Towards the end of last year there were some fantastic deals on the full-frame Panasonic Lumix S5 cameras across the world. We have always keep a close watch on what Panasonic does in the camera space as they have a fantastic track record with their range of mirrorless cameras, no matter the sensor size. You only have to spend a short time searching and watching videos online to see that the Panasonic GH4 and GH5 were game changing when they were first released.
So when it came to replace some of our older and even brand new Sony cameras (a post for another day) we settled down and watched nearly every piece of Panasonic Lumix S5 content that was on Youtube.
After many late nights and too many talking heads to remember, we decided that for the price and deals that were offered it was a no brainer. The effort to replace our different Sony bodies and sell all our E-Mount lenses was worth the hassle to have full-frame, stabilised, 4K 10-bit video footage - with the exact same body and a couple of lenses.
I know many of you are already shouting at us from your device, don't you have an A7Siii that does all of that without a crop in higher frame rates and the stickiest autofocus known to man? Well, we did have that camera but sold it for probably the most fundamental reason of all - money.
For the price of a Sony A7Siii body, we managed to get one camera, 2 lenses (admittedly one lens was a kit-lens) and even with a tiny bit extra, another S5 body. That was before we sold any lenses.
Now that the price has gone back to "normal" - it might have been a bit of a harder sell, especially since the deal of the free nifty 50 is no longer around. We love a bargain though and the only thing we are really missing is auto focus.
And this whole post is just one really long-winded way to say that after 3 months that is the only downside for us. We have come up with a pretty nifty hack though - we just shoot deep. We are not afraid to set our f-stop to 5.6-8 if it means for our talking head shots we are near 100% confident that no matter what the person does, they will be in focus.
It has even forced us to be better camera operators by really work on our focus pulling, which has definitely been a nice bonus. Coupled with this point as well, having the extra cash in our back pocket means we are a little bit closer to purchasing some cinema lenses, which means we automatically lose autofocus, no matter what body we use. Whilst we are speaking of lenses as well, most exciting of all is the fact that with the anamorphic modes inside the camera, we can also grab some of these lenses and really get our cinema on.
And finally, we love editing our videos in Davinci, and with the ability to grab a BlackMagic video recorder, we can also get BRAW out of this camera - something which still isn't available on the Sony cameras at the moment.
Does anyone want to swap our Ninja V for Black Magic Recorder?
So to close this off, would we have changed if it wasn't for the price? Probably not, we would have just saved and saved for a second A7Siii and got rid of our A7iii. But now with Panasonic, we are much closer to where we wanted to be without hurting our wallets.