New L-Mount Lumix (cinema?) Camera

[Andrew Reid]

39 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

On another note, I'm not exactly how MPB decides to offload cameras sometimes. One day, there're 20 GH6 bodies and the next day none. 

They give them to DHL and they go missing.

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

They give them to DHL and they go missing.

They look at who the purchaser is and if it’s @Andrew Reid they deliberately make it disappear. Just to annoy the fuck out of him. Because they can.

[mercer]

2 hours ago, John Matthews said:

I also had the GH6 for about a year, but I'm really considering getting one again. I'll probably do like @kye and use that 14-140 most of the time. I'm still debating in my head though. The problem is simple- there are just so many old smaller "good enough" cameras, but nothing small and modern that can do 4k120 in the system. The G9ii is the smallest.

On another note, I'm not exactly how MPB decides to offload cameras sometimes. One day, there're 20 GH6 bodies and the next day none. 

I went with the GH6 again for for a few reasons...

1. Official Arri LogC profile - it's even embedded in the metadata, so FCPX reads it as Arri footage. For someone who will probably never shoot with an Alexa, I must admit it's a stupidly cool thing...

2. ProRes

3. IBIS

4. Flip up screen

Honorable Mention - I didn't realize how good the preamps in it were going to be. With good mic placement,  some of the audio is perfectly usable. 

[alsoandrew]

On 5/14/2025 at 3:13 AM, ND64 said:

Here is the summary: give Panasonic engineers a random sensor, and they give you the most video featured camera around that sensor that you could imagine. The problem is 1. Nobody gives them the state of the art sensor (or they don't like to pay high price) 2. They're asked to repeat themselves for similar sensor/bodies with overlapping customer target. 3. What they do is attractive for niche part of the hybrid market and not enough to absorb new customers. 4. "Similar offering to big three but at cheaper price" could kick the can down the road for a while, but even that strategy is no more with these prices. 5. When a market is saturated, and there are big players in that saturated market, the only way to survive is to be bold and different. Just like what Chinese discovered in the lens market, and so we're seeing 15mm macro! 

I think the problem with Panasonic is that they do not have much in the way of leverage for semiconductor/image sensors. Sony dominates image sensor market, Canon produces their own sensors/lithography equipment, Nikon is second to only ASML for lithography, Fuji has patents dating back to film. Meanwhile Panasonic is better known for making TVs or batteries. 

[D Verco]

Except they made a sensor

 

https://petapixel.com/2024/03/11/panasonics-organic-sensor-may-be-complete-but-likely-wont-be-used/

[eatstoomuchjam]

... and Black Magic seem to be able to source sensors from Fairchild.  And Red from Towerjazz (or at least they did once?).   Even if those are exclusive contracts, there are plenty of others able to make image sensors. 

https://us.metoree.com/categories/image-sensor/

At least in the case of BMD and Red, that also means that they have sensors that are a lot more interesting than others - with Red having a global shutter with similar DR performance (or superior in the case of V-Raptor) to non-global shutters used in most mirrorless cameras.  And in the case of BMD, the RGBW sensor in the UC12K and Pyxis is fantastic and a great differentiator vs Sony's offerings.

The catch is that there's a big upfront cost in development of those or other sensors and Panasonic are unlikely to invest that - instead focusing on extracting money from customers who are locked in to their mount and from technology licensing deals with Leica.

 

[MrSMW]

3 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

And Red from Towerjazz (or at least they did once?)

As did Lumix for the S1R.

[Jahleh]

16 hours ago, mtol said:

16 hours ago, mtol said:

Also from CineD

" a short discussion, we agreed that this camera is truly suffering from extensive noise reduction implementation in ProRes internal recording mode. This is why I switched to ProRes RAW (HQ) in this test."

I'm mostly interested in the H265 and H264 codecs to keep files sizes reasonable on documentary projects. I hope these are not overly detailed too.

If Prores Raw HQ at it’s highest bitrate on S1II is 4200Mbps and Panny H.265 is 200-300Mbps Prores Raw takes about 21-14x more space to get rid of the NR.  
6k50p N-Raw normal takes only 7,8-5,2x more space and still your SDDs can feel it. 1,5TB of N-Raw footage would be only 192-288GB in H.265. 

[PPNS]

On 5/14/2025 at 12:06 AM, Andrew Reid said:

Why doesn't Gerald yearn to make a film instead or shoot instead? He has no interest in it. He knows his job and his role in this industry is to sell cameras.

when’s the last time you’ve shot or made one? this comes off as jealousy that you couldn’t maintain your position as a reviewer-influencer.

[eatstoomuchjam]

4 hours ago, PPNS said:

when’s the last time you’ve shot or made one? this comes off as jealousy that you couldn’t maintain your position as a reviewer-influencer.

Counterpoint: Did Gerald ever make one?

And didn't Panasonic quite literally just invite Andrew to review a camera, but he turned them down?  It's a weird time to make that accusation.  😃

[Al Dolega]

10 hours ago, MrSMW said:

As did Lumix for the S1R.

And for the GH6/G9ii/GH7 sensor too, I believe.

[MrSMW]

10 minutes ago, Al Dolega said:

And for the GH6/G9ii/GH7 sensor too, I believe.

So it's not like they were reliant on Sony, but maybe Tower Jazz can't produce something beyond a certain level that is no longer competitive with more modern stacked or BSI stuff? 🤷‍♂️

[eatstoomuchjam]

I dunno - the V-Raptor [X] sensor seems to be a marvel of modern engineering - and while it's designed by RED's engineers, the semiconductor manufacturing is done by TowerJazz.

And quite good, if not marvelous, the Komodo and Komodo-X sensors are also made by them and they are fantastic.

Plus the GH7 sensor is, from everything I've heard, really really good.

My guess is that it's largely a cost-based decision.  The off-the-shelf part from Sony has much better economy of scale and it's "good enough" for most things.  It's sort of the basis for the Z Cam business model - integrate high-end (though inexpensive) off-the-shelf components and write good software to glue them together.  The entire E2 series is basically a wedding of Sony sensors with... I think it's Hisense?  Anyway, with another off-the-shelf circuit board.  They shove those things into a box and put a lens mount and teeny tiny screen on it.  The majority of their R&D is in software.

It's not hard to imagine somebody in Panasonic management looking at a price sheet and saying "We could integrate this TowerJazz sensor for $1,200 and get 10% better performance than the Sony sensor which costs $600.  Either way, we're going to sell the camera for $3,800.  Will we get enough extra sales based on 10% better performance to make up for a $600/unit shortfall?"

That's even more the case when you are also supporting budget cameras like the S9 which basically demands a commodity sensor which will come from Sony.  So you already have a team of engineers who are familiar with the ins and outs of Sony's sensors and having them also support (or having a different team to support) TowerJazz is also going to be expensive.

I have no insight into the actual costs of either vendor, but if you're Red and were selling the Komodo for like $6,000 or $7,000 when it was first released, spending an extra few hundred bucks per sensor ain't so bad because you have enormous margin.

BlackMagic are the real outlier here.  They seem genuinely less interested in turning a huge profit per unit with their cameras.  It's not to say the high end where they use Fairchild isn't expensive, but I'm still a little bit boggled by the UC 12K which, at $7,000 is a lot, but less than 2x an R5 Mark II.  Other than the fact that my car's suspension groans when I set the camera on the passenger seat, that is.  Well, that and offloading footage from the media module.  They really need to release a single module reader with USB-C.  Having to offload directly from the camera over 10gE is really silly.  It means I'll have the CF Express module in my bag most of the time, just in case we need to offload on-site.

[John Matthews]

20 hours ago, mercer said:

1. Official Arri LogC profile - it's even embedded in the metadata, so FCPX reads it as Arri footage. For someone who will probably never shoot with an Alexa, I must admit it's a stupidly cool thing...

I have a question about this. If you use it on a GH6 and later upgrade to a GH7, does it still work or do you have to purchase it again? I guess the value of the GH6 would be slightly more in this case, but it would be better to be able to uninstall and reinstall on a different body if you upgrade, rather than paying 200 euros every time you upgrade.