end up being some tiered annual payment) vs monthly subscription. That might not be all that different but the key is that with subscription, they cut off your service if you don't pay. Upgrade models, you stay at what version you want and aren't punished for not paying for the service at any particular point.
Either way it may hurt the brand; A lot of what makes Resolve attractive is that is has been both freely accessible and stable for the most part. Even the more casual crowd that uses software like CapCut for social edits have found Resolve attractive after they moved to $10/mo subscription.
Yeah, perhaps it may be a la carte for the AI tools. We'll see.

Autofocus!

Looks like there is some internal nd there.

Got my S1RII and like I thought, I'm a bit disappointed.
Stills are great with very good resolution, the Dpreview studio test is odd because the camera is very sharp even when using not so sharp lenses like the 28-200mm. 
But there are better cameras for photography, AF implementation is weird, AF-S is only DFD and the buffer is a joke when shooting high fps pictures.
Video quality is the same than S5II, a bit less sharpening but still the same video engine, it still looks worse than the old gen, the resolution just feels not as good, no matter the mode or resolution used the image doesn't look really sharp in a good way, lines are not straight, some details are missing like if a filter or blur in some part of the image was added. The image looks like there is a slight oil painting touch softening the image at the core. Like on the S5II the rec 709 profiles are worse than V-log.
So it is a bit ironic from Lumix to say "discover unseen details" for their S1RII tagline. Because of this the moire is not too much prononced. Some will like this tradeoff. 
I tested Prores Raw 6K Pixel to Pixel and the image is much better, the weird processing is gone. But I can't get the image right when using Premiere Pro, colors are off, I don't think Prores Raw is really fully supported by Premiere. The crop and the data size also makes this mode hard to use and it is not supported at all by Resolve.
Using the Canon R5 or Z6III for raw is much easier as the files are better supported and there is no crop.
The rolling shutter is just bad when using the DR boost, I didn't think I could see it but I can see jello even with relatively slow movements. In addition 24fps is the max fps we can use with DR boost and Open Gate. I can't select 30fps, maybe a bug.
I think the best modes are 6k or 4k 60fps, there is only a slight crop, worse DR because no DR boost and the image quality becomes even slighltly worse but there is not a big difference with the 30fps and the rolling shutter is better.
I quickly tested the 4k 120fps and as if it isn't enough that the 4k30fps was not great, the 120fps is even worse : blurry, bad details, just unusable. When selecting Pixel to Pixel, the quality is better but again these crop make these Pixel to Pixel modes hard to use and feel like we are using a S35 camera. 
Stabilization is the best in the market and for me it's the main reason I still use Panasonic (with Open Gate too). But the S5II is as good ...
 
The S1RII feels like it was created for people taking mostly photography of still subjects. And for this the camera is good, not the best DR performance but nice colors and impressive 177MP handheld mode (the image makes a very long time to create though, much longer than on the S5II). For video it comes with marketing bait as 8k and 4k 120fps. The 8k like every other modes except raw is too much processed, it has high rolling shutter when the DR boost is enabled and the 4k120fps is not good at all. Yes we can do a lot of things with this camera but with big penalties most of the time.
The added Prores Raw is questionable too, the files are not supported in Resolve and the crop is really disappointing.

The fact remains, however, than the S1RII is the only affordable high resolution camera with acceptable autofocus for L mount. However, I don't see anything which could attract new users to Lumix or L mount, the S5II is a much better value for Youtube and other social media creators. And the A7RIV is much cheaper and has better AF for stills. 3600€ is a lot of money but I would have happily spend a bit more to get better video engine, better rolling shutter and 8k raw. 
As things stand at the moment with the current firmware, I think the right price should be more about 3200€.


About the reviews available online like the one from Northrup, I think the best is to always wait for some Chinese or Korean reviews, they provides much more informations and are much more unbiased than any Northrup or Undone reviews.

Here is an exemple of a good and accurate review :

 

The EOS R50 V is a loss leader out to encourage lens sales with a huge army of social media influencers and Youtubers.
On the face of it, it's definitely a step forward from Canon in the value for money stakes.
Sure, they will want you to buy loads of expensive glass for it.
Thankfully Sigma is doing some nifty APS-C lenses so we don't have to.
I do like the built in LUTs, C-LOG3, AF should be decent although maybe perfect, but it does lack an EVF and IBIS.

Saw Soderbergh's Presence the other day. Immediately noticed it was shot on mirrorless with gimbal, and turns out its the A9iii with Sony FE 14mm F1.8 GM. Interesting choice for a full-feature, it makes sense since the POV is a floating ghost inside a house:
"We shot this on the [Sony Alpha 9 III], which is, as you know, a digital [mirrorless] camera. Its primary mode is as a still camera, but it also shoots really good video. It’s small, and this new version has a sensor that was never used in [this kind of camera] before. I did experiments with all the digital cameras that I’d worked with before and ones I hadn’t. I stripped them down as much as I could, then put them on the smallest stabilization rig that would support them. What I discovered was that there was just a couple of pounds’ difference between the camera I could use and stabilize and be able to back into any space I wanted to, and the next step up made that impossible because of the weight. We did all these tests with the Sony and this one rig. And I’m like, 'This’ll work. It’s not heavy.'"

I have the OG S5 I could sell/move to C camera and make room for a LUMIX FX3 style camera. However if it’s priced around the S1Rii I may still go for that. After 4k 120p uncropped and a faster readout speed, we’re really running out of things to complain about. What will people even argue about on YouTube anymore?
LX3? They should troll Sony with that model number. 

I hear you for sure. You’re definitely right.
I think the point behind the nitpicking is to figure out where the current gen Lumix bodies stand in comparison to the competition and last gen, including IQ. It’s been a while since they released a pro body like this so it’s good to see where their focus is now in their positioning within the pro market.
Things like downscaling and cropping do factor in to purchase choices just like features, ergonomics, and reliability do. Some want paint brushes. Some want tested utilitarian tools. Some want some balanced mix of both for their money. It may or may not make a difference; some of us just want to know what’s happening under the hood.
Because if we’re gonna say that clients don’t really care what we see, how come most of us don’t just pick up a few secondhand 5D3/D810/A7Sii/GH5/C100/P6k/FS7 and call it a day? Some answers to this may reveal legit analysis paralysis. Others, not so much. 
It’s something every artist or business has to answer for themselves. Like I really don’t care for the FX6 since what I have is good enough, but if owning one fits well into existing clients’ workflows AND gets me more jobs then hey it’s time to consider upgrading.
(Remembering that we’re pages deep into a topic discussing video performance for a supposedly photo-focused camera model haha)

I hear you for sure. You’re definitely right.
I think the point behind the nitpicking is to figure out where the current gen Lumix bodies stand in comparison to the competition and last gen, including IQ. It’s been a while since they released a pro body like this so it’s good to see where their focus is now in their positioning within the pro market.
Things like downscaling and cropping do factor in to purchase choices just like features, ergonomics, and reliability do. Some want paint brushes. Some want tested utilitarian tools. Some want some balanced mix of both for their money. It may or may not make a difference; some of us just want to know what’s happening under the hood.
Because if we’re gonna say that clients don’t really care what we see, how come most of us don’t just pick up a few secondhand 5D3/D810/A7Sii/GH5/C100/P6k/FS7 and call it a day? Some answers to this may reveal legit analysis paralysis. Others, not so much. 
It’s something every artist or business has to answer for themselves. Like I really don’t care for the FX6 since what I have is good enough, but if owning one fits well into existing clients’ workflows AND gets me more jobs then hey it’s time to consider upgrading.
(Remembering that we’re pages deep into a topic discussing video performance for a supposedly photo-focused camera model haha)

I hear you for sure. You’re definitely right.
I think the point behind the nitpicking is to figure out where the current gen Lumix bodies stand in comparison to the competition and last gen, including IQ. It’s been a while since they released a pro body like this so it’s good to see where their focus is now in their positioning within the pro market.
Things like downscaling and cropping do factor in to purchase choices just like features, ergonomics, and reliability do. Some want paint brushes. Some want tested utilitarian tools. Some want some balanced mix of both for their money. It may or may not make a difference; some of us just want to know what’s happening under the hood.
Because if we’re gonna say that clients don’t really care what we see, how come most of us don’t just pick up a few secondhand 5D3/D810/A7Sii/GH5/C100/P6k/FS7 and call it a day? Some answers to this may reveal legit analysis paralysis. Others, not so much. 
It’s something every artist or business has to answer for themselves. Like I really don’t care for the FX6 since what I have is good enough, but if owning one fits well into existing clients’ workflows AND gets me more jobs then hey it’s time to consider upgrading.
(Remembering that we’re pages deep into a topic discussing video performance for a supposedly photo-focused camera model haha)

Agree with what everyone has said regarding there being many poor looking film movies that we forgot about, many great looking digital movies, and everything in between.
I believe a better thesis would be, "movies looked better before smartphones were invented"
A big reason that mainstream movies look bland is because they are no longer designed for a giant screen in a dark theater, nor even on a big flatscreen in your living room. They are increasingly consumed on 6" screens in broad daylight (as well as theaters and living rooms).
 
Now to go on a sight tangent, the same can be said of writing. Often when I talk to friends, they'll say, "oh yeah, I saw that movie. It was on netflix in the background while I cleaned my house" To some degree, it's not that writers are worse, it's that modern writing is designed to be consumed at 50% attention with chunks missing. The percent of audience that watches every second at full attention is simply getting smaller.
I don't believe that shift has anything to do with filmmaking technology.

I very much prefer the image of the OG S5 over the S5II X, but people really make a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the "worse" image. It's really not that bad. In the year I've had it not one client or viewer has complained about the image; in fact it has been the exact opposite! I feel like cameras have plateaued so now people over analyze and overstate every little thing. But virtually all of this stuff doesn't matter to the audience that we are creating these images for.
Anyone with any discernible talent will be able to take the S1RII and create compelling images with it. That bride is going to love the pictures you take, the corporate client is going to be ecstatic with the talking head interviews you shoot, the MMA school is going to be psyched with the promotional video you film, etc. As long as it's in focus, the colors are okay, and it's framed well, these folks aren't going to really care if it's a little noisier than the R5II or if the rolling shutter is slightly worse than the A7RV.
I don't know how it is where you all live, but there are literally people making money using cheap Canon Rebel DSLRs and kit lenses in my area. I see friends post their wedding pictures, their kid's senior portraits, baby pictures, and all of that stuff on Facebook all of the time. Most of the time these photographers aren't even good at what they do, put people I know still go crazy over them and post these photos they paid for proudly on social media! These photographers still get paid work, not just because they are cheap (that certainly helps!) but because the average person's standards aren't all that high. That's not to say that we should lower our standards, just that we should remember the big picture (no pun intended) and stop worrying about the small things that aren't going to matter to 99.9% of our clients/audience.

You sure about this? Or just speculation based on the online comparisons?
The internal processing of the S5ii is almost offensive when compared to the previous gen, but I hardly notice it in practice since it’s less aggressive in Vlog. And I really only shoot in vlog or burnt LUT.
The bigger issue on that camera is the green tint to the noise floor in the internal codecs that is visible as soon as 1-2 stops under, and that seems to be pretty much gone in the S1rii.
I’ll agree though I was looking forward to their first internal raw recording in full frame, but it is what it is. Reminds me of how I always cropped in on the a7rii for anything video for the best rendering.