7 ms·

Panasonic developing two full-frame mirrorless cameras with Leica L-mount

49 points by petepete 8y ago

eropple 8y ago
Wow. My video kit is a GH4, GH3, and G7 for live or recorded-to-external events, so I am plenty deep in hock to Panasonic. But I did not expect that they would have a way to get even more of my money. I've been considering a Sony full-frame as a photo camera with some backup video usage but Panasonic has so much goodwill with me that I will probably hold off until I can play with an S1 or S1R and make a decision. I don't get excited about cameras much anymore, but...dang.
- seltzered_ 8y ago
  Hoping this technology will eventually make its way to a prosumer mini camera like the lx10. I’ve been waiting for 4k60 with some form of built-in stabilization. Sorta wish GoPro would make something along this front given their investment in custom ASICS for hypersmooth - dream of something like a hero 7 with a bigger sensor size to deal with low light.
- growlist 8y ago
  I'm big into Lumix m4/3 and will be strongly considering this as I've had some beautiful shots out of my GF2 and more recently GX1, though that's probably a lot to do with the decent primes I use (20mm and 25mm). I doubt I'll be able to afford the rumoured £2k price tag at the outset but hopefully a year or two down the line. Also hoping there might be some cheap primes offered as there are for other systems - I read somewhere that (for some reason that escapes me now) m4/3 primes require more expensive glass, and my other half was able to get a decent Canon prime for less than half what I paid for my 20mm pancake.
- sjwright 8y ago
  Don't overestimate the value of full frame. Unless you're trying to get a shallower depth of field than you can achieve with your MFT lenses, a full frame camera doesn't offer much inherent advantage. For example, the Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.7 lens is visually equivalent to a hypothetical 85mm f/3.4 lens on a full frame (35mm) sensor. When I say equivalent, I mean these combinations would have the same practical field of view, the same depth of field, and—this is the part which trips people up—the same overall quantity of photons falling on the sensor area. Historically, larger sensors have been more efficient at converting said photons into data, but the difference has narrowed greatly to the point where it doesn't matter so much, particularly at the relatively modest resolution of 4K video (approximately 8.3—8.9 megapixels) where the limits of lens diffraction don't tend to come into play. Of course on full frame systems you can easily find inexpensive 85mm f/1.8 and very high quality f/1.4 lenses. But if you don't use the extra depth of field and you shoot FF at f/3.4 or greater, there was no fundamental benefit. (Of course you should never discount the glass advantage, as the mid-range FF glass tends to be optically superior to high-end MFT glass... but does that benefit apply to a new lens mount? Will these cameras do a good job focusing EF and/or F mount glass?)
  - romed 8y ago
    Doesn't the availability of speed boosters somewhat counteract the advantage of access to Canon and Nikkor lenses? I switched from a Nikon system to an Olympus m43 body and kept using all my old glass. Except for one particularly snazzy macro lens, I don't have any native m43 lenses.
    - sjwright 8y ago
      That is 100% correct. Another way (a better way in my opinion) is to think of a speed booster is it's a sensor size increaser. In effect a GH4 with a Metabones EF speed booster attached is effectively comparable to an EF camera with an APS-H size sensor (1.3x crop factor).
    - dllu 8y ago
      Yes, but only somewhat. A speedbooster is not optically perfect and may degrade image quality by introducing aberrations.
  - reneherse 8y ago
    Lower noise levels at high ISO are an advantage of FF. Very useful for shooting action in low light (e.g. sports and dance), where you need high shutter speeds to freeze motion.
    - romed 8y ago
      I think what you meant is that low noise and high ISO are advantages of large pixels. Larger sensors just happen to have more such pixels. If you where willing to eat the reduction in resolution, you'd get the same noise and sensitivity from any size sensor. For example, a 10MP APS-C sensor has the same sensitivity as a 25MP full frame sensor, all other things held equal.
      - NikolaNovak 8y ago
        Per pixel. Not overall. 25MP (or any resolution) full frame sensor with a (say) 1.8 lens will gather more photos than 10MP (or any resolution) APC sensor with a 1.8 lens.
- sjwright 8y ago
  If you're currently running a GH4, you should be more excited about the GH5S. It's not cheap but this future Pana FF is probably going to be more expensive again. You get a camera that does everything your GH4 does, but a lot better. The only thing it misses out on compared to the GH5 is sensor stabilisation, which your GH4 doesn't have anyway. You get the full benefit of all your existing glass. In fact you get more benefit because the effective crop factor of the GH4 in 4K is 2.3, whereas on the GH5S with the multi-aspect sensor it's between 1.8 and 2. It's a bigger sensor both physically and logically. Whereas a full frame Pana means an expensive body and a new glass collection, with barely any advantage over a GH4/GH5/GH5S with a speed booster.
  - eropple 8y ago
    The GH5/GH5S are interesting from a video point of view. I'm talking about as a photo-first camera; I assume the S1/S1R are going to inherit most of the GH5's photo-friendly stuff. My current glass is literally all tailored for video stuff--a bunch of those MFT 14-140 lenses, which I love for video but are nothing special for photography--so that isn't really a big concern for me right now. Also, I do like a good autofocus that I can then tweak; I haven't used a speed booster, but Metabones's own website suggests that it's not great.
    - sjwright 8y ago
      Fair enough, I assumed that because you have GH-series cameras your use is video because that's where they excel. They are perfectly fine stills cameras, but they aren't een the best stills cameras within the MFT ecosystem. A Panasonic full frame camera is interesting in the context of video. But for stills, I'm not sure I'd want to invest in an unproven system that has one of the most obscure lens mounts in the industry. Even if it can be adapted, autofocus performance is unlikely to be good—just look at the Sony cameras for evidence there.
      - eropple 8y ago
        That makes sense. The other option I'm considering is actually getting into Sony, as most of their mirrorless cameras can sub into my video workflow with no huge loss and I really like the feel and the results when I've borrowed even lower-end ones from friends.
romed 8y ago
Interesting. “Full” is a weird way of saying 35mm. Aside from that I’ve come to think that software beats hardware in photography. My m43 body can drive the sensor around using the IS actuators to take a high-resolution image with no color filter artifacts. With a speed booster and an old Nikkor lens there’s a stupefying amount of light hitting the sensor. Best pictures I’ve taken in my life and I’ve used all kinds of cameras. So what’s magic about “full” frame digital?
- aequitas 8y ago
  I'm in the market for m43 and have been reading into some of this. One of the things I get told is that full frame produces 'better looking' images due to differences in focal length. Things like certain bokeh effects that aps-c/m43 cannot achieve, even with wider apertures and zoom lenses. Also the sensor resolution trick only works on stationary subjects, so probably a no-go for sports photographers. But I'd love to hear otherwise, as m43 seems a lot more appealing to me, considering cost, weight and size.
  - erokar 8y ago
    The bigger the sensor, the more out of focus background (aka "bokeh") for any given aperture. Blurry background can sometimes be useful if you need to isolate a subject, bot often you want less of it, not more.
  - alistairSH 8y ago
    My hobbyist opinion... m4/3 has it's limits, but they are well beyond my limits as a once-a-month photographer. I'm currently shooting an Olympus OMD EM5ii (standard-sized body) and a PEN EP5 (smaller rangefinder-sized body). I primarily use the 12-40mm f2.8 Pro lens on the big body and either the 17mm f1.8 or 25mm f1.8 on the small body. All three lenses will produce pleasing bokeh. Sometimes, I have to run them wide-open to do so. But, at laptop-screen size, any CA or distortion isn't noticeable to the people looking at my photos (family and friends). Anyway, for me, m4/3 hit the sweet spot of price, size, and photo quality. I used to shoot a Canon DSLR (older Rebel crop-senor) and it was just too bulky to haul around on active vacations. I stopped carrying it, preferring a compact Canon S90. But, it wasn't flexible enough, especially indoors. So, I moved to an Olympus PEN EPL7 to try out m4/3. Loved the size of the complete kit, and traded it for the EM5ii after a year of use. Added the EP5 a bit later just to have a second body on hand (was used and cheap, so I'll carry it places I won't take the more expensive EM5ii).
jseliger 8y ago
There are a lot of interesting camera products being released right now—the Fuji X-T3 is another: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t3-first-impressions-review https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t3-first-impress.... I personally think most of these full-frame cameras are overly pricey, especially for the marginal gains over APS-C-sized cameras, but someone must be buying them.
- aczerepinski 8y ago
  I bought one (the Sony A73). For me, low-light performance was the big draw vs sticking with a cheaper crop sensor. I'm just a hobbyist photographer, but I kept getting disappointed by things like an indoor family gathering where if I didn't want to use a flash, I had to bump the ISO up to super-grainy and drop the shutter speed lower than what my kid can keep still for. With the A73 and a nice prime lens, I can go all the way to ISO 6400 with perfectly acceptable noise levels, and thanks to the great dynamic range, bring the shadows up further at my computer. It allows me to capture certain scenes that would be hard to get a "keeper" from at all on a crop. For well-lit outdoor photography, including sports & wildlife, I agree that the gains over a high-end APS-C are marginal. Even for portraits, the bokeh on a full-frame is going to be better, but it'd probably be fair to call it marginally better.
  - igouy 8y ago
    > … disappointed by things like an indoor family gathering where if I didn't want to use a flash… I didn't want to use flash at family gatherings because 1) I didn't want the disruption of flash spill in people's eyes 2) the aesthetics of hard flash shadow. Now I use bounce-flash close onto a wall and a half-snoot made from $1 artshop foam + elastic hair band, at base ISO. If they're too dark I'll make tifs across a range of EV and blend with https://wiki.panotools.org/Enfuse https://wiki.panotools.org/Enfuse
onemoresoop 8y ago
I wonder if this will increase the dynamic range? Anyone can answer this?
- petepete 8y ago
  It's the size of the pixel that matters, rather than the size of the sensor. Sensors with fewer pixels will perform better than the same sized sensors with more pixels simply because they each have a larger surface area and can capture more light.
microcolonel 8y ago
I keep saying it, but the first full-frame mirrorless camera with a fully-updated Android install (even if it is significantly modified to guarantee reliability/performance of the basic camera app) will absolutely dominate. Sony was half way there, but decided to ship Android 2.3 the whole time, and in their most recent α3-series cameras, it is no longer even part of the system (neither their locked down version, nor the jailbreak/third party app ecosystem). I'll keep sending the pitches to Sony folks until it's a thing, but sadly it seems that they're likely to wait until somebody else comes to market with it first.
Glyptodon 8y ago
Happy to see Panasonic competing with Sony in the full frame space, and glad to see they realize m4/3ds isn't really competing with full frame 90% of the time. Ergonomically speaking my m4/3ds camera is just too convenient for traveling and hiking and such to ever seriously consider a full frame option solely because of lens size differences: small lenses that perform pretty decently are the bee's knees, especially if you're lucky enough to have one of the models with a huge and decent viewfinder. Not interesting if massively increasing the size and weight I'd be carrying for full frame images.

49 points by petepete 8y ago

Wow. My video kit is a GH4, GH3, and G7 for live or recorded-to-external events, so I am plenty deep in hock to Panasonic. But I did not expect that they would have a way to get even more of my money. I've been considering a Sony full-frame as a photo camera with some backup video usage but Panasonic has so much goodwill with me that I will probably hold off until I can play with an S1 or S1R and make a decision. I don't get excited about cameras much anymore, but...dang.

seltzered_ 8y ago
Hoping this technology will eventually make its way to a prosumer mini camera like the lx10. I’ve been waiting for 4k60 with some form of built-in stabilization. Sorta wish GoPro would make something along this front given their investment in custom ASICS for hypersmooth - dream of something like a hero 7 with a bigger sensor size to deal with low light.
growlist 8y ago
I'm big into Lumix m4/3 and will be strongly considering this as I've had some beautiful shots out of my GF2 and more recently GX1, though that's probably a lot to do with the decent primes I use (20mm and 25mm). I doubt I'll be able to afford the rumoured £2k price tag at the outset but hopefully a year or two down the line. Also hoping there might be some cheap primes offered as there are for other systems - I read somewhere that (for some reason that escapes me now) m4/3 primes require more expensive glass, and my other half was able to get a decent Canon prime for less than half what I paid for my 20mm pancake.
sjwright 8y ago
Don't overestimate the value of full frame. Unless you're trying to get a shallower depth of field than you can achieve with your MFT lenses, a full frame camera doesn't offer much inherent advantage. For example, the Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.7 lens is visually equivalent to a hypothetical 85mm f/3.4 lens on a full frame (35mm) sensor. When I say equivalent, I mean these combinations would have the same practical field of view, the same depth of field, and—this is the part which trips people up—the same overall quantity of photons falling on the sensor area. Historically, larger sensors have been more efficient at converting said photons into data, but the difference has narrowed greatly to the point where it doesn't matter so much, particularly at the relatively modest resolution of 4K video (approximately 8.3—8.9 megapixels) where the limits of lens diffraction don't tend to come into play. Of course on full frame systems you can easily find inexpensive 85mm f/1.8 and very high quality f/1.4 lenses. But if you don't use the extra depth of field and you shoot FF at f/3.4 or greater, there was no fundamental benefit. (Of course you should never discount the glass advantage, as the mid-range FF glass tends to be optically superior to high-end MFT glass... but does that benefit apply to a new lens mount? Will these cameras do a good job focusing EF and/or F mount glass?)
- romed 8y ago
  Doesn't the availability of speed boosters somewhat counteract the advantage of access to Canon and Nikkor lenses? I switched from a Nikon system to an Olympus m43 body and kept using all my old glass. Except for one particularly snazzy macro lens, I don't have any native m43 lenses.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    That is 100% correct. Another way (a better way in my opinion) is to think of a speed booster is it's a sensor size increaser. In effect a GH4 with a Metabones EF speed booster attached is effectively comparable to an EF camera with an APS-H size sensor (1.3x crop factor).
  - dllu 8y ago
    Yes, but only somewhat. A speedbooster is not optically perfect and may degrade image quality by introducing aberrations.
- reneherse 8y ago
  Lower noise levels at high ISO are an advantage of FF. Very useful for shooting action in low light (e.g. sports and dance), where you need high shutter speeds to freeze motion.
  - romed 8y ago
    I think what you meant is that low noise and high ISO are advantages of large pixels. Larger sensors just happen to have more such pixels. If you where willing to eat the reduction in resolution, you'd get the same noise and sensitivity from any size sensor. For example, a 10MP APS-C sensor has the same sensitivity as a 25MP full frame sensor, all other things held equal.
    - NikolaNovak 8y ago
      Per pixel. Not overall. 25MP (or any resolution) full frame sensor with a (say) 1.8 lens will gather more photos than 10MP (or any resolution) APC sensor with a 1.8 lens.
sjwright 8y ago
If you're currently running a GH4, you should be more excited about the GH5S. It's not cheap but this future Pana FF is probably going to be more expensive again. You get a camera that does everything your GH4 does, but a lot better. The only thing it misses out on compared to the GH5 is sensor stabilisation, which your GH4 doesn't have anyway. You get the full benefit of all your existing glass. In fact you get more benefit because the effective crop factor of the GH4 in 4K is 2.3, whereas on the GH5S with the multi-aspect sensor it's between 1.8 and 2. It's a bigger sensor both physically and logically. Whereas a full frame Pana means an expensive body and a new glass collection, with barely any advantage over a GH4/GH5/GH5S with a speed booster.
- eropple 8y ago
  The GH5/GH5S are interesting from a video point of view. I'm talking about as a photo-first camera; I assume the S1/S1R are going to inherit most of the GH5's photo-friendly stuff. My current glass is literally all tailored for video stuff--a bunch of those MFT 14-140 lenses, which I love for video but are nothing special for photography--so that isn't really a big concern for me right now. Also, I do like a good autofocus that I can then tweak; I haven't used a speed booster, but Metabones's own website suggests that it's not great.
  - sjwright 8y ago
    Fair enough, I assumed that because you have GH-series cameras your use is video because that's where they excel. They are perfectly fine stills cameras, but they aren't een the best stills cameras within the MFT ecosystem. A Panasonic full frame camera is interesting in the context of video. But for stills, I'm not sure I'd want to invest in an unproven system that has one of the most obscure lens mounts in the industry. Even if it can be adapted, autofocus performance is unlikely to be good—just look at the Sony cameras for evidence there.
    - eropple 8y ago
      That makes sense. The other option I'm considering is actually getting into Sony, as most of their mirrorless cameras can sub into my video workflow with no huge loss and I really like the feel and the results when I've borrowed even lower-end ones from friends.

romed 8y ago

Interesting. “Full” is a weird way of saying 35mm. Aside from that I’ve come to think that software beats hardware in photography. My m43 body can drive the sensor around using the IS actuators to take a high-resolution image with no color filter artifacts. With a speed booster and an old Nikkor lens there’s a stupefying amount of light hitting the sensor. Best pictures I’ve taken in my life and I’ve used all kinds of cameras. So what’s magic about “full” frame digital?

aequitas 8y ago
I'm in the market for m43 and have been reading into some of this. One of the things I get told is that full frame produces 'better looking' images due to differences in focal length. Things like certain bokeh effects that aps-c/m43 cannot achieve, even with wider apertures and zoom lenses. Also the sensor resolution trick only works on stationary subjects, so probably a no-go for sports photographers. But I'd love to hear otherwise, as m43 seems a lot more appealing to me, considering cost, weight and size.
- erokar 8y ago
  The bigger the sensor, the more out of focus background (aka "bokeh") for any given aperture. Blurry background can sometimes be useful if you need to isolate a subject, bot often you want less of it, not more.
- alistairSH 8y ago
  My hobbyist opinion... m4/3 has it's limits, but they are well beyond my limits as a once-a-month photographer. I'm currently shooting an Olympus OMD EM5ii (standard-sized body) and a PEN EP5 (smaller rangefinder-sized body). I primarily use the 12-40mm f2.8 Pro lens on the big body and either the 17mm f1.8 or 25mm f1.8 on the small body. All three lenses will produce pleasing bokeh. Sometimes, I have to run them wide-open to do so. But, at laptop-screen size, any CA or distortion isn't noticeable to the people looking at my photos (family and friends). Anyway, for me, m4/3 hit the sweet spot of price, size, and photo quality. I used to shoot a Canon DSLR (older Rebel crop-senor) and it was just too bulky to haul around on active vacations. I stopped carrying it, preferring a compact Canon S90. But, it wasn't flexible enough, especially indoors. So, I moved to an Olympus PEN EPL7 to try out m4/3. Loved the size of the complete kit, and traded it for the EM5ii after a year of use. Added the EP5 a bit later just to have a second body on hand (was used and cheap, so I'll carry it places I won't take the more expensive EM5ii).

jseliger 8y ago

There are a lot of interesting camera products being released right now—the Fuji X-T3 is another: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t3-first-impressions-review https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilm-x-t3-first-impress.... I personally think most of these full-frame cameras are overly pricey, especially for the marginal gains over APS-C-sized cameras, but someone must be buying them.

aczerepinski 8y ago
I bought one (the Sony A73). For me, low-light performance was the big draw vs sticking with a cheaper crop sensor. I'm just a hobbyist photographer, but I kept getting disappointed by things like an indoor family gathering where if I didn't want to use a flash, I had to bump the ISO up to super-grainy and drop the shutter speed lower than what my kid can keep still for. With the A73 and a nice prime lens, I can go all the way to ISO 6400 with perfectly acceptable noise levels, and thanks to the great dynamic range, bring the shadows up further at my computer. It allows me to capture certain scenes that would be hard to get a "keeper" from at all on a crop. For well-lit outdoor photography, including sports & wildlife, I agree that the gains over a high-end APS-C are marginal. Even for portraits, the bokeh on a full-frame is going to be better, but it'd probably be fair to call it marginally better.
- igouy 8y ago
  > … disappointed by things like an indoor family gathering where if I didn't want to use a flash… I didn't want to use flash at family gatherings because 1) I didn't want the disruption of flash spill in people's eyes 2) the aesthetics of hard flash shadow. Now I use bounce-flash close onto a wall and a half-snoot made from $1 artshop foam + elastic hair band, at base ISO. If they're too dark I'll make tifs across a range of EV and blend with https://wiki.panotools.org/Enfuse https://wiki.panotools.org/Enfuse

onemoresoop 8y ago

I wonder if this will increase the dynamic range? Anyone can answer this?

petepete 8y ago
It's the size of the pixel that matters, rather than the size of the sensor. Sensors with fewer pixels will perform better than the same sized sensors with more pixels simply because they each have a larger surface area and can capture more light.

microcolonel 8y ago

I keep saying it, but the first full-frame mirrorless camera with a fully-updated Android install (even if it is significantly modified to guarantee reliability/performance of the basic camera app) will absolutely dominate. Sony was half way there, but decided to ship Android 2.3 the whole time, and in their most recent α3-series cameras, it is no longer even part of the system (neither their locked down version, nor the jailbreak/third party app ecosystem). I'll keep sending the pitches to Sony folks until it's a thing, but sadly it seems that they're likely to wait until somebody else comes to market with it first.

Glyptodon 8y ago

Happy to see Panasonic competing with Sony in the full frame space, and glad to see they realize m4/3ds isn't really competing with full frame 90% of the time. Ergonomically speaking my m4/3ds camera is just too convenient for traveling and hiking and such to ever seriously consider a full frame option solely because of lens size differences: small lenses that perform pretty decently are the bee's knees, especially if you're lucky enough to have one of the models with a huge and decent viewfinder. Not interesting if massively increasing the size and weight I'd be carrying for full frame images.