The internet camera reviewers dumped their reviews of the new Panasonic Lumix S9 after an expense paid trip to Osaka, Japan.
It’s a full-frame L-Mount camera of a small form factor. It features IBIS, 6K video, 24MP sensor, on par with S5II.
Photography-wise, no breakthrough. One exception is the possibility to add multiple LUT to apply to the image processing for SOOC JPEG. It’s like film emulation but customizable. A purely software feature. LUTs can be loaded from the card or using the companion LumixLab app, which also include the editing feature for the profiles that aren’t anywhere. The reliance on a “mobile app” remain a bad trend. The LUT feature is actually expanded from the Lunix S5II where it was limited in numbers (maximum of 10 vs 39 on the S9) and to V-log.
Panasonic also released an L-Mount pancake 26mm f/8 fixed aperture manual focus lens to make a compact setup. Beside, they announced a 18-40mm f/4.5-6.3 a compact zoom lens that would help keeping the camera compact.
Missing are a viewfinder, possibly a hot shoe (it’s cold, ie no connector, not even flash sync — to be fair this only prevent using a flash strobe) and the headphone jack. Compactness has a price.
For video, it targets “social media” and support many formats and aspect-ratios, including vertical (yikes!), and while the built in mic doesn’t seem to reach the levels of Sony’s, it has a mic input jack (but no headphones). Also it has a tilt screen (hi Fujifilm!), and you can apply the LUT mentioned above to your video footage. It uses the whole sensor in a 3:2 aspect ratio for video, that can be cropped and reframed to your preferred aspect-ratio. However it has recording time limits of 10 minutes if you use 6K mode, 15 minutes in 4k, and 20 minutes in 1080 that the S5II doesn’t have.
MSRP:
- 26mm f/8: USD$199
- Lumix S9: USD$1499
- 18-40mm: unknown
DPReview initial Panasonic S9 review
DPReview: Panasonic announces 26mm F8 body-cap manual lens and trails 18-40mm
On a personal matter, the lack of viewfinder remain for me a huge drawback as a photography camera. Otherwise if feels like a perfectly capable camera, and probably excel in video like most of the Panasonic lineup including in m4/3. And if you already have L-mount lenses, this could represent a great choice as a supplementary camera body, being a little less expensive than the Lumix S5II almost matching its capabilities. None of this opinion is based on hands-on use.