kye

Of course...  duh!  *slaps own forehead* 🙂 
Interesting about the cage manufacturers doing the leaking.  I guess they'd be the ones with the most detailed knowledge of the cameras too - considering that they'd be required to receive accurate dimensions and potentially would also get the size requirements of the lenses too so they'd be able to figure out the lens configuration and sensor size.
I think it's a straight up content creators camera.
Gerald said he thinks that it was Panasonic trying to get some of that Fuji money after the success of the X100 selling out, and that the inclusion of all the more advanced features was simply a case of taking the S5ii package and not paying engineers to disable features when they can just release the new camera with those features and not pay anyone to remove them.
Millennials and GenZ are running around with vintage point-and-shoot cameras and want film presets now, despite their smartphone being technically better in practically every way.  The fact that us crotchety old camera nerds don't know what the hell they want isn't surprising, especially considering I'm pretty sure they don't know what they want either!
Anyone who has ever looked at the fashion industry will know that nothing makes sense, lots of things look completely stupid, yet there is a rabid market for it and you can make squillions of dollars if you can get it right.

After a little while reading comments and watching videos and reading the specs, I have come to think of this camera a little differently than it seems others are.
I think it's about size.  
If you want a better camera and don't care about size then just buy an S5iiX, or a BMCC 6K, or Alexa or whatever.  
Camerasize.com doesn't have the S9 yet, so I did a mockup myself, basically it's the same size as the GX85:

In those terms, it's a GX85 sized camera body but FF, PDAF, Dual native ISO, 10-bit LOG, Open Gate, claimed 14+ stops of DR, cutting edge colour profiles, etc, without losing the IBIS etc.  If it was an MFT camera then people would be falling all over themselves about it, but it's FF and so somehow has to be an Alexa LF to not get roasted..  doesn't make sense to me.
Of course, it's not perfect because nothing is, but at this size and price the competition really isn't perfect either.  
Also, the F8 prime doesn't really bother me that much, and it's a much closer comparison to the 14mm F2.5 lens than you might think.  The 14mm F2.5 has the DOF of a 28mm F5 lens, which is only just over a stop deeper, and if you combine the dual ISO of the S9 with the F8 lens then that gives it a 2.5 stop boost giving equivalent light gathering of a F3.5 lens (if I did the math right?).
The iPhone 15 main camera has a crop factor of 5, so the main lens is equivalent to a 26mm F7.2 lens, and older models had smaller sensors so would be equivalent to slower lenses.  Entire media empires have been built on content shot on phones, so I don't see this as a major issue.  
Then again, I bought the Olympus 15mm F8 body cap lens for MFT, so what would I know!
My review of that lens is that it's great, but F8 is too slow for anything indoors or after sunset.  With the Dual ISO that limitation disappears.
The challenge for FF was lens size (and especially the L-mount), so here's a lens that's small and pocketable and great for street photography.  Is it overpriced?  Should it be AF?  Probably..  but it exists, and "F8 and be there" is a saying that came from the best photographers who ever lived and has stood the test of time.
All that said, I'm not buying one because the lenses are all still enormous except the new pancake.  Hopefully this is a new body that Panasonic can re-use for the MFT line 🙂

Have been messing around with a friend's XA50 and love the AF, cLog3 and above all... the form factor. The process becomes solely about composition and storytelling. Anyway here's a frame I grabbed after shooting with it for about 2 minutes...

There’s quite a few ‘R Us YT’ers Full of Shit’ videos already uploaded, I guess in response and there will be others.
Gate opened.

One thing I think is useful to keep in mind is that anything published to YT is a part of the entertainment industry.  That's why everything is about views & subscribers (the ratings system for free online content) and ad breaks and sponsored videos etc.  The business model is the same - the owner pays to make content that will attract viewers and then sells that attention to advertisers.  YT didn't call them 'channels' and have a TV as its icon by accident - everyone is running a TV station now.  Some are trying to be community stations, attracting patrons of the arts rather than selling out, etc, but the game is the same.
If camera reviews were part of science then there would be peer-review and the general goal would be to be well-respected and get funding through that mechanism.  Sure, there are lots of corruptions to science with research funding politics and publishing etc but it's still a long way from being in the territory that the entertainment industry is.
Only you can decide if a TV show / YT video is an informercial, a talk show, a documentary, or a public broadcast, but you should be making that decision when you watch.

To add... anytime gear becomes the center of discussion, there always ends up being flame wars. This camera is better than that camera. The features on my camera beats the features on your camera. My dick is bigger than yours. Blah, blah, blah. And the videos from YT get celebrated for it. If GeraldUndone posts a video about whatever technical, resolution achievement it becomes a fact and a must have. If Zedlin, a working Hollywood cinematographer, posts a video about how and why filmmakers are chasing the wrong thing... he's considered a dipshit.

I don't know... I think all of these YouTube personalities are full of shit, on some level. And that's fine. It's a niche market in and of itself and if they have found a way to feed their families, then it's no worse than many other professions. As long as you know where they're coming from, then I don't care one way or the other.
They all follow trends amongst themselves, chasing each other's angles. The new angle seems to be... why YouTube content creating is soul draining and why I am getting out.
A month or two ago, one of my favorite YT shillebrities posted a video with that topic and then he broke in the middle for a word from his sponsor...
HAHAHAHA!!!!

I always took that as tongue-in-cheek and as a device to add a bit of humor to what would otherwise be relatively dry videos of somebody showing him a bunch of lights on lightstands, etc.

First, I should say I like Gerald Undone's videos and I watch most of them. My criticism of him is that he portrays himself as an expert in 2 fields: 1) cameras; 2) YouTube setups (he walks around with a clipboard grading them). Now with this video, he is adding to his repertoire and he sounds like he portraying himself as a "moral expert" when it comes to the relationship with companies. Again, Gerald, the expert, and, as you know, "we should all listen to experts". I'm not a fan of "experts," maybe after watching F or Fake. 
It might sound like I'm being excessively harsh on him and I'm sure there are many who are much less of an "expert" than him, but I don't like that attitude. I think he's full of crap when it comes to him explaining how he takes the moral high road. I think he too, will take the cash when shown. That's just my opinion.

No.
I said that based on the timeline that any panic that had been suggested to exist would have had to have been on BM’s side.
The suggestion wasn’t mine obviously.

I'm not really sure what criticisms you're making.
When I watch a Gerald video, the things I'm seeing are things like:
What is the DR that he measured What features aren't available in which modes (ie, what the manufacturer won't tell you) What else did he notice about it, like if it overheated, or took 20s to turn on, or got corrupted clips, etc He's mentioned before that he has a standard checklist of things to test and does that for all his reviews, so assuming that's true then it's a semi-rounded take on the camera Maybe I'm missing all the times when he made comments that were outside his knowledge and experience?  If he did then I don't remember him making them.
The territory that gets tricky is when a reviewer is commenting on how good a camera it is overall (because that's subjective and not objective), or when things are outside their experience.  I can read whatever I want about an Alexa 35 but I'd be talking out my backside if I told you that it was a good camera for a cinematographer to shoot a feature film on, because I have no experience of that.
Perhaps the biggest criticism of that Gerald that I am aware of is omission of relevant facts.  Is there some gotcha about the camera that wasn't in one of his reviews?  Probably in every one of them.  Are they deliberately withheld, and if so then why? or did he just not find them?  Who knows, but it's worth noting that Gerald takes the most time to menu dive out of all the YT reviewers, and is obviously much more systematic in his approach, so whatever extent he's guilty of it then everyone else is guilty of it 10X or 50X more.
Most YT 'reviewers' seem to just read out the marketing brochure, turn the camera on and wave it around enough to film a video long enough for a sponsor segment, and if they find a weakness then might mention it and might not...  then proceed to tell you that it's a good fit for doing a bunch of things that they have no experience with at all.
We can throw shade at Gerald, and no-one is perfect of course, but if we're going to get specific then perhaps we should refocus our attention to the worst offenders.  Lots of reviewers making only positive reviews about a brand and then a "why I'm switching to X" video which mentions a dozen or so criticisms of their previous brand that somehow never made it into the original videos but would have been obvious from day one.
Of course, if we're going to re-direct our attention, then maybe we should focus on those who actively oppose any genuine criticism of a brand, like the R5 incident which was easily verifiable by anyone who had one or had access to someone who did...  Not being a critical reviewer is one thing, but voluntarily participating in a cover up is something else entirely.

Exactly (GX85 + 14-140mm is my current travel cam).
Versus the GX85 or GX9, you get 24MP stills, PDAF, a dual-gain sensor with good high-ISO performance, 4k50p/60p (albeit with a crop but so does the GX85/GX9 in 4k), a higher capacity battery, better stabilization, variable electronic zoom, a mic input, H264 and H26 10-bit recording at (in round numbers) 24/25/30/48/50/60p up to C4K, with higher resolutions up to 30p, at up to 4:2:2 and 200Mbps long-GOP.
Viewed as a GX85 & GX9 successor, it makes a lot of sense, especially once the 18-40mm zoom is available.
(At the moment, buying used from a dealer in the UK, a GX9 + 14-140mm would cost around £700 - £1000 so that's not a cheap camera either). 

100^ on point. To think the only way to legit be into camera and video is to learn color grading is quite odd. I’m going to die someday. Let me have optimal color or near optimal with minimal work - for the platform of socials and YouTube. That’s it. This camera is a massive step in that direction. Panasonic is really stepping up whereas canon is just like huh

I think this is a key point - colour grading is a daunting and time-consuming thing that most won't want to do (or learn to do).  
I disagree that this isn't for content creators, I think that's exactly who it's for, but the point stands.
I got into video around 2016 and at the time the people here were all about LUTs and profiles, CineD in Panasonic cameras, the Leeming LUT etc.  At that time I didn't see anyone talking about colour management, and although Resolve was the same price then as it is now, it was a very different tool back then.  It had only recently had the Edit page added, and round-tripping from PP/FCPX to Resolve and back isn't for the faint-of-heart.
There are still lots of people who don't want to colour grade, for a variety of reasons, but now it's not a choice between a few profiles or a few LUTs, or spending the time and effort to learn colour grading.

Actually, I think he's one of the most authentic YT reviewers in that way - he isn't a film-maker and doesn't pretend to be one.  His reviews are technical and he doesn't pretend to know which little technical gotcha will be important to you and what won't be.  This makes sense to me because film-making is different for everyone and tiny little things can be deal-breakers for a few but meaningless to most.
The other authentic YT reviewers are the cinematographers.  They are working pros who can speak to what is important, but also have a YT channel.  This is important to me because cinematographers can have a tendency to know almost nothing about post-production, and/or their knowledge is based on having a workflow that has 27 people in it who all do this for a living.  So when a cinematographer is also on YT it generally means they have experience with doing the whole thing themselves, so are able to speak to the whole end-to-end workflow and any quirks about things, which is what matters to lots of us.
To complete the picture, the worst YT reviewers are the professional YouTubers.  They pretend to be film-makers but only know about YT.  They are mostly self-taught and not technical, so they think they're experts, but they're just pretending.  If we took the fundamentals of image creation and tested them on it, most would fail, and some would get zero.  
Take the Resolution Demo from Yedlin - anyone who has actually watched it would either immediately stop hyping up anything 3K or above, or doesn't care about the fact that the image will, in the end, be put in front of an audience.
They simply review cameras in terms of how good they are at filming yourself making camera reviews, nothing more, because they don't know anything else.
A special mention goes to Chris and Jordan from DPReview fame, who actually made a short film each year with all the processes and techniques of the industry, and yet consistently made statements in reviews that showed they had zero understanding of the fundamentals.
I'm wondering if this will spark a bit of a checkpoint in the community.  First was the announcements about Insta360 asking people to hide sponsorships, and now this from Gerald, on the back of a highly visible PR event.  Everyone says how much influence these "influencers" have, I guess we'll see.  
One thing I thought was fascinating was his idea of the three phases, and the idea that a reviewer can get big enough to start getting the invitations without having special access, so in theory they don't need it to keep growing.  I suspect this video will make the rounds quietly within the YT community, and a lot of people will go "oh yeah...  that makes sense".  It's the kind of thing that once you've heard it you won't forget it.  People will do what they want with that info of course, but I think it might cause a subtle shift.

After a little while reading comments and watching videos and reading the specs, I have come to think of this camera a little differently than it seems others are.
I think it's about size.  
If you want a better camera and don't care about size then just buy an S5iiX, or a BMCC 6K, or Alexa or whatever.  
Camerasize.com doesn't have the S9 yet, so I did a mockup myself, basically it's the same size as the GX85:

In those terms, it's a GX85 sized camera body but FF, PDAF, Dual native ISO, 10-bit LOG, Open Gate, claimed 14+ stops of DR, cutting edge colour profiles, etc, without losing the IBIS etc.  If it was an MFT camera then people would be falling all over themselves about it, but it's FF and so somehow has to be an Alexa LF to not get roasted..  doesn't make sense to me.
Of course, it's not perfect because nothing is, but at this size and price the competition really isn't perfect either.  
Also, the F8 prime doesn't really bother me that much, and it's a much closer comparison to the 14mm F2.5 lens than you might think.  The 14mm F2.5 has the DOF of a 28mm F5 lens, which is only just over a stop deeper, and if you combine the dual ISO of the S9 with the F8 lens then that gives it a 2.5 stop boost giving equivalent light gathering of a F3.5 lens (if I did the math right?).
The iPhone 15 main camera has a crop factor of 5, so the main lens is equivalent to a 26mm F7.2 lens, and older models had smaller sensors so would be equivalent to slower lenses.  Entire media empires have been built on content shot on phones, so I don't see this as a major issue.  
Then again, I bought the Olympus 15mm F8 body cap lens for MFT, so what would I know!
My review of that lens is that it's great, but F8 is too slow for anything indoors or after sunset.  With the Dual ISO that limitation disappears.
The challenge for FF was lens size (and especially the L-mount), so here's a lens that's small and pocketable and great for street photography.  Is it overpriced?  Should it be AF?  Probably..  but it exists, and "F8 and be there" is a saying that came from the best photographers who ever lived and has stood the test of time.
All that said, I'm not buying one because the lenses are all still enormous except the new pancake.  Hopefully this is a new body that Panasonic can re-use for the MFT line 🙂

Panasonic UK have two S9 kits listed on their website, one with the 20-60mm f3.5-5.6, the other with the 28-200mm f4-7.1 Macro OIS lens (but no price as yet for that kit).
Comparing the sizes of both on the S9, the 28-200mm kit looks like it might be a nice FF travel cam combination at just under 900g total weight including battery. According to Panasonic W x H x D is 126 x 73.9 x 140.1 mm with the 28-200 (the 20-60 is just 6mm shorter and 63g lighter):

Amateur Photographer magazine in the UK has estimated the length of the upcoming compact 18-40mm F4.5-6.3 at around 40mm, which is about half the length of the 20-60mm.

With regard to the objectivity and competence of these “reviewers”, I thought we’d put that to bed on here a few years ago.


Never forget the absolute pile on suffered by @Andrew Reid for raising the blatant shenanigans that Canon were up to and the lengths that we both had to go to in proving it definitively.
Did any of these clowns apologise ?
No, they just made follow up videos about it to generate more clicks !
Oh but jokes about kittens right ?

So, I've been watching that podcast and got to the part where Dave implies incredibly strongly that the S9 wasn't the camera that was planned to be announced.  
It's at the 1h30m mark of the video, but he's saying it as strongly as he can without breaking an NDA or outing a source (or both).  
My theory is that almost a week ago BM dropped the price of the BMCC 6K by 40% to $1575, and then seemingly Panasonic swaps the camera released during a press event where they had invited a bunch of film-makers to...  
Was Panasonic releasing a high-end video camera and didn't want to compete with the BMCC 6K at the same price point? Did BM get wind what Panasonic was releasing and drop their price to screw up their launch?
I've seen documentaries about corporate espionage and that shit is real - companies spy on each other as much as you'd expect when there are millions of dollars at stake.

After a little while reading comments and watching videos and reading the specs, I have come to think of this camera a little differently than it seems others are.
I think it's about size.  
If you want a better camera and don't care about size then just buy an S5iiX, or a BMCC 6K, or Alexa or whatever.  
Camerasize.com doesn't have the S9 yet, so I did a mockup myself, basically it's the same size as the GX85:

In those terms, it's a GX85 sized camera body but FF, PDAF, Dual native ISO, 10-bit LOG, Open Gate, claimed 14+ stops of DR, cutting edge colour profiles, etc, without losing the IBIS etc.  If it was an MFT camera then people would be falling all over themselves about it, but it's FF and so somehow has to be an Alexa LF to not get roasted..  doesn't make sense to me.
Of course, it's not perfect because nothing is, but at this size and price the competition really isn't perfect either.  
Also, the F8 prime doesn't really bother me that much, and it's a much closer comparison to the 14mm F2.5 lens than you might think.  The 14mm F2.5 has the DOF of a 28mm F5 lens, which is only just over a stop deeper, and if you combine the dual ISO of the S9 with the F8 lens then that gives it a 2.5 stop boost giving equivalent light gathering of a F3.5 lens (if I did the math right?).
The iPhone 15 main camera has a crop factor of 5, so the main lens is equivalent to a 26mm F7.2 lens, and older models had smaller sensors so would be equivalent to slower lenses.  Entire media empires have been built on content shot on phones, so I don't see this as a major issue.  
Then again, I bought the Olympus 15mm F8 body cap lens for MFT, so what would I know!
My review of that lens is that it's great, but F8 is too slow for anything indoors or after sunset.  With the Dual ISO that limitation disappears.
The challenge for FF was lens size (and especially the L-mount), so here's a lens that's small and pocketable and great for street photography.  Is it overpriced?  Should it be AF?  Probably..  but it exists, and "F8 and be there" is a saying that came from the best photographers who ever lived and has stood the test of time.
All that said, I'm not buying one because the lenses are all still enormous except the new pancake.  Hopefully this is a new body that Panasonic can re-use for the MFT line 🙂

Yeah, exactly like the G9.  Making the S9 into a GX line camera would literally be the same - taking a FF body and putting an MFT sensor / mount into it.
If they did this, it would make sense.  Have a few standard body shapes where you can get economies of scale for manufacture, and just change the sensor and lens mounts etc for different models.  BM has been doing this with the BMPCC lineup.
I'd be inclined to say that this is what they're doing, but who knows...  anything designed by committee is inherently unpredictable unless you're in the room with the committee, and even then, lots of corporate folks get chewed up and spat out by office politics even when they are in the room!
In terms of the potential overheating, Gerald said something in the livestream to the effect that Panasonic test their cameras at 40C / 104F and that these record time limits would be a guarantee that the camera would record for that long under those conditions.  It was just a reference in passing of course, so don't quote me on that.
I also heard a comment in one of the reviews (Cams IIRC) where someone said that someone tested the camera by just hitting record over and over again, and it being fine recording for something like an hour, and there was talk with Panasonic about removing the time limits via firmware, but obviously who knows what will happen.
I suspect a bunch of people will be happy.  Dave said in the steam that he mentioned the controversy about the release to one of the creators who was there and they didn't know what he was talking about because his audience, who are all iPhone / vlogging folks, didn't have any negative comments about it at all.
When I was shooting with primes, the 2X function on the GH5 and GX85 were really important to me.  They literally changed the lenses that I bought and my approach to how I shot.  For most people this feature was of zero importance.
Why do I say this?  For most people who buy these cameras, this whole conversation and controversy is the equivalent of me talking about the 2X feature - they don't know about this stuff, wouldn't understand it if they came across it, and if we explained it to them they simply wouldn't care.

They’d already gathered in Osaka, shot with it and left by time BM announced the price cut.

With the amount of leaks coming out of there about the S9, it’s more likely the panic came from BM rather than the other way round.
There was a lot of talk about there being a fixed lens camera (aka Panasonic badged Leica Q3) so it’s possible that may have been something that was held back.
Perhaps Leica didn’t want Panasonic overshadowing their own announcement this week of their new fixed lens camera.
Although them releasing a £1500 version of the few years old Panasonic LX100mk2 kind of overshadowed itself anyway.
My theory is that the leaking about all this stuff comes from the manufacturers of the cages which are always coincidentally announced on the same day as the new cameras so they have the most prior knowledge.

Ha, like the opposite of what they did with the G9?!
I was giving this camera a little further consideration and came to the conclusion that it actually does everything my S5ii does THAT I USE, but in a more compact and lighter body.
I use my S5ii as a purely handheld, run & gun, 4k 50p, unit along with Smallrig cage, side handle, Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 and Rode Micro.
I could see a use case of a more compact version of that using the S9 as a base.
I would then ideally move the S5ii over to being a stills unit but have already established I don’t much care for it in this role, so I’d need to sell it.
So used trade in price vs new S9 price. What would I gain and what would I lose?
Gain = smaller & lighter
Lose = stuff such as; recording length, potential overheating, twin card slots…stuff you might call ‘pro’ needs.
So on balance, would the S9 make a great small run & gun video unit? I think without question yes, but I’d need to test it in worst case real world scenarios to know I could fully trust it whereas my S5ii has seen and passed a full year of that and sailed through.
I could also see it as a compact stills unit with a set of small Sigma f2.8 primes such as the 24, 35, 45, 90, but for my kind of work/needs, despite being a prime guy at heart, zooms are what I need.

After a little while reading comments and watching videos and reading the specs, I have come to think of this camera a little differently than it seems others are.
I think it's about size.  
If you want a better camera and don't care about size then just buy an S5iiX, or a BMCC 6K, or Alexa or whatever.  
Camerasize.com doesn't have the S9 yet, so I did a mockup myself, basically it's the same size as the GX85:

In those terms, it's a GX85 sized camera body but FF, PDAF, Dual native ISO, 10-bit LOG, Open Gate, claimed 14+ stops of DR, cutting edge colour profiles, etc, without losing the IBIS etc.  If it was an MFT camera then people would be falling all over themselves about it, but it's FF and so somehow has to be an Alexa LF to not get roasted..  doesn't make sense to me.
Of course, it's not perfect because nothing is, but at this size and price the competition really isn't perfect either.  
Also, the F8 prime doesn't really bother me that much, and it's a much closer comparison to the 14mm F2.5 lens than you might think.  The 14mm F2.5 has the DOF of a 28mm F5 lens, which is only just over a stop deeper, and if you combine the dual ISO of the S9 with the F8 lens then that gives it a 2.5 stop boost giving equivalent light gathering of a F3.5 lens (if I did the math right?).
The iPhone 15 main camera has a crop factor of 5, so the main lens is equivalent to a 26mm F7.2 lens, and older models had smaller sensors so would be equivalent to slower lenses.  Entire media empires have been built on content shot on phones, so I don't see this as a major issue.  
Then again, I bought the Olympus 15mm F8 body cap lens for MFT, so what would I know!
My review of that lens is that it's great, but F8 is too slow for anything indoors or after sunset.  With the Dual ISO that limitation disappears.
The challenge for FF was lens size (and especially the L-mount), so here's a lens that's small and pocketable and great for street photography.  Is it overpriced?  Should it be AF?  Probably..  but it exists, and "F8 and be there" is a saying that came from the best photographers who ever lived and has stood the test of time.
All that said, I'm not buying one because the lenses are all still enormous except the new pancake.  Hopefully this is a new body that Panasonic can re-use for the MFT line 🙂