2025 camera rankings new vs used

[kye]

4 hours ago, Ninpo33 said:

Almost all of these simply display photographs mixed with animations done in Adobe After FX. It is very rare to see 4K video being displayed on these vertically. If there is video being displayed it is generally 1080p max. Everything I said before about resolution, crops, shooting, horizontal and extracting vertical still applies. I’ve worked on several campaigns that display things similarly for hotel lobbies and they all ask for final 1080p files for ease of playback. 

I don't really know what to say....

The post I was replying to said they hadn't seen 9:16 displays in public so I shared some images.  

The fact you haven't experienced the need to deliver 4K 9:16 videos doesn't mean other people haven't.  

Why is everyone so interested in being an expert about what people they've never met are required to deliver for companies they've never heard of in other countries they've never visited?

[Ninpo33]

18 minutes ago, kye said:

I don't really know what to say....

The post I was replying to said they hadn't seen 9:16 displays in public so I shared some images.  The fact you haven't experienced the need doesn't mean other people haven't.  

Why is everyone so interested in being an expert about what people they've never met are required to deliver for companies they've never heard of in other countries they've never visited?

You posted multiple photos of kiosks displaying photographic stills which was not relevant to the conversation at hand. Had you shown an example of 4k video being displayed vertically on topic with the current conversation I would have been interested in further discussion. 

In no way did i ever say or claim to be an expert in anything so please do not put words in my mouth. I was simply sharing my experience of delivering content professionally for numerous production companies in Los Angelas and Tokyo. if you don’t find that relevant, feel free to disregard. 

Funny, i was asking honestly if anyone has been delivering in vertical 4k delivery and you proceeded to interject for some reason despite having no relevant addition to the conversation. I also wonder why so many people need to respond and feel the need to play the “expert” and contribute nothing meaningful?

 

[kye]

37 minutes ago, Ninpo33 said:

Funny, i was asking honestly if anyone has been delivering in vertical 4k delivery 

The vertical resolution of deliverables is only part of the equation.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, another consideration is FOV and DOF.  

On 12/26/2025 at 6:31 PM, kye said:

• If you're shooting on location for a brand, there are often lots of things in the background you want to blur out (other brand logos, construction, etc) and backing up or going to a wider lens means the background comes more into focus, which means you need a wider or faster lens to get the same background defocus, potentially meaning you have to sacrifice optical quality (which commercial clients don't like), hire/buy expensive lenses, and potentially have to deal with much heavier setups (bad if you're using them on a gimbal/rails/etc)

It's actually a crop-factor problem.  Just as it's harder to get shallow DOF on smaller sensors, a FF sensor that shoots 16:9 only has a vertical crop factor of 1.185 compared to the same sensor shooting in 3:2.

Also, sometimes there isn't room to just back up:

On 12/26/2025 at 6:31 PM, kye said:

• You often don't have space to back up, especially considering that lots of corporate and brand content will be shot on location, and corporate especially is often shot in tiny conference rooms etc where you want as much space as possible to pull the subject away from the background for some separation (blur) and also to make lighting easier so there's less spill on the background

 

[kye]

57 minutes ago, Ninpo33 said:

You posted multiple photos of kiosks displaying photographic stills which was not relevant to the conversation at hand. Had you shown an example of 4k video being displayed vertically on topic with the current conversation I would have been interested in further discussion. 

I also posted Cam Mackeys video earlier in the thread, which shows vertical TVs showing video at 2m07s (linked to timestamp):

Also at 3m55s he shows an ad for Dior that is vertical video too.

I don't know the delivery resolution was and I don't think he mentioned it in the video (unless I missed it?) but he does mention the value of having extra resolution to provide sharper images to the client, so it's obviously a consideration for him and his business.

[newfoundmass]

Go to Times Square or Tokyo and you'll see endless 9:16 screens playing (presumably 4K or higher) video. They're massive screens.

We're kinda derailing this thread, but it's silly to argue that open gate isn't a benefit for a lot of people. It's cool if you don't need it, but others do. 

[Ilkka Nissila]

23 hours ago, kye said:

I also posted Cam Mackeys video earlier in the thread, which shows vertical TVs showing video at 2m07s (linked to timestamp):

Also at 3m55s he shows an ad for Dior that is vertical video too.

I don't know the delivery resolution was and I don't think he mentioned it in the video (unless I missed it?) but he does mention the value of having extra resolution to provide sharper images to the client, so it's obviously a consideration for him and his business.

Nonetheless he said the videos were shot with a Ronin 4D which does not support "open gate" video recording; ergo, illustrating that it was not necessary and other camera characteristics were more important to the project than open gate. 

 

Nothing comes free; open gate at full resolution without line skipping would mean the sensor read time increases and so there would be more rolling shutter and possibly it might need more processing power to handle that data (or at least it would generate more heat). These may be appropriate compromises for some users. However, seriously one can ask whether all cameras need to have open gate or if it is sufficient that a few do, enough to satisfy this market. Short form videos are considered to be tiring to the brain are reduce the viewer's ability to concentrate and control themselves. I believe most of not all of the vertical videos belong to this class. For long form content video, I believe the horizontal format is much more suitable.

 

Times square, huh? I recently checked hotel prices in NYC and they were in the $500+. I wonder where the tourists are coming from given these prices. I have stayed in Manhattan many times before but the prices were 1/4th of today's prices.

[John Matthews]

On 12/27/2025 at 9:36 PM, ac6000cw said:

Minor point - the S9 *does* have a 3.5mm mic input jack (but no headphone jack).

Yes, that's what I meant but failed to write properly. I actually have that camera too.

[MrSMW]

22 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

Yes, that's what I meant but failed to write properly. I actually have that camera too.

Needs to be lockable on the next gen camera…if there is one.

Plus more robust everything!

[John Matthews]

10 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

Needs to be lockable on the next gen camera…if there is one.

Plus more robust everything!

The 2 "cheapest feeling" cameras I've ever used (and there are many) are probably the Olympus e-p7 (which felt hollow) and the Panasonic S9. The S9's rear d-pad is simply ridiculous, feeling much more like a GX800 than anything remotely premium. It really needed proper front and back dials and go for buttons on the d-pad for a minimum. Also, give us similar buttons as on the other FF cameras. I would have also preferred a flip-up, not out screen.

[MrSMW]

I love it’s size, it’s weight and it’s capability but as a pro tool, it is sorely lacking.

I have used it as my primary video unit on a couple of occasions and the result has been great…mostly, - too many times I have jogged those dials etc though 😏

I would like to see a second gen, but for now/2026, I have relegated mine to back up/spare apart from one single use case (locked on to grooms face for bridal entrance…which seems a bit overkill to have a camera dedicated to and then packed away but 🤷‍♂️) and so it stays. For now.

[FHDcrew]

2 hours ago, John Matthews said:

The S9's rear d-pad is simply ridiculous

I second that.  They seem to wear out fast too.  This summer when I briefly owned the S9, the rear dial just felt mushy and very easy to turn.  I recently tried a Lumix S9 at a bestbuy that seemed to be in good condition; the rear dial felt better.  And on a Lumix S9 FB group I've heard reports of the dials going bad and becoming less responsive.  A major reason I went Panasonic G9II instead of S9 this time around.  I also never really loved the Smallrig grip for the Panasonic S9; the grip felt lose half the time even when tightening.  With all this being said, the S9 is still quite the value for the money.  I think it smokes the Sony ZVE10II for example.

[Emanuel]

FX30 is more than just a cinema-line camera for people who are used to shooting with it.

Those damn, counter-intuitive Japanese menus — so shooting-unfriendly (a PITA, and truly a shame; these guys have no notion of photography/filmmaking at all) — are the only thing I’ve got against it, and the only gripe I’ve ever collected.

- EAG

[John Matthews]

13 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

I second that.  They seem to wear out fast too.  This summer when I briefly owned the S9, the rear dial just felt mushy and very easy to turn.  I recently tried a Lumix S9 at a bestbuy that seemed to be in good condition; the rear dial felt better.  And on a Lumix S9 FB group I've heard reports of the dials going bad and becoming less responsive.  A major reason I went Panasonic G9II instead of S9 this time around.  I also never really loved the Smallrig grip for the Panasonic S9; the grip felt lose half the time even when tightening.  With all this being said, the S9 is still quite the value for the money.  I think it smokes the Sony ZVE10II for example.

Yes. I haven't tried the G9ii, but I bet the build is in a different league; yet, the pricing of the S9 would indicate otherwise when it first came out. Not having that EVF meant to me they were not going to cheap-out elsewhere, but they gave us GX800-level buttons. I got the SmallRig cage and it does feel much better to hold and it has all those rigging options now. Still, it does have a lot going for it in terms of output. Personally, I thought it would be a major problem not going above 1/100 in artificial lighting, but it doesn't seem so.

[Ty Harper]

I work on a daily live national pop culture program - and while we are theoretically a terrestrial radio program first and foremost, realistically speaking we are a multi-platform program that is consumed as a traditional radio show, a podcast on Apple, a video podcast on Spotify/Youtube, and there are a lot of people who ONLY know our program via the video reels we post on our IG account. The program is captured with 3 Sony PTZs, and guests joining us via Zoom are patched into the convo by our digital producer who is also our live switcher, who is also framing each person (up to four guests, including the host) for our Youtube/Spotify podcasts AND our IG reels... so yes, Open Gate would prob be a helpful option for our digital producer/switcher/editor to have in post.

[kye]

17 hours ago, Ilkka Nissila said:

Nonetheless he said the videos were shot with a Ronin 4D which does not support "open gate" video recording; ergo, illustrating that it was not necessary and other camera characteristics were more important to the project than open gate. 

Nothing comes free; open gate at full resolution without line skipping would mean the sensor read time increases and so there would be more rolling shutter and possibly it might need more processing power to handle that data (or at least it would generate more heat). These may be appropriate compromises for some users. However, seriously one can ask whether all cameras need to have open gate or if it is sufficient that a few do, enough to satisfy this market. Short form videos are considered to be tiring to the brain are reduce the viewer's ability to concentrate and control themselves. I believe most of not all of the vertical videos belong to this class. For long form content video, I believe the horizontal format is much more suitable.

This is the core challenge of film-making - compromises and trade-offs.

Absolutely, open gate without dropping quality means many trade-offs....  more rolling-shutter, more processing demands in-camera, greater heat generated in-camera, more power requirements and therefore shorter battery life or larger batteries required, great write-speed requirements for the media and larger capacity media, more processing power to edit, greater hard drive capacity, etc etc etc.  

His choice to use the Ronin 4D would have been like any other choice in film-making - a tradeoff of various factors to try and optimise the outcome (video quality, customer satisfaction, profit on the job, or some other factor) but if I had to guess it might have been that the 4D has excellent stabilisation including a fourth axis, which would have been important if the operator was walking/running rather than having the shot on rails or using something that rolls (considering the shot was a horizontal move with parallax on what looked like a longer lens).
So this situation ends up potentially being a trade-off between DOF, sharpness, size of area required for a shoot, and stabilisation (fourth-axis stabiliser / slider / rails / dolly / etc and the associated setup and teardown times, etc).  The value of open gate is that it removes the requirement to trade some of these things off against each other.

The key question being debated though, is choice.

No-one is suggesting that everyone be forced to record in open-gate modes.  Yet the people who are arguing against it are saying that it shouldn't be in cameras and therefore no-one should have the option to use it.

[kye]

13 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

I second that.  They seem to wear out fast too.  This summer when I briefly owned the S9, the rear dial just felt mushy and very easy to turn.  I recently tried a Lumix S9 at a bestbuy that seemed to be in good condition; the rear dial felt better.  And on a Lumix S9 FB group I've heard reports of the dials going bad and becoming less responsive.  A major reason I went Panasonic G9II instead of S9 this time around.  I also never really loved the Smallrig grip for the Panasonic S9; the grip felt lose half the time even when tightening.  With all this being said, the S9 is still quite the value for the money.  I think it smokes the Sony ZVE10II for example.

It's sad to hear this - the S9 seems to suffer with the same cost-cutting mechanisms of all smaller cameras.

It's funny how consumer electronics mostly tend to charge a premium for smaller devices and yet when it comes to cameras the industry seems to regard small as being cheap and large as being professional.

[Emanuel]

On 12/26/2025 at 10:39 AM, kye said:

The iPhone 17 Pro selfie camera has a square sensor, and when using the default camera app there's a button that swaps between it recording a 9:16 video and a 16:9 video.

I don't know if you'd rate it as a "real" camera or not though!

Ignore it today, it's stuck in the past.

E. :- )