LUMIX S9 First Impressions from a Fujifilm GFX and X User

All right, I am back with another video. And as you can probably tell from the title of this video, it's not really going to be about Fujifilm cameras, but instead about a camera that I'm experimenting with a whole new system that I recently purchased and I'm having a lot of fun with. And that is the Lumix S9 from Lumix and Panasonic. I've got the 35.1.8 on this camera right now and I kind of want to open up this discussion, sort of this first impressions with the camera. But this idea of why Lumix, why now? You know, what are they doing that's so important? And so just backing up a little bit, I think. You know, if you look at some of the previous videos on this channel, I've been using Fujifilm cameras for the better part of the last decade and have done a plenty of paid work with them as well as hobbyist work and just family work. Personal photography I guess you could call it. And I've shot everything from weddings to headshots to events to, I mean, you name it, I've done some professional work with those cameras at some level, whether it's the GFX100 Mark II or what got me into the GFX system, which was the GFX50 Mark II or, you know, maybe it's the XH2 or the XH2S. My wife still uses the XH2S for video. It's a fantastic camera, despite some of these autofocus struggles we hear about. Still an amazing camera. And I've had a long storied history with the X100 series. I've got all my photos that I've ever taken and am proud of on my Flickr page. So feel free to check that out in the description below. But I got this long history with Fujifilm and I'm not leaving them per se. This video isn't a I switched to Lumix, but it's certainly a video where I want to start exploring this camera system and sort of getting back to photography. Not in the fun cool way, but getting back to photography with full frame. And I think that's where my, you know, sort of want for Fujifilm has gone. And my friend Tung who shout out tong he's been doing videos every single day for the past few years. Fujifilm, Sony talks about all sorts of different camera brands, but one thing he's talked a lot about is that, you know, Fujifilm, if they got into the full frame market, it would be a much different discussion because right now they're sort of on these, these, these ends, right? They're on the medium format. They own that market. They're killing it. I mean, you know, we've said multiple Times that the GFX100 Mark II is the best image quality in a camera. And then the APS C cameras are fantastic for what they are, but they're definitely missing some of that depth of field. So I want to talk a little about this camera and tell you why I purchased it and why I'm really enjoying it. All right, so first reason why did I purchase this camera? You know, this camera was very well documented for being a very dramatic camera due to the way the kind of creator influencer camera world is right now. Obviously there's a ton of organic advertising and marketing happening on folks channels and Instagrams and YouTube where they're taking products and sort of giving you first impressions. You know, I've purchased this one with my own money. I've never actually really been sponsored by any camera brand or anything like that, or been paid to produce content. I do this for fun. I actually have two full time jobs and then I do part time photography on the side. So I have a lot going on and this is just a hobby for me because I'm passionate about cameras and I'm passionate about photography and videography and I like to share that with folks. But this camera, I purchased it despite all of that conversation because I think what Lumix is doing when it comes to not just the real time luts and not just you know, this idea of like this creator camera, I look at this camera more like maybe an X100VI with a full frame sensor, maybe an XE5. If the XE5 from Fujifilm was ever produced and it had a full frame sensor, I think that this would be kind of right there. And it got me excited into like what I could possibly do with this camera. When I started looking at the Lumix lens lineup, which is something I don't see a lot of folks talking about. These trio or I think there's four or five lenses, 18, 24, 35, 50 and 85 millimeters, 1.8. They're very small, they're very light for what they are and the image quality is incredible. So think of these as sort of like the F2 Fuji crons. They're fantastic. They're obviously bigger than that, but they're very powerful for what they are. And I've been shooting pretty much exclusively with the 35 millimeter F1 8 on this S9 and I'm really enjoying it. So that's a big reason why I purchased the camera. And again, just trying to get a full frame look not just in video but also in photo and then kind of deliberating, you know, what that looks like and what my next three years of photography looks like. Maybe I fully switch to Lumix, maybe I love it that much or maybe it's just a hobbyist camera for me. I'm not quite sure yet. But again, that's one of the big reasons I purchased this camera. Now all that goes without saying that yes, the real time luts and sort of the LUT system on this camera is very enticing. You can see on the back of the camera here, if I can get the camera to focus that we've got a LUT button on here. And I'm really enjoying it. I think it's fun, right? I think, you know, Fujifilm with the recipes, that's really where they blew up. That's really where that camera really found its TikTok following and Instagram following. Folks like Fuji X Weekly have built an entire career out of this recipe idea. And I think even Richie from Fuji X Weekly has built an app and there's some monetization going on there. So it's really a fantastic ecosystem that has been born from this idea of let's get straight out of camera photos that look really good and spend less time editing. Obviously in some of the marketing for this camera, that's what they're saying. They're saying like shoot, you know, get rid of the editing and just share, right? And so me personally, that's not my style. I love being in Lightroom. It's sort of a nice thing, right? At the end of a day I'll put my daughter to bed, I'll, you know, say hi to my wife and I'll say I want to go edit some photos for a little bit, right? And I think that for me is really important now. You know, shooting with those luts on and really getting like a real time view of that is pretty exciting. I think the other thing that's really cool is, you know, when I can make something in DaVinci resolve like a power grade and then export that to a cube file and put it on here. I mean that whole kind of workflow is really exciting and I don't think Fujifilm is doing it to that level. I also think there are some limiting factors with Fujifilm recipes, namely this idea of the clarity slider really delaying the processing, I don't know why that hasn't been fixed. I think with all these new processors that clarity slider issue would be gone by now. But nevertheless it's still here. So on the S9 again, the Luts are fun. One of the reasons I was interested in the camera in the first place. But again, pretty, pretty cool. Lastly, I'm pretty excited to like experiment with videography on this camera. I have seen a ton of Lumix footage on the Internet. I think, you know, we wax poetic about colors and density and all these great things. But I think what this camera does pretty well, especially in my experience and on some of the experience online, is just get really great 10 bits 420 videos out of camera. Now the difference with this camera versus like a Fujifilm XH2 XH2S is that, you know, Fujifilm could do 10 bit 422 prores internally. But again, much smaller sensor. Kind of a different ball game, but even a 420-10-bit internal 4K 24, 4K 30, you know, this camera's putting out some pretty impressive results. I haven't used the open gate mode too much. I, in fact I don't use the open gate on my XH2s. I'm more of just a hey shoot, shoot, edit post kind of guy. I could. I should probably do that and learn a little bit more about what that entails. However, this has been really fun to shoot video with and I've got some cool video of my daughter and some other stuff that I've done recently and it's been fun. And again, for such a small form factor, I mean they just came out with this. I think it's a 16 to 40 or 18 to 40 lens with a pretty, pretty dark aperture. But that's really small, right? It's the smallest and lightest, I guess, full frame lens out there. And so I think there's a lot of potential here. And again, it's exciting. I'm sure they'll make an S9 Mark II in the next couple years and blow this thing out of the water. But in the meantime, I think that in the time that I've had this camera, in terms of the video, the photos and all the different things that I enjoy about cameras, I've had a really good time. There are some other folks on YouTube who are not paid by Lumix who have purchased this. Dan Farrar is one of them that comes to mind. And Dan's the kind of guy who's posting videos every single day of like walking his dogs and he's not getting millions of views, but he's having fun with this camera and really playing with the LUT function. So I'll link his videos down below. I think it's worth a watch in terms of, you know, seeing what the footage and some of the photos out of this camera look like. But again, the LUT function here is great and I've had a ton of fun with the camera so far. So those are some of the reasons I've purchased the camera. I want to talk a little about my disappointments with the camera and maybe some things I didn't do enough research on. I think a lot of us that enjoy cameras and watch videos on YouTube, if you're watching this video, you're likely one of these folks that will do a ton of research on the camera, make sure it's for them and then go and purchase it. And I think for me personally, I did a bunch of research on this camera. I was really enthralled by it and again, pretty intrigued by the camera. And one of the things I didn't really pay attention to is the weather ceiling. I think maybe I'm spoiled from Fujifilm, but you know, I live here in Southern California. It's a beautiful area and we don't deal with a ton of weather. In fact, I don't think it's rained here in a couple of months. But ultimately, you know, weather sealing is a nice to have thing and certainly I'm planning to do some traveling later this year and early next year and. And I want to make sure my camera is weather sealed and so their lenses are weather sealed, but this body unfortunately is not. And that's something that again I didn't pay a ton of attention to. So that's a disappointment for me. The other disappointment, and this was well documented, I did do research on this. But this camera has no evf, right? So it's essentially just kind of this rangefinder style camera without an evf. And you know, funny enough, the screen on here, I feel like it's higher resolution. I might have to do some comparing on that than the Fujifilm back screens. But certainly I feel like it's just a better experience. It's a cleaner interface with the menus, which again I could talk about. But there's definitely room for getting a better screen on here despite not having an evf. But I think this screen is good enough. I think the other thing that disappointed me about this camera that again, this was something I didn't do a ton of research on. But I had kind of figured but that there is no mechanical shutter. And so for me, you know, as a photography first person, and I'm beginning to be more of a hybrid user of cameras, but as a photography first person, I like the mechanical shutter. You'll hear about people saying this all across the Internet, is that when you hear that of a shutter on a click on a photo, it's a really cool experience. And I even made a YouTube short on here about the difference in sound for the XH2s and X H2. And obviously that's a little odd, but for me, it's something I do miss. Now, you know, the camera sounds out of here are kind of cheesy and very, you know, camera brandy where they sound, and that's not really good for me. So I keep this camera in silent mode. And again, with not having a mechanical shutter, the feeling and the sound aside, there are some limitations to electronic shutters across any camera brand. This one, certainly there's some rolling shutter on the video. I think it's like a 22 millisecond response time. And so those things aside, not having an evf, not having a mechanical shutter can be a little bit frustrating. The, you know, back screen here is good. I wish it was a little bit better. But having said all that, I think those are some interesting compromises to make and still makes for a very fun camera. So the last thing that again has disappointed me, and this was again, another thing that's totally on me as a consumer that I didn't do enough research on, is that this hot shoe on the top is actually not hot at all. It's actually quite cold. So this hot shoe is actually just a cold shoe. You can see here, there's no connectors, there's no data points there to connect to the camera. And, you know, certainly buying a flash for this would be a whole other discussion and kind of going down that route of getting TTL set up. I have a very passionate feeling about how Godox makes a different flash for each camera. And I understand that TTL technology per cameras are technically proprietary, so I understand that. But again, just not having that option is kind of disappointing. I think there are some other accessories that I'd like to have that maybe would connect to the camera. But despite that, it's definitely an unfortunate piece. Maybe making a hot shoe with an EVF accessory would have been really cool in Lumix's part, but obviously there's a reason they didn't do that. So that's been a little bit Disappointing. The other thing that's been a little bit disappointing to me is not having a back scroll wheel. So right here where the thumb rest is, there is no back scroll reel. You'll actually have to use the kind of spinning wheel here to do what you would normally do on a scroll wheel. The other thing that's a little bit disappointing is I'm very used to having like buttons on the side of the camera right here like on Fujifilm. And I know Lumix has these on their larger bodies, but not having those things feels like a strange omission, especially at this price point. And I know this has been talked about to death, but I just think it's been a little bit interesting not having those on this camera. The other thing that was a tough thing in the beginning but was fixed quite easily was not having a grip. I'm used to having Fujifilm cameras that nowadays have decent grips and so it doesn't have a grip on it. But I did install this kind of small rig, little grip system here I think was $39. So again, really, really cool accessory. Shout out smallrig. I love everything they do. I think they make some great products, especially at great price points. So those are some of the things that disappoint me about the camera. But I'd say certainly the look of the images, the look of the video is really, really impressive. Maybe I sound like a noob here, but not having a full frame camera in recent years has made me appreciate the look that comes out of this camera a lot more. My first kind of big DSLR mirrorless camera was the Sony A7, the original. I loved that camera. I had a 35F 1.8 Zeiss lens that I took with me everywhere. When I originally moved to LA from San Francisco, I went to Venice beach and took photos. It was such a cool experience having like a full frame camera with a really bright fast lens at my favorite focal length which is 35 millimeters on the full frame. So, you know, all of those things aside, again it's been a great experience with this camera so far. I'm excited to share more about this camera with you in the coming months. I actually am looking at the S5.2X as doing a video camera. But in the meantime I'm very excited with what I'm getting out of this camera and hopefully you'll stick around for the ride. I'm not leaving Fujifilm anytime soon. I do have an XM5. Like I said in my last video on pre order, I'm excited for that camera that's going to be definitely like a dad camera for me that I can sort of document my daughter. The 18 millimeter F2 is going to go right on that and kind of enjoy that experience. So a lot of stuff coming soon, but I think it's a great time and I'll end with this. I think it's a great time to be a photography or videography fan. I mean we have so many incredible cameras, right? We've got the Sony A7C2, we've got, you know, Sony stuff. Sony's coming out with the A1 mark two very shortly. Nikon's got the ZF is selling like crazy. You know, Fujifilm still cannot produce any X100 Vies. And so when we think about photography and videography from a 30,000 foot view, what an amazing time it is to be able to purchase a camera, use it, produce stuff with it and just have fun. I don't think I've had this much fun with photography at all in my life leading up to this point. So very excited. I've got some decisions to make with the gear that I have and the gear that I'm going to be acquiring and have acquired. So again, hopefully you stick around for that ride and I just want to say thanks for watching and we'll speak with you soon. Bye.