Panasonic Lumix G9II - - Hands on first look!
**Using LUTs with Your Camera**
Many photographers want to add a specific color effect to their images, but they may not know how to achieve this using their camera's built-in settings. Fortunately, you can use LUT (Look Up Table) files to enhance your photos. These files allow you to apply a specific look or color palette to your images, giving them a unique and professional finish. If you're looking for a way to add some color effect to your photos without having to resort to post-processing software, using LUTs is a great option.
If you're new to LUTs, it's worth noting that they can be used with cameras that read the real-time LUTs, which allows you to apply a specific look or color palette to your images as you take them. This feature is available on Panasonic cameras, and it offers a tremendous amount of flexibility for photographers who want to achieve a specific look or style in their images.
**Panasonic G9 vs G92**
In this article, we'll be focusing on the Panasonic G9, but I'll also mention some key differences between the G9 and its successor, the G92. The G9 is a great camera that still holds up today, with many of its features remaining unchanged from previous models. However, there are a few things that have been lost or changed in the latest iteration.
One thing that's missing from the G92 is the viewfinder on the original G9. While the new viewfinder on the G92 is excellent, I miss the ability to select the eye point it would show. This feature was a great option for photographers who wore glasses and wanted to adjust the display accordingly. Another thing I really miss is the top-level display that was present on the G9. It was one of the best displays I've seen on any camera, with a backlight that made it easy to read in bright conditions.
**Additional Features Lost from the G9**
In addition to these display-related features, there are a few other things that have been lost or changed in the latest iteration. The front mode switch, which was customizable, has also gone missing. This feature allowed you to change the exposure compensation on the fly using a button on the back of the camera. While it wasn't something I used often, I think it's an interesting feature that many photographers might appreciate.
Finally, there are the 6K and 8K photo modes that were present on previous Panasonic cameras. These features allowed you to shoot high-speed video and then pull a still image from that footage as a JPEG file. However, with the latest models, these features have been replaced by better autofocus and continuous shooting capabilities.
**The Benefits of Micro Four Thirds**
Despite the loss of some features in the G92, I still believe that micro four thirds is an excellent format for photographers who want to shoot compact and portable systems without sacrificing image quality. With a wide range of lenses available, you can get a big performance boost with a travel setup that's easy to carry. The Panasonic G9 II, in particular, offers some impressive features that make it a great option for those who want to stay within the micro four thirds format.
**Conclusion**
In this article, we've taken a first look at the Panasonic G92 and explored its key features and benefits. While there are some changes from the original G9, I believe that the G92 is still an excellent camera that offers many of the same advantages as its predecessor. With its improved autofocus and continuous shooting capabilities, it's a great option for photographers who want to shoot high-speed video and capture a wide range of focal lengths in a compact system.
As we move forward with our review of the G92, I'd love to hear from you! What features are most important to you when choosing a camera? Do you have any experience with micro four thirds or Panasonic cameras in general? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthank you so this is the new Lumix g92 from Panasonic micro four thirds is definitely alive and well with this new photo Centric camera the Lumix g92 features a 25.2 megapixel image sensor and a new processing engine this is also the very first Lumix micro four thirds camera to finally feature hybrid phase detection autofocus with iaf for both human and animals we've got car and motorcycle detection as well you can shoot up to 60 frames per second burst speed that's in AFC mode it also does 75 frames per second in AFS as well as pre-burst shooting the camera also gives us an 8 stop 5-axis in-body image stabilization we've got a 3.6 million dot OLED evf and a 1.8 million dot fully articulating monitor video support is also very impressive for what they're essentially marketing is a still Centric camera this camera features 5.8 K open gate recording VL log Vlog gamut video profiles USB SSD recording capabilities and you can shoot up to 4K Cinema 4K at 120p video in 10 bit welcome back everyone so it has been a while but we finally have the follow-up to the Panasonic Lumix G9 this is the G9 II it's going to look a lot like the s52 in many ways and we're going to get to that in a second I want to say a couple words about the G9 in general about five years ago back in 2018 I did my full review on the Lumix G9 it was a camera that I was very impressed with a lot of times we think of Panasonic as building more video Centric cameras you know we have things like the gh5 the gh52 the gh6 now and then with the S5 and Panasonic has said that they've moved into the video realm in a lot of ways the G9 however was a Stills based micro four thirds camera and it was really good in fact I went as far as to say that it was one of the better camera bodies to come out that year and the only thing that was holding Panasonic back at that time was the lack of phase detection autofocus and I think for Stills photography depending on what kind of a shooter you are that was probably fine to use the DFD system if you didn't need a lot of continuous autofocus and that was one thing that kept a lot of people from getting into that system well Panasonic have finally broken through that we now have a hybrid face detection autofocus system it is incredible the original G9 is an outstanding camera and I think in many ways considering its age it still holds up today now we have the next incarnation of this and it's even better so let's dig down and talk about the g92 so at first glance you're probably going to notice that the g92 uses pretty much the exact same body as the S5 II I think this is actually a pretty good decision on Panasonic Lumix behalf the only difference that you're going to see here is actually in the viewfinder housing now on the s52 you're going to see vents that are cut into here now that is a video Centric camera and the reason behind that is cooling now that is gone on the g92 it is a completely sealed off design and Panasonic decide to go this way because they wanted a more weather sealed approach since this is mainly a Stills camera they felt that talking with photographers they worked with they found that Moore had a desire for weather sealing than they did ventilation so that is an advantage to this camera for still shooting if you're familiar with the s52 you're going to notice that the layout is very similar on the top of the camera on the left hand side we have our Drive selection mode on the right hand side we've got our mode selection dial on and off switch video recording on and off and the traditional three button switches that Panasonic is known for white balance ISO as well as exposure compensation we've got front and rear dials on the top and on the back side the layout is also the same now one of the things that I really love about Panasonic cameras is the way they handle the autofocus selection switch so you have an outer ring for selecting between single continuous or manual focus and then you have a button in the middle and this will get you to all of your autofocus options I think this is a really clean layout I really love the way Panasonic have so far done face detection autofocus it's very simple it's very straightforward there's not a lot of menu options to dive into and it really just works now you do have independent autofocus controls that are customizable in the menus and they're very simple you can adjust the autofocus sensitivity for Stills autofocus area switching sensitivity and the moving subject prediction and I've found that in general once you get this set up the way you like it it's a set it and forget it kind of thing and I really love that about lumix's it never becomes confusing like you see with other camera brands sometimes now a few observations and first impressions with autofocus I've had this camera for a few weeks now generally when you're testing a new system you're using some kind of point of comparison in your mind and I have used a lot of Lumix cameras in the past there's a lot of things that they offer that I've really enjoyed now you're used to the DFD contrast based autofocus system you have little workarounds for things and I have to say it is so awesome and this is night and day difference this is the autofocus system that should have been in Lumix cameras years ago and I commend them for finally coming around and putting a phase detection autofocus system in here it's very fast it's very responsive it's good enough to use in video finally these are things that were very difficult before to work around and it's just there now and this is awesome now as I mentioned earlier Panasonic are positioning the G9 series as more of a Stills based series of camera in other words the priority is for the still photographer that's not to say that it has bad video the video specs on this are still way better than what you're going to see on most full-frame cameras the fact that you can shoot up to 120 frames per second with no crop at all is pretty amazing a lot of that has to do with sensor readout speeds and as you know the micro four third sensor is much smaller so it has a faster readout because of its physical size so this allows us to do a lot more with it like for instance with the S5 II and just about all the other 24 megapixel sensors out there that are not Stacks sensor configurations the crop has to happen when you get into 60 frames per second and it's a speed issue and so you don't have that with these cameras the ability to shoot open gate on these in other words you're going to use the entire sensor the only drawback in terms of video on this camera I would say would be the fact that it is not ventilated and they went with the option to make this more weather sealed and so you might run into issues if you're trying to film for long periods of time I have not tested that I have shot a lot of video on here but I haven't like actually put it through the paces because it's absolutely boring and asinine to sit there for an hour waiting for this to overheat and I have other things to do and I think there's more interesting things about this camera but I will say that's probably going to be the limitation like the G9 didn't have v-log for instance we've got v-log now so this is a very capable camera for video and I think that that makes it a pretty good alternative for photographers who do want to shoot some video and do some hybrid stuff and they can actually push it pretty far I think they'd be very happy with this setup the G9 did video pretty well this one does it even better it's just not a video Centric camera let's say now another point that I want to address because I know this is going to be a question with a lot of people is that we're using the same body design as essentially a full-frame camera with the s52 so what is the point of micro four thirds and this seems to be everyone one's favorite argument marketing within the camera industry has told us that full frame is by far the best system for use over the last couple years and I make the argument that there still really is a case for micro four thirds and I'm really happy to see this camera come out now a lot of people will say well what is the point of using what's essentially a full-frame camera body for a micro fourth his third system because isn't the promise of micro four thirds to have really tiny cameras well yeah you could say that but the problem with really tiny cameras is heat dispersion and so anytime you're getting into video if you're going to put when you get into Pro specs into a video camera you want to have pro video performance and having a camera overheat is a problem across the line for a lot of cameras and so the body size might be bigger but one of the arguments that I will make for micro four thirds is that your lenses stay a lot smaller case in points so Panasonic also released three new lenses today for this system this is the 12 to 35 F 2.8 it's a constant aperture and this is the 30 25 to 100 millimeter constant aperture F28 so think of this in full frame equivalents as this being a 2470 and this being a 70 to 200 and look at the size I mean these are smaller than a full frame Prime these are really awesome and they're lightweight they look incredible these are redesigns of two lenses that have already been in the lineup highly recommended I'll do another video on the lenses as I've had a little more time with the camera they also released a 100 to 400 millimeter that I'm really excited about I don't have that version yet but when I do I will do a follow-up with the micro four thirds lenses if you guys are interested in some other major improvements over the original G9 in terms of color options with this camera so we've got a new Leica monochrome photo style that looks really good if you want a high contrast black and white look this has been a lot of fun to shoot with this does come out of the collaboration that like in Panasonic have together and it looks really awesome now we also have the new real-time Lut support and it's just like we saw in the Panasonic s52 now what this allows you to do is it allows you to bring in your own Luts or color lookup tables you can store these on the SD card the camera will read them from the card you put them into memory and then you can select them for when you're shooting in jpeg now what's really cool about this is for people who don't like to do a lot of editing and post and want to just shoot and have a file they can use but they want to have some kind of color effect then you can use your own Lut files now I get a lot of questions because many of you know that I have my two Lut packs my kodakified and fujified which are Kodak simulations as well as Fuji simulations these I designed for camera raw and you can run them in Lightroom or capture one I've gotten asked quite a bit if I'm going to make these available for the Panasonic cameras that read the real-time Luts the short answer is yes I am working on those right now this is something that I've been really excited about as an option for these cameras you can shoot in jpeg plus raw and you can get the look in the jpeg file and of course in raw you can use presets or Reddit however you want later but it gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility it's taken me a little bit of time to get the Luts to look just right but within the next month or so here I will have those available so subscribe stay tuned whatever and I'll let you know as soon as they're ready so back to the original G9 for a second because there's a couple things that I want to point out as I said I really like that camera I think it holds up today this camera clearly does more it's got better autofocus there's a lot of things to love about the g92 but there are a few things that unfortunately are gone and I want to talk about that for a second so what is now gone from the original G9 so first of all is the viewfinder now the viewfinder on the g92 is awesome but the one on the original one thing I really loved about it was you had this great viewfinder and you could actually select the eye point that it would show so this was great if you wanted a bigger display and you're not wearing glasses and you want to pull it back a little bit if you are wearing glasses as someone who wears glasses when they photograph sometimes that is a big deal to me it's not a deal breaker on this camera but I do miss it one thing I really do miss though is the top level display that was something that we had on the G9 and it was incredible and it was also backlit it was one of the best top level displays I've seen on any camera and of course it's gone now because the ergonomics of the camera changed the button layout the UI everything has changed and there is no top level display on here it does keep the body size down and in all fairness the G9 was a pretty big body it's not a deal breaker for me but that is something I actually really miss the G9 also had a front mode switch which was customizable I thought this was a great idea in theory I'll be honest I didn't use it very much but it is something that we don't have anymore and of course there is the old famous 6K and 8K photo modes that we saw in Panasonic cameras Panasonic has moved into a new Direction and while I think that the 6K photo mode was a great workaround for high-speed shooting it wasn't ideal it basically shot a video clip with a high frame rate on it and it allowed you to pull a still as a JPEG from that video file I prefer to shoot everything in raw and you just don't need it anymore because these cameras will do well this one will do up to 60 frames per second continuous that's if you you're in AFC or autofocus continuous if you're in AFS and you don't need the fast autofocus then you can get up to 75 frames per second so it's really not needed anymore and these perform just fine especially when you consider how much we're actually gaining with the G9 II now again I know that Marketing in the camera industry will tell you that micro four thirds is old school and you've got to be full frame to be cool I don't know that I agree with that completely as I made the case for in this entire video they're still very much is a use case for micro four thirds I'm very happy to see this camera come out it's something that I still use in specific situations and to get a big performance boost like this out of these cameras when you consider a travel setup where you want to take a wide range of focal lengths and you don't want to carry a whole lot of stuff I think when you combine these lenses with they albeit larger body you're still having very Compact and very portable system I would love to know what you guys think this has just been a first look at this camera I will talk about it some more and do a full review as we've gotten into it a little bit but I would love to hear from you so drop me a comment below until the next video I will see you guys then laterthank you so this is the new Lumix g92 from Panasonic micro four thirds is definitely alive and well with this new photo Centric camera the Lumix g92 features a 25.2 megapixel image sensor and a new processing engine this is also the very first Lumix micro four thirds camera to finally feature hybrid phase detection autofocus with iaf for both human and animals we've got car and motorcycle detection as well you can shoot up to 60 frames per second burst speed that's in AFC mode it also does 75 frames per second in AFS as well as pre-burst shooting the camera also gives us an 8 stop 5-axis in-body image stabilization we've got a 3.6 million dot OLED evf and a 1.8 million dot fully articulating monitor video support is also very impressive for what they're essentially marketing is a still Centric camera this camera features 5.8 K open gate recording VL log Vlog gamut video profiles USB SSD recording capabilities and you can shoot up to 4K Cinema 4K at 120p video in 10 bit welcome back everyone so it has been a while but we finally have the follow-up to the Panasonic Lumix G9 this is the G9 II it's going to look a lot like the s52 in many ways and we're going to get to that in a second I want to say a couple words about the G9 in general about five years ago back in 2018 I did my full review on the Lumix G9 it was a camera that I was very impressed with a lot of times we think of Panasonic as building more video Centric cameras you know we have things like the gh5 the gh52 the gh6 now and then with the S5 and Panasonic has said that they've moved into the video realm in a lot of ways the G9 however was a Stills based micro four thirds camera and it was really good in fact I went as far as to say that it was one of the better camera bodies to come out that year and the only thing that was holding Panasonic back at that time was the lack of phase detection autofocus and I think for Stills photography depending on what kind of a shooter you are that was probably fine to use the DFD system if you didn't need a lot of continuous autofocus and that was one thing that kept a lot of people from getting into that system well Panasonic have finally broken through that we now have a hybrid face detection autofocus system it is incredible the original G9 is an outstanding camera and I think in many ways considering its age it still holds up today now we have the next incarnation of this and it's even better so let's dig down and talk about the g92 so at first glance you're probably going to notice that the g92 uses pretty much the exact same body as the S5 II I think this is actually a pretty good decision on Panasonic Lumix behalf the only difference that you're going to see here is actually in the viewfinder housing now on the s52 you're going to see vents that are cut into here now that is a video Centric camera and the reason behind that is cooling now that is gone on the g92 it is a completely sealed off design and Panasonic decide to go this way because they wanted a more weather sealed approach since this is mainly a Stills camera they felt that talking with photographers they worked with they found that Moore had a desire for weather sealing than they did ventilation so that is an advantage to this camera for still shooting if you're familiar with the s52 you're going to notice that the layout is very similar on the top of the camera on the left hand side we have our Drive selection mode on the right hand side we've got our mode selection dial on and off switch video recording on and off and the traditional three button switches that Panasonic is known for white balance ISO as well as exposure compensation we've got front and rear dials on the top and on the back side the layout is also the same now one of the things that I really love about Panasonic cameras is the way they handle the autofocus selection switch so you have an outer ring for selecting between single continuous or manual focus and then you have a button in the middle and this will get you to all of your autofocus options I think this is a really clean layout I really love the way Panasonic have so far done face detection autofocus it's very simple it's very straightforward there's not a lot of menu options to dive into and it really just works now you do have independent autofocus controls that are customizable in the menus and they're very simple you can adjust the autofocus sensitivity for Stills autofocus area switching sensitivity and the moving subject prediction and I've found that in general once you get this set up the way you like it it's a set it and forget it kind of thing and I really love that about lumix's it never becomes confusing like you see with other camera brands sometimes now a few observations and first impressions with autofocus I've had this camera for a few weeks now generally when you're testing a new system you're using some kind of point of comparison in your mind and I have used a lot of Lumix cameras in the past there's a lot of things that they offer that I've really enjoyed now you're used to the DFD contrast based autofocus system you have little workarounds for things and I have to say it is so awesome and this is night and day difference this is the autofocus system that should have been in Lumix cameras years ago and I commend them for finally coming around and putting a phase detection autofocus system in here it's very fast it's very responsive it's good enough to use in video finally these are things that were very difficult before to work around and it's just there now and this is awesome now as I mentioned earlier Panasonic are positioning the G9 series as more of a Stills based series of camera in other words the priority is for the still photographer that's not to say that it has bad video the video specs on this are still way better than what you're going to see on most full-frame cameras the fact that you can shoot up to 120 frames per second with no crop at all is pretty amazing a lot of that has to do with sensor readout speeds and as you know the micro four third sensor is much smaller so it has a faster readout because of its physical size so this allows us to do a lot more with it like for instance with the S5 II and just about all the other 24 megapixel sensors out there that are not Stacks sensor configurations the crop has to happen when you get into 60 frames per second and it's a speed issue and so you don't have that with these cameras the ability to shoot open gate on these in other words you're going to use the entire sensor the only drawback in terms of video on this camera I would say would be the fact that it is not ventilated and they went with the option to make this more weather sealed and so you might run into issues if you're trying to film for long periods of time I have not tested that I have shot a lot of video on here but I haven't like actually put it through the paces because it's absolutely boring and asinine to sit there for an hour waiting for this to overheat and I have other things to do and I think there's more interesting things about this camera but I will say that's probably going to be the limitation like the G9 didn't have v-log for instance we've got v-log now so this is a very capable camera for video and I think that that makes it a pretty good alternative for photographers who do want to shoot some video and do some hybrid stuff and they can actually push it pretty far I think they'd be very happy with this setup the G9 did video pretty well this one does it even better it's just not a video Centric camera let's say now another point that I want to address because I know this is going to be a question with a lot of people is that we're using the same body design as essentially a full-frame camera with the s52 so what is the point of micro four thirds and this seems to be everyone one's favorite argument marketing within the camera industry has told us that full frame is by far the best system for use over the last couple years and I make the argument that there still really is a case for micro four thirds and I'm really happy to see this camera come out now a lot of people will say well what is the point of using what's essentially a full-frame camera body for a micro fourth his third system because isn't the promise of micro four thirds to have really tiny cameras well yeah you could say that but the problem with really tiny cameras is heat dispersion and so anytime you're getting into video if you're going to put when you get into Pro specs into a video camera you want to have pro video performance and having a camera overheat is a problem across the line for a lot of cameras and so the body size might be bigger but one of the arguments that I will make for micro four thirds is that your lenses stay a lot smaller case in points so Panasonic also released three new lenses today for this system this is the 12 to 35 F 2.8 it's a constant aperture and this is the 30 25 to 100 millimeter constant aperture F28 so think of this in full frame equivalents as this being a 2470 and this being a 70 to 200 and look at the size I mean these are smaller than a full frame Prime these are really awesome and they're lightweight they look incredible these are redesigns of two lenses that have already been in the lineup highly recommended I'll do another video on the lenses as I've had a little more time with the camera they also released a 100 to 400 millimeter that I'm really excited about I don't have that version yet but when I do I will do a follow-up with the micro four thirds lenses if you guys are interested in some other major improvements over the original G9 in terms of color options with this camera so we've got a new Leica monochrome photo style that looks really good if you want a high contrast black and white look this has been a lot of fun to shoot with this does come out of the collaboration that like in Panasonic have together and it looks really awesome now we also have the new real-time Lut support and it's just like we saw in the Panasonic s52 now what this allows you to do is it allows you to bring in your own Luts or color lookup tables you can store these on the SD card the camera will read them from the card you put them into memory and then you can select them for when you're shooting in jpeg now what's really cool about this is for people who don't like to do a lot of editing and post and want to just shoot and have a file they can use but they want to have some kind of color effect then you can use your own Lut files now I get a lot of questions because many of you know that I have my two Lut packs my kodakified and fujified which are Kodak simulations as well as Fuji simulations these I designed for camera raw and you can run them in Lightroom or capture one I've gotten asked quite a bit if I'm going to make these available for the Panasonic cameras that read the real-time Luts the short answer is yes I am working on those right now this is something that I've been really excited about as an option for these cameras you can shoot in jpeg plus raw and you can get the look in the jpeg file and of course in raw you can use presets or Reddit however you want later but it gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility it's taken me a little bit of time to get the Luts to look just right but within the next month or so here I will have those available so subscribe stay tuned whatever and I'll let you know as soon as they're ready so back to the original G9 for a second because there's a couple things that I want to point out as I said I really like that camera I think it holds up today this camera clearly does more it's got better autofocus there's a lot of things to love about the g92 but there are a few things that unfortunately are gone and I want to talk about that for a second so what is now gone from the original G9 so first of all is the viewfinder now the viewfinder on the g92 is awesome but the one on the original one thing I really loved about it was you had this great viewfinder and you could actually select the eye point that it would show so this was great if you wanted a bigger display and you're not wearing glasses and you want to pull it back a little bit if you are wearing glasses as someone who wears glasses when they photograph sometimes that is a big deal to me it's not a deal breaker on this camera but I do miss it one thing I really do miss though is the top level display that was something that we had on the G9 and it was incredible and it was also backlit it was one of the best top level displays I've seen on any camera and of course it's gone now because the ergonomics of the camera changed the button layout the UI everything has changed and there is no top level display on here it does keep the body size down and in all fairness the G9 was a pretty big body it's not a deal breaker for me but that is something I actually really miss the G9 also had a front mode switch which was customizable I thought this was a great idea in theory I'll be honest I didn't use it very much but it is something that we don't have anymore and of course there is the old famous 6K and 8K photo modes that we saw in Panasonic cameras Panasonic has moved into a new Direction and while I think that the 6K photo mode was a great workaround for high-speed shooting it wasn't ideal it basically shot a video clip with a high frame rate on it and it allowed you to pull a still as a JPEG from that video file I prefer to shoot everything in raw and you just don't need it anymore because these cameras will do well this one will do up to 60 frames per second continuous that's if you you're in AFC or autofocus continuous if you're in AFS and you don't need the fast autofocus then you can get up to 75 frames per second so it's really not needed anymore and these perform just fine especially when you consider how much we're actually gaining with the G9 II now again I know that Marketing in the camera industry will tell you that micro four thirds is old school and you've got to be full frame to be cool I don't know that I agree with that completely as I made the case for in this entire video they're still very much is a use case for micro four thirds I'm very happy to see this camera come out it's something that I still use in specific situations and to get a big performance boost like this out of these cameras when you consider a travel setup where you want to take a wide range of focal lengths and you don't want to carry a whole lot of stuff I think when you combine these lenses with they albeit larger body you're still having very Compact and very portable system I would love to know what you guys think this has just been a first look at this camera I will talk about it some more and do a full review as we've gotten into it a little bit but I would love to hear from you so drop me a comment below until the next video I will see you guys then laterthank you so this is the new Lumix g92 from Panasonic micro four thirds is definitely alive and well with this new photo Centric camera the Lumix g92 features a 25.2 megapixel image sensor and a new processing engine this is also the very first Lumix micro four thirds camera to finally feature hybrid phase detection autofocus with iaf for both human and animals we've got car and motorcycle detection as well you can shoot up to 60 frames per second burst speed that's in AFC mode it also does 75 frames per second in AFS as well as pre-burst shooting the camera also gives us an 8 stop 5-axis in-body image stabilization we've got a 3.6 million dot OLED evf and a 1.8 million dot fully articulating monitor video support is also very impressive for what they're essentially marketing is a still Centric camera this camera features 5.8 K open gate recording VL log Vlog gamut video profiles USB SSD recording capabilities and you can shoot up to 4K Cinema 4K at 120p video in 10 bit welcome back everyone so it has been a while but we finally have the follow-up to the Panasonic Lumix G9 this is the G9 II it's going to look a lot like the s52 in many ways and we're going to get to that in a second I want to say a couple words about the G9 in general about five years ago back in 2018 I did my full review on the Lumix G9 it was a camera that I was very impressed with a lot of times we think of Panasonic as building more video Centric cameras you know we have things like the gh5 the gh52 the gh6 now and then with the S5 and Panasonic has said that they've moved into the video realm in a lot of ways the G9 however was a Stills based micro four thirds camera and it was really good in fact I went as far as to say that it was one of the better camera bodies to come out that year and the only thing that was holding Panasonic back at that time was the lack of phase detection autofocus and I think for Stills photography depending on what kind of a shooter you are that was probably fine to use the DFD system if you didn't need a lot of continuous autofocus and that was one thing that kept a lot of people from getting into that system well Panasonic have finally broken through that we now have a hybrid face detection autofocus system it is incredible the original G9 is an outstanding camera and I think in many ways considering its age it still holds up today now we have the next incarnation of this and it's even better so let's dig down and talk about the g92 so at first glance you're probably going to notice that the g92 uses pretty much the exact same body as the S5 II I think this is actually a pretty good decision on Panasonic Lumix behalf the only difference that you're going to see here is actually in the viewfinder housing now on the s52 you're going to see vents that are cut into here now that is a video Centric camera and the reason behind that is cooling now that is gone on the g92 it is a completely sealed off design and Panasonic decide to go this way because they wanted a more weather sealed approach since this is mainly a Stills camera they felt that talking with photographers they worked with they found that Moore had a desire for weather sealing than they did ventilation so that is an advantage to this camera for still shooting if you're familiar with the s52 you're going to notice that the layout is very similar on the top of the camera on the left hand side we have our Drive selection mode on the right hand side we've got our mode selection dial on and off switch video recording on and off and the traditional three button switches that Panasonic is known for white balance ISO as well as exposure compensation we've got front and rear dials on the top and on the back side the layout is also the same now one of the things that I really love about Panasonic cameras is the way they handle the autofocus selection switch so you have an outer ring for selecting between single continuous or manual focus and then you have a button in the middle and this will get you to all of your autofocus options I think this is a really clean layout I really love the way Panasonic have so far done face detection autofocus it's very simple it's very straightforward there's not a lot of menu options to dive into and it really just works now you do have independent autofocus controls that are customizable in the menus and they're very simple you can adjust the autofocus sensitivity for Stills autofocus area switching sensitivity and the moving subject prediction and I've found that in general once you get this set up the way you like it it's a set it and forget it kind of thing and I really love that about lumix's it never becomes confusing like you see with other camera brands sometimes now a few observations and first impressions with autofocus I've had this camera for a few weeks now generally when you're testing a new system you're using some kind of point of comparison in your mind and I have used a lot of Lumix cameras in the past there's a lot of things that they offer that I've really enjoyed now you're used to the DFD contrast based autofocus system you have little workarounds for things and I have to say it is so awesome and this is night and day difference this is the autofocus system that should have been in Lumix cameras years ago and I commend them for finally coming around and putting a phase detection autofocus system in here it's very fast it's very responsive it's good enough to use in video finally these are things that were very difficult before to work around and it's just there now and this is awesome now as I mentioned earlier Panasonic are positioning the G9 series as more of a Stills based series of camera in other words the priority is for the still photographer that's not to say that it has bad video the video specs on this are still way better than what you're going to see on most full-frame cameras the fact that you can shoot up to 120 frames per second with no crop at all is pretty amazing a lot of that has to do with sensor readout speeds and as you know the micro four third sensor is much smaller so it has a faster readout because of its physical size so this allows us to do a lot more with it like for instance with the S5 II and just about all the other 24 megapixel sensors out there that are not Stacks sensor configurations the crop has to happen when you get into 60 frames per second and it's a speed issue and so you don't have that with these cameras the ability to shoot open gate on these in other words you're going to use the entire sensor the only drawback in terms of video on this camera I would say would be the fact that it is not ventilated and they went with the option to make this more weather sealed and so you might run into issues if you're trying to film for long periods of time I have not tested that I have shot a lot of video on here but I haven't like actually put it through the paces because it's absolutely boring and asinine to sit there for an hour waiting for this to overheat and I have other things to do and I think there's more interesting things about this camera but I will say that's probably going to be the limitation like the G9 didn't have v-log for instance we've got v-log now so this is a very capable camera for video and I think that that makes it a pretty good alternative for photographers who do want to shoot some video and do some hybrid stuff and they can actually push it pretty far I think they'd be very happy with this setup the G9 did video pretty well this one does it even better it's just not a video Centric camera let's say now another point that I want to address because I know this is going to be a question with a lot of people is that we're using the same body design as essentially a full-frame camera with the s52 so what is the point of micro four thirds and this seems to be everyone one's favorite argument marketing within the camera industry has told us that full frame is by far the best system for use over the last couple years and I make the argument that there still really is a case for micro four thirds and I'm really happy to see this camera come out now a lot of people will say well what is the point of using what's essentially a full-frame camera body for a micro fourth his third system because isn't the promise of micro four thirds to have really tiny cameras well yeah you could say that but the problem with really tiny cameras is heat dispersion and so anytime you're getting into video if you're going to put when you get into Pro specs into a video camera you want to have pro video performance and having a camera overheat is a problem across the line for a lot of cameras and so the body size might be bigger but one of the arguments that I will make for micro four thirds is that your lenses stay a lot smaller case in points so Panasonic also released three new lenses today for this system this is the 12 to 35 F 2.8 it's a constant aperture and this is the 30 25 to 100 millimeter constant aperture F28 so think of this in full frame equivalents as this being a 2470 and this being a 70 to 200 and look at the size I mean these are smaller than a full frame Prime these are really awesome and they're lightweight they look incredible these are redesigns of two lenses that have already been in the lineup highly recommended I'll do another video on the lenses as I've had a little more time with the camera they also released a 100 to 400 millimeter that I'm really excited about I don't have that version yet but when I do I will do a follow-up with the micro four thirds lenses if you guys are interested in some other major improvements over the original G9 in terms of color options with this camera so we've got a new Leica monochrome photo style that looks really good if you want a high contrast black and white look this has been a lot of fun to shoot with this does come out of the collaboration that like in Panasonic have together and it looks really awesome now we also have the new real-time Lut support and it's just like we saw in the Panasonic s52 now what this allows you to do is it allows you to bring in your own Luts or color lookup tables you can store these on the SD card the camera will read them from the card you put them into memory and then you can select them for when you're shooting in jpeg now what's really cool about this is for people who don't like to do a lot of editing and post and want to just shoot and have a file they can use but they want to have some kind of color effect then you can use your own Lut files now I get a lot of questions because many of you know that I have my two Lut packs my kodakified and fujified which are Kodak simulations as well as Fuji simulations these I designed for camera raw and you can run them in Lightroom or capture one I've gotten asked quite a bit if I'm going to make these available for the Panasonic cameras that read the real-time Luts the short answer is yes I am working on those right now this is something that I've been really excited about as an option for these cameras you can shoot in jpeg plus raw and you can get the look in the jpeg file and of course in raw you can use presets or Reddit however you want later but it gives you a tremendous amount of flexibility it's taken me a little bit of time to get the Luts to look just right but within the next month or so here I will have those available so subscribe stay tuned whatever and I'll let you know as soon as they're ready so back to the original G9 for a second because there's a couple things that I want to point out as I said I really like that camera I think it holds up today this camera clearly does more it's got better autofocus there's a lot of things to love about the g92 but there are a few things that unfortunately are gone and I want to talk about that for a second so what is now gone from the original G9 so first of all is the viewfinder now the viewfinder on the g92 is awesome but the one on the original one thing I really loved about it was you had this great viewfinder and you could actually select the eye point that it would show so this was great if you wanted a bigger display and you're not wearing glasses and you want to pull it back a little bit if you are wearing glasses as someone who wears glasses when they photograph sometimes that is a big deal to me it's not a deal breaker on this camera but I do miss it one thing I really do miss though is the top level display that was something that we had on the G9 and it was incredible and it was also backlit it was one of the best top level displays I've seen on any camera and of course it's gone now because the ergonomics of the camera changed the button layout the UI everything has changed and there is no top level display on here it does keep the body size down and in all fairness the G9 was a pretty big body it's not a deal breaker for me but that is something I actually really miss the G9 also had a front mode switch which was customizable I thought this was a great idea in theory I'll be honest I didn't use it very much but it is something that we don't have anymore and of course there is the old famous 6K and 8K photo modes that we saw in Panasonic cameras Panasonic has moved into a new Direction and while I think that the 6K photo mode was a great workaround for high-speed shooting it wasn't ideal it basically shot a video clip with a high frame rate on it and it allowed you to pull a still as a JPEG from that video file I prefer to shoot everything in raw and you just don't need it anymore because these cameras will do well this one will do up to 60 frames per second continuous that's if you you're in AFC or autofocus continuous if you're in AFS and you don't need the fast autofocus then you can get up to 75 frames per second so it's really not needed anymore and these perform just fine especially when you consider how much we're actually gaining with the G9 II now again I know that Marketing in the camera industry will tell you that micro four thirds is old school and you've got to be full frame to be cool I don't know that I agree with that completely as I made the case for in this entire video they're still very much is a use case for micro four thirds I'm very happy to see this camera come out it's something that I still use in specific situations and to get a big performance boost like this out of these cameras when you consider a travel setup where you want to take a wide range of focal lengths and you don't want to carry a whole lot of stuff I think when you combine these lenses with they albeit larger body you're still having very Compact and very portable system I would love to know what you guys think this has just been a first look at this camera I will talk about it some more and do a full review as we've gotten into it a little bit but I would love to hear from you so drop me a comment below until the next video I will see you guys then later\n"