(If you want to watch the video go here!)
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan and this is Kenneth Merrill. Why would you choose the Panasonic S9 over your phone? We’ll give you four reasons why!
So here we are hunkered down in the stairway because it’s so windy outside. We cannot even get out there and shoot. But we did find the most beautiful part of the hotel for you. So you’re welcome for that! It also matches the camera that Jay P, you like that maroon stairway don’t you? I love the maroon stairway, absolutely!
So why is it you would choose the S9 over your iPhone. This feels like the real competition because this is targeted towards people that are getting into a serious camera for the first time. So they’re probably moving from the iPhone. And the question is why? And they are content creators. That’s what this camera is aimed towards. People who are going to create content, who want to get things up quickly, who want to get great looking things up quickly.
I think the first reason is really, its picture quality! This gives you a beautiful image. This is a 24 megapixel full-frame sensor in this camera. Which is an incredible image. And that’s going to be pretty hard to compete. 
You mean they don’t have full frame sensors in these little? No, no. Yeah, a full-frame sensor, I mean it’s going to give you such better quality in terms of dynamic range, in terms of resolution, in terms of color. 
The iPhone boasts pretty high resolution these days I think. I have the 15. I think it’s up to 24 megapixels. But those megapixels are, it’s not high quality megapixels. Your sensor is still about this big. 
A teeny little sensor. And so you’re not getting a lot of information through these lenses. Whereas this, it’s just about as good as you can get in that 24 megapixel range. Oh, absolutely! I mean there’s a beautiful image. 
Panasonic has always had great color science. It’s a beautiful image. It looks wonderful. So you’re not going to compete with this and it’s going to show. And if you look at these side by side, see the images, you see exactly what we’re talking about. 
Just how beautiful that color is and the ability to change the color and to manipulate it and to do things with it are so much stronger. Especially if you shoot a raw image. But most people are not going to be doing that. That’s true.
I would say reason number two is you actually get real bokeh. If you get a lens with a nice, decent wide aperture you’re going to get real out of focus background. 
You’re not going to rely on the computational editing that your phone’s doing where it’s artificially creating a blur around your subject.Which frankly sometimes it does work, sometimes it looks great. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all.
Well that really leads into number three. Because that beautiful bokeh, because it’s an L-mount lens and you can change the lenses on this camera. So you can put any lens that is made out there that’s L mount on this. 
From whether it’s from Panasonic or from some other aftermarket company, it just gives you the ability to choose wonderful lens choice to give you great bokeh, to give you great reach. We were shooting on a 28-200mm on this yesterday which just gave us beautiful reach. 
And so it’s just, you have so many more options with a camera like this. And especially with this built-in assist. When you’re doing the zoom assist it really can keep you at 4K but you can zoom out to 300mm on a 200mm lens. So it gives you great options. 
And the other thing about the L-mount is it’s pretty shallow. Which means there are a lot of adapters out there that can adapt vintage glass. And shooting on vintage glass with that full-frame sensor is going to give you a look that you can’t get with the iPhone no matter what editing software you’re using on the iPhone. You’re not going to get the really fun, unique look you get out of, you know, something like a Helios lens. So, and we all know that we have a Helios lens at home we’d like to be using on this. All of us do have one of those and we’re dying to use it. No, but in reality, the vintage look and the nostalgia is so big right now. And I feel like a lot of content creators want to lean into that. And having the ability to try out old glass, stuff that you can pick up really cheap on eBay for $50 bucks. I’ve got some beautiful 70’s Nikon lenses. Oh yeah, that’s perfect! That are just beautiful old lenses. That are just great and would look excellent on this camera. They really would. It would, now, just a note for Apple. It would be cool if they did come out with an iPhone that had old ’70s Nikon lenses. I think it’d really add to the value. Up charge $200 bucks. It’d be hard to get in your pocket but it would look cool. The images would be great. So there you go.
And the last reason is that this camera shoots in open gate. So it’s 3:2, you’re shooting the entire sensor. So you can take that vertical out of the middle. You can go square. You can use just different cropping in that same sensor size. Whereas you don’t have to be going like this, you know, let’s shoot it vertical, now let’s shoot it horizontal, you know. Which we do periodically. 
We’re shooting things on the phone quickly for social media. Got to shoot, you got to cover them both. Which this gives you an open gate recording so you can do both. 
Yeah, with the phone, I mean you’re stuck to 9×16 this way and 9×16 this way for video at least. And the open gate gives you such a taller thing. You can kind of get both in one. Which is why they have that functionality in that camera. It’s really nice.
So there really is, as interesting as it is, there are great reasons why the S9 is an excellent choice for content creation. Especially if you consider the new workflow you get through their app, Lumix Lab. Lumix Lab allows you to put presets on. It allows you to crop and cut and push things out to social media. It becomes an interface between camera, phone and out to social media. 
Which makes this a fast content creation device. And it’s not that much more expensive than the phone. And if you have a nicer camera you don’t have to go quite as expensive on your phone cameras. You know, if that’s, if the primary purpose is content creation you can get a cheaper phone then get a nicer actual camera. I will say, the S9 has been designed around the idea of shooting and then going directly to sharing without having to pull it into Lightroom or Photoshop and tweek images and do all this grading stuff. And that is still the edge that the iPhone has over the S9. Because you don’t even have to offload the images. There’s just no step in between. You take the picture and post it immediately, just changing an app. So if in that sense the phone is always going to be a little more convenient. But I think the sacrifice that you’re making in terms of the time it takes to kind of get your images online is well worth it if you’re looking for that beautiful full-frame, you know, rich color imagery. And the flexibility that comes along with a powerhouse camera like this. All things are trade-off one way or another and I think that trade-off is worth the image quality and the beautiful images you get, the bokeh, the things we talked about, lens choices. 
So that’s why we think there’s four good reasons why the S9 is a pretty good decision over your phone when it comes to content creation. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin!
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