I sent off my a7r², e-lenses and a few μ43/PK odds & ends, got a lowball offer but a clean closet, and my S5 + 20-60 dream team.
Great to hear that you found a good solution to enter the L-Mount system.
Looking at the older postings of this thread, I just wanted to put some things into perspective about how often new models come out etc.
I started with photography in the analog times, in the late 80ies. Almost 40 years ago.
At that time Photokina in Köln/Germany was the biggest photo fair worldwide. Held every 2 years. Most companies showed new models at every Photokina, so every 2 years. Pro models had a longer cycle like every 4-6 years. This did also depend on the market share. Nikon, Minolta and Canon had new models every 2 years, Leica, Pentax and Contax less often.
Medium Format did this a lot slower, because the MF market was not big enough to justify it and the technological advancement were not worth it.
The innovation in the analog times came mainly with the "software", not with the hardware. The software was the film/slide. Fuji Velvia 50 for example or Fuji Provia 100F. The films allowed us to make a step up in image quality. Not the body. The "big" improvemnts on the bodies were more on the usability side. They introduced in the 80ies aperture priority, program mode etc.. Or different metering calculations like in the Nikon F3 with its 80% metering or spot metering. The younger people around us will be shocked how "slow" innovation was at that time with the hardware and what kind of "basics" were introduced at that time, which every 99$ P&S is capable nowadays.
If we skip the adventure of
APS film cameras, the digital P&S area began. We got bombarded almost every 3-6 months with newer P&S models. We startd with 1MP (!) and my first digital camera, a Olympus C100 had 2MP. Nobody thought at that time about DSLRs. It was still too early for "serious" photography. Fuji offered only P&S at that time, Casio was really big in that P&S business etc.
Years later, slowly the DSLR market came alive. First APS-C only models were available, later also fullframe (high end). But also here, new DSLRs every 6 months and Pro models every 2-4 years until the market peaked in technological innovation in 2012.
This was a crazy time and compared to now, you really burned your money every 6-12 months because technology advanced so fast, that each iteration every 6 months brought really a step up in image quality or AF or viewfinder, that you could see in real life situations. So you were kind of "forced" to buy very often a newer model to get this significant step upwards in quality, because the "film" was glued to the hardware. You could not just buy a new film for your old camera like in the old times. Compared to 2024, this was really a nightmare for your wallet.
For normal human beeings, digital Medium Format was not affordable at all. Price tags well above 20.000$ made it impossible. Later digital backs for MF became cheaper but still way too expensive for most of us.
Since 2012 the market saturated and declined. There was no real, siginificant improvement for the masses to justify to continue to burn the money at the same speed. Parallel to this, smartphones became more capable. In 2012 the iphone 5 came out. Camera sales dropped from 120 million per year to around 20 million per year pre Corona (2019). Product cycles adapted and fewer new models appeared at greater intervals. But you get still excellent photos with a Nikon D800 from 2012. There you can see, that there is no big progress anymore since 2012. Cameras are that good already.
But during this period from 2012-2019 the industry continued to adapt. Mirrorless was the "the next big thing". Some were (partly) earlier (Nikon 1, Panasonic & Olympus MFT, Sony, Fuji X), some came very late (Canon and Nikon with bigger sensors in 2018)
Then Corona came in 2020 and the industry hold a deep breath and waited with new models, which is understandable. Today we are at a market with around 6 million camera sales per year worldwide and it will probablydrop down to around 4 million over the next 18 months.
From 120 million in 2012 to 6 million today. Bear this is mind.
The brands have really to fight nowadays to survive and each model needs to be a winner, especially if your brand has a smaller market niche. You can not afford to launch every 2 years a new model with only a few upgrades. Nobody will buy it, because the old cameras are so good already, that you do not need it really. And you need to bundle your R&D efforts. But this is good for us. Longer product cycle iterations means the hardware holds longer its value, we burn less often our money for new models and because the technology matured, we do not really miss something, except maybe the drug (GAS) withdrawal symptoms
At the same time we can be glad that Panasonic and Leica brought out so many different models in such difficult times although the L-Mount market share is a fraction of Canon or Sony or Fuji.
If we complain about too many or too few updates, we should compare this to other brands. Sony has the habit to make firmware updates only with new models. If you want to have a new feature, buy a new body
Nikon launched its Nikon 1 system and killed it again. Canon launched its M-System and killed it again. After Sony took over Minolta for 1$, they changed so many times there strategy, that you did not know whether the camera you buy today will be supported tomorrow. Kodak is gone, Minolta is gone, Rollei is gone, Mamiya is gone, Contax is gone, Hasselblad is almost gone etc. pp.
Fuji has a strange strategy that it offers many different bodies around the same sensor, but you never get a body which has all "good things" in one body. For example: If you want to have the body, features and usability of the XT5, but do not want to have 40MP, but maybe 24-26 MP only, there is nothing you can buy from Fuji. If you want to have a Fuji body with 24MP, you have to buy a totally different camera with a totally differnt usability.
The grass on the other side of the fence is not greener. I am really happy with the L-Mount and that we got in Sept. 2020 a S5, in January 2023 a S5ii with PDAF. Both are still today great cameras (no need for a S5ii if you do not need PDAF). Similar to Sony with its older A7 models, the L-Mount has the S5 as an affordable entry level into the L-Mount system. Compared to the older Sony A7 models, the S5 is a lot better and still one of the best cameras with one of teh best sensors out there. You can not say this from the older Sony A7 models
The other Lumix models will get successors too but the higher the price tag, the longer it will take (beside of the Corona break). Would you buy every 2 years a 4.000$ camera? I would not have the money for this.
But looking at the small niche we have with L-Mount in a 6-4 million market, we can not extpect to have too many different models in the future. The Lumix S9 was a surprise for me. My guess is one model below the S5 will come sooner or later, maybe as a rangefinder model - if Leica allows this. A successor of the S1R and also of the S1H. But I doubt that there will be a successor of the S1. The customer voted with their wallet and the S5/S5ii sales numbers are probably a multiple of the S1.
Would I recommend to buy the S5 today? Yes. Without any hesitation. I could go back from my S5ii to the S5 and would miss only some minor things for my individual use case which noone else would care about.
As Paul said the S5 is really good. For me the DFD AF works even for sports. The S5 is still the benchmark others have to try to come even close to it.
I'm definitely loving the video performance and the sticky accurate AF eye tracking for birds etc. so far.
