John Matthews

Maybe it's me, but the ZR seems more like a S9 with a bigger LCD, internal RAW, and a slightly more functional hotshoe in a heavier body, worse IBIS, not as many tools, and roughly for $1200 more. Am I missing something? The ZR also has 4k 120 in S35, which could be a big deal for some.

Inspired by this post, I tried to make some flares with the Makinon.

Some were shot at f/16 and others f/3.5 with an ND filter. I shot in v-log and corrected for exposure and add the official Panasonic LUT.

1 hour ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

I'm looking forward to watching the video on the Makinon.  I've not heard of that one before - and if it's still $30ish on eBay, I guess there's not a reason not to buy it.

I have the AR mount version. It's a decent lens by my eye. My copy has a trashed front thread and the rubber missing from the zoom ring- neither are a problem for me. I've seen them in K-mount too, but I'm not sure if there any differences. The fact that it has been used to oblivion is a good sign to me- somebody loved this lens to use it that much. Judging from this video and the video he shot entirely on it, I'd say there aren't any differences.

I also have a Pentax 35-105 f/3.5 constant that belonged to my father, but it's almost impossible to use. There's just so much gear noise and you have to go into a full-macro mode to get somewhat close. Here's a video describing it:

On 8/15/2025 at 10:36 PM, QuickHitRecord said:

Same series of lens for consistency

Good luck. Manufacturers changed coatings every time they went to the bathroom. They were always getting tweaked. Granted, they often had similar looks. You can find some very unique f/3.5 constant zooms that will do the job. Some of them are sharp and cheap with magnificent and crazy flares.

Here are some that I found interesting. I have the Makinon zoom lens.

11 hours ago, Tulpa said:

I know that @Kye like the GH bodies... but notice no one here has said much about the GH7 as a work horse. It would be such a solid contender if they could get that low light up a bit. Correct?

I never used the GH7, only the GH6, but I found it to be great in low light; just not "no light" situations. Both of those cameras are mostly about 4k 120fps. The GH7 is about that and the AF in video and Hybrid Zoom. If the cost and size aren't the determining factors, the GH7 is the most fully-featured M43 camera for video today. Want the same features as the GH7? Go for the G9ii something smaller and cheaper, just no insanely long clips. In fact, the G9ii might be my last M43 camera as I don't see a point in anything more.

I'm going to revise my choice for this type of use. Camping and biking mean to me that one camera might not suffice if going Panasonic. I do not think that the OM-3 will give acceptable levels of noise inside a tent at night unless with a small light; nor do I believe the S9 by itself will give acceptable levels of weather resistance (by the way, I doubt the Panasonic 14-140 does either even though it's rated weather resistant).

Therefore, I would still go for the S9 with a 18mm f/1.8 lens for dark, inside a tent scenes and the 28-200. For bad weather, I'd get an action cam. This will eliminate bad-weather low light; maybe pick up a camera cover for the S9. At MPB, that setup will set you back 2500 euros.

The other option is the "do everything" set-up with the OM-3 with the Olympus 14-150 ii and the Panasonic 9mm for about the same amount of money, but you'll be spending more on the camera (double!) for less quality output (but still great).

If you are a disciplined shooter that usually uses a tripod and manual focus, there are options that will cost way less.

That OM-3 setup is about 950g and the S9 + action cam setup is 1300g. Note: Camera size doesn't have the Panasonic 18mm list, but it's the same size as the 24mm.

Again, this is for 10-bit with great IBIS and AF being the priority. I'd go with a much cheaper setup if it were me. I wouldn't want to take that expensive of gear out into the unknown. It's a close call though. There are so many good choices. It almost makes you say "screw it" and just use whatever you have with its limitations. If you're a creative, this is usually better.

Here's one of the issues with M43:

Granted, the OM-3 is quite possibly a more functional setup with a better build, but the S9 could be all you need and will beat the OM-3 in price, low-light, and video output. Personally, I'd rather go with the S9 even though I've bad-mouthed it quite a bit. 

4 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

I'd be apt to leave that to the micro 4/3 enthusiasts like @kye and @John Matthews. 

My guess, and please do take this with a huge grain of salt, as I haven't owned a real micro 4/3 camera in years, is that the camera body suggestion will look something like a GX85 or OM-3/OM-5 II for small/light/sealed, but I don't follow m43 enough to know off the top of my head which have 10 bit.  If the Panasonic 14/2.5 or 20/1.7 are weather sealed, they could be alright.  Otherwise, the humble Panasonic 14-42mm kit lens is not bad.  The Olympus equivalent might be alright too.  You'd probably want one of the primes for low light.

10-bit and weather sealing. There's the rub.

Panasonic: GH5, GH5 ii, GH5S, G9, G9ii, GH6, GH7

Olympus: OM-1, OM-1ii, OM-3

Anything smaller, you'll need to forgo 10-bit.

For lenses, there are many options from flagship zooms (all are great, new and old) to small primes. However with the latter, there aren't necessarily that many that are weather-sealed.

Panasonic: All the new versions of the Leica-branded primes, minus the Leica 15mm f/1.7

Olympus: All the Pro versions and the new versions of the 17mm and 25mm f/1.8.

For run and gun in 2025 (AF in video), I'd choose the G9ii (lighter) or the GH7.

For lenses, I'd go with two- one all-purpose, do everything lens like the 14-150 (Olympus), 14-140 (Panasonic), or 12-100 (Olympus, heavy!). After, I'd go for the Leica 25mm prime (new version) if weather-sealing is necessary; if not, the old version of the Leica 15mm f/1.7, Olympus 17mm f/1.8 or Panasonic 25mm f/1.7.

If 10-bit isn't the issue, I'd go for the smallest camera with the best output. I'd go go a GX85 and an audio recorder, the E-M5 iii, OM5, OM5ii (all of these have decent audio and AF).

It's sad that Panasonic cannot offer us anything under 500g with 10-bit, decent audio, and decent IBIS in MFT. For that, they can only offer the S9 in FF with NO pancake lenses- a CRAZY situation that is costing them dearly every single day!

1 hour ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

You might be talking me into reinstalling Parsec and trying this out, but for different reasons.  Usually I edit on my Macbook (The lower-end M2 Max) and it's totally fine, but when I'm at home, I prefer to edit off my basement NAS instead of from external drives and I use a postgres database on a server next to it.  But if I don't plug into the network (which means sitting at my desk where the dock with 10ge is), editing video is not great (and editing photos in Lightroom ain't great either).

But I have a windows gaming PC also set up near the desk which has a pretty decent setup with a nice GPU.  I suppose I could just parsec to that while on the couch or in bed and do my editing, with the main catch being that I need to use Windows shortcut keys.  That or I wait until there's a decent deal on an M4 Mini with 10ge (there have been some solid deals, but they're always for the base model with only 1ge)

With Parsec, the key is efficient H.265 (HEVC) encoding and decoding. On my 2020 Intel MacBook Air, I’m seeing decode times around 9ms at its native resolution. On the other end, the M2 Mac Mini encodes the HEVC stream in about 8.5ms. Over Wi-Fi (on the Air), network latency hovers around 4ms. Altogether, that gives me a total latency just under 25ms—well below the 42ms frame time of 24fps video. In practice, it’s totally usable and, to my eyes, indistinguishable from working directly on an M2 MacBook Air.

Most Intel Macs from 2017 onward support QuickSync, which provides solid hardware-accelerated decoding. The real game-changer, though, is the vastly improved encoding performance on Apple Silicon, which makes setups like this feel snappy and responsive.

When using Ethernet—even at modest speeds—latency drops further (often below 1ms). Parsec can stream H.265 video with variable bitrates up to 50 Mbps, which is trivial for gigabit Ethernet. It also supports 10-bit 4:2:2 streams, though honestly, I can’t see a difference on my aging eyes—especially when using high-DPI iMac displays.

For me, Parsec solves three major problems:

1. Reviving modest hardware — especially for tasks like video editing.
2. Enabling near-instant resource sharing — with Thunderbolt providing a pseudo-network connection up to 40Gbps between Mac Minis.
3. Letting me work remotely — from the kitchen table, for instance, while the main setup runs in the basement.

When you pair Parsec with BetterDisplay, the experience is nearly identical to working on the host machine—if not better. In my case, the iMac’s high-DPI Retina display actually gives me a superior viewing experience compared to using the M2 Mac Mini with a standard external monitor. Unless you're using an Apple Studio or Cinema Display, it’s hard to beat the visual quality of 4K, 4.5K, or 5K iMacs.

Interestingly, the 2017 iMac Pro isn’t the best choice as a Parsec thin client. It lacks both QuickSync and the T2 chip, which hurts performance. If you're going this route, a standard 5K iMac (2017 or later) is a much better option.

8 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

I'm curious about Parsec, but it seems to be a similar price for similar feature set.

I've been using the free version only. However, I did pay for BetterDisplay ($20)- for me, it's worth it and they did a hell of job that needs to be rewarded.

10 minutes ago, Anaconda_ said:

Splashtop Remote Desktop

I'll definitely have a look at this too. Thanks for that.

If macOS ever supported multiple simultaneous users, I’d happily run just one Mac Mini and use 3–4 iMacs around the house as thin clients for the whole family. I’m confident the performance would be more than sufficient—as long as no one is editing video at the same time!

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. But there’s nothing stopping me from setting up several iMacs as thin clients, each connected to its own Mac Mini. By placing the Mac Minis next to each other and linking them via Thunderbolt, I could enable ultra-fast access to shared resources—effectively building a small, high-speed local computing cluster with shared storage and plenty of power.

37 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

I never tried editing with Parsec, but it's a good idea!  How does it handle color management?  Or is that done by Better Display?

I’m not 100% focused on color accuracy here—I rely on scopes for that—since calibrating two machines in different environments is never going to yield perfect results. My main reason for using BetterDisplay is to match the exact 4096x2304 resolution of my 2019 4K iMac. Retina displays don’t play nicely with standard external monitors, like the one I currently have connected to the M2 Mac Mini.

I’ve heard some users connect “dummy” displays to the encoding machine to force the proper resolution, but this setup with Parsec achieves the same effect. If I send a standard 4K signal to the iMac, it doesn’t look as clean—the image is upscaled and noticeably less sharp. With this setup, I just launch Parsec and connect to the M2 Mac Mini. What I see on the iMac looks almost indistinguishable from running natively on the 2019 i3 iMac with 8GB of RAM—except, of course, I get the performance of the M2 Mac Mini.

In fact, I often forget I’m even using Parsec. I’ve accidentally shut down the Mac Mini thinking I was turning off the iMac! And the biggest surprise? I’m getting Thunderbolt 4-level performance on my media drives—despite using only a 1Gbps Ethernet connection. As long as latency stays below a certain threshold, the experience is virtually seamless.

The iMac just becomes a glorified thin client- exactly what I want.

I'm putting this question out there to see if anyone else is doing something similar. I've been running Parsec over a modest 1Gbps home network, paired with BetterDisplay to ensure proper 4K+ 60fps signals are sent to my iMacs—while editing 6K video on very modest hardware.

For those unfamiliar, Parsec is low-latency remote desktop software. With BetterDisplay, I can match the resolution to the native Retina display of my iMac, allowing me to work from two different locations in my home without needing multiple high-end machines—or a 10Gbps network. The end result? It feels like I'm using an Apple M2 Mac Mini directly on a 2019 4K iMac. Honestly, I can barely tell the difference. I’d estimate the latency is under 25ms with this setup.

Now I’m curious—has anyone tried this off-site? I imagine cross-continent setups would suffer from latency, but within the same continent, it seems like remote editing could be entirely feasible. It sure beats lugging around terabytes of footage.

For me, this setup has breathed new life into an older machine. I’m even considering picking up another iMac—maybe a 5K model from 2017 or later. With H.265 decoding not being too demanding and the M2 or M4 Mac Mini handling encoding with ease, it seems like a highly effective and budget-friendly workflow.

EH FILMS gave an interesting take on the GH7:

For what it's worth, so far, I have to say that my experience has been very positive. I've bought lenses and cameras without hiccups. I've sold about 5000 euros of gear to them and most of the time they upped my initial quote. A key part of that process is they don't report the amounts they pay me to the French government either as it must be some loophole, unlike when you sell on leboncoin.fr. The process is a little slow, but I don't have the same headaches about wondering if I'm going to get paid or scammed. If they don't accept my condition for an item, they just send it back to me. I'm happy.

On 6/28/2025 at 5:01 AM, newfoundmass said:

Virtually any camera released in the last 10 years, if used with care and consideration, will look good. And ten years from now the GH5 will still be able to generate lovely images, assuming there are some still out there that work! The pace in which people upgrade cameras is crazy to me, it just seems pointless and wasteful.

The human eye isn't going to get any major upgrades last time I heard. It's the one constant from the early days of image creation to now. The crazy thing about the upgrades is that many cameras being sold have less than 5000 actuation.

13 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

My second GX85 has arrived yesterday. It feels like new. I'll sell the 12-32mm, since I'm owning two of them now. Great deal for a great camera. I still got my first one, which I bought eight years ago thanks to a great thread on this forum. I should let the GM5 go, since the faux orange rubber coating is kinda too cute to stress test it when using the camera for photography. I might give it a photo tour before departing from it. Decisions.:)

That sounds great, coming from a og pocket and Bmmcc afficiando like you! @kye How is sharpness on the GH7, artificial looking or natural? What about punchin focussing during recording? Does the camera offer a 2x crop mode with good codecs and quality for some b3/4 goodness? True S16 mode or 16, 2.87 vs 3x? More questions to come.:) Thanks!😊

I have so much great footage I've taken with the gx80- the one that was used in that gx85 thread started way back when (and briefly became the most popular thread on EOSHD ever). Every camera I've used since (there have been many of all shapes and sizes) was either bigger, lacking features, or didn't have add significant improvements over it. In retrospect, I probably should have stuck with it and I would have saved a bundle and paid off my house that much quicker.

Just last night, I was live streaming via HDMI with my S9 (not recording) and the camera over-heated mid-session (about a hour in), something  my M43 cameras NEVER did. Granted, I don't think the S9 is made for what I was doing with it in a VERY hot attic (~35C), but still I wasn't even recording and I had a dummy battery. I guess the S5ii will now need to be doing that job and I'll set up my GH2 as a backup (just in case it happens again).

6 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

Or, instead of forcing my 6k open gate camera into shooting 4k cropped, I can stick with my smaller and lighter Sigma 28-70 f2.8 🤔

Arguably, the new zoom is the equivalent of 1mm wider and 10mm longer in terms of focal range and arguably f1.8 is still f1.8 for light gathering purposes, but for DOF equivalencies, f2.7 = f2.8, but nah, zero real world gains for my needs and a HUGE downgrade from 6k open gate. 

Now if the lens was significantly smaller and lighter, maybe a small argument could be made, but nah…

For APSC users, it’s a different matter and the lens makes sense. Just not for me.

Good point!

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

My S9 sits smugly looking on.

At sub 1k prices, its video spec is in another league.

That is VERY clear! Even in terms of photography, it's not that bad even for studio work if you use continuous lighting (which I now do). For outside stuff, you'll need a good reflector.

On another note, the S9 can also be fitted with the new Sigma 17-40 f/1.8, which would perform like a M43 camera with a 25-60 f/1.2.

I've had the E-M5ii and E-M5iii. I've also had the E-M1ii, E-P7 and E-PL9. All of them had decent images in 4k. The E-M5iii and E-M1ii were definitely a step up when you turned on its picture mode (I forget the exact term). Shooting in 4k in the other normal modes wasn't bad, but a little "soft" for extreme detail. The major problem I had with the E-M5ii was absolutely horrendous moiré issues. For AF, both the E-P7 and E-PL9 did way better continuous AF in video than Panasonic contrast detect.

The OM5 series could be so good if they could just put a little better processing in it and 10-bit.

The beige looks like puke. Maybe it would be stealthy for a safari or desert situation. Also, OM System is thinking they can way more for this camera, but they will soon realise the contrary. It costs 1299 euros and 200 cheaper in dollars. I get the feeling OM System is asking the europeans to pay those effing tariffs for the Americans rather than asking the Americans to pay. The price gap is too much, especially since the dollar has been in a rather large decline since January 2025.

Sadly the new OM5ii isn't offering any real video upgrades. The E-M5iii remains the smallest M43 camera with PDAF at a decent used price until Panasonic pulls their head out of their rear-end.

14 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I bought myself a second GX85. It will hopefully arrive this week. Comes with the 12-32, which I already own and enjoyed using for some test clips with the og pocket. I think I should let go my GM5, as it was more an object of desire than being a practical artists tool for me.

What do you guys think? Prices are pretty nice and high for these at the moment. Mine is orange and in a very good shape. Much usage would rub the faux leather off I think.

I love the subtle color grade @kye Great results with your GX85 cinema beast.:) Btw I really love the colors of the GX' raw files when taking photos . This camera is perfect for street and to carry along. Anyway, how is Prores on the GH7?:) Any nasty artefacts? Awesome to hear and read about your findings with this exciting camera, Kye!

Out of curiosity, how much is that combo going for where you live? I'm always looking for it, but it often seems a bit pricy for me. In France, it can be found for about 350 euros.

4 hours ago, Sebastien said:

As I understand it, the only mode that allows for locking the shutter at 1/50 and being able to adjust the aperture via the camera is the manual mode under the movie mode - which does not allow auto iso, right? (Strangely, the M mode for stills allows for auto iso). 

This is correct. Use a variable neutral density filter to adjust the exposure. If you REALLY want auto ISO, you need to also accept shooting in 30fps because this is only achievable in 4K photo mode.

4 hours ago, Sebastien said:

But how do you achieve that, provided it is a 4/3 lens without an aperture ring (like my olympus 17 & 45 mm 1.8 and the 12-32 kit lens)?

None of those lenses have apertures to control via the lens. They have focus rings, unlike the 12-32. With the 12-32, put the camera into manual focus mode and there will be a [AF] button in the bottom right corner. Tap it and the lens will focus on that spot- this is your friend. You can also just tap where you want to focus and it will also focus on the object. All of this can happen in MF mode and without any physical focus ring on the lens... if that makes sense.

24 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

Man, I lost my GX7 years ago --and when I look at that 1080 footage I still find myself coveting it.

I had that camera for about 1 month and then sent it back to Amazon because the GX80 came out at the same time. Still, I recorded some great moments on it. One of the videos is so precious that I have it on my desktop at all times.