News, reviews and rumors about all things 4K.
These are interesting cameras but Panasonic’s targeting the higher end market is a departure from its approach with M43 where it released very affordable products for the features they offered. Premium is where the camera makers believe the money is at I guess.
Regardless, we wish Panasonic success because they have shown more innovation the Nikon and Canon and we’d be happy to have them survive as a competitor.
Here’s Lok’s first Look:
We’ve really appreciated Panasonic’s video contributions via their m43 cameras. It appears that they are going a premium product route with their new full frame cameras. However, given the competence they’ve displayed in the past we’re hopeful that their new full frame bodies might bring something different to the table.
I think most of us have forgotten about the Panasonic LX100 Mark II after it was a let down of a release. Not that it’s a bad camera. But basically Panasonic did not innovate and other cameras in the market improved in the meantime.
The G85 was (and still may be) the king of affordable 8-bit 4K hybrid cameras. However, any camera with IBIS can be vulnerable to vibrations causing jitter in the image. This is part of why pros sometimes shy away from IBIS and go with good old fashioned fixed sensor cameras.
The Panasonic S1R (47MP) and S1 (24MP) will be price as premium cameras. Expected price as we’re hearing now (but have not confirmed) is $4000 for the S1R and $2600 for the S1.
These cameras will shoot 4K 60P. We wonder if Panasonic will provide any RAW capabilities for these to set them apart from Canon/Nikon/Sony’s offerings.
A lot of the attention has been on Blackmagic lately. The EVA1 has been out for a year and has had significant firmware updates. It’s good to see Panasonic competing in this price range.
We were disappointed with what was upgraded in the LX100 Mark II considering 4 years had passed. These are incremental changes and Panasonic didn’t do anything special. Yet this remains a great little camera that does 4K video and will definitely be a competitor in the travel camera category.
Props to Panasonic for continuing to support their products long after release. Even though we have had lots of love for the Blackmagic Pocket 4K lately, we still shoot and do not forget all the amazing value products Panasonic has provided us. Here are some examples:
The Panasonic GH5 is not known for having the best autofocus. It’s not totally unusable but it’s not the camera you buy if autofocus is your number one priority. I’m not sure why the Nikon Z7 is being compared against it, but we’re still happy to have the comparison.