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When the Panasonic Lumix S9 was announced, everyone thought it was stupid. Myself included. No EVF, electronic shutter only, and to make matters worse, Panasonic decided to release the camera was an absolutely unhinged 26mm f8 lens. It’s a manual focus lens with a fixed aperture. I understand that it’s small, but so is a pinhole lens, that doesn’t make it a good idea. The main gripe with most people is that there are no good small L mount lenses, which is still kinda true, but I’ll get to that later.
The S9 also was ostensibly a “Creator camera” with tons of great video features like amazing stabilization and open gate 6k recording, but it came hampered with some also-unhinged recording limits; 10 minutes in 6k, 15 minutes in 4k, 20 minutes in 1080.
Now, nearly a year and a few software updates later, the S9 makes a lot more sense. The recording limit is gone, and Panasonic released the 18-40 kit lens, which is very compact, has autofocus, and makes a lot more sense on the S9.
I picked mine up with the Panasonic 20-60 which is an awesome lens but completely too big for the S9. I figured it was worth having a wide zoom for video anyway and it was next to free with the camera.
What I ended up putting on mine was the Sigma 35 f2. It’s still larger than I would like, but manageable and reasonably fast. Also a very well built lens. This combination is absolutely killer for an EDC camera. I toss it in my bag or backpack and have an exceptionally high quality camera with me at all times. It feels pretty good in your hand, but I do HIGHLY recommend the smallrig grip. It improves handling massively. With the smallrig and a wrist strap, it’s a great little walkaround camera that kinda just sits naturally in your hand, as long as you’re using a reasonably small lens, which I’ll get to later.
The Real Time Luts are very cool, and in my opinion better than fuji film sims just because there’s so much more flexibility. On Fuji you’re limited to what they give you, with Lumix you can download them from the internet or make your own based on editing your own photos in Lightroom.
The autofocus is good. I’m not a good judge of autofocus because I’m used to fuji cameras with trash autofocus, but it seems on par with the Nikon ZF I also own.
Okay, time for me to shut up and post some pics.
Pretty pretty good right? These were all with the Sigma 35 F2. So far the electronic shutter has been a non-issue for me, even shooting at night under LED lights I haven’t had any banding or weirdness.
The lack of EVF takes some time to get used to but I think it’s the correct call for this camera.
The lack of small lenses still kinda sucks though. The Sigma contemporary lenses are smallish, but still relatively large and heavy. Sure, on an S5ii or something they seem dainty, but this camera really needs some small, light primes. I would stab someone to be able to mount the Nikkor 40mm f2 to the S9. That’s EXACTLY what this camera needs, some small, light, cheap primes that take good looking photos. There are some Sigma primes that are smaller than the 35 f2, but they’re all slower, the next best and contender for future lens for me is the 45 f2.8, there’s also a 24mm f3.5 that is small, but these are getting pretty slow as they get smaller. For now, I’m going to rock the 35 f2 and probably pick up the 18-40 when it goes on sale at some point just to have a very small, light, walk-around travel lens that’s suitable for video too.
Hopefully more lenses are forthcoming as more companies join the L mount alliance. For now, the S9 with the Sigma 35 is still a pretty compact and compelling package. The Real Time Luts play right into my hatred of editing. The size is amazing, it’s a very capable video shooter, and their Lumix Lab app is actually great for quick sharing. Considering you can get the S9 with the 18-40 for well under $2k, I think it’s a great bang for your buck setup. So great, in fact, that I sold my rarer-than-hens-teeth Fuji X100VI and replaced it with the S9.
I gotta say, I was wrong on this one. The S9 is an awesome little camera.
