what if you could get the same results from a cost effective camera that you could from a five
thousand dollar camera and that doesn't even include the lens in this David versus Goliath
video we are going to be pitting the Lumix s52x against the Sony a7s III which is the king in a
lot of ways and we're gonna be putting them through real life scenarios not just talking
about specs and blabbing away about this that and the other thing we're going to go use them and
we're going to talk about which have what benefits in certain areas now a lot of us are enthusiasts
not everyone gets paid to do photography or videography so that's what we're going to
talk about from a very practical standpoint if you guys are professionals you probably already
know what type of specs you need from a camera and probably already have it in Your Arsenal but
for the rest of us I'm going to talk to you guys about the Real Life practical use cases for these
cameras let's talk about the cost breakdown the Sony a7s III body starts at forty eight hundred
dollars here in Canada that is without a lens so you still can't use it and you still need a pretty
expensive memory card to get the most out of that camera the Lumix s52x on the other hand goes for 3
000 Canadian dollars and they have packed a lot of punch into this tiny and cost
effective camera such as all eye formats you can shoot up to prores you can record out to
an SSD and you can shoot out to Raw through the HDMI as well and it packs a whole bunch
of extra professional video features in that camera as well for being almost two thousand
dollars cheaper now the first thing that we really notice between the Sony and the Lumix was that
the image stabilization was vastly different now can you figure out which one was better
it was the Lumix the in-body image stabilization on these cameras is maybe the best in all of the
camera categories when I came back and started editing this footage I was honestly blown away
at how shaky these Sony footage was when I had already looked at the Lumix footage it's almost
unusable on the Sony side and when you're talking about real life use cases with these cameras that
can actually be a really big deal being able to practically use handheld footage and not feel the
need to have to upgrade to a gimbal for example to make sure that you're getting that solid stable
footage so in this category the Lumix is going to take the win for me now when it comes to image
quality we were shooting both of these cameras at 422 10 bit codecs in 4k the Lumix s52x does
have the ability to shoot in all eye formats and prores when you're recording out to an SSD drive
but these file sizes are quite honestly they're massive so you have to make sure you have plenty
of hard drives on hand when you you bring that footage back because one little clip is like 1.9
gigs per second that's crazy that's absolutely crazy and potentially unnecessary so you have to
make sure that whatever project you're working on that you are using the correct tool for most of us
I think that 422 10 bit is a great codec whether you are shooting in Long GOP or all I I honestly
just use the long GOP format in my Lumix camera because it's plenty good enough and if you want
to shoot up too raw you can but again for most of us we're posting to social media or YouTube
or whatever it is and don't actually require the depth of color retention that raw really gives us
so something to consider when you're looking at a camera when it comes to dynamic range the Lumix
and the Sony actually are very close the Lumix boasts 14 plus stops of dynamic range and the Sony
boasts up to 15 stops of dynamic range so very very close in how they can retain highlights and
shadows using their log profiles which was really actually necessary because we were out shooting in
very bright conditions so the ability to retain those highlights and still see some details in
those Shadow areas was really great and one thing that I noticed about these two profiles I actually
used the same v-log to rec 709 profile that I've created for both the Lumix and the Sony and they
both looked incredible the color retention the way that it brought back the dynamic range was
very similar actually so I actually used that same Lut on all of the footage I love the v-log
profile the way that it retains highlights in this camera is it's beautiful the roll-off is amazing
and the Highlight retention you can just get it all back I I absolutely love using this camera and
then the low light performance on the Sony make sure that you're getting all the crispy details
in the shadows so not necessarily a clear winner in this area at least in my use case when it was
super bright and sunny now when it comes to low light shooting the Sony a7s3 is obviously the king
the whole entire internet will tell you that it is the best in low light but the Lumix is no pushover
in this area either it does offer a dual native ISO at 640 and at 4 000 which is super usable in
real life situations the Sony a7s III has a crazy dual native ISO I think it's like up at 12 800 or
something correct me if you are a Sony user down in the comments which is awesome because if you're
shooting in Crazy low-light situations you can get another clean platform to shoot in those low
light situations additionally when you add ISO into these cameras the noise is actually quite
manageable it doesn't get too gross it's still usable footage whereas when I was using the canons
the R5 and the R6 they don't have that dual native ISO so that made it a lot more difficult when you
started bringing noise always into those images started looking really icky and actually a lot of
times not very usable so if you're in the Canon ecosystem you probably want to go more for like
that r5c or something better so you can get like that dual native ISO so let's get into some of the
compromises you might have to make if you go with either one of these cameras the first one that I
want to talk about is slow motion is this is where I think that the greatest difference come from
with the Sony and the Lumix the Sony is going to offer you a ton of slow motion options at high bit
rates so you can shoot at 120 frames per second at 422 10 bit with Incredible color retention now
if you need that and you shoot a ton of 120 and you need to be just color rich and awesome then
you need the Sony but if you honestly didn't even understand the numbers that I just said
then you don't the Lumix does offer 60 frames per second and 120 but the 60 frames per second
is cropped at 4K still incredibly usable and a beautiful image because you can shoot at 422 10
bit but I've even used practically speaking the 60 frames per second 10 bit color retention at 1080p
posted it all over the Internet and y'all aren't any the wiser because you just you just don't know
most of us are practically posting to YouTube or social media but if you are the rare breed that
needs those incredibly High bit rates for your professional work then you might be needing that
Sony camera that was a compromise that I was willing to make with the Lumix is having lower
resolution for my slow motion which I don't shoot a ton of and when I do I'm actually okay with the
crop on the 60 frames per second 4K I found it to be very usable and still a really great image
another compromise that you are going to have to look at is in the photography now the Sony a7s III
is not necessarily a photographer first camera it's quite honestly an afterthought you have 12
megapixel photos which practically speaking is very usable if you posted that stuff to social
media no one's really going to be any the wiser it's going to look great the bokeh is gonna look
beautiful and it's all getting compressed down anyway for social media so if that's all you're
using it for you're plenty good over there but the Lumix on the other hand has a 24 megapixel
and this means that you can blow up those photos a little bit bigger if you need to you maybe get
a little bit more data in there but there's pros and cons just really depends on where you're gonna
end up putting those photos the reason that the Sony has such a low megapixel count is so that
it can bring in all that low light so that is the compromise is getting that incredible low light
performance but not having as many megapixels to get a high quality high resolution photo
again real life usage I've seen a ton of these photos go out to the internet and no one knows
that it's only 12 megapixels but in the this area I think the Lumix kind of takes the win because
it still has incredible low light performance with slightly higher resolution photos as well
another compromise you have to think about is in the lens costs so the Sony starts at 4 800
Canadian and that is without a lens and then if you look at the cost of Sony lenses they're
they're wild like realistically speaking it is a significant amount of money to be able to get
into the Sony ecosystem so when I've asked a lot of my friends hey would you consider
Lumix because I'm a big fan I'm not paid to say any of this by the way but they're like I can't
switch I'm too invested I'm in it deep man like they can never move because they're thousands of
dollars invested into this company where I found the benefit on the Lumix side was I was able to
get a body a lens and a DJI mini RS3 gimbal all for the same price as whoever was buying that Sony
body absolutely incredible uh what you get from this little package and one question I would ask
is can you actually tell the difference between a three thousand dollar lens and a 600 lens like
when you're scrolling Instagram can you actually be like oh that was a three thousand dollar lens
right there I can't and most of my career has actually been built on budget friendly lenses like
Sigma series or just more cost effective lenses like the Lumix lenses that I have here are six
hundred dollars and eight hundred dollars and I shoot a ton of professional work with it so when
we really consider the real practical implications of how we use our cameras and where we are posting
the content that we're shooting with it I think it's pretty interesting to consider the pros and
cons when you're just looking at camera bodies and what they're capable of so are those compromises
worth it for you does the cost really balance out do you need 120 frames per second at 4K to make
sure that all your friends can see how much money you have if not well you can subscribe because I
do a lot of Lumix content and you could watch this video here to see me do some POV photography with
the Lumix I hope that this has been insightful I hope you guys enjoyed this video but I hope that
you've been a little bit educated today again I know this was sponsored by anyone I think it's
just interesting to have real world opinions on these cameras cool take care guys peace