documental

I've been using a "Portkenstein" - a mix of Portkeys LEYE II and Zacuto eyepiece - for some time. It's the best cheap solution but requires 3d printing the adapter and manually assembling the whole thing. Not a big deal, but requires some patience and some time. It's also a bit heavy once you add a Canon LP battery, not ideal for a lightweight rig on long days of solo filming - I make documentaries and tv reportages. So I bought this new viewfinder (hdmi+ usb version) on Alixpress for 200€ after taxes and duties and it looks fairly good for now. On my Lumix s5IIx (50hz) the HDMI power is not enough so I put a super lightweight, lipstick shaped power bank on my rig to give it usb power. After some time I can unplug the USB cable and it still works, strange but true. If I turn the camera on and off again, I need to plug the Usb cable again. I think I will just keep it connected all the time. It's super small and light, the image is fair if you don't care about perfect color accuracy. The image is also a little too big so you have to slightly adjust the eye position to see it all. I will do some real world test this weeks but so far it looks like a decent compromise for lightweight work. One good upgrade, as another forum member suggested, would be to replace the bulky HDMI cable with a female adapter glued to the viewfinder body.

I've been using the S1H for all my work since 2021 (mostly mid-to-high end TV documentaries and one feature doc to be screened in cinemas). I like that camera a lot, I saw its C4K Long-Gop V-LOG projected on a giant cinema screen and it was perfect. The camera has many little things that really make your life easier like the waveform, the luminance spot meter, excellent stabilization, TC in via flash interface, superb battery life, the OLPF, but also the way it displays all the camera info sent via HDMI in an elegant and minimal interface, except for the uselessly huge electronic level (Sony found a much better way to display a level since like... forever). Recently I needed a 2nd Lumix body for shooting solo interviews so I had to buy a second hand S5IIx. I like the 4ch of audio, the image magnification while shooting in manual focus (100% of my shooting is MF - I miss that on the S1H!). I will play with autofocus a bit to see if it's reliable at least in a static interview situation but I like A LOT the fact that I can use the AF of my good old Canon EF glass via the Sigma adapter. That said, I am looking forward to a solid S1H successor that would improve the excellent S1H: 4K50P (at least) in FF, a faster rolling shutter, less HDMI lag and some improvement in ISO sensitivity would be enough for me. It would be a real shame if Panasonic would let its S line die!